Rabbit, Run - By John Updike Page 0,39

package of frozen lima beans, a package of frozen French fries, a quart of milk, a jar of relish, a loaf of raisin bread, a ball of cheese wrapped in red cellophane, and, on top of the bag, a Ma Sweitzer’s shoo-fly pie. It all costs $2.43. As she brings the things out of the bag in her tiny stained kitchen, Ruth says, “You’re kind of a bland eater.”

“I wanted lamb chops but he only had hot dogs and salami and hash in cans.”

While she cooks he wanders around her living-room and finds a row of pocketbook mysteries on a shelf under a table beside a chair. The guy in the bunk beside his at Fort Hood used to read those all the time. Ruth has opened the windows, and the cool March air is sharpened by this memory of baking Texas. Ruth’s curtains of dingy dotted Swiss blow; their gauze skin gently fills and they lean in toward him as he stands paralyzed by a more beautiful memory: his home, when he was a child, the Sunday papers rattling on the floor, stirred by the afternoon draft, and his mother rattling the dishes in the kitchen; when she is done, she will organize them all, Pop and him and baby Miriam, to go for a walk. Because of the baby, they will not go far, just a few blocks maybe to the old gravel quarry, where the ice pond of winter, melted into a lake a few inches deep, doubles the height of the quarry cliff by throwing its rocks upside down into a pit of reflection. But it is only water; they take a few steps further along the edge and from this new angle the pond mirrors the sun, the illusion of inverted cliffs is wiped out, and the water is as solid as ice with light. Rabbit holds little Mim hard by the hand. “Hey,” he calls to Ruth. “I got a terrific idea. Let’s go for a walk this afternoon.”

“Walk! I walk all the time.”

“Let’s walk up to the top of Mt. Judge from here.” He can’t remember having ever gone up the mountain from the Brewer side; gusts of anticipation sweep over him, and as he turns, exalted, away from the curtains stiff and leaning with the breeze, huge church bells ring. “Yeah let’s,” he calls into the kitchen. “Please.” Out on the street people leave church carrying wands of green absent-mindedly at their sides.

When Ruth serves lunch be sees she is a better cook than Janice; she has boiled the hot dogs somehow without splitting them. With Janice, they always arrived at the table torn and twisted, cracked from end to end in wide pink mouths that seemed to cry out they’d been tortured. He and Ruth eat at a small porcelain table in the kitchen. As he touches his fork to his plate he remembers the cold feel in his dream of Janice’s face dropping into his hands, and the memory spoils his first bite, makes it itself a kind of horror. Nevertheless he says, “Terrific,” and gamely goes ahead and eats, and does regain some appetite. Ruth’s face across from him takes some of the white crudity of the table-top; the skin of her broad forehead shines and the two blemishes beside her nose are like spots something spilled has left. She seems to sense that she has become unattractive, and eats obsequiously, with quick little self-effacing bites.

“Hey,” he says.

“What?”

“You know I still have that car parked over on Cherry Street.”

“You’re O.K. The meters don’t matter on Sunday.”

“Yeah, but they will tomorrow.”

“Sell it.”

“Huh?”

“Sell the car. Get rich quick.”

“No, I mean— Oh. You mean for you. Look, I still have thirty dollars, why don’t you let me give it to you now?” He reaches toward his hip pocket.

“No, no, I did not mean that. I didn’t mean anything. It just popped into my fat head.” She is embarrassed; her neck goes splotchy and his pity is roused, to think how pretty she appeared last night.

He explains. “You see, my wife’s old man is a used-car dealer and when we got married he sold us this car at a pretty big discount. So in a way it’s really my wife’s car and anyway since she has the kid I think she ought to have it. And then as you say my shirt’s dirty and I ought to get my clothes if I can. So what I thought was, after lunch why don’t I