Rabbit, Run - John Updike [50]
Ruth was funny. Her bowling was awful; she just sort of paddled up to the line and dropped the ball. Plok. Every time, in Gigi, the stereophonic-sound loudspeaker behind them in the theater would blare out she turned around and said “Shh” as if it were somebody in the theater talking too loud. In The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, every time Ingrid Bergman’s face appeared on the screen she leaned over to Rabbit and asked him in a whisper, “Is she really a whore?” He was upset by Robert Donat; he looked awful. He knew he was dying. Imagine knowing you’re dying and going ahead pretending you’re a mandarin. Ruth’s comment about Bell, Book and Candle last night was, “Why don’t you ever see any bongo drums around here?” He vowed secretly to get some. A half-hour ago, waiting for the bus on Weiser Street, he priced a set in the window of the Chords ‘n’ Records music store. $19.95. All the way out on the bus he beat bongo patterns on his knees.
“For I’m just wild about Harry-ree—”
Number 61 is a big brick place with white wood trim, a little porch imitating a Greek temple, and a slate roof that shines under the clouds’ sullen luster. Out back a wire fence encloses a yellow swing frame and a sandbox. A puppy yaps in this pen as Harry goes up the walk. The grass wears that intense greasy green that promises rain, the color of grass in color snapshots. The place looks too cheerful to be right; Rabbit thinks of ministers as living in black shingled castles. But a small plate above the fish-shaped door-knocker says in engraved script The Rectory. He bangs the fish twice and, after waiting, twice again.
A crisp little number with speckled green eyes opens the door. “What is it?” Her voice as good as says, “How dare you?” As she adjusts her face to his height her eyes enlarge, displaying more of the vividly clear whites to which her moss-colored irises are buttoned.
At once, absurdly, he feels in control of her, feels she likes him. Freckles dot her little bumpy nose, kind of a pinched nose, narrow and pale under the dots of tan. Her skin is fair, and fine-grained as a child’s. She is wearing orange shorts. With a pleasantness that amounts to arrogance he says, “Hi.”
“Hello.”
“Say, is Reverend Eccles in?”
“He’s asleep.”
“In the middle of the day?”
“He was up much of the night.”
“Oh gosh. The poor guy.”
“Do you want to come in?”
“Well gee, I don’t know. He told me to be here. He really did.”
“He might well have. Please come in.”
She leads him past a hall and staircase into a cool room with a high ceiling and silver wallpaper, a piano, watercolors of scenery, a lot of sets of books in a recessed bookcase, a fireplace whose mantel supports one of those clocks with a pendulum of four gold balls that are supposed to run practically forever. Photographs in frames all around. Furniture heavy green and red except for a long sofa with a scrolling back and arms whose cushions are cream white. The room smells coldly kept. From far off comes the warmer odor of cake baking. She stops in the center of the rug and says, “Listen.”
He stops. The faint bump that he also heard is not repeated. She explains, “I thought that brat was asleep.”
“Are you the babysitter?”
“I’m the wife,” she says, and sits down in the center of the white sofa, to prove it.
He takes a padded wing chair opposite. The plum fabric feels softly gritty against his naked forearms. He is wearing a checked sports shirt, with the sleeves turned back to his elbows. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Of course. Her bare legs, crossed, show the blue dabs of varicose veins. Her face, when she sits, is not as young as at the door. Double chin when she relaxes, head tucked back. Smug little cookie. Firm little knockers. He asks, “How old is your child?”
“Two children. Two girls, one and three.”
“I have a boy who’s two.”
“I’d like a boy,” she says. “The girls and