Rabbit, Run - John Updike [108]
She feels this and is oppressed by it. “Why don’t you go out? You’re making the baby nervous. You’re making me nervous.”
“Don’t you want a drink?”
“No. No. I just wish you’d sit down or stop smoking or rock the baby or something. And stop touching me. It’s too hot. I think I should be back at the hospital.”
“Do you hurt? I mean down there.”
“Well I wouldn’t if the baby would stop. I’ve fed her three times. Now I must feed you supper. Ohh. Sundays make me sick. What did you do in church that makes you so busy?”
“I’m not busy. I’m trying to be helpful.”
“I know. That’s what’s so unnatural. Your skin smells funny.”
“How?”
“Oh I don’t know. Stop bothering me.”
“I love you.”
“Stop it. You can’t. I’m not lovable right now.”
“You just lie down on the sofa and I’ll make some soup.”
“No no no. You give Nelson his bath. I’ll try to nurse the baby again. Poor thing there’s nothing there.”
They eat supper late but in broad light; the day is one of the longest of the year. They sip soup by the flickering light of Rebecca’s urgent cries; her fragile voice is a thin filament burning with erratic injections of power. But as, amid the stacked dishes on the sink, under the worn and humid furniture, and in the coffin-like hollow of the plaited crib, the shadows begin to strengthen, the grip of the one with which Becky has been struggling all afternoon relaxes, and suddenly she is quiet, leaving behind a solemn guilty peace. They had failed her. A foreigner speaking no English but pregnant with a great painful worry had been placed among them and they had failed her. At last, night itself had swept in and washed her away like a broken piece of rubbish.
“It couldn’t have been colic, she’s too young for colic,” Janice says. “Maybe she was just hungry, maybe I’m out of milk.”
“How could that be, you’ve been like footballs.”
She looks at him squinting, sensing what’s up. “Well don’t think you’re going to play.” But he thinks he spies a smile there.
Nelson goes to bed as he does when he’s sick, willingly, whimpering. His sister was a drain on him today. Sunk in the pillow, Nelson’s brown head looks demure and compact. As the child hungrily roots the bottle in his mouth, Rabbit hovers, seeking what you never find, the expression with which to communicate, to transfer, those fleeting burdens, ominous and affectionate, that are placed upon us and as quickly lifted, like the touch of a brush. Obscure repentance clouds his mouth, a repentance out of time and action, a mourning simply that he exists in a world where the brown heads of little boys sink gratefully into narrow beds sucking bottles of rubber and glass. He cups his hand over the bulge of Nelson’s forehead. The boy drowsily tries to brush it off, waggles his head with irritation, and Harry takes it away and goes into the other room.
He persuades Janice to have a drink. He makes it—he doesn’t know much about alcoholic things—of half whisky and half water. She says it tastes hateful. But after a while consumes it.
In bed he imagines that he can feel its difference in her flesh. There is that feeling of her body coming into his hand, of fitting his palm, that makes a welcome texture. All under her nightie up to the pit of her throat her body is still for him. They lie sideways, facing each other. He rubs her back, first lightly, then toughly, pushing her chest against his, and gathers such a feel of strength from her pliancy that he gets up on an elbow to be above her. He kisses her dark hard face scented with alcohol. She does not turn her head, but he reads no rejection in this small refusal of motion, that lets him peck away awkwardly at a profile. He stifles his tide of resentment, reschooling himself in her slowness. Proud of his patience, he resumes rubbing her back. Her skin keeps its secret, as does her tongue; is she feeling it? She is mysterious against him, a sullen weight whose chemistry is impervious to ideas, impregnable