Rabbit, Run - John Updike [40]
“Enough.”
“Why do you like me?”
“ ‘Cause you’re bigger than I am.” She moves to the next corner and tugs. “Boy that used to gripe hell out of me, the way these little women everybody thinks are so cute grab all the big men.”
“They have something,” he tells her. “They seem easier to get to.”
She laughs and says, “I guess that’s right.”
He pulls up his trousers and buckles the belt. “Why else do you like me?”
She looks at him. “Shall I tell you?”
“Tell me.”
“ ‘Cause you haven’t given up. ‘Cause in your stupid way you’re still fighting.”
He loves hearing this; pleasure spins along his nerves, making him feel very tall, and he grins. But the American protest of modesty is instinctive with him, and “The will to achievement” glides out of his mouth mockingly.
“That poor old bastard,” she says. “He really is a bastard too.”
“Hey, I’ll tell you what,” Rabbit says. “I’ll run out and get some stuff at that grocery store you can cook for our lunch.”
“Say, you settle right in, don’t you?”
“Why? Were you going to meet somebody?”
“No, I don’t have anybody.”
“Well, then. You said last night you liked to cook.”
“I said I used to.”
“Well, if you used to you still do. What shall I get?”
“How do you know the store’s open?”
“Isn’t it? Sure it is. Those little stores make all their money on Sundays, what with the supermarkets.” He goes to the window and looks up at the corner. Sure, the door of the place opens and a man comes out with a newspaper.
“Your shirt’s filthy,” she says behind him.
“I know.” He moves away from the windowlight. “It’s Tothero’s shirt. I got to get some clothes. But let me get food now. What shall I get?”
“What do you like?” she asks.
The thing about her is, she’s good-natured. He knew it the second he saw her standing by the parking meters. He could just tell from the soft way her belly looked. With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they’re a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman’s good nature. The pavement kicks under his feet as he runs to the grocery store in his dirty shirt. What do you like? He has her. He knows he has her.
He brings back eight hot dogs in cellophane, a package of frozen lima beans, a package of frozen French fries, a quart of milk, a jar of relish, a loaf of raisin bread, a ball of cheese wrapped in red cellophane, and, on top of the bag, a Ma Sweitzer’s shoo-fly pie. It all costs $2.43. As she brings the things out of the bag in her tiny stained kitchen, Ruth says, “You’re kind of a bland eater.”
“I wanted lamb chops but he only had hot dogs and salami and hash in cans.”
While she cooks he wanders around her living-room and finds a row of pocketbook mysteries on a shelf under a table beside a chair. The guy in the bunk beside his at Fort Hood used to read those all the time. Ruth has opened the windows, and the cool March air is sharpened by this memory of baking Texas. Ruth’s curtains of dingy dotted Swiss blow; their gauze skin gently fills and they lean in toward him as he stands paralyzed by a more beautiful memory: his home, when he was a child, the Sunday papers rattling on the floor, stirred by the afternoon draft, and his mother rattling the dishes in the kitchen; when she is done, she will organize them all, Pop and him and baby Miriam, to go for a walk. Because of the baby, they will not go far, just a few blocks maybe to the old gravel quarry, where the ice pond of winter, melted into a lake a few inches deep, doubles the height of the quarry cliff by throwing its rocks upside down into a pit of reflection. But it is only water; they take a few steps further along the edge and from this new angle the pond mirrors the sun, the illusion of inverted cliffs is wiped out, and the water is as solid as ice with light. Rabbit holds little Mim hard by the hand. “Hey,” he calls to Ruth. “I got a terrific idea. Let’s go for a walk this afternoon.”
“Walk! I walk all the time.”
“Let’s walk up to the top of Mt. Judge from here.”