Rabbit At Rest

Sparse specks of rain have appeared on the panes. His eyelids feel heavy again; a fog within is rising up to swallow his brain. When you are sleepy an i

The call to di

"Coming, for Chrissake," he says.

Janice called but the meal was cooked by Pru; it is light, delicious, healthful. Baked sole garnished with parsley and chives and flavored with pepper and lemon, asparagus served steaming in a rectangular microwave dish, and in a big wooden bowl a salad including celery and carrot slices and dates and green grapes. The salad bowl and microwave equipment are new since Ma Springer died.

Everybody eats but nobody has much to say except Janice, who chatters on bravely about her quiz, her class, the people in it, some of them women like herself developing midlife careers and others young people that seem much the way we were in the Fifties, ru

Judy tells some involved story about what a boy at school did today: he accidentally spilled paint for a poster they were making all over the floor and when the teacher bawled him out took the spilled jar and shook it at her so some got on her dress. Meanwhile there is this one black boy in the class, his family has just moved to Mt. Judge from Baltimore, and he was painting his face all over with these designs that have a secret meaning, he said. Her talk is a little like her excited cha

Pru asks Harry how he is feeling. He says fine; his breathing does feel freer since the operation – "the procedure, the doctors like to call it" – and his memory for that matter better. He wonders how soft in the head he was getting before without realizing it. Really, he says, apologizing to her for her trouble, thanking her for the good healthy meal that he has managed to get down on top of the fermenting lump of Corn Chips, saying he could perfectly well have been left alone in his own house tonight.

Janice says she knows it is probably foolish but she could never forgive herself if he took a bad turn while she was in class and how could she concentrate on liens and curtilage and lex loci thinking he was back in the house drowning?

The other adults at the table hold their breaths at this slip; Harry gently says, when the silence gets unbearable, "You don't mean drowning," and Janice asks, "Did I say drowning?," knowing now in her ear's recall that she did. Harry sees that she only seems to have forgotten Rebecca, that in her own mind she is always and will always be the woman who drowned her own baby. It was this time of year, late spring, they are approaching the a

"Who wants coffee besides me?" she asks, all eyes upon her, like an actress who must come up with some line.

"And there's some butter-pecan ice cream for dessert if anybody wants," Pru says, her flat Ohio voice having fallen over the years into the local locutions, that considerate Pe

"My favorite flavor," Harry says, pitying his wife, wanting to help her out of the brightly lit center of the stage; even little Roy with his inky eyes is staring at Janice, sensing something strange, a curse nobody mentions.

"Harry, that's the worst possible thing for you," Janice says, grateful for this opportunity he has given her for a quarrel, a scene. "Ice cream and nuts both."

Pru says, "I got some frozen yogurt with Harry in mind. Peach and banana I think are the flavors."

"It's not the same," Harry says, clowning to keep the attention of both women. "I want butter-pecan. With something. How about some good old-fashioned apple strudel, with all that sort of wallpaper paste inside? Or some sticky buns? Or shoo-fly pie? Yum: huh, Roy?"

"Oh, Harry, you're going to kill yourself!" Janice cries, excessively, her grief centered elsewhere.

"There's something called ice milk," Pru is saying, and he feels that her heart too is elsewhere, that throughout the meal she has been maneuvering around the covered-up hole of Nelson's absence, which no one has mentioned, not even the wide-eyed children.

"Shoo-fly pie," Roy says, in an oddly deep and ma

"Makes your eyes light up," Rabbit sings to him, "and your tummy say `howdy."'

Pru takes Roy upstairs while Janice serves Judy butter-pecan ice cream and stacks the dishes into the dishwasher. Harry kept his spoon and digs into Judy's dish while Janice's back is turned. He loves that second when the tongue flattens the ice cream against the roof of the mouth and the fragments of pecan emerge like stars at evening. "Oh Grandpa, you shouldn't," Judy says, looking at him with genuine fright, though her lips want to smile.

He touches his own lips with a finger and promises, "Just one spoonful," while going for another.

The child calls for help: "Grandma!"

"He's just teasing," Janice says, but asks him, "Would you like your own dish?"

This gets him up from the table. "I shouldn't have ice cream, that's the worst thing for me," he tells her, and scolds, seeing the jumble of plates she has stacked in the dishwasher, "My God, you have no system – look at all the space you're wasting!"

"You stack it, then," she says, a modern woman, and while he does, fitting the dishes closer together, in harrowlike rows, she gathers together her papers and book and purse from the diningroom table. "Damn," she says, and comes to the kitchen to tell Harry, "All my pla