Rabbit at rest (57 page)

Harry feels he must interrupt, he doesn't like the trend of this
monologue. "We think this agency is. Sales have been up eight per
cent this summer, bucking the national trend. I'm always saying to
people, `Toyota's been good to us, and we've been good to
Toyota."'

"No more, sorry," Mr. Shimada says simply, and resumes: "In
United States, is fascinating for me, struggle between order and
freedom. Everybody mention freedom, all papers terevision anchor
people everybody. Much rove and talk of freedom. Skateboarders want
freedom to use beach boardwalks and knock down poor old people.
Brack men with radios want freedom to selfexpress with super jumbo
noise. Men want freedom to have guns and shoot others on freeways
in random sport. In Carifornia, dog shit much surprise me.
Everywhere, dog shit, dogs must have important freedom to shit
everywhere. Dog freedom more important than crean grass and cement
pavement. In U.S., Toyota company hope to make ireands of order in
ocean of freedom. Hope to strike proper barance between needs of
outer world and needs of inner being, between what in Japan we call
giri and ninjó." He leans forward and, with a flash of wide
white cuff, taps the page of figures on Harry's desk. "Too much
disorder. Too much dog shit. Pay by end of August, no prosecution
for criminal activities. But no more Toyota franchise at Singer
Motors."

"Springer," Harry says automatically. "Listen," he pleads. "No
one feels worse about my son's falling apart than I do."

Now it is Mr. Shimada who interrupts; his own speech, with
whatever beautiful shadows in Japanese it was forming in his mind,
has whipped him up. "Not just son," he says. "Who is father and
mother of such son? Where are they? In Frorida, enjoying sunshine
and tennis, while young boy prays games with autos. Nelson
Ank-a-stom too much a boy still to be managing Toyota
agency. He roses face for Toyota company." This statement tugs his
flat lips far down, in a pop-eyed scowl.

Hopelessly Harry argues, "You want the sales staff young, to
attract the young customers. Nelson'll be thirty-three in a
couple months." He thinks it would be a waste of breath, and maybe
offensive, to explain to Mr. Shimada that at that same age Jesus
Christ was old enough to be crucified and redeem mankind. He makes
a final plea: "You'll lose all the good will. For thirty years the
people of Brewer have known where to come to buy Toyotas. Out here
right on Route One One One."

"No more," Mr. Shimada states. "Too much dog shit, Mr.
Ank-strom." His third try and he almost has it. You got to
hand it to them. "Toyota does not enjoy bad games prayed with its
ploduct." He picks up his slim briefcase and stands. "You keep
invoice. Many more papers to arrive. Most preasant if regretful
visit, and good talk on topics of general interest. Perhaps you
would be kind to discuss with rimo driver best way to find Route
Four Two Two. Mr. Krauss has agency there."

"You're going to see Rudy? He used to work here. I taught him
all he knows."

Mr. Shimada has stiffened, in that faintly striped
smoky-blue suit. "Good teacher not always good parent."

"If Rudy's going to be the only Toyota in town, he ought to get
rid of Mazda. That Wankel engine never really worked out. Too much
like a squirrel cage."

Harry feels lightheaded, now that the ax has fallen.
Anticipation is the worst; letting go has its pleasant side. "Good
luck with Lexus, by the way," he says. "People don't think luxury
when they think Toyota, but things can change."

"Things change," says Mr. Shimada. "Is world's sad secret." Out
in the showroom, he asks, "Rovely rady?" Elvira with her clicking
brisk walk traverses the showroom floor, her earrings doing a dance
along the points of her jaw. Their visitor asks, "Could prease have
business card, in case of future reference?" She digs one out of
her suit pocket, and Mr. Shimada accepts it, studies it seriously,
bows with his hands at his side, and then, to strike a jocular
American note, imitates a tennis backhand.

"You've got it," she tells him. "Take it back low."

He bows again and, turning to Harry, beams so broadly his
eyeglass frames are lifted by the creasing of his face. "Good ruck
with many probrems. Perhaps before too rate should buy Rexus at
dealer price." This is, it would seem, a little Japanese joke.

Harry gives the manicured hand a gritty squeeze. "Don't think I
can afford even a Corolla now," he says and, in a reflex of good
will really, manages a little bow of his own. He accompanies his
visitor outdoors to the limousine, whose black driver is leaning
against the fender eating a slice of pizza, and a cloud pulls back
from the sun; a colorless merciless dog-day brilliance makes
Harry wince; all joking falls away and he abruptly feels fragile
and ill with loss. He cannot imagine the lot without the tall blue
TOYOTA sign, the glinting still lake of well-made cars in
slightly bitter Oriental colors. Poor Janice, she'll be knocked for
a loop. She'll feel she's let her father down.

But she doesn't react too strongly; she is more interested these
days in her real-estate courses. Janice has completed one
pair of ten-week courses and is into another. She has long
phone conversations with her classmates about the next quiz or the
fascinating personality of their teacher, Mr. Lister with his
exciting new beard. "I'm sure Nelson has some plan," she says. "And
if he doesn't, we'll all sit down and negotiate one."

"Negotiate! Two hundred thousand disappearing dollars! And you
don't have Toyotas to sell any more."

"Were they really so great, Harry? Nelson hated them. Why can't
we get an American franchise - isn't Detroit making a big
comeback?"

"Not so big they can afford Nelson Angstrom."

She pretends he's joking, saying, "Aren't you awful?" Then she
looks at his face, is startled and saddened by what she sees there,
and crosses their kitchen to reach up and touch his face. "Harry,"
she says. "You are taking it hard. Don't. Daddy used to say, `For
every up there's a down, and for every down there's an up.' Nelson
will be home in a week and we can't do a thing really until then."
Outside the kitchen window screen, where moths keep bumping, the
early-August evening has that blended tint peculiar to the
season, of light being withdrawn while summer's warmth remains. As
the days grow shorter, a dryness of dead grass and chirring insects
has crept in even through this summer of heavy rains, of more
thunderstorms and flash floods in Diamond County than Harry can
ever remember. Out in their yard, he notices now a few brown leaves
shed by the weeping cherry, and the flower stalks of the violet
hosta dying back. In his mood of isolation and lassitude he is
drawing closer to the earth, the familiar mother with his infancy
still in her skirts, in the shadows beneath the bushes.

"Shit," he says, a word charged for him with magic since the
night three months ago when Pru used it to announce her despairing
decision to sleep with him, once. "What kind of plans can Nelson
have? He'll be lucky to stay out of jail."

"You can't go to jail for stealing from your own family. He had
a medical problem, he was sick the same way you were sick only it
was addiction instead of angina. You're both getting better."

He hears in the things she says, more and more, other voices,
opinions and a wisdom gathered away from him. "Who have you been
talking to?" he says. "You sound like that know-it-all
Doris Kaufmann."

"Eberhardt. I haven't talked to Doris for weeks and weeks. But
some of the women taking the real-estate program, we go out
afterwards to this little place on Pine Street that's not too
rough, at least until later, and one of them, Francie Alvarez, says
you got to think of any addiction as a medical condition just like
they caught the flu, or otherwise you'd go crazy, blaming the
addicts around you as if they can help it."

"So what makes you think Nelson's cure will take? Just because
it cost us six grand, that doesn't mean a thing to the kid. He just
went in to let things blow over. You told me yourself he told you
once he loves coke more than anything in the world. More than you,
more than me, more than his own kids."

"Well, sometimes in life you have to give up things you
love."

Charlie. Is that who she's thinking of, to make her voice sound
so sincere, so sadly wise and wisely firm? Her eyes for this moment
in dying August light have a darkness that invites him in, to share
a wisdom her woman's life has taught her. Her fingers touch his
cheek again, a touch like a fly that when you're trying to fall
asleep keeps settling on your face, the ticklish thin skin here and
there. It's annoying; he tries to shake her off with a snap of his
head. She pulls her hand back but still stares so solemnly. "It's
you I worry about, more than Nelson. Is the angina coming back? The
breathlessness?"

"A twinge now and then," he admits. "Nothing a pill doesn't fix.
It's just something I'm going to have to live with."

"I wonder if you shouldn't have had the bypass."

"The balloon was bad enough. Sometimes I feel like they left it
inside me."

"Harry, at least you should do more exercise. You go from the
lot to the TV in the den to bed. You never play golf any more."

"Well, it's no fun with the old gang gone. The kids out there at
the Flying Eagle don't want an old man in their foursome. In
Florida I'll pick it up again."

"That's something else we ought to talk about. What's the point
of my getting the salesperson's license if we go right down to
Florida for six months? I can never build up any local
presence."

"Local presence, you've got lots of it. You're Fred Springer's
daughter and Harry Angstrom's wife. And now you're a famous coke
addict's mother."

"I mean professionally. It's a phrase Mr. Lister uses. It means
the people know you're always there, not off in Florida like some
person who doesn't take her job seriously."

"So," he says. "Florida was good enough to stash me in when I
was manager at Springer Motors, to get me out of Nelson's way, but
now you think you're a working girl we can just forget it,
Florida."

"Well," Janice allows, "I
was
thinking, one
possibility, to help with the company's debts, might be to sell the
condo."

"Sell it? Over my dead body," he says, not so much meaning it as
enjoying the sound of his voice, indignant like one of those
perpetually outraged fathers on a TV sitcom, or like
silver-haired Steve Martin in the movie
Parenthood,
which they saw the other night because one of Janice's
real-estate buddies thought it was so funny. "My blood's got
too thin to go through a Northern winter."

In response Janice looks as if she is about to cry, her
darkbrown eyes warm and glassy-looking just like little Roy's
before he lets loose with one of his howls. "Harry, don't confuse
me," she begs. "I can't even take the license exam until October, I
can't believe you'd immediately make me go down to Florida where
the license is no good just so you can play golf with some people
older and worse than you. Who beat you anyway, and take twenty
dollars every time."

"Well what am 1 supposed to do around here while you run around
showing off? The lot's finished,
kaput,
or whatever the
Japanese word is,
finito,
and even if it's not, if the
kid's half-way straightened out you'll want him back there
and he can't stand me around, we crowd each other, we get on each
other's nerves."

"Maybe you won't now. Maybe Nelson will just have to put up with
you and you with him."

Harry humbly tells her, "I'd be willing." Father and son,
together against the world, rebuilding the lot up from scratch: the
vision excites him, for the moment. Shooting the bull with Benny
and Elvira while Nelson skitters around out there in the lake of
rooftops, selling used cars like hotcakes. Springer Motors back to
what it used to be before Fred got the Toyota franchise. So they
owe a few hundred thousand - the government owes trillions
and nobody cares.

She sees hope in his face and touches his cheek a third time. At
night now, Harry, having to arise at least once and sometimes, if
there's been more than one beer with television, twice, has learned
to touch his way across the bedroom in the pitch dark, touching the
glass top of the bedside table and then with an outreached arm
after a few blind steps the slick varnished edge of the high bureau
and from there to the knob of the bathroom door. Each touch, it
occurs to him every night, leaves a little deposit of sweat and oil
from the skin of his fingertips; eventually it will darken the
varnished bureau edge as the hems of his golf-pants pockets
have been rendered grimy by his reaching in and out for tees and
ball markers, round after round, over the years; and that
accumulated deposit of his groping touch, he sometimes thinks when
the safety of the bathroom and its luminescent light switch has
been attained, will still be there, a shadow on the varnish, a
microscopic cloud of his body oils, when he is gone.

"Don't push me, honey," Janice says, in a rare tone of direct
appeal that makes his hard old heart accelerate with revived
husbandly feeling. "This horrible thing with Nelson really has been
a stress, though I may not always show it. I'm his mother, I'm
humiliated, I don't know what's going to happen, exactly.
Everything's in flux."

His chest feels full; his left ribs cage a twinge. His vision of
working side by side with Nelson has fled, a pipe dream. He tries
to make Janice, so frighteningly, unusually somber and frontal,
smile with a tired joke. "I'm too old for flux," he tells her.

Nelson is scheduled to return from rehab the same day that the
second U.S. Congressman in two weeks, a white Republican this time,
is killed in a plane crash. One in Ethiopia, one in Louisiana; one
a former Black Panther, and this one a former sheriff. You don't
think of being a politician as being such a hazardous profession;
but it makes you fly. Pru drives to get her husband at the halfway
house in North Philadelphia while Janice babysits. Soon after they
arrive, Janice comes home to Penn Park. "I thought they should be
alone with each other, the four of them," she explains to
Harry.