Rabbit, Run - By John Updike Page 0,124

all pinned and hemmed in but still looking broad and sooty in her mother’s fat dress. She doesn’t wear a hat. The undertaker’s black Cadillac comes and takes them to the funeral parlor. It was once a house but now is carpeted the way no house ever was, pale green carpets that deaden your steps like an inch of dust on the floor. Little silver tubes on the wall shield a yellowish light and the colors everywhere, on all the walls and curtains you can see, are colors no one would live with, salmon and aqua and the violet that kills germs on toilet seats. They come up a flagstone walk in the sunshine past frothy green bushes into this, and wait in a little pink side-room. Harry can see into the main room; on a few rows of auditorium chairs about six people sit, five of them women. The only one be knows is Peggy Gring. Her little boy wriggling beside her makes seven. It was meant to be at first nobody but the families, but the Springers then asked a few close friends. His parents are not here. Somewhere someone’s boneless hands trail up and down the keys of an electric organ. The unnatural coloring of the interior comes to a head in the hothouse flowers arranged around a little white coffin. The coffin, with handles of painted gold, rests on a platform covered with a deep purple curtain; he thinks the curtain might draw apart and reveal, like a magician’s trick, the living baby underneath. Janice looks in and yields a startled whimper and an undertaker’s man, blond and young with an unnaturally red face, conjures a bottle of spirits of ammonia out of his side pocket. Her mother holds it under her nose and she suppresses a face of disgust; her eyebrows stretch up, showing the bumps her eyeballs make under the thin membrane. Harry takes her arm and turns her so she can’t see into the next room.

The side-room has a window through which they can look at the street, where children and cars are running. “Hope the minister hasn’t forgotten,” the young red-faced man says, and to his own embarrassment chuckles. He can’t help being at his ease here.

“Does that happen often?” Mr. Springer asks. He is standing behind his wife, and his face tips forward with curiosity, a birdy black gash below his pale mustache. Mrs. Springer has sat down on a chair is pressing her palms against her face through the veil. The purple berries tremble in their stem of wire.

“About twice a year,” is the answer.

A familiar old Plymouth slows against the curb outside and Rabbit’s mother gets out and looks up and down the sidewalk angrily. His heart leaps and trips his tongue: “Here come my parents.” As if giving a warning. And they do all come to attention, as if to withstand an attack. Mrs. Springer gets up and Harry places himself between her and Janice. Standing in formation with the Springers like this, he can at least show his mother that he’s reformed, that he’s accepted and been accepted. The undertaker’s man goes out to bring them in; Harry can see them standing on the bright sidewalk, arguing which door to go into; Mim a little to one side. Dressed in a quiet suit and with no make-up, she reminds him of the little sister he once had. The sight of his parents makes him wonder why he was afraid of them.

His mother comes through the door first; her eyes sweep the line of them and she steps toward him with reaching curved arms. “Hassy, what have they done to you?” She asks this out loud and wraps him in a hug as if she would carry him back to the sky from which they have fallen.

This quick it opens, and seals shut again. In a boyish reflex of embarrassment he pushes her away and stands to his full height. As if unaware of what she has said, his mother turns and embraces Janice. He is relieved to see her act courteously, normally. Pop, murmuring, shakes Springer’s hand. Mini comes and touches Harry on the shoulder and then squats and whispers to Nelson, these two the youngest. All under him Harry feels these humans knit together. His wife and mother cling together. His mother began the embrace automatically but has breathed a great life of grief into it. Her face creases in pain; Janice, rumpled and smothered, yet