Rabbit Remembered

The fall has turned cooler. On top of the turtleneck she wears an embroidered red jacket from India or someplace. No hurricane sweeps Elm Street with its drizzling fringe; the sun shines weakly, a white blur in a hazed sky above the city's cornices, but enough leaves are down in the Bradford pear trees for a bald light to strike off the macadam, gleaming where the surface was patched by dribbles of tar. The overworked waitress settles them in a front booth that is still uncleared from the last customers, with him facing the window this time. His face feels lit up so that all its imperfections and wormy nerves show. Nelson is used to the Center twilight, the half-windows giving on street level, and the cluttered gloom of 89 Joseph Street. He says, "I dreamed of my father last week. Our father. I think it was him."

"You're not sure?"

"I never saw his face. But the, the affect"-she has to know the word, any nurse would-"was his. His toward the end. Before he ran south and died."

"Is that what he did?"

"Didn't you know? Yes, basically-he got in the car and drove to his condo in Deleon, that's on the Gulf side, rather than face my mother."

"I can see why. She has a mind of her own."

"Funny, that was just the thing he thought she didn't have."

"What was his affect? You started to say."

Nelson thinks back. "Discouraged. But dogged. Going through the motions. He was practicing golf in our backyard, which was something he never did. There wasn't room-there was a vegetable garden, and a swing set. In fact he never practiced his golf at all. He just got up on the tee and expected to be terrific."

"And was he?"

"Not very, actually. But in his mind he had all this potential."

"He sounds dear. Like a little boy who's always been somebody's pet."

"That was him. Do you think it means anything, the dream?"

"You tell me, Nelson. You're the shrink."

"I'm not a shrink. I keep telling the clients that. They keep looking to me to have answers-all the world wants a guru. A savior. I'm nobody's savior."

"Not even mine?" She smiles-he thinks she smiles, her face is in shadow, the big window bright behind her, with the sidewalk trees going bare. "In the dream, did he say anything to you? Did he- did he give you any instructions?"

"None. He never did. Almost never. He didn't even look at me. I think I made him too sad."

"Why was that?"

"Maybe I reminded him of his other child, the one that died. My sister Becky. Also, he hated my being so short, taking after my mother."

"Did he, or did you just think that? You're as tall as I am, and I'm not short. Five seven."

"Really?" He is thinking about something else; he is rattled enough to tell her. "I tried to run my Relationships group this morning, we discussed how to make it through the holidays-everything goes up in the holidays, suicides, psychotic breaks, acting out; the expectations are too much-and it got away from me, onto the meaning of life. Glenn, this suicidal gay with diamond studs all over his face, gets his kicks telling everybody how there is no meaning, the universe is an accident, a hiccup in empty space, and our existence is a cruel joke evolution has played on us, and he'd just as soon be out of it as not but he has too much contempt for the whole farce even to give it the satisfaction of pulling the trigger. This sends Rosa off the deep end, she's a bipolar who in her manic phase says Jesus talks to her personally through various systems He has. She tells Glenn he's going straight to Hell and won't get any pity from her; she'll look down at him and laugh.

This gets Shirley, she's a three-hundred-pound binger with a history' of ECT for depression, this gets her riled up and she says Glenn is a very kind and considerate person and that the meaning of life for her is in small acts of kindness, not in some remote God in Heaven."

"How did empty space hiccup? Did Glenn explain it?"

"Sort of. Virtual particles, I think he said. Empty space isn't really empty but full of virtual particles that come and go in nanoseconds. They somehow got together and made the Big Bang. He keeps up with all this stuff."

"That's interesting. He doesn't sound suicidal to me."

"Me neither! He just says he is so he won't have to leave us. We're his family. Then Michael-have I told you about Michael?"

"Just a little. He's the pretty boy with the rich self-made parents."

"Exactly." At times talking to Annabelle is like talking to himself, they are in such accord. "Michael gets very angry and says he'd like to know how people who think they talk to Jesus know it's not the Devil pretending to be Jesus and that the voices that talk to him use dirty words he would never use, that's how he knows they're from outside his head. I'm pleased he can come out with all this, he tends to stay above it all when he even bothers to show up. He was in his first year at Penn when he broke. Then Jim-you want to hear all this garbage? You don't."