Rabbit Remembered

Pru says, twisting her head to talk to Annabelle, "So you got pawed. So did I. My father was a crumb-bum, when you think about it. It's not the end of the world." She is tough. Her nose looks sharp as a witch's in profile but he senses her bulk, her body in the shimmery silk dress and rust-brown overcoat, as radiating warmth. Her long hands lie idle in her shadowy lap. He reaches down to adjust the car heat, and his own hand and Pru's knees show similarly pale in the dash-light glow. He remembers how once when she was new to their family she surprisingly comforted him by telling him, Why, honey. I think from what I've seen your parents are quite fond of each other. Couples that have stayed together that long, they must have something.

In the back seat, his sister is sniffling and Billy is saying, "Easy, easy. We're talking ancient history."

The road has stoplights now, and up ahead somebody, a car dealer or club owner, has gone to the expense of renting a bank of spotlights; three of them stir the sky to the limits of the local haze.

"We are passing," Nelson announces in a tour guide's droning tone, "the former site of Springer Motors Toyota Agency, now derelict."

Mom sold the acreage and building to a computer-components company that never took off; a sudden turn in technology left it behind. By inner moonlight Nelson sees the ghosts of his father and himself and Charlie Stavros and Elvira Ollenbach standing at the boarded-up windows looking out at Route 111 for customers that will never come.

"My father's!" Annabelle says, sitting up with a rustle. "I remember. With Jamie. He bought an orange Corolla, eventually."

"It was my mother's, more," Nelson says. "It's sad to see. The company that bought it from her is still in bankruptcy proceedings, ten years later. They've probably forgotten that they own it. I heard a Barnes and Noble was interested, to make a superstore."

The spotlights are a little farther down Route 111, in front of what was once a Planter's Peanuts store and became, added on to, a disco in the Seventies. The tall thin silhouette of Mr. Peanut outside, a twelve-foot billboard, became a nearly nude dancing girl with her naughty parts covered by bubbles, but that was too sexist to last. Now the humanoid shape holds a cowgirl in short white skirt and high white boots advertising PURE COUNTRY MUSIC. Country music keeps coming back. Or is it just slow to go away? The parking lot looks only half full. People with sense are staying home tonight, exhausted by the hype, petrified of fanatic Arabs sneaking in from Canada.

"Hey, Nellie," Billy pipes up. "It's getting close to midnight, and we're nowhere."

"I know, I'm going as fast as I can. If you hadn't got me lost-"

"Did Nelson ever tell you the story," Pru asks Annabelle, "how he lost the agency up his nose?"

"No, not really." Her voice sounds dried out, for now.

"Say, thanks a lot," Nelson complains to his wife.

"Siblings should have no secrets," Pru says, and makes, he knows without looking, that prudish little mouth of hers, as if sucking on something tart. "Nelson wasn't always such a saint."

"He was a pill of a sissy, in fact," Billy contributes, making the fun rougher. "A real little mamma's boy, terrified of his father, who was a pretty nice guy, actually."

"Unlike yours," Nelson tells him. "What a sleazebag."

"Very musical, though," Billy tells Annabelle. "He could play anything, any instrument, by ear."

"Oh, I've always wanted to be able to do that!" she responds, snuggling from the way her voice squeezes down. Does Nelson imagine it, or is there the purr of a zipper being unzipped, that long diagonal zipper on the front of her dress? His sister giggles, and a hand is lightly slapped.