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. Discouraged.But dogged.Going through themotions.He was practicing golf in our backyard, which wassomething he never did.There wasn t room there was avegetable garden, and a swing set.In fact he never practiced hisgolf at all.He just got up on the tee and expected to be terrific. And was he? Not very, actually.But in his mind he had all this potential. He sounds dear.Like a little boy who s always been somebody spet. That was him.Do you think it means anything, the dream? Rabbit Remembered 105 You tell me, Nelson.You re the shrink. I m not a shrink.I keep telling the clients that.They keep lookingto me to have answers all the world wants a guru.A savior.I mnobody s savior. Not even mine? She smiles he thinks she smiles, her face is inshadow, the big window bright behind her, with the sidewalk treesgoing bare. In the dream, did he say anything to you? Did hedid he give you any instructions? None.He never did.Almost never.He didn t even look at me.Ithink I made him too sad. Why was that? Maybe I reminded him of his other child, the one that died.Mysister Becky.Also, he hated my being so short, taking after mymother. Did he, or did you just think that? You re as tall as I am, and I mnot short.Five seven. Really? He is thinking about something else; he is rattled enoughto tell her. I tried to run my Relationships group this morning,we discussed how to make it through the holidays everythinggoes up in the holidays, suicides, psychotic breaks, acting out; theexpectations are too much and it got away from me, onto themeaning of life.Glenn, this suicidal gay with diamond studs allover his face, gets his kicks telling everybody how there is nomeaning, the universe is an accident, a hiccup in empty space, andour existence is a cruel joke evolution has played on us, and he djust as soon be out of it as not but he has too much contempt forthe whole farce even to give it the satisfaction of pulling thetrigger.This sends Rosa off the deep end, she s a bipolar who inher manic phase says Jesus talks to her personally through varioussystems He has.She tells Glenn he s going straight to Hell andwon t get any pity from her; she ll look down at him and laugh. Rabbit Remembered 106This gets Shirley, she s a three-hundred-pound binger with ahistory of ECT for depression, this gets her riled up and she saysGlenn is a very kind and considerate person and that the meaningof life for her is in small acts of kindness, not in some remote Godin Heaven. How did empty space hiccup? Did Glenn explain it? Sort of.Virtual particles, I think he said.Empty space isn t reallyempty but full of virtual particles that come and go innanoseconds.They somehow got together and made the Big Bang.He keeps up with all this stuff. That s interesting.He doesn t sound suicidal to me. Me neither! He just says he is so he won t have to leave us.We rehis family.Then Michael have I told you about Michael? Just a little.He s the pretty boy with the rich self-made parents. Exactly. At times talking to Annabelle is like talking to himself,they are in such accord. Michael gets very angry and says he d liketo know how people who think they talk to Jesus know it s not theDevil pretending to be Jesus and that the voices that talk to himuse dirty words he would never use, that s how he knows they refrom outside his head.I m pleased he can come out with all this,he tends to stay above it all when he even bothers to show up.Hewas in his first year at Penn when he broke.Then Jim you wantto hear all this garbage? You don t. Finish, Nelson.I do.But we must get the waitress and order.Shehasn t even cleared the table and I have a dental appointment attwo. You do? I never schedule the dentist after lunch. I brought floss and a toothbrush in my purse, Annabelle saysprimly, complacently.Her hair with its fluffy ragged cut makes ahalo against the window, her face in shadow round like a solareclipse.She suddenly seems a total stranger, an angel of blankness, Rabbit Remembered 107and he wonders what he is doing here; she is too much for him totake on.The same gnawing he wakes to at night attacks hisstomach and robs him of appetite at the very moment when thewaitress, flushed and overwhelmed, comes to their booth, stacksthe used plates on her arm, and asks for their order. We never got a menu, Nelson tells her.But before the girl can retreat to get them one, Annabelle says, We re in a hurry.Just bring me a hamburger. Nelson looks at the specials blackboard above the counter andsays, O.K., I ll have the split-pea soup and the half a bean-sproutssandwich. To drink? Coffee. A medium Sprite, Annabelle says.He accuses her, when the waitress leaves, Your teeth look perfect. No, actually they need a lot of care.My molars are full of fillingsand may have to be crowned.I ve always had a sweet tooth.ThenJim, she prompted. Then Jim Jim is an addict.You name it, he s addicted.He has abeer belly from booze and yellow fingers from cigarettes and he sbeen on methadone for years.But he ll do uppers, downers, he dget hooked on M&Ms if there was nothing else. Yum, says Annabelle. Jim decides to tell us, maybe just to rile us all up, that themeaning of life is sex, and he starts to describe a sexual adventurehe just had, with all the words in place, in this sort of eye-rollingphilosophizing way, a girl he met in a Third Street bar& Go on. Rabbit Remembered 108 She did this, he suggested that, she said why not, dude, the earthbegan to shudder and shake I had to cut him off, which I hate todo, but it was pure exhibitionism, Rosa actually walked out, it wasso inappropriate I know, Annabelle says. I get that with my Alzheimer s patients.They de-inhibit. Your father, Nelson says, thinking the subject needed a change. The man you thought was your father.Did he ever look at you? Her eyes lose their sleepy look; a stonewashed-denim blue, theywiden like a doll s when you sit it erect. I mean, Nelson hastens to explain, unlike my father, whodidn t look around at me in the dream, even though I know heknew I was there. Yes, she says. Frank did look at me.Especially Especially after you were sixteen, Nelson supplies. He died when I was sixteen.He began to look earlier than that.When I was fourteen. Her eyes regain their unimpeachable calm. But, you know, nothing.He was a wonderful, generous man.Mymother wasn t always easy.She had a temper, and wasn t really acountry person.She couldn t talk to the other farm women,Mennonite some of them. More capable than she looks, the waitress brings his pea soup withthe frothy half-sandwich and Annabelle s hamburger with chipsand a slice of pickle, cut the long way.The smell of ground grilledmeat travels to him across the Formica, reminding him of highschool its cafeteria lunches, its aimless car rides that ended withWhoppers at Burger King.Since his father s death of sludgyarteries he has been careful to watch his diet; his blood pressure ishigh for his age, and so is his cholesterol.It was aggressive ofAnnabelle, he feels, to order a hamburger, just as her outfit isaggressive, the purple turtleneck stretched by the push of her Rabbit Remembered 109breasts
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