Rabbit, Run - By John Updike Page 0,59
the hill in a little orange shack with a metal cat climbing up the shutters, used to invariably say, turn to me with lipstick halfway up to her nose and say”—she mimics a too-sweet voice with a spirited spite that shakes her frame—“ ‘My, Mrs. Smith, this must be what Heaven is like!’ One year I said to her, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer, I said, ‘Well if I’m driving six miles back and forth to St. John’s Episcopal Church every Sunday just to get into another splash of rhodies, I might as well save the mileage because I don’t want to go.’ Now wasn’t that a dreadful thing for an old sinner to say?”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“To this poor woman who was only trying to be civil? Hadn’t a bean of a brain in her head, of course; painting her face like a young fool. She’s passed on now, poor soul; Alma Foster passed on two or three winters back. Now she knows the truth and I don’t.”
“Well, maybe what looks like rhododendrons to her will look like alfalfa to you.”
“Heh! Eh-HA! Exactly! Exactly! You know, Mr. Angstrom, it’s such a pleasure—” She stops them in the walk and caresses his forearm awkwardly; in the sunshine the tiny tan landscape of her face tips up toward his, and in her gaze, beneath the fumbling girlish flirtatiousness and the watery wander, there glitters the edge of an old acuteness, so that Rabbit standing there easily feels a stab of the unkind force that drove Mr. Smith out to the brainless flowers. “You and I, we think alike. Don’t we? Now don’t we?”
“You have it pretty good, don’t you?” Ruth asks him. They have gone on the afternoon of this Memorial Day to the public swimming pool in West Brewer. She was self-conscious about getting into a bathing suit but in fact she looks great, up to her thighs in turquoise water and soaked licks of red hair sneaking out of her bathing cap. She swims easily, her big legs kicking slowly and the water flowing in bubbling transparence over her shoulders and her clean arms lifting and her back and bottom shimmering black under the jiggled green. Sometimes, when she stops and floats a moment, putting her face down in the water in a motion that quickens his heart with its slight danger, her bottom of its own buoyance floats up and breaks the surface—nothing much, just a round black island glistening there, a clear image suddenly in the water wavering like a blooey television set, but the solid sight swells his heart with pride, makes him harden all over with a chill clench of ownership. His, she is his, he knows her as well as the water, like the water has been everywhere on her body. When she does the backstroke the water breaks and pours down her front into her breastcups, flooding her breasts with touch; the arch of her submerged body tightens, thrusting her breasts fitfully into air; she closes her eyes and moves blindly. Two skinny boys dabbling at the shallow end of the pool splash away from her headfirst approach. She brushes one with a backsweep of her arm, awakes, and squats smiling in the water; her arms wave bonelessly to keep her balance in the nervous tides of the crowded pool. The air sparkles with the scent of chlorine. He rejoices in how clean she feels: clean, clean. What is it? Nothing touching you that is not yourself. Her in water, him in grass and air. Her head, bobbing like a hollow ball, makes a face at him. Himself, he is not a water animal. Wet is cold to him. Having got wet, he prefers to sit on the tile edge dangling his feet and imagining that high-school girls behind him are admiring the muscle-play of his broad back. He revolves his shoulders thoughtfully and feels the blades stretch his skin in the sun. Ruth wades to the end, through water so shallow the checker pattern of the pool floor is refracted to its surface. She climbs the little ladder, shedding water in great grape-bunches. He scrambles back to their blanket and lies down so that when she comes over he can see her standing above him as big as the sky, the black hair high on the inside of her thighs pasted into swirls by the water. She tears off her cap and shakes out her hair and bends over for