Rabbit Redux by John Updike Read Free Book Online Page B

pencilgray, the right clothes insofar as any clothes can be right in this muggy river-bottom in the middle of July. Their faces have an edgy money look: their brows have that ftontal clarity the shambling blurred poor can never duplicate. Though he can never now be one of them Harry likes their being here, in this restaurant so chaste it is chic. Maybe Brewer isn't as dead on its feet as it seems.
                The menus are in hectographed handwriting. Nelson's face tightens, studying it. "They don't have any sandwiches," he says.
                "Nelson," Janice says, "if you make a fuss out of this I'll never take you out anywhere again. Be a big boy."
                "It's all in gobbledy-gook."
                She explains, "Everything is more or less lamb. Kebab is when it's on a skewer. Moussaka, it's mixed with eggplant."
                "I hate eggplant."
                Rabbit asks her, "How do you know all this?"
                "Everybody knows that much; Harry, you are so provincial. The two of you, sitting there side by side, determined to be miserable. Ugly Americans."
                "You don't look all that Chinese yourself," Harry says, "even in your little Lord Fauntleroy blouse." He glances down at his fingertips and sees there an ochre smudge of pollen, from having touched the daisies.
                Nelson asks, "What's kalamaria?"
                "I don't know," Janice says.
                "I want that."
                "You don't know what you want. Have the souvlakia, it's the simplest. It's pieces of meat on a skewer, very well done, with peppers and onions between."
                "I hate pepper."
                Rabbit tells him, "Not the stuff that makes you sneeze, the green things like hollow tomatoes."
                "I know," Nelson says. "I hate them. I know what a pepper is, Daddy; my God."
                "Don't swear like that. When did you ever have them?"
                "In a Pepperburger."
                "Maybe you should take him to Burger Bliss and leave me here," Janice says.
                Rabbit asks, "What are you going to have, if you're so fucking smart?"
                "Daddy swore."
                "Ssh," Janice says, "both of you. There's a nice kind of chicken pie, but I forget what it's called."
                "You've been here before," Rabbit tells her.
                "I want melopeta," Nelson says.
                Rabbit sees where the kid's stubby finger (Mom always used to point out, he has those little Springer hands) is stalled on the menu and tells him, "Dope, that's a dessert."
                Shouts of greeting announce in the doorway a large family all black hair and smiles, initiates; the waiter greets them as a son and rams a table against a booth to make space for them all. They cackle their language, they giggle, they coo, they swell with the joy of arrival. Their chairs scrape, their children stare demure and big-eyed from under the umbrella of adult noise. Rabbit feels naked in his own threadbare little family. The Penn Park couple very slowly turn around, underwater, at the commotion, and then resume, she now blushing, he pale - contact, touching hands on the tablecloth, groping through the stems of wineglasses. The Greek flock settles to roost but there is one man left over, who must have entered with them but hesitates in the doorway. Rabbit knows him. Janice refuses to turn her head; she keeps her eyes on the menu, frozen so they don't seem to read. Rabbit murmurs to her, "There's Charlie Stavros."
                "Oh, really?" she says, yet she still is reluctant to turn her head. But Nelson turns his and loudly calls out, "Hi, Charlie!" Summers, the kid spends a lot of time over at the lot.
                Stavros, who has such