Rabbit Remembered

He is hostile, she decides. She says, "I don't know, there's always something worthwhile there, even when they can't remember from one minute to the next. They're easy to make contact with. Maybe the shame they can't express, about being useless, opens them up." His mouth tightens, his glasses glint. He has taken her meaning, that he is not open or easy to make contact with. All this probing and grappling we must do, out in society: how much easier, Annabelle thinks, it is to stay in rooms you know as well as your own body, having a warm meal and an evening of television, where it's all so comfortably one-way.

Seated at the table, she feels comfortable next to Mr. Dietrich, with his handsome long head and little fake-flesh hearing aid and sharp high cheekbones blotched by a stately excitement. He tells her about his travels-the bulky souvenirs his wife insists on buying, the number of times they have been cheated-in Mexico, in Egypt, in Sri Lanka. He conveys his pleasure in being able to support an acquisitive wife and legions of cheats. "Most of these foreigners are rascals," he says, "but you can't blame them, since they labor under the misfortune of not being Americans." And he looks down at her sideways slyly, to see how she takes that, and turns to Nelson's mother on his other side, asking, "Isn't that right, Janice? Did you hear what I said to the delightful young lady?"

"No, Deet darling, say it again to me!"

Mrs. Harrison is tense. Her dark eyes-like Nelson's, but moister, female, and less lashy, shrunken by age-have been shuttling up and down the table, watching all those faces connected to her. With a stepgrandson on her other side, she has lurched at the old man's overture. They know each other; they have between them that toothless intimacy of the more-than-middle-aged-they can banter without any chance of follow-up.

"I said, my dear, that you can't blame foreigners for being rascals since they labor under the misfortune of not being Americans!"

Janice puzzles. "I'm not sure I get it. If they're foreigners, of course they're not Americans."

"Of course! Exactly!" Deet in deaf triumph rests his big mottled hand on her forearm and fondly squeezes.

On Annabelle's other side, Georgie asks her about Broadway shows. He cannot believe she's never seen Cats or Miss Saigon. But he obliges her with a description of a show called Keep Bangin' that consists of nothing but men playing drums. He offers to get her and Nelson tickets: "People here really live so much closer to New York than they realize. The drive takes less than three hours, and if you don't want to bother with a car to park there's a perfectly usable bus. If you and Nelson don't want to hear all that drumming I know one of the dance coaches for the revival of Kiss Me, Kate that's going to open next week. The most amazing production I've seen lately has the rather embarrassing title The Vagina Monologues, a one-woman show by Eve Ensler, and it's really more serious than it sounds. It's about us and our bodies. All of us. Men, women, and in-between."

"Nelson and I don't really go around together like that," she must point out. "We discovered each other just recently."

"What a remarkable thing," he says, eager to follow any lead she gives him. She makes him uneasy, she realizes. A grin is held on his face like a firecracker ready to go off. His face is theatrically large-featured, and sun-wrinkled like a farmer's-from beaches and vacations, she supposes. He has a marathoner's unnatural leanness, to go with his mobile full lips, big beaky nose, and long, ropily veined hands. He asks, "You grew up around here?"

"Sure did."

"And you don't want to get away? I was always dying to. I wanted to dance and did make a few chorus lines, but never in shows that had long runs, that was just my luck. What I do now, to make ends meet-the city has become ridiculously expensive, even the neighborhoods that used to be grungy-I facilitate sales at a ticket agency. To put it baldly, I take orders over the phone. My brothers and father think it's a grotesque career for a man past his fortieth birthday, but long ago I decided that they and the good folk of greater Brewer weren't going to live my life for me. My agency sets up out-of-town theatre tours, so there are some executive and negotiative skills involved-really, I don't see why I should be apologizing, I get free tickets to any show I want and still do my jetés and pliés for an hour every day. I haven't given up on dancing; there are more and more good roles for males well past puberty. The producers are waking up to the audience demographics. The graying of America-we're all part of it."