"No idea where," Nelson says, and smiles into the television flicker. "I get lost down here, it's like one big business strip. One nice thing about Florida, it makes Pennsylvania look unspoiled."
The local news commentator is giving the manatee update. "Manatee herds continue to populate both warm-weather feeding areas and traditional winter refuges as fair weather and eightydegree temperatures continue. A general waterways alert is out: boaters, cut your throttle to half-speed. Throughout the weekend, encounters with manatees remain likely in widely varied habitats around Southwest Florida."
"They say that," Rabbit says, "but I never encounter one."
"That's because you're never on the water," Nelson says. "It's stupid, to be down here like you are and not own a boat."
"What do I want a boat for? I hate the water."
"You'd get to love it. You could fish all over the Gulf. You don't have enough to do, Dad."
"Who wants to fish, ifyou're halfway civilized? Dangling some dead meat in front of some poor brainless thing and then pulling him up by a hook in the roof of his mouth? Cruellest thing people do is fish."
The blond newscaster, with his hair moussed down so it's stiff as a wig, tells them, "An adult manatee with calf was reported at midday on Wednesday heading inland along Cape Coral's Bimini Canal about one-half mile from the Bimini Basin. Sightings like this indicate that while a large number of the Caloosahatchee herd have moved back out into the open waters of the river and back bays, some animals may still be encountered in and near sheltered waterways. To report dead or injured manatees, call 1-800-3421821." The number rolls across some footage of a manatee family sluggishly rolling around in the water. "And," he concludes in that sonorous way television announcers have when they see the commercial break coming, "to report a manatee sighting, call the Manatee Hotline at 332-3092."
To refresh his rapport with Judy, Rabbit calls over, "How'd you like to have a single big tooth like that mamma manatee?" But the girl doesn't seem to hear, her fair little face radiantly riveted on one of those ads with California raisins singing and dancing like black men. In a row like the old Mousketeers. Where are they now? Middle-aged parents themselves. Jimmie died years ago, he remembers reading. Died young. It happens. Roy is sucking his thumb and nodding off against Nelson's chest. Nelson is still wearing the white-collared, pink-striped shirt he wore down in the plane, as if he doesn't own anything as foolish as a shortsleeved shirt.
"Tomorrow," Rabbit loudly promises he doesn't know who, "I'll get out on the water. Judy and I will rent a Sunfish. I have it all set up with Ed Silberstein's son over at the Bayview Hotel."
"I don't know," Nelson says. "How safe are those things?"
Rabbit is insulted. "They're like toys, for Chrissake. If they tip over, you just stand on the centerboard and up they come. Kids ten, eleven years old race them over in the Bay all the time."
"Yeah, but Judy's not even nine yet, not for a couple weeks. And no offense, Dad, you're way into double digits. And no sailor, from what you just said."
"O.K., you do something with your kids tomorrow. You entertain 'em. I spent over eight hours at it today and dropped around eighty bucks."
Nelson tells him, "You're supposed to want to do things like that. You're their dear old grandfather, remember?" He softens, slightly. "Sunfishing's a nice idea. Just make sure she wears a life jacket."
"Why don't you all come along? You, Pru, Sleeping Beauty here. It's a helluva beach. They keep it clean."
"Maybe we will, if I can. I'm expecting a call or two."
"From the -lot? Can't they even manage for half a week?"
Nelson is drifting away, hiding behind the distraction of television. One of the new Toyota ads is playing, with the blackwoman car salesman. At the end, she and the customer jump into the air and are frozen there. "No," Nelson is saying, so softly Rabbit can hardly hear. "It's a contact I made down here."
"A contact? What about?"
Nelson puts his finger to his lip, to signal they should not wake Roy.
Rabbit gets out his needle again. "Speaking of digits, I keep trying to remember what seemed off about that November statement. Maybe the number of used seemed down for this time of year. Usually it's up, along with the new models."
"Money's scared, with Reagan going out," Nelson answers, ever so softly. "Also, Lyle's put in a new accounting system, maybe they were deferred into the next month and will show up in the December stats. Don't worry about it, Dad. You and Mom just enjoy Florida. You've worked hard all your life. You've earned a rest."
And the boy, as if to seal in the possibility of irony, kisses little Judy ón the top of her shiny-sleek, carrot-colored head. The blue light from the set penetrates the triangular patch of thinning hair between Nelson's deepening temples. A hostage he's given to fortune. Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
"Dinner, guys and gals," Pru calls from Janice's aqua kitchen.
Her meal is a more thought-out affair than Janice's ever are, with a spicy clear sort of minestrone soup to begin, and a salad on a separate plate, and a fresh white fish, broiled on the stove grill attachment that Janice never takes the trouble to use. Janice has become a great warmer-up of leftovers in the microwave, and a great buyer over at Winn Dixie of frozen meatloaves and stuffed peppers and seafood casseroles in their little aluminum pans that can be tossed into the trashmasher dirty. She was always a minimal housewife and now the technology has caught up with her. The vegetables Pru serves, wild rice and little tender peas and baby onions, have a delicate pointed taste that Harry feels is aimed at him, a personal message the others consume without knowing. "Delicious," he tells Pru.
Janice explains to Harry, "Pru went into this little narrow fish store behind Eckerd's where I never thought to go. Our generation," she explains to Pru, "didn't have that much to do with fish. Except I remember Daddy used to bring home a quart of shucked Chesapeake oysters as a treat for himself sometimes."
Pru tells Harry in her personally aimed, slightly scratchy Ohio voice, "Oily deepwater fish, bluefish especially, have lots of EPA in their oil, that's a kind of acid that actually thins your blood and lowers the triglyceride level."
She would take care of me, Harry thinks. Pleasurably he complains, "What's everybody always worried about my cholesterol level for? I must look awful."
"You're a big guy," Pru says, and the assessment pierces him like a love dart, "and as we all age the proportion of fat in our bodies goes up, and the amount of LDL, that's low-density lipoprotein, the bad kind of fat, goes up and that of the highdensity, good kind stays the same, so the ratio goes up, and the danger of Apo B attaching to your arteries goes up with it. And we don't exercise the way people used to, when everybody had farms so the fats don't get burned up."
"Teresa, you know so much," Janice says, not quite liking being upstaged and using Pru's baptismal name as a tiny check, to keep her in place.
The other woman lowers her eyes and drops her voice. "You remember, I took that course at the Brewer Penn State extension. I was thinking, when Roy gets into school full-time, I should have something to do, and thought-maybe nutrition, or dietetics…"
"I want to get a job, too," Janice says, annoying Harry with her intrusion into Pru's demure lecture about his very own, he felt, fatty insides. "The movie we saw this afternoon, all these women working in New York skyscrapers, made me so jealous." Janice didn't use to dramatize herself. Ever since her mother died and they bought this condo, she has been building up an irritating confidence, an assumption that the world is her stage and her performance is going pretty well. Around Valhalla Village, she is one of the younger women and on several committees. Just not being senile is considered great down here. When they went to the Drechsels' seder, she turned out to be the youngest and had to ask the four questions.