Rabbit Remembered

"There was pressure," Mrs. DiLorenzo tells Nelson. "Joe needed him to carry on and he knew it. That he didn't come out and say it made it worse. The girls, they married and got out of here. They'd had enough of it, the chemicals, the presses, the hours until seven, eight. Only one of them even stayed in the state, and she's way out near Pittsburgh, a nice suburb up along the Allegheny. Their husbands, what do they care about dry-cleaning? It was all on Michael, and he knew it. He snapped. Men don't want their whole lives mapped out for them. They want adventure. Isn't that right, Mr. Nelson?"

"She's crazy," Mr. DiLorenzo confides. "He didn't want adventure. He wasn't like these young hoodlums these days, their heads full of, what do they call it, hip-hop, grabbing guns and going off to shoot their classmates to make the evening news. Shooting their parents, no respect for anything under the sun. He wanted to carry on the family business. There was no pressure. At Penn he was taking chemistry to be on top of the best, the newest solvents, the most environmentally sensitive as we say now. Disposal of used cleaners is the number-one headache in this business; a single cancer lawsuit can wipe you out-defending against it, even if you win. I love America, but not its justice system."

"Joe, there was pressure." To Nelson Mrs. DiLorenzo explains, "My husband, he slaved to build up Perfect. He began by doing dirty work for this old Jew in South Brewer, just a basement in a row of houses, a little dark slot, his equipment crowded into the back, a shed built illegally, fifty cents an hour if he got that, Joe was always being chiselled. When the Jew died Joe borrowed to buy the business from the widow and named it Perfect Cleaners himself."

"It's prettier in Italian, perfetto" Mr. DiLorenzo said, drawing out the word, "but this is America. Things want to be perfect here. Don't mind Maria-Jake was good to me, he taught me the trade. Had me out on the vats first, breathing in carbon tetrachloride before the switch to petroleum solvents, then had me as a finisher, on the steam presses, and then a spotter, that takes skill-you can ruin a silk blouse, a fine wool suit. After a while it was going so good I opened a branch in West Brewer, and then one up in Hamburg, and two years ago this industrial acreage came up for sale in Hemmigtown. For a long time I'd been wanting to build a bigger plant, with summer fur storage and equipment to take anything, to take even old lace tablecloths, they get yellow with age, very fragile, and big velvet curtains where you could choke on their dust, some of these mansions in Perm Park and up along Youngquist, the owners never-"

Nelson has heard enough about dry-cleaning. "And you were counting on Michael to take all this over someday."

"Someday, not now. Maybe ten years, maybe less. We have a little place in Florida, the winters here aren't so good for Maria-"

"Don't blame me if you want to go to Florida and stick the poor boy with all these plants, all these employees and their benefits-"

DiLorenzo takes this up enthusiastically, telling Nelson, "It's socialism without being called that. It's putting everybody smaller than Perfect out of business-the benefits, the insurance. There used to be a cleaner every other block. I shouldn't complain, it's good for the bigger outfits that can absorb it, but still you hate to see it. Setting out the way I did back then, with no assets to speak of, I couldn't do it now."

"He slaves" his wife says, "and he wants to lay it all on Michael. He wants to go to Florida and look at the girls on the beach and make himself dark as a black."

"The boy was eager, I mean it, with no pressure from me."

"Joe, the boy felt pressure. Even his senior year, he was drifting away, into his own world. He was bringing home B's."

Nelson intervenes, to stop their love feast. They love each other, and the child of their hearts is Perfect. "Michael is very angry with himself," he tells them, "for what he calls letting his family down. But, I keep trying to tell him, it's not his fault. It's not your fault either. It's no one's fault."

"What is it then?" Mr. DiLorenzo asks simply, of this invisible invader, his son's destroyer.

Good question. "It's a," Nelson says, "it's a disorder of the nervous system, having to do with dopamine flow, with the chemical control of the synapses' tiring."

"I often wondered about that," Michael's mother breaks in. "When he was so young, thirteen, fourteen, working with his father summers, inhaling all those poisons."

"Get sensible, Maria," her husband says, hoarse from his talking. "Look at me, inhaling all my life."