Harry is disbelieving. "When did you talk to Charlie?"
"At the reception," Ma Springer admits. "I saw you looking over at us."
"Well my God, whajja say?"
This is some old lady, Rabbit thinks, sneakers, Ace bandages, cotton dress up over her knees, puffy throat, funny silver-browed eyeglasses, and all. Once in a while, in the winters since old Fred cashed in, she has visited the lot wearing the mink coat he gave her for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and there was a glitter on that fur like needles of steel, like a signal crackling out of mission control. She says, "I asked him how his health was."
"The way we worry about Charlie's health you'd think he was in a wheelchair."
"Janice has told me, even ten years ago he was taking nitroglycerine. For a man only in his thirties then, that's not good."
"Well what did he say, how his health was?"
"Fair," Ma Springer answers, giving it the local two syllables, Fai-ir. "Janice herself claims you complain he doesn't do his share anymore, just sits huddled at the desk playing with paperwork he should leave for Mildred to do."
"Did I say all that?" He looks at Janice, his betrayer. He has always thought of her darkness as a Springer trait but of course old man Springer was fair, thin-skinned pink; it is her mother's blood, the Koerners', that has determined her coloring.
She flicks her cigarette at the ashtray impatiently. "More than once," she says.
"Well I didn't mean your mother should go fire the guy."
"Fire was never used as a word," Ma Springer says. "Fred would never have fired Charlie, unless his personal life got all out of hand."
"You got to go pretty far to get out of hand these days," Harry says, resenting that this is the case. He had tried to have fun too early.
Ma Springer rolls her weight uncomfortably on the sofa. "Well I must say, this chasing that girl out to Ohio -"
"He took her to Florida, too," Harry says, so quickly both women stare at him with their button-black eyes. It's true, it galls him more than it should, since he could never warm to Melanie himself and had nowhere to take her anyhow.
. "We talked about Florida," Ma Springer says. "I asked him if now that winter's coming he mightn't be better off down there. Amy Gehringer's son-in-law, that used to work in an asbestos plant in New Jersey until they got that big scare, has retired down there on the compensation, and he's under fifty. She says he tells her there are a lot of young people coming down there now, to get away from the oil crisis, it's not just the old people like in all the jokes, and of course there are jobs to be had there too. Charlie's clever. Fred recognized that from the start."
"He has this mother, Ma. An old Greek lady who can't speak English and who's never been out of Brewer hardly."
"Well maybe it's time she was. You know people think we old people are such sticks in the mud but Grace Stuhl's sister, older than she is, mind you, and buried two husbands right in the county, went out to visit her son in Phoenix and loved it so she's bought her own little condominium and even, Grace was telling me, her burial plot, that's how much she pulled up her roots."
"Charlie's not like you, Harry," Janice explains. "He's not scared of change."
He could take that green glass egg and in one stride be at the sofa and pound it down into her dense skull. Instead he ignores her, saying to Ma, "I still haven't heard exactly what you said to Charlie, and he said to you."
"Oh, we reminisced. We talked about the old days with Fred and we agreed that Fred would want Nellie to have a place at the lot. He was always one for family, Fred, even when family let him down."
That must mean him, Rabbit thinks. Letting that shifty little wheeler-dealer down is about the last thing on his conscience.
"Charlie understands family," Janice interposes, in that smooth matronly voice she can do now, imitating her mother. "All the time I was, you know, seeing him, he was absolutely ready to stand aside and have me go back."
Bragging about her affair to her own mother. The world is falling apart fast.
"And so," Ma Springer sighs – she is wearying of this, her legs hurt and aren't improving, old people need their privacy – "we tried to come to an understanding of what Fred would want and came up with this idea of a leave for Charlie, for six months with half pay, and then at the end we'd see how Nellie was working out. In the meantime if the offer of another job comes Charlie's way he's to be free to take it, and then we'll settle at that point with two months' pay as a bonus, plus whatever his Christmas bonus would be for all of 1979. This wasn't just worked out at the party, I was over there today while you were playing golf."
He had been carrying an 83 into the last hole and then hooked into the creek and took an 8. It seems he'll never break 90 there, unless he does it in his sleep. Webb Murkett's relaxed swing is getting on his nerves. "Sneaky," he says. "I thought you didn't trust yourself to drive the Chrysler in Brewer traffic anymore."
"Janice drove me over."
"Aha." He asks his wife, "How did Charlie like seeing you there on this mission of mercy?"
"He was sweet. This has all been between him and Mother. But he knows Nelson is our son. Which is more than you seem to."
"No, no, I know he is, that's the trouble," Harry tells her. To old lady Springer he says, "So you're paying Charlie thousands to hand Nelson a job he probably can't do. Where's the savings for the firm in that? And you're going to lose sales without Charlie, I don't have half the contacts around town he does. Not just Greeks, either. Being single he's been in a lot of bars, that's where you win people's trust around here."
"Well, it may be." Ma Springer gets herself to her feet and stamps each one softly on the carpet, testing if either is asleep. "It may all be a mistake, but in this life you can't always be afraid of mistakes. I never liked that about Charlie, that he was unwilling to get married. It bothered Fred too, I know. Now I must get myself upstairs and see my Angels. Though it's not been the same since Farrah left."
"Don't I get a vote?" Harry asks, almost yelling, strapped as he feels into the Barcalounger. "I vote against it. I don't want to be bothered with Nelson over there."
"Well," Ma says, and in her long pause he has time to appreciate how big she is, how broad from certain angles, like a tree trunk seen suddenly in terms of all the toothpicks it would make, all those meals and days gone into this bulk, the stiff heavy seesaw of her hips, the speckled suet of her arms, "as I understand Fred's will, he left the lot to me and Janice, and I think we're of a mind."
"Two against three, Harry, in any case," Janice says, with a winning smile.
"Oh screw you," he says. "Screw Springer Motors. I suppose if I don't play dead doggie you two'll vote to can me too."
They don't deny it. While Ma's steps labor up the staircase, Janice, beginning to wear that smudged look she gets when the day's intake catches up with her, gets to her feet and tells him confidentially, "Mother thought you'd take it worse than you did. Want anything from the kitchen? This CocoRibe is really addictive."
October first falls on a Monday. Autumn is starting to show its underside: out of low clouds like a row of torn mattresses a gray rain is knocking the leaves one by one off the trees. That lonely old maple behind the Chuck Wagon across Route 111 is bare now down to its lower branches, which hang on like a monk's fringe. Not a day for customers: Harry and Charlie gaze together through the plate-glass windows where the posters now say COMING, ALL NEW COROLLAS • New 1.8-liter engine • New aerodynamic styling
Aluminum wheels on SR5 models • Removable sunrooflmoonroof • Best selling car in the world! Another paper banner proclaims THE COROLLA TERCEL • First Front-Wheel Drive Toyota • Toyota's Lowest Price amp; Highest Mileage • 33 Est. MPG • 43 EPA Estimated Highway MPG. "Well," Harry says, after clearing his throat, "the Phillies went out with a bang." By shutting out the Montreal Expos on the last day of the season, 2-0, they enabled Pittsburgh to win the championship of the National League East.