"How're the crepes cooking these days?" Harry asks her, trying to make up for having told the girl she should have been a man. He may have hit on something, though; in her a man's normal bossiness has had to turn too sweet.
"Fine. I've given them my notice and the other waitresses are going to give me a party."
Nelson says, "She's turned into a real party girl, Dad. I hardly ever saw her when we were here together. Your pal Charlie Stavros keeps taking her out, he's even coming for her this afternoon."
You poor little shnook, Rabbit thinks. Why is the kid standing so close? He can hear the boy's worried breath.
"He's taking me to Valley Forge," Melanie explains, brighteyed, those bright eyes concealing what mischief, Rabbit may never know now. The girl is pulling out. "I'm about to leave Pennsylvania and I really haven't seen any of the sights, so Charlie's being nice enough to take me to some of the places. Last weekend we went into Amish country and saw all the buggies."
"Depressing damn things, aren't they?" Harry says, going on, "Those Amish are mean bastards – mean to their kids, to their animals, to each other."
"Dad
"If you're going as far as Valley Forge you might as well go look at the Liberty Bell, see if it still has a crack in it."
"We weren't sure it was open Sundays."
"Philly in August is a sight to see anyhow. One big swamp of miserable humanity. They cut your throat for a laugh down there."
"Melanie, I'm so sorry to hear you're leaving," Janice intervenes smoothly. It sometimes startles Harry, how smooth Janice can be in her middle age. Looking back, he and Jan were pretty rough customers – kids with a grudge, and not much style. No style, in fact. A little dough does wonders.
"Yeah," the guest of their summer says, "I should visit my family. My mother and sisters, I mean, in Carmel. I don't know if I'll go up to see my father or not, he's gotten so strange. And then back to college. It's been wonderful staying here, you were all so kind. I mean, considering that you didn't even know me."
"No problem," Harry says, wondering about her sisters, if they all have such eyes and ruby lips. "You did it yourself; you paid your way." Lame, lame. Never could talk to her.
"I know Mother will really miss your company," Janice says, and calls over, "Isn't that right, Mother?"
But Ma Springer is examining the china in her breakfront, to see if anything has been stolen, and doesn't seem to hear.
Harry asks Nelson abruptly, "So what did you want to show me in such a hurry?"
"It's over at the lot," the boy says. "I thought we could drive over when you came back."
"Can't I even have lunch first? I hardly had any breakfast, with all this talk of making church. Just a couple of Pecan Sandies that the ants hadn't gotten to." His stomach hurts to think of it.
"I don't think there is that much for lunch," Janice says.
Melanie offers, "There's some wheat germ and yogurt in the fridge, and some Chinese vegetables in the freezer."
"I have no appetite," Ma Springer announces. "And I want to try my own bed. Without exaggerating I don't believe I had more than three hours' sleep in a row all that time up there. I kept hearing the raccoons."
"She's just sore about missing church," Rabbit tells the others. He feels trapped by all this fuss of return. There is a tension here that wasn't here before. You never return to the same place. Think of the dead coming back on Resurrection Day. He goes out through the kitchen into his garden and eats a kohlrabi raw, tearing off the leaves with his hands and stripping the skin from the bland crisp bulb with his front teeth. The butch women up the street are still hammering away – what can they be building? How did that poem used to go? Build thee more stately something O my soul. Lofty Bingaman would have known, waving her hand in the air. The air feels nice. A flatter noon than earlier, the summer settling to its dust. The trees have dulled down from the liquid green of June and the undertone of insect hum has deepened to a constant dry rasp, if you listen. The lettuce is tall and seedy, the beans are by, a carrot he pulls up is stubby as a fat man's prick, all its push gone upwards into greens. Back in the kitchen Janice has found some salami not too dried-out to eat and has made sandwiches for him and Nelson. This excursion to the lot seems bound to happen, when Harry had hoped to get over to the club this afternoon and see if the gang has missed him. He can see them gathered by the shuddering bright pool of chlorinated aqua, laughing, Buddy and his dog of the month, the Harrisons, foxy old Webb and his little Cindy. Little Cindy Blackbottom Babytoes. Real sunlight people, not these shadows in the corners of Ma's glum house. Charlie honks out front but doesn't come in. Embarrassed, and he should be, the babysnatcher. Harry looks at Janice to see how she takes it when the front door slams. Not a flicker. Women are tough. He asks her, "So what're you going to do this afternoon?"
"I was going to tidy up the house, but Melanie seems to have done it all. Maybe I'll go over to the club and see if I can get into a game. At least I could swim." She swam at Hourglass Lake, and in truth does look more supple through the middle, longer from hips to breasts. Not a bad little bride, he sometimes thinks, surprised by their connivance in this murky world of old blood and dark strangers.
"How'd you like that, about Charlie and Melanie?" he asks.
She shrugs, imitating Charlie. "I like it fine, why not? More power to him. You only live once. They say."
"Whyn't you go over and Nellie and I'll come join you after I look at this thing of his, whatever it is?"
Nelson comes into the kitchen, mouth ajar, eyes suspicious.
Janice says, "Or I could come with you and Nelson to the lot and then we all three could go to the club together and save gas by using only the one car."
"Mom, it's business," Nelson protests, and from the way his face clouds both parents see that they had better let him have his way. His gray suit makes him seem extra vulnerable, in the way of children placed in unaccustomed clothes for ceremonies they don't understand.
So Nelson and Harry, behind the wheel of his Corona for the first time in a month, drive through the Sunday traffic the route they both know better than the lines in their palms, down Joseph to Jackson to Central and around the side of the mountain. Harry says, "Car feels a little different, doesn't it?" This is a bad start; he tries to patch it with, "Guess a car never feels the same after it's been banged up."
Nelson bridles. "It was just a dent, it didn't have anything to do with the front end, that's where you'd feel the difference if there was any."
Harry holds his breath and then concedes, "Probably imagining it."
They pass the view of the viaduct and then the shopping center where the four-theater complex advertises AGATHA MANHATTAN MEATBALLS AMITYVILLE HORROR. Nelson asks, "Did you read the book, Dad?"
"What book?"
"Amityville Horror. The kids at Kent were all passing it around."
Kids at Kent. Lucky stiffs. What he could have done with an education. Been a college coach somewhere. "It's about a haunted house, isn't it?"
"Dad, it's about Satanism. The idea is some previous occupant of the house had conjured up the Devil and then he wouldn't go away. Just an ordinary-looking house on Long Island."
"You believe this stuff?"
"Well – there's evidence that's pretty hard to get around."
Rabbit grunts. Spineless generation, no grit, nothing solid to tell a fact from a spook with. Satanism, pot, drugs, vegetarianism. Pathetic. Everything handed to them on a platter, think life's one big TV, full of ghosts.
Nelson reads his thoughts and accuses: "Well you believe all that stuff they say in church and that's really sick. You should have seen it, they were giving out communion today and it was incredible, all these people sort of patting their mouths and looking serious when they come back from the altar rail. It was like something out of anthropology."