Rabbit Remembered

"I loved my father, too," says Annabelle, "the man I thought was my father. He could fix anything-you know how around a farm everything is always breaking down, he never let on he was flummoxed, just would sigh and settle down to it. He had this wonderful confident, calm touch-with my mother, too, when she'd let her temper fly. Whenever the excitable of my patients get to acting up, I try to think of him and act like he'd act."

Nelson's inner ear tells him there is something wrong with this. He is being sold something. But it may be that his ear is jaded, hearing all day about families, dealing with all the variations of dependency and resentment, love and its opposite, all the sickly inturned can't-get-away-from-itness of close relations. If society is the prison, families are the cells, with no time off for good behavior. Good behavior in fact tends to lengthen the sentence.

"He sounds great," he grunts. "Every time my father tried to fix anything around the house, it got broken worse." He hears these words and wonders if they are fair. He remembers his father digging in a garden he had made in the back yard, even building a little wire fence to defend the vegetables against rabbits. He remembers his father on one of their car trips somewhere pleading with him not to get married, not to get himself trapped in marriage, even though Pru was pregnant and the wedding day set: he shocked his son by suggesting an abortion and offering to pay her off. I just don't like seeing you caught, you're too much me.

I'm not you! I'm not caught!

Nellie, you 're caught. They've got you and you didn't even squeak.

He had fought his father off, accused him of being jealous, denied the resemblance the old man was pushing. You don't necessarily have to lead my life, I guess is what I want to say. Well, he hadn't, exactly, and marrying Pru hadn't worked out, exactly, but what pains Nelson now is seeing that his father had been trying as far as his narcissism allowed to step out of his selfish head and help his son, trying to shelter him from one of those disasters that most decisions entail. He had tried to be a better father than Nelson could give him credit for, even now. He says with an effort, "But he wasn't all bad. We used to have great games of catch in the back yard. And he'd take me to Blasts games out at the stadium. Once we even drove down to Philly for a Flyers game, somebody had given him tickets."

"I met him, you know. At the car lot. He seemed nice. Of course I had no idea he was my father, but he acted fatherly, And funny."

"What did he say funny?"

"Nelson, how can you expect me to remember?" And then it comes to her. The bright June day, the Toyota agency tucked over on Route 111 across the river, the drive with Jamie at the wheel, and the heavy tall middle-aged salesman with his pale fine hair in the front. He sat in the death seat, Annabelle in the back. She says, "It was the time of the gas shortage. He said all the hardware stores in Brewer were selling out of siphons and soon we'd all be standing in line for everything, even Hershey bars, I forget how that came up. It was like he didn't really care if we bought a car or not."

"He didn't. The only job he ever gave a damn about was operating a Linotype machine like his own father. Then Linotypes got obsolete."

"That's sad," his daughter says.

The waitress is standing there in her green apron. "Could I interest either of you in any dessert?"

Nelson said, "I thought you closed up."

"Yes well, I did, but the cook's still out back, he thinks the power may be coming back on. For dessert we have tofu, honied oatcakes, puffed goat cheese baked in little ramekins, and lo-cal frozen yogurt. That's lo-cal, not local. And lately we've put in some home-baked pics, since people kept asking. They are local. Let me see-shoo-fly, lemon meringue, and apple crumb. We may have a piece of the rhubarb still left. We can't warm them, though, as long as the power's out."

She is the mother, it comes to Nelson, that he and Annabelle have in common. The waitress is pure Brewer, her face squarish and asymmetrical, like a bun pleasantly warped in the oven. Good-humored suffering-sore feet, errant sons, daily complaints- radiates through her uniform. And yet, though this woman feels old to him, she is possibly not much older than they are- somewhere in her forties.

"The apple crumb sounds good," he says, not wanting this lunch to end. For what happens next? It's not like a first date, where a second or third leads to fucking.

"I shouldn't," his sister declares, "but let me try the honey oatcake."