Rabbit, Run - John Updike [126]
Nelson takes the rubber panda along and every time he makes it squeak it makes Rabbit’s stomach ache. The town now is bleached by a sun nearing the height of noon.
Mrs. Springer, when Janice tells what happened, bustles around and finds an old black dress of hers that, with skillful pinning and a little sewing, she thinks will do. She and Janice go upstairs and after half an hour Janice comes down wrapped in black. “Harry. Does it look all right?”
“What in hell do you think this is going to be? A fashion show?” The idea that she can wear her mother’s clothes infuriates him. He adds regretfully, “You look fine,” but the damage is done. Janice is wounded and collapses upstairs and Mrs. Springer revokes the small measure of tolerance she had extended to him. The house again fills with the unspoken thought that he is the murderer. He accepts the thought gratefully; it’s true, he is, he is, and hate suits him better than forgiveness. Immersed in hate he doesn’t have to do anything; he can be paralyzed, and the rigidity of hatred makes a kind of shelter for him.
He reads Nelson a Little Golden Book about a little choochoo who was afraid of tunnels but finally became courageous. Mrs. Springer comes in and bites off the word “Lunch.” Harry says he doesn’t want any but, taking courage from the storybook, goes into the kitchen to supervise and guard Nelson. Mrs. Springer manages to keep her back to him all the time. When Nelson is finished with his soup and raw carrots and Lebanon balony sandwich Harry takes him upstairs and settles him in bed and then resumes sitting in the living-room chair. Janice has fallen asleep and the sound of Mrs. Springer’s sewing machine spins out into the birdsong and murmur of the early afternoon. Janice wakes up and comes down to the refrigerator and then goes up again and her voice and her mother’s mingle. Mr. Springer comes home, comes in and tries to talk about nothing, and senses that Harry’s status in the house has gone down again. He trots upstairs to the women. Footfalls pad above. Fancy dishes in the glass-fronted cupboard behind Harry vibrate.
He wonders if the pain in his stomach comes from eating so little in the last two days and goes out to the kitchen and eats two crackers. He can feel each bite hit a scraped floor inside. The pain increases. The bright porcelain fixtures, the steel doors, all seem charged with a negative magnetism that pushes against him and makes him extremely thin. He goes into the shadowy living-room and at the front window watches two teen-age girls in snug shorts shuffle by on the sunny sidewalk. Their bodies are already there but their faces are still this side of being good. Funny about girls about fourteen, their faces have this kind of eager bunchy business. Too much candy, sours their skin. They walk as slowly as the time to the funeral passes. Daughters, these are daughters, would June—he chokes the thought. The girls’ long legs and slow, developed motions seem distasteful and unreal. He himself, watching them behind the window, seems a smudge on the glass. He wonders why the universe doesn’t just erase a thing so dirty and small. He looks at his hands and they seem fantastically ugly.
He goes upstairs and with intense care washes his hands and face and neck. He doesn’t dare use one of their fancy towels. Coming out with wet hands he meets Springer in the muted hallway and says, “I don’t have a clean shirt.” Springer says “Wait” and brings him a shirt and black cuff links. Harry dresses in the room where Nelson sleeps. Sunlight under the drawn shades; the boy’s heavy breath. It takes less time to dress than he hoped it would. The wool suit is uncomfortably hot, but something stubborn