his unfocused eyes stare at Rabbit’s shoes, and big black square cuff links, thinly rimmed and initialed S in gold, creep out of his coat sleeves as his arms tighten the hug.
As Nelson leads his father to the stairs they pass the room where Mrs. Springer is sitting. Rabbit has a glimpse of a puffed face slippery with tears and averts his eyes. He whispers to Nelson to go in and kiss her good-night. When the boy returns to him they go upstairs and down a smooth corridor papered with a design of old-style cars into a little room whose white curtains are tinted green by a tree outside. On either side of the window symmetrical pictures, one of kittens and one of puppies, are hung. He wonders if this was the room where Janice was little. It has a musty innocence, and a suspense, as if it stood empty for years. An old teddy-bear, the fur worn down to cloth and one eye void, sits in a broken child’s rocker. Had it been Janice’s? Who pulled the eye out? Nelson becomes queerly passive in this room. Harry undresses the sleepy body, brown all but the narrow bottom, puts it into pajamas and into bed and arranges the covers over it. He tells him, “You’re a good boy.”
“Yop.”
“I’m going to go now. Don’t be scared.”
“Daddy go way?”
“So you can sleep. I’ll be back.”
“O.K. Good.”
“Good.”
“Daddy?”
“What?”
“Is baby Becky dead?”
“Yes.”
“Was she frightened?”
“Oh no. No. She wasn’t frightened.”
“Is she happy?”
“Yeah, she’s very happy now.”
“Good.”
“Don’t you worry about it.”
“O.K.”
“You snuggle up.”
“Yop.”
“Think about throwing stones.”
“When I grow up, I’ll throw them very far.”
“That’s right. You can throw them pretty far now.”
“I know it.”
“O.K. Go to sleep.”
Downstairs he asks Springer, who is washing dishes in the kitchen, “You don’t want me to stay here tonight, do you?”
“Not tonight, Harry. I’m sorry. I think it would be better not tonight.”
“O.K., sure. I’ll go back to the apartment. Shall I come over in the morning?”
“Yes, please. We’ll give you breakfast.”
“No, I don’t want any. I mean, to see Janice when she wakes up.”
“Yes of course.”
“You think she’ll sleep the night through.”
“I think so.”
“Uh—I’m sorry I wasn’t at the lot today.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. That’s negligible.”
“You don’t want me to work tomorrow, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“I still have the job, don’t I?”
“Of course.” His talk is gingerly; his eyes fidget; he feels his wife is listening.
“You’re being awfully good to me.”
Springer doesn’t answer; Harry goes out through the sun-porch, so he won’t have to glimpse Mrs. Springer’s face again, and around the house and walks home in the soupy, tinkling dark. He lets himself into the apartment with his key and turns on all the lights as rapidly as he can. He goes into the bathroom and the water is still in the tub. Some of it has seeped away so the top of the water is an inch below a faint gray line on the porcelain but the tub is still more than half full. A heavy, calm volume, odorless, tasteless, colorless, the water shocks him like the presence of a silent person in the bathroom. Stillness makes a dead skin on its unstirred surface. There’s even a kind of dust on it. He rolls back his sleeve and reaches down and pulls the plug; the water swings and the drain gasps. He watches the line of water slide slowly and evenly down the wall of the tub, and then with a crazed vortical cry the last of it is sucked down. He thinks how easy it was, yet in all His strength God did nothing. Just that little rubber stopper to lift.
In bed he discovers that his legs ache from all the walking he did in Brewer today. His shins feel splintered; no matter how he twists, the pain, after a moment of relief gained by the movement, sneaks back. He tries praying to relax him but it doesn’t do it. There’s no connection. He opens his eyes to look at the ceiling and the darkness is mottled with an unsteady network of veins like the net of yellow and blue that mottled the skin of his baby. He remembers seeing her neat red profile through the window at the hospital and a great draft of horror sweeps through him, brings him struggling out of bed to turn on the lights. The electric glare seems thin. His groin aches to weep. He is afraid to stick even his hand into the bathroom; he fears if he turns on the