Rabbit, Run - By John Updike Page 0,88

around. Ever since that he’s Happy Beans.”

Rabbit laughs, and Lucy, having delivered the Cheerios—too much milk; he is used to living with Ruth, who let him pour his own milk; he likes just enough to take away the dryness, so that the milk and cereal come out even—chats on gaily. “The worst thing that happened, in connection with some committee or other Jack was talking with one of the vestrymen over the phone and had the idea that it would buck this poor soul up to be given a church job so he said, ‘Why not make Happy Beans the chairman of something or other?’ Well, the man on the other end of the line said “Happy Who?” and Jack realized what he’d said but instead of just sluffing it off like anybody else would have, Jack tells the whole story about the children calling him Happy Beans and of course this stuffy old vestryman doesn’t think it’s at all funny. He was a friend, you see, of Happy Beans; they weren’t exactly business associates but often had lunch together over in Brewer. That’s the thing about Jack; he always tells people too much. Now this vestryman is probably telling everybody how the rector pokes fun of this poor miserable Happy Beans.”

He laughs again. His coffee comes, in a thin shallow cup monogrammed in gold, and Lucy sits down opposite him at the table with a cup of her own. “He said I’m going to stop being naughty,” Rabbit says.

“Yes. He’s overjoyed. He went out of here virtually singing. It’s the first constructive thing he thinks he’s done since he came to Mt. Judge.”

Rabbit yawns. “Well I don’t know what he did.”

“I don’t either,” she says, “but to hear him talk the whole thing was on his shoulders.”

This suggestion that he’s been managed rubs him the wrong way. He feels his smile creak. “Really? Did he talk about it?”

“Oh, all the time. He’s very fond of you. I don’t know why.”

“I’m just lovable.”

“That’s what I keep hearing. You have poor old Mrs. Smith wrapped around your little finger. She thinks you’re marvelous.”

“And you don’t see it?”

“Maybe I’m not old enough. Maybe if I were seventy-three.” She lifts the cup to her face and tilts it and the freckles on her narrow white nose sharpen in proximity to the steaming brown coffee. She is a naughty girl. Yes, it’s very clear, a naughty girl. She sets the cup down and looks at him with round green eyes, and the triangular white space between her eyebrows seems to look and mock too. “Well tell me. How does it feel? To be a new man. Jack’s always hoping I’ll reform and I want to know what to expect. Are you ‘born anew’?”

“Oh, I feel about the same.”

“You don’t act the same.”

He grunts “Well” and shifts in his chair. Why does he feel so awkward? She is trying to make him feel foolish and sissy, just because he’s going to go back to his wife. It’s quite true, he doesn’t act the same; he doesn’t feel the same with her, either; he’s lost the nimbleness that led him so lightly into tapping her backside that day. He tells her, “Last night driving home I got this feeling of a straight road ahead of me; before that it was like I was in the bushes and it didn’t matter which way I went.”

Her small face above the coffee cup held in two hands like a soup bowl is perfectly tense with delight; he expects her to laugh and instead she smiles silently. He thinks, She wants me.

Then he thinks of Janice with her legs paralyzed talking about toes and love and orangeade and this perhaps seals shut something in his face, for Lucy Eccles turns her head impatiently and says, “Well you better get going down that nice straight road. It’s twenty of one.”

“How long does it take to walk to the bus stop?”

“Not long. I’d drive you to the hospital if it weren’t for the children.” She harks. “Speak of the devil: here comes one.”

As he’s pulling on his socks the older girl sneaks into the kitchen, dressed just in underpants.

“Joyce.” Her mother halts halfway to the sink with the empty cups. “You get right back up to bed.”

“Hello, Joyce,” Rabbit says. “Did you come down to see the naughty man?”

Joyce stares and hugs the wall with her shoulder blades. Her long golden stomach protrudes thoughtfully.

“Joyce,” Lucy says. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Why doesn’t he