The phone is ringing, ringing, like thrilling cold water poured into the mossy warm crevices1 of his dream. He was dreaming of snuggling into something, of having found an aperture3 that just fit. The phone is on Janice's side; he gropes for it across her stubbornly sleeping body and, with a throat dry from mouthbreathing, croaks4, "Hello?" The bedside clock seems to have only one hand until he figures out it's ten minutes after two. He expects one of those men's voices and tells himself they should take the phone off the hook downstairs whenever they go to bed. His heart's pounding seems to fill the dark room to its corners, suffocatingly5.
A tremulous young woman's voice says, "Harry6? It's Pru.
Forgive me for waking you up, but I -" Shame, fear trip her voice into silence. She feels exposed.
"Yeah, go on," he urges softly.
"I'm desperate. Nelson has gone crazy, he's already hit me and I'm afraid he'll start in on the children!"
"Really?" he says stupidly. "Nelson wouldn't do that." But people do it, it's in the papers, all the time.
"Who on earth is it?" Janice asks irritably7, yanked from her own dreams. "Tell them you have no money. Just hang up."
Pru is sobbing8, on the end of the line, ". . . can't stand it any more . . . it's been such hell . . . for years."
"Yeah, yeah," Harry says, still feeling stupid. "Here's Janice," he says, and passes the hot potato into her fumbling10 hand, out from under the covers. His sudden window into Pru, the hot bright unhappy heart of her, felt illicit11. He switches on his bedside light, as if that will help clear this all up. The white jacket of the history book he is still trying to get through, with its clipper ship in an oval of cloud and sea, leaps up shiny under the pleated lampshade. Since he began reading the book last Christmas afternoon, the author herself has died, putting a kind of blight12 on the book. Yet he feels it would be bad luck never to finish it.
"Yes," Janice is saying into the phone, at wide intervals13. "Yes. Did he really? Yes." She says, "We'll be right over. Stay away from him. What about going into Judy's room with her and locking yourselves in? Mother had a bolt put on the door, it must be still there."
Still Pru's voice crackles on, like an acid eating into the night's silence, the peace that had been in the room ten minutes before. Bits of his interrupted dream come back to him. A visit to some anticipated place, on a vehicle like a trolley14 car, yes, it had been an old?time trolley car, the tight weave of cane15 seats, he had forgotten how they looked, the way they smelled warmed by the sun, and the porcelain16 loops to hang from, the porcelain buttons to press, the dusty wire grates at the windows, the air and light coming in, on old?fashioned straw hats, the women with paper flowers in theirs, all heading somewhere gay, an amusement park, a fair, who was with him? There had been a companion, a date, on the seat beside him, but he can't come up with her face. The tunnel of love. The trolley car turned into something carrying them, him, into a cozy17 tunnel of love. It fit.
"Could the neighbors help?"
More crackling, more sobbing. Rabbit gives Janice the "cut" signal you see on TV ? a finger across the throat ? and gets out of bed. The aroma18 of his old body lifts toward him as he rests his bare feet on the carpet, a stale meaty cheesy scent19. Their bedroom in the limestone20 house has pale?beige Antron broadloom; a houseful of unpatterned wall?to?wall seemed snug2 and modern to him when they ordered it all, but in their ten years of living here certain spots ?inside the front door, the hall outside the door down to the cellar, the bedroom on either side of the bed ? have collected dirt from shoes and sweat from feet and turned a gray no rug shampoo could remove, a grimy big fingerprint21 your life has left. Patterned carpets like people had when he was a boy ? angular flowers and vines and mazes22 he would follow with his eyes until he felt lost in a jungle ? swallowed the dirt somehow, and then the housewives up and down Jackson Road would beat it out of them this time of year, on their back?yard clotheslines, making little swirling23 clouds in the cool April air, disappearing into the dust of the world. He collects clean underwear and socks from the bureau and then is a bit stumped24, what to wear to an assault. Formal, or rough and ready? Harry's brain is skidding25 along like a surfer on the pumping of his heart.
"Hi honey," Janice is saying in another tone, high?pitched and grandmotherly. "Don't be scared. We all love you. Your daddy loves you, yes he does, very much. Grandpa and I are coming right over. You must let us get dressed now so we can do that. It'll take just twenty minutes, honey. We'll hurry, yes. You be good till then and do whatever your mother says." She hangs up and stares at Harry from beneath her skimpy rumpled26 bangs. "My God," she says. "He punched Pru in the face and smashed up everything in the bathroom when he couldn't find some cocaine27 he thought he hid in there that he wanted."
"He wants, he wants," Harry says.
"He told her we're all stealing from him."
"Ha," Harry says, meaning it's the reverse.
Janice says, "How can you laugh when it's your own son?"
Who is this woman, this little nut?hard woman, to chasten him? Yet he feels chastened. He doesn't answer but instead says in a measured, mature manner, "Well, it's probably good this is coming to a head, if we all survive it. It gets it out in the open at least."
She puts on what she never wears in the daylight up north, her salmon28 running suit with the powder?blue sleeves and stripe. He opts29 for a pair of pressed chinos fresh from the drawer and the khaki shirt he puts on to do light yard chores, and his oldest jacket, a green wide?wale corduroy with leather buttons: kind of a casual Saturday?afternoon look. Retirement30 has made them both more clothes?conscious than before; in Florida, the retirees play dress?up every day, as if they've become their own paper dolls.
They take the slate32?gray Celica, the more Batmobilelike and steely car, on this desperate mission in the dead of the night. Along the stilled curving streets of Penn Park, the oaks are just budding but the maples33 are filling in, no longer red in tint34 but dense35 with translucent36 tender new leaves. The houses have an upstairs night light on here and there, or a back?porch light to keep cats and raccoons away from the garbage, but only the streetlamps compete with the moon. The trimmed large bushes of the groomed37 yards, the yews38 and arborvitae and rhododendrons, look alert by night, like jungle creatures come to the waterhole to drink and caught in a camera's flash. It seems strange to think that while we sleep these bushes are awake, exhaling39 oxygen, growing; they do not sleep. Stars do not sleep, but above the housetops and trees crowns shine in a cold arching dusty sprinkle. Why do we sleep? What do we rejoin? His dream, the way it fit him all around. At certain angles the lit asphalt feels in the corners of his eyes like snow. Penn Park becomes West Brewer40 and a car or two is still awake and moving on blanched41 deserted42 Penn Boulevard, an extension of Weiser with a supermarket parking lot on one side and on the other a low brick row of shops from the Thirties, little narrow stores selling buttons and bridal gowns and pastry43 and Zipf Chocolates and Sony TVs and hobby kits44 to make model airplanes with ? they still manufacture and sell those in this era when all the kids are supposedly couch potatoes and all the planes are these wallowing wide?body jets with black noses like panda bears, not sleek45 killing46 machines like Zeros, Messerschmitts, Spitfires, Mustangs. Funny to think that with all that world?war effort manufacturers still had the O.K. to make those little models, keeping up morale47 in the kiddie set. All the shops are asleep. A flower shop shows a violet growing light, and a pet store a dimly lit aquarium48. The cars parked along the curbs49 display a range of unearthly colors, no longer red and blue and cream but cindery50 lunar shades, like nothing you can see or even imagine by daylight.
Harry pops a nitroglycerin pill and tells Janice accusingly, "The doctors say I should avoid aggravation51."
"It wasn't me who woke us up at two in the morning, it was your daughter?in?law."
"Yeah, because your precious son was beating up on her."
"According to her," Janice states. "We haven't heard Nelson's side of it."
The underside of his tongue bums52. "What makes you think he has a side? What're you saying, you think she's lying? Why would she lie? Why would she call us up at two in the morning to lie?"
"She has her agenda, as people say. He was a good bet for her when she got herself pregnant but now that he's in a little trouble he's not such a good bet and if she's going to get herself another man she better move fast because her looks won't last forever."
He laughs, in applause. "You've got it all figured out." Discreetly54, distantly, his asshole tingles55, from the pill. "She is good?looking, isn't she? Still."
"To some men she would seem so. The kind that don't mind big tough women. What I never liked about her, though, was she makes Nelson look short."
"He is short," Harry says. "Beats me why. My parents were both tall. My whole family's always been tall."
Janice considers in silence her responsibility for Nelson's shortness.
There are any number of ways to get to Mt. Judge through Brewer but tonight, the streets all but deserted and the stoplights blinking yellow, he opts for the most direct, going straight over the Running Horse Bridge, that once he and Jill walked over in moonlight though not so late at night as this, straight up Weiser past the comer building that used to house JIMBO's Friendly LOUNGE until trouble with the police finally closed it and that now has been painted pastel condo colors and remodelled56 into a set of offices for yuppie lawyers and financial advisers57, past Schoenbaum Funeral Directors with its stately building of white brick on the left and the shoeshine parlor58 that sells New York papers and hot roasted peanuts, the best peanuts in town, still selling them all those years since he was a kid not much older than Judy now. His idea then of the big time was to take the trolley around the mountain and come into downtown Brewer on a Saturday morning and buy a dime59 bag of peanuts still warm from the roaster and walk all around cracking them and letting the shells fall where they would, at his feet on the sidewalks of Weiser Square. Once an old bum53 grumbled60 at him for littering; even the bums had a civic61 conscience then. Now the old downtown is ghostly, hollow in lunar colors and closed to traffic at Fifth Street, where the little forest planted by the city planners from Atlanta to make a pedestrian mall looms62 with ghostly branches under the intense blue lights installed to discourage muggings and sex and drug transactions beneath these trees which grow taller every year and make the downtown gloomier. Rabbit turns left on Fifth, past the post office and the Ramada Inn that used to be the Ben Franklin with its grand ballroom63, which always makes him think of Mary Ann and her crinolines and the fragrance64 between her legs, and over to Eisenhower Avenue, above number 1204 where Janice hid out with Charlie that time, and takes an obtuse65?angled turn right, heading up through the Hispanic section, which used to be German working?class, across Winter, Spring, and Summer streets with the blinding lights and occasional moving shadow, spics out looking for some kind of a deal, the nights still a little cool to bring out all the street trash, to Locust66 Boulevard and the front of Brewer High School, a Latin?inscribed67 Depression monument, ambitious for the common good like something Communists would put up, the whole country close to Communism in the Thirties, people not so selfish then, built the year Harry was born, 1933, and going to outlast68 him it looks like. Of pale?yellow brick and granite69 quoins, it clings to the greening mountainside like a grand apparition70.
"What do you think she meant," he asks Janice, " `gone crazy'? How crazy can you go from cocaine?"
"Doris Kaufmann, I mean Eberhardt, has a brother?in?law whose stepson by his wife's first marriage had to go to a detox center out near the middle of the state. He got to be paranoid and thought Hitler was still alive and had agents everywhere to get just him. He was Jewish."
"Did he beat up his wife and children?"
"He didn't have a wife, I think. We don't know for sure Nelson's threatened the children."
"Pru said he did."
"Pru was very upset. It's the money I think upsets her, more than anything."
"It doesn't upset you?"
"Not as much as it seems to you and Pru. Money isn't something I worry about, Harry. Daddy always said, `If I don't have two nickels to rub together, I'll rub two pennies.' He had faith he could always make enough, and he did, and I guess I inherited his philosophy."
"Is that the reason you keep letting Nelson get away with murder?"
Janice sighs and sounds more than ever like her mother, Bessie Koerner Springer, who lived her whole life overweight, without a lick of exercise except housework, sitting in her big house with its shades down to protect the curtains and upholstery from sunlight and sighing about the pains in her legs. "Harry, what can I do, seriously? It's not as if he's still a child, he's thirty?two."
"You could fire him from the lot, for starters."
"Yes, and shall I fire him as my son, too ? tell him I'm sorry, but he hasn't worked out? He's my father's grandson, don't forget. Daddy built that lot up out of nothing and he would have wanted Nelson to run it, run it even if he runs it into the ground."
"Really?" Such a ruinous vision startles him. Having money makes people reckless. Bet a million. Junk bonds. "Couldn't you fire him provisionally, until he shapes up?"
Janice's tone has the bite of impatience71, of fatigue72. "All this is so easy for you to say ? you're just sore since Lyle told you I was the real boss, you're trying to make me suffer for it. You do it, you do whatever you think should be done at the lot and tell them I said you should. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of you and Nelson fighting your old wars through me."
Streetlights flicker73 more swiftly on his hands as the Celica moves more rapidly through the city park, above the tennis courts and the World War II tank painted a thick green to forestall74 rust75, repainted so often they've lost the exact military green Harry remembers. What did they call it? Olive drab. He feels under the barrage76 of streetlights bombarded, and Brewer seems empty of life like those bombed?out German cities after the war. "They wouldn't believe me," he tells her spitefully, "they'd still come to you. And I'm like you," he tells her more gently, "scared of what I'll stir up."
After the park there is a stoplight that says red, and a locally famous old turreted77 house roofed in round fishscale slate shingles78, and then a shopping mall where the cineplex sign advertises SEE YOU DREAM TEAM SAY ANYTHING OUT OF CONTROL. Then they're on 422 and a territory bred into their bones, streets they crossed and recrossed in all seasons as children, Central, Jackson, Joseph, the hydrants and mailboxes of the borough79 of Mt. Judge like buttons fastening down their lives, their real lives, everything drained of color at this nadir80 of the night, the streets under the burning blue mercury lights looking rounded like bread?loaves and crusted with snow, the brick?pillared porches treacherous81 emplacements up behind their little flat laps oflawn and tulip bed. Number 89 Joseph, the Springers' big stucco house where when Rabbit was courting Janice in his old Nash he used to hate to come because it made his own family's semi?detached house on Jackson Road look poor, has all its lights ablaze82, like a ship going down amid the silent darkened treetops and roof peaks of the town. The huge spreading copper83?beech84 tree on the left side where Harry and Janice's bedroom used to be, a tree so dense the sun never shone in and its beech nuts popping kept Harry awake all fall, is gone, leaving that side bare, its windows exposed and on fire. Nelson had it cut down. Dad, it was eating up the whole house. You couldn't keep paint on the woodwork on that side, it was so damp. The lawn wouldn't even grow. Harry couldn't argue, and couldn't tell the boy that the sound of the rain in that great beech had been the most religious experience of his life. That, and hitting a pure golf shot.
They park outside, under the maples that are shedding chartreuse fuzz and sticky stuff this time of year. He always hates that about parking here. He'll get the car washed Monday.
Pru has been watching for their arrival. She pulls the door open as their feet hit the porch, as if there's an electric eye. Like Thelma the other week. Judy is with her, in some fuzzy Oshkosh B'Gosh pajamas85 that are too small for her. The child's feet look surprisingly long and white and bony, with the inches of exposed ankle.
"Where's Roy?" Harry asks instantly.
"Nelson's putting him in bed," Pru says, with a wry86 downward tug87 of one side of her mouth, a kind of apology.
"To bed?" Harry says. "You trust him with the kid?"
She says, "Oh yes. He's calmed down since I called. I think he shocked himself, hitting me so hard. It did him good." In the illumination of the front hall they can see the pink welt along one cheekbone, the lopsided puffiness of her upper lip, the redness around her eyes as if rubbed and rubbed with a scouring89 pad. She is wearing that quilted shorty morning?glory bathrobe but not as in Florida over bare legs; under it she has on a long blue nightgown. But you can see the outline of her legs through the thin cloth, like fish moving through murky90 water. Fake?fur?lined bedroom slippers92 clothe her feet, so he can't check out her toenail polish.
"Hey, is this some kind of false alarm?" Harry asks.
"When you see Nelson I don't think you'll think so," Pru tells him, and turns to the other woman. ` Janice, I've had it. I want out. I've kept the lid on as long as I can and now I've had it!" And the eyes that have scoured93 their lids with tears begin to water again, and she embraces the older woman before Janice has quite straightened out from bending down to kiss and hug Judy hello.
Harry's guts94 give a tug: he can feel Pru's attempt to make a sweeping95 connection; he can feel his wife's resistance. Pru was raised a Catholic, showy, given to big gestures, and Janice a tight little Protestant. The embrace breaks up quickly.
Judy takes Harry's fingertips. When he stoops to peck her on the cheek, her hair gets in his eye. The little girl giggles96 and says in his ear, "Daddy thinks ants are crawling all over him."
"He's always feeling itchy," Pru says, sensing that her attempt to sweep Janice into her escape plan has failed, she must do some more selling of the situation. "That's the coke. They call it formication. His neurotransmitters are fucked up. Ask me anything, I know it all. I've been going to Narc?Anon in Brewer for a year now.
"Huh," Rabbit says, not quite liking97 her tough tone. "And what else do they tell you?"
She looks straight at him, her green eyes glaring with tears and shock, and manages that smile of hers, downtwisted at the corner. Her upper lip being puffy gives it a sad strangeness tonight. "They tell you it's not your problem, the addicts98 can only do it themselves. But that still leaves it your problem."
"What happened here tonight, exactly?" he asks. He has to keep speaking up. He feels Janice pulling back, distancing herself irritatingly, like that time they took the kids to jungle Gardens in the Camry.
Judy doesn't find her grandparents as much fun as usual and leaves Harry's side to go lean against her mother, pressing her carrot?colored head back against Pru's belly100. Pru protectively encircles the child's throat with a downy freckled101 forearm. Now two pairs of greenish eyes stare, as if Harry and Janice are not the rescue squad102 but hostile invaders103.
Pru's voice sounds tough and weary. "The usual sort of garbage. He came home after one and I asked him where he'd been and he told me none of my business and I guess I didn't take it as docilely104 as usual because he said if I was going to be that way he needed a hit to calm his nerves, and when the coke wasn't in the bathroom where he thought he hid it in an aspirin105 bottle he smashed things up and when I didn't like that he came out after me and started slugging me all over the place."
Judy says, "It woke me up. Mommy came into my room to get away and Daddy's face was all funny, like he wasn't really seeing anything."
Harry asks, "Did he have a knife or anything?"
Pru's eyebrows106 knit crossly at the suggestion. "Nelson would never go for a knife. He can't stand blood and never helps in the kitchen. He wouldn't know which end of a knife to use."
Judy says, "He said he was real sorry afterwards."
Pru has been smoothing Judy's long red hair back from her face and now, just the middle fingers touching107 her forehead and cheeks, tucks back her own. She has outgrown108 the Sphinx look; it hangs limp to her shoulders. "He calmed down after I called you. He said, `You called them? I can't believe it. You called my parents?' It was like he was too stunned109 to be angry. He kept saying this is the end and how sorry he was for everything. He makes no sense." She grimaces110 and lightly pushes Judy away from her body and tightens111 the robe around her middle, with a shiver. For a second they all seem to have forgotten their lines. In crises there is something in our instincts which whittles112, which tries to reduce the unignorable event back to the ignorable normal. "I could use a cup of coffee," Pru says.
Janice asks, "Shouldn't we go upstairs to Nelson first?"
Judy likes this idea and leads the way upstairs. Following her milky113 bare feet up the stair treads, Harry feels guilty that his granddaughter has to wear outgrown pajamas while all those Florida acquaintances of theirs have different?colored slacks for every day of the week and twenty sports coats hanging in cleaner's bags. The house, which he remembers from way back in the days of the Springers, when they were younger than he is now, seems rather pathetically furnished, now that he looks, in remnants from the old days, including the battered114 old brown Barcalounger that used to be Fred Springer's throne, along with nondescript newer stuff from Schaechner's or one of the shabby furniture places that have sprung up along the highways leading out of the city, mingled115 among the car lots and fast?food joints117. The stairs still have the threadbare Turkish runner the Springers had tacked118 down forty years ago. The house has descended119 to Nelson and Pru in stages and they never really have taken it on as their own. You try to do something nice for kids, offer them a shortcut120 in life, a little padding, and it turns out to be the wrong thing, undermining them. This was no house for a young couple.
All the lights being turned on gives the house a panicky overheated air. They ascend121 the stairs in the order Judy, Harry, Janice, and Pru, who maybe regrets having called them by now and would rather be nursing her face and planning her next move in solitude122. Nelson greets them in the hallway, carrying Roy in his. "Oh," he says, seeing his father, "the big cheese is here."
"Don't mouth off at me," Harry tells him. "I'd rather be home in bed."
"It wasn't my idea to call you."
"It was your idea though to go beating up your wife, and scaring the hell out of your kids, and otherwise acting123 like a shit." Harry fishes in the side pocket of his chinos to make sure the little vial of heart pills is there. Nelson is trying to play it cool, still wearing the black slacks and white shirt he was out on the town in, and having the kid on his arm, but his thinning hair is bristling124 out from his head and his eyes in the harsh hallway light are frantic125, full of reflected sparks like that time outside the burning house at 26 Vista126 Crescent. Even in the bright light his pupils look dilated127 and shiny?black and there is a tremor128 to him, a shiver now and then as if this night nearly in May is icy cold. He looks even thinner than in Florida, with that same unpleasant sore?looking nose above the little half?ass9 blur129 of a mustache. And that earring130 yet.
"Who are you to go around deciding who's acting like a shit?" he asks Harry, adding, "Hi, Mom. Welcome home."
"Nelson, this just won't do."
"Let me take Roy," Pru says in a cool neutral voice, and she pushes past the elder Angstroms and without looking her husband in the face plucks the sleepy child from him. Involuntarily she grunts131 with the weight. The hall light, with its glass shade faceted132 like a candy dish, crowns her head with sheen as she passes under it, into Roy's room, which was Nelson's boyhood room in the old days, when Rabbit would lie awake hearing Melanie creep along the hall to this room from her own, the little room at the front of the house with the dress dummy133. Now she's some gastroenterologist. In the harsh overhead light, Nelson's face, white around the gills, shows an electric misery134 and a hostile cockiness, and Janice's a dark confused something, a retreat into the shadows of her mind; her capacity for confusion has always frightened Harry. He realizes he is still in charge. Little Judy looks up at him brightly, titillated135 by being awake and a witness to these adult transactions. "We can't just stand here in the hall," he says. "How about the big bedroom?"
Harry and Janice's old bedroom has become Nelson and Pru's. A different bedspread ? their old Pennsylvania Dutch quilt of little triangular136 patches has given way to a puff88 patterned with yellow roses, Pru does like flowered fabrics137 ? but the same creaky bed, with the varnished138 knobbed headboard that never hit your back quite right when you tried to read. Different magazines on the bedside tables ? Racing139 Cars and Rolling Stone instead of Time and Consumer Reports ? but the same cherry table on Harry's old side, with its sticky drawer. Among the propped140?up photographs on the bureau is one of him and Janice, misty141?eyed and lightly tinted142, taken on their twenty?fifth wedding anniversary in March of 1981. They look embalmed143, Rabbit thinks, suspended in that tinted bubble of time. The ceiling light in this room, glass like the hall light, is also burning. He asks, "Mind if I switch that off? All these lights on, I'm getting a headache."
Nelson says sourly, "You're the big cheese. Help yourself."
Judy explains, "Mommy said to turn them all on while Daddy was chasing her. She said if it got worse I should throw a chair through a front window and yell for help and the police would hear."
With the light switched off, Rabbit can see out into the dark gulf144 of air where the copper beech used to be. The neighbor's house is closer than he ever thought, in his ten years of living here. Their upstairs lights are on. He can see segments of wall and furniture but no people. Maybe they were thinking of calling the police. Maybe they already have. He switches on the lamp on the cherry table, so the neighbors can look in and see that everything is under control.
"She overreacted," Nelson explains, fitfully gesturing. "I was trying to make a point and Pru wouldn't hold still. She never listens to me any more."
"Maybe you don't say enough she wants to hear," Harry tells his son. The kid in his white shirt and dark trousers looks like a magician's assistant, and keeps tapping himself on the chest and back of the neck and rubbing his anus through the white cloth as if he's about to do a trick. The boy is embarrassed and scared but keeps losing focus, Rabbit feels; there are other presences for him in the room besides the bed and furniture and his parents and daughter, a mob of ghosts which only he can see. A smell comes off him, liquor and a kind of post?electrical ozone145. He is sweating; his gills are wet.
"O.K., O.K.," Nelson says. "I treated myself to a bender tonight, I admit it. It's been a helluva week at the lot. California wants to have this nationwide Toyotathon to go with a TVcommercial blitz and they expect to see a twenty?per?cent increase of new sales to go with the discounts they're offering. They let me know they haven't been liking our figures lately."
"Them and who else?" Harry says. "Did your buddy146 Lyle tell ya I was over there the other day?"
"Snooping around last week, yeah, he sure did. He hasn't come to work since. Thanks a bunch. You put Elvira into a snit, too, with all your sexist flirtatious147 stuff:"
"I wasn't sexist, I wasn't flirtatious. I was just surprised to see a woman selling cars and asked her how it was going. The cunt, I was just as pleasant as I could be."
"She didn't think so."
"Well screw her, then. From my look at her she can take care of herself. What's your big huff for ? you boffing her?"
"Dad, when are you going to get your mind off boffing? You're what, fifty?seven? ?"
"Fifty?six."
"? and you're so damn adolescent. There's more things in the world than who's boffing who."
"Tell me about it. Tell me about how the me generation has a bender. You can't keep snorting this stuff every half?hour to keep high, your nose'd burn out. Yours looks sort of shot already. What do you do with crack? How do you take it in? It's just little crystals, isn't it? Do you need all that fancy burning stuff and tubes they show on TV? Where do you do it, then? You can't just haul all that paraphernalia149 into the Laid?Back or whatever they call it now, or can you?"
"Harry, please," Janice says.
Judy contributes, bright?eyed at three in the morning, "Daddy has lots of funny little pipes."
"Shut up honey, would you mind?" Nelson says. "Go find Mommy and she'll put you to bed."
Harry turns on Janice. "Let me ask him. Why should we all go around on tiptoe forever pretending the kid's not a hophead? Face it, Nellie, you're a mess. You're a mess and you're a menace. You need help."
Self?pity focuses the boy's features for a second. "People keep telling me I need help but they're no help is what I notice. A wife who doesn't give me shit, a father who's no kind of father at all and never was, a mother..." He trails off, not daring offend his one ally.
"A mother," Harry finishes for him, "who's letting you rob her blind."
This gets to him a little, burns through the jittery150 buzz in his eyes. "I'm not robbing anybody," he says, numbly151, as though a voice in his head told him to say it. "Everything's been worked out. Hey, I feel sick. I think I have to throw up."
Harry raises his hand in lofty blessing152. "Go to it. You know where the bathroom is."
The bathroom door is to the right of the dresser with the color snapshots of the kids at various stages of growing and the tinted one of Harry and Janice looking embalmed, mistily153 staring at the same point in space. Looking in, Harry sees all sorts of litter on the floor. Prell, Crest154, pills. Luckily most things come in plastic con31-tainers these days so there isn't much breakage. The door closes.
Janice tells him, "Harry, you're coming on too strong."
"Well, hell, nobody else is coming on at all. You expect it to go away by itself. It won't. The kid is hooked."
"Let's just not talk about the money," she begs.
"Why not? Just what is so fucking sacred about money, that everybody's scared to talk about it?"
The tip of her tongue peeks155 from between her worried lips. "With money you get into legal things."
Judy is still with them and has been listening: her clear young eyes with their bluish whites, her reddish?blonde eyebrows with their little cowlick, her little face pale as a clock's face and as pre-cise pluck at Harry's anger, undermine his necessary indignation. Retching noises from behind the bathroom door now frighten her. Harry explains, "It'll make your daddy feel better. He's get-ting rid of poison." But the thought of Nelson being sick upsets him too, and those bands of constriction156 around his chest, the playful malevolent157 singeing158 deep within, reassert their threat. He fishes in his pants pocket for the precious brown vial. Thank God he remembered to bring it. He unscrews the top and shakes out a small white Nitrostat and places it, as debonairly159 as he used to light a cigarette, beneath his tongue.
Judy smiles upward. "Those pills fix that bad heart I gave you."
"You didn't give me my bad heart, honey, I wish you'd get that out of your mind." He is bothered by Janice's remark about money and legal things and the implication that they are getting in over their heads. ANGSTROM, SON INCARCERATED160. Joint116 Scam Sinks Family Concern. The lights in the neighbor's upstairs win-dows have gone off and that relieves some pressure. He could feel Ma Springer turning in her grave at the possibility that her old house has become a bother to the neighborhood. Nelson comes out of the bathroom looking shaken, wide?eyed. The poor kid has seen some terrible things in his day: Jill's body carried from the burned?out house in a rubber bag, his mother hugging the little dead body of his baby sister. You can't really blame him for any-thing. He has washed his face and combed his hair so his pallor has this gleam. He lets a shudder161 run from his head down into his body, like a dog shaking itself dry after running in a ditch.
For all his merciful thoughts Harry goes back on the attack. "Yeah," he says, even as the kid is closing the bathroom door, "and another new development over there I wasn't crazy about is this fat Italian you've hired. What are you letting the Mafia into the lot for?"
"Dad, you are incredibly prejudiced."
"I don't have prejudices, just facts. The Mafia is a fact. It's being scared out of the drug trade, too violent, and is getting into more and more legitimate162 businesses. It was all on 60 Minutes."
"Mom, get him off me."
Janice gets up her courage and says, "Nelson, your father's right. You need some help."
"I'm fine," he whines163. "I need some sleep, is what I need. You have any idea what time it is? ? it's after three. Judy, you should go back to bed."
"I'm too wired," the child says, smiling, showing her perfect oval teeth.
Harry asks her, "Where'd you learn that word?"
"I'm too jazzed," she says. "Kids at school say that."
Harry asks Nelson, "And who're these guys keep calling our house at all hours asking for money?"
"They think I owe them money," Nelson answers. "Maybe I do. It's temporary, Dad. It'll all work out. Come, Judy. I'll put you to bed."
"Not so fast," Harry says. "How much do you owe, and how're you going to pay 'em?"
"Like I said, I'll work it out. They shouldn't be calling your number, but they're crude guys. They don't understand term financing. Go back to Florida if you don't like your phone ringing. Change your number, that's what I did."
"Nelson, when will it end?" Janice asks, tears making her voice crack, just from looking at him. In his white shirt with his electric movements Nelson has the frailty164 and doomed165 alertness of a cornered animal. "You must get off this stuff"
"I am, Mom. I am off. Starting_tonight."
"Ha," Harry says.
Nelson insists to her, "I can handle it. I'm no addict99. I'm a recreational user."
"Yeah," Harry says, "like Hitler was a recreational killer166." It must be the mustache made him think of Hitler. If the kid would just shave it off, and chuck the earring, he maybe could feel some compassion167, and they could make a fresh start.
But, then, Harry thinks, how many fresh starts for him are left? This room, where he spent ten years sleeping beside Janice, listening to her snore, smelling her nice little womanly sweat, her unconscious releases of gas, making some great love sometimes, that time with the Krugerrands, and other times disgustedly watching her stumble in tipsy from a night downstairs sipping168 sherry or Campan, this room with the copper beech outside the window leafing in and changing the light and then losing its leaves and giving the light back and the beech nuts popping like little firecrackers and Ma Springer's television mumbling169 on and making the bedside lamp vibrate when a certain pitch was reached on the program?ending surge of music, Ma sound asleep and never hearing it, this room soaked in his life, how many more times will he see it? He hadn't expected to see it tonight. Now all at once, as happens at his age, fatigue like an inner overflowing170 makes him feel soggy, dirty, distracted. Little sparks are going off and on in the corners of his eyes. Avoid aggravation. He'd better sit down. Janice has sat down on the bed, their old bed, and Nelson has pulled up the padded stool patterned with yellow roses Pru must use to perch171 on in her underwear when she sits putting on makeup172 at her dresser mirror before going out with him to the LaidBack or some yuppie buddies173' party in northeast Brewer. How sorry is he supposed to feel for his son when the kid has a big tall hippy dish like that to boff?
Nelson has changed his tune174. He leans toward his mother, his fingers intertwined to still their shaking, his lips tensed to bite back his nausea175, his dark eyes full of an overflowing confusion like her own. He is pleadingly, disjointedly, explaining himself. ". . . the only time I feel human, like other people I guess feel all the time. But when I went after Pru that way tonight it was like a monster or something had taken over my body and I was standing176 outside watching and felt no connection with myself. Like it was all on television. You're right, I got to ease off. I mean, it's getting so I can't start the day without . . . a hit . . . and all day all I think about . . . That's not human either."
"You poor baby," she says. "I know. I know just what you're saying. It's lack of self?esteem177. I had it for years. Remember, Harry, how I used to drink when we were young?"
Trying to pull him into it, make him a parent too. He won't have it, yet. He won't buy in. "When we were young? How about when we were middle?aged178, like now even? Hey look, what's this supposed to be, a therapy session? This kid just clobbered179 his wife and is conning180 the pants off us and you're letting him!"
Judy, lying diagonally on the bed behind her grandmother, and studying them all with upside?down eyes, joins in, observing, "When Grandpa gets mad his upper lip goes all stiff just like Mommy's does."
Nelson comes out of his fog of self?pity enough to say to her, "Honey, I'm not sure you should be hearing all this."
"Let me put her back to bed," Janice offers, not moving though.
Harry doesn't want to be left alone with Nelson. He says, "No, I'll do it. You two keep talking. Hash it out. I've had my say to this jailbait."
Judy laughs shrilly181, her head still upside down on the bed, her reversed eyelids182 monstrous183. "That's a funny word," her mouth says, the teeth all wrong, big on bottom and little on top. " Jailbait.' You mean jailbird.' "
"No, Judy," Harry tells her, taking her hand and trying to pull her upright. "first you're jailbait, then you're a jailbird. When you're in jail, you're a jailbird."
"Where the holy fuck is her mother?" Nelson asks the air in front of his face. "That damn Pru, she's always telling me what a jerk I am, then she's out to lunch half the time herself. Notice how broad in the beam she's getting? That's alcohol. The kids come home from school and find her sound asleep." He says this to Janice, placating184 her, badmouthing his wife to his mother, then suddenly turns to Harry.
"Dad," he says. "Want to split a beer?"
"You must be crazy."
"It'll help bring us down," the boy wheedles185. "It'll help us to sleep."
"I'm fighting sleep; Jesus. It's not me who's wired or whatever you call it. Come on, Judy. Don't give Grandpa a hard time. He hurts all over." The child's hand seems damp and sticky in his, and she makes a game of his pulling her off the bed, resisting to the point that he feels a squeeze in his chest. And when he gets her upright beside the bed, she goes limp and tries to collapse186 onto the rug. He holds on and resists the impulse to slap her. To Janice he says sharply, "Ten more minutes. You and the kid talk. Don't let him con you. Set up some kind of plan. We got to get some order going in this crazy family."
As he pulls the bedroom door halfway187 shut, he hears Nelson say, "Mom, how about you? Wouldn't half a beer be good? We have Mick, and Miller's."
Judy's room, wherein Ma Springer used to doze188 and pretend to watch television, and from whose front windows you can see patches of Joseph Street, deserted like tundra189, blanched by the streetlights, through the sticky Norway maples, is crowded with stuffed toys, teddy bears and giraffes and Garfields; but Harry feels they are all old toys, that nobody has brought this child a present for some time. Her childhood is wearing out before she is done with it. She turned nine in January and who noticed? Janice sent her a Dr. Seuss book and a flowered bathing cap from Florida. Judy crawls without hesitation190 or any more stalling into her bed, under a tattered191 red puff covered with Peanuts characters. He asks her if she doesn't need to go pee?pee first. She shakes her head and stares up at him from the pillow as if amused by how little he knows about her insides. Slant192 slices of streetlight enter around the window shades and he asks her if she would like him to draw the curtains. Judy says No, she doesn't like it totally dark. He asks her if the cars going by bother her and she says No, only the big trucks that shake the house sometimes and there's a law that says they shouldn't come this way but the police are too lazy to enforce it. "Or too busy," he points out, always one to defend the authorities. Strange that he should have this instinct, since in his life he hasn't
been especially dutiful. Jailbait himself on a couple of occasions. But the authorities these days seem so helpless, so unarmed. He asks Judy if she wants to say a prayer. She says No thanks. She is clutching some stuffed animal that looks shapeless to him, without arms or legs. Monstrous. He asks her about it and she shows him that it is a stuffed toy dolphin, with gray back and white belly. He pats its polyester fur and tucks it back under the covers with her. Her chin rests on the white profile of Snoopy wearing his aviator193 glasses. Linus clutches his blanket; Pigpen has little stars of dirt around his head; Charlie Brown is on his pitcher's mound194, and then is knocked head over heels by a rocketing ball. Sitting on the edge of the bed, wondering if Judy expects a bedtime story, Harry sighs so abjectly195, so wearily, that both are surprised, and nervously196 laugh. She suddenly asks him if everything will be all right.
"How do you mean, honey?"
"With Mommy and Daddy."
"Sure. They love you and Roy, and they love each other."
"They say they don't. They fight."
"A lot of married people fight."
"My friends' parents don't."
"I bet they do, but you don't see it. They're being good because you're in the house."
"When people fight a lot, they get divorced."
"Yes, that happens. But only after a lot of fighting. Has your daddy ever hit your mommy before, like tonight?"
"Sometimes she hits him. She says he's wasting all our money."
Harry has no ready answer to that. "It'll work out," he says, just as Nelson has. "Things work out, usually. It doesn't always seem that way, but they usually do."
"Like you that time you fell on the sand and couldn't get up."
"Wasn't that a funny way to act? Yes, and see, here I am, as good as new. It worked out."
Her face broadens in the dark; she is smiling. Her hair is spread in dark rays across the glowing pillow. "You were so funny in the water. I teased you."
"You teased me how?"
"By hiding under the sail."
He casts his weary mind back and tells her, "You weren't teasing, honey. You were all blue and gaspy when I got you out. I saved your life. Then you saved mine."
She says nothing. The dark pits of her eyes absorb his version, his adult memory. He leans down and kisses her warm dry forehead. "Don't you worry about anything, Judy. Grandma and I will take good care of your daddy and all of you."
"I know," she says after a pause, letting go. We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual197 reassurances198, our loving lies.
Emerging opposite to the closed door of the old sewing room, where Melame used to sleep, Rabbit sneaks199 down the hall past the half?closed door to the master bedroom ? he can hear Janice and Nelson talking, their voices braided into one ? and to the room beyond, a back room with a view of the back yard and the little fenced garden he used to tend. This was Nelson's room in the distant days when he went to high school and wore long hair and a headband like an Indian and tried to learn the guitar that had been Jill's and spent a small fortune on his collection of rock LPs, records all obsolete200 now, everything is tapes, and tapes are becoming obsolete, everything will be CDs. This room is now little Roy's. Its door is ajar; with three fingertips on its cool white wood Harry pushes it open. Light enters it not as sharp slices from the proximate streetlights above Joseph Street but more mistily, from the lights of the town diffused201 and scattered202, a yellow star?swallowing glow arising foglike from the silhouettes203 of maples and gables and telephone poles. By this dim light he sees Pru's long body pathetically asleep across Roy's little bed. One foot has kicked off its fake?furry204 slipper91 and sticks out bare from its nightie, so filmy it clings to the shape of her bent205 full?thighed206 leg, her short quilted robe ruched up to her waist, rumpled in folds whose valleys seem bottomless in the faint light. One long white hand of hers rests extended on the rumpled covers, the other is curled in a loose fist and fitted into the hollow between her lips and chin; the bruise207 on her cheekbone shows like a leech208 attached there and her hair, its carrot?color black in the dark, is disarrayed209. Her breath moves in and out with a shallow exhausted210 rasp. He inhales211 through his nose, to smell her. Perfumy traces float in her injured aura.
As he bends over for this inspection212, Rabbit is startled by the twin hard gleam of open eyes: Roy is awake. Cuddled on his bed by his mother, sung a song that has put the singer to sleep, the strange staring child reaches up through the darkness to seize the loose skin of his grandfather's looming213 face and to twist it, his small sharp fingernails digging in so that Harry has to fight crying out. He pulls this fierce little crab214 of a hand away from his cheek, disembeds it finger by finger, and with a vengeful pinch settles it back onto Roy's chest. In his animal hurt Harry has hissed215 aloud; seeing Pru stir as if to awake, her hand making an agitated216 motion toward her tangled217 hair, he backs rapidly from the room.
Janice and Nelson are in the bright hall looking for him. With their thinning hair and muddled218 scowling219 expressions they seem siblings220. He tells them in a whisper, "Pru fell asleep on Roy's bed."
Nelson says, "That poor bitch. She'd be O.K. if she'd just get off my case."
Janice tells Harry, "Nelson says he feels much more like himself now and we should go home to bed."
Their voices seem loud, after the foglit silence of Roy's room, and he pointedly221 keeps his own low. "What have you two settled? I don't want this to happen again."
In Nelson's old room, Roy has begun to cry. He should cry; it's Harry's cheek that hurts.
"It won't, Harry," Janice says. "Nelson has promised to see a counsellor."
He looks at his son to see what this means. The boy visibly suppresses a smile of collusion, over the necessity ofplacating women. Harry tells Janice, "I said, Don't let him con ya."
Her forehead, which her bangs do not cover, creases222 in impatience. "Harry, it's time to go." She is, as Lyle informed him, the boss.
On the drive back, he vents223 his indignation. "What did he say? What about the money?" Route 422 shudders224 with tall trucks, transcontinental eighteen?wheelers. They make better time in the dead of the night.
Janice says, "He's running the lot and it would be too unmanning to take it from him. I can't run it and you're going into the hospital for that angio?thing. Plasty."
"Not till the week after next," he says. "We could always put it off."
"I know that's what you'd like but we just can't go on pretending you're fine. It's been nearly four months since New Year's and in Florida they said you should recover enough in three. Dr. Breit told me you're not losing weight and avoiding sodium225 the way you were told and you could have a recurrence226 of what happened on the Sunfish any time."
Dr. Breit is his cardiologist at the St. Joseph's Hospital in Brewer ? a fresh?faced freckled kid with big glasses in fleshcolored plastic rims227. Janice's telling him all this in her mother's matter?of?fact, determined228 voice carves a dreadful hollowness within him. The sloping park as they cruise through on Cityview Drive seems fragile and papery, the illuminated229 trees unreal. There is nothing beneath these rocks, these steep lawns and proud row houses, but atoms and nothingness, waiting for him to take his tight?fitting place among them. Dear God, reach down. Pull my bad heart out of me. Thelma said it helped. Janice's mind, far from prayer, is moving on, her voice decided230 and a bit defiant231. "As for the money, Nelson did allow as there has to be some financial restructuring."
"Restructuring! That's what everybody up the creek232 talks about. South American countries, those Texas S and Ls. Did he really say `restructuring'?"
"Well, it's not a word I would have thought to use. Though I expect when I start with my courses it'll be one of the things they teach."
"Your courses, Jesus," he says. That tank, painted the wrong green, how much longer before nobody remembered why it was there ? the ration148 stamps, the air?raid drills, the screaming eightcolumn headlines every morning, God versus233 Satan a simple matter of the miles gained each day on the road to Aachen? "What did he say about himself and Pru?"
"He doesn't think she's found another man yet," Janice says. "So we don't think she'll really leave."
"Well, that's nice and hard?boiled ofyou both. But what about her, her own welfare? You saw her battered face tonight. How much more should she take? Face it, the kid is utterly234 gonzo. Do you see the way he was twitching235 all the time? And throwing up then? Did you hear him offer me a beer? A beer, for Chrissake, when we should have been the cops really. He's damn lucky the neighbors didn't call 'em."
"He was just trying to be hospitable236. It's a great trial to him, Harry, that you're so unsympathetic."
"Unsympathetic! What's to be sympathetic with? He cheats, he snivels, he snorts or whatever, he's a lush besides, over at the lot he hires these gangsters237 and guys with AIDS -"
"Really, you should hear yourself. I wish I had a tape recorder."
"So do I. Tape me; I'm talking truth. So what's he going to do about the dope?" Even at this hour, going on four, a few men in sneakers and jeans are awake in the park, conferring behind trees, waiting on benches. "Did he promise to give it up?"
"He promised to see a counsellor," Janice says. "He admits he might have a problem. I think that's a good night's work. Pru has all sorts of names and agencies from these Narc?Anon meetings she's been going to."
"Names, agencies, we can't expect society to run our lives for us, to baby us from cradle to grave. That's what the Communists try to do. There comes a point when you got to take responsibility." He fingers his pants pocket to make sure the little hard cylindrical238 bottle is there. He won't take a pill now, but save it for when they get home. With a small glass of milk in the kitchen. And a Nutter239?Butter cookie to dip into the milk. Shaped like a big peanut, a Nutter?Butter is delicious dipped into milk, first up to the peanut waist, and then the rest for a second bite.
Janice says, "I wish my parents were still alive to hear you talk about responsibility. My mother thought you were the most irresponsible person she ever met."
This hurts, slightly. He had liked Ma Springer toward the end, and thought she liked him. Hot nights out on the screened porch, pinochle games up in the Poconos. They both found Janice a bit slow.
Out of the park, he heads the slate?gray Celica down Weiser, through the heart of Brewer. The Sunflower Beer Clock says 3:50, above the great deserted city heart. Something cleansing240 about being awake at this forsaken241 hour. It's a new world. A living, crouching242 shadow ? a cat, or can it be a raccoon? ? stares with eyes like circular reflectors in his headlights, sitting on the cement stairs of a dry fountain there on the edge of the little woods the city planners have created. At the intersection243 of Weiser and Sixth, Rabbit has to turn right. In the old days you could drive straight to the bridge. The wild kids in high school liked to drive down the trolley tracks, between the islands where passengers would board.
As his silence lengthens244, Janice says placatingly245, "Weren't those children dear? Harry, you don't want them to live in one of those sad one?parent households."
收听单词发音 |
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crevices
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| n.（尤指岩石的）裂缝，缺口( crevice的名词复数 ) | |
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snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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aperture
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| n.孔，隙，窄的缺口 | |
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croaks
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| v.呱呱地叫( croak的第三人称单数 )；用粗的声音说 | |
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suffocatingly
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| 令人窒息地 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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irritably
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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ass
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fumbling
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illicit
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blight
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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trolley
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| n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车 | |
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cane
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porcelain
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cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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aroma
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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limestone
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fingerprint
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mazes
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| 迷宫( maze的名词复数 )； 纷繁复杂的规则； 复杂难懂的细节； 迷宫图 | |
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swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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stumped
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的过去式和过去分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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skidding
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| n.曳出，集材v.（通常指车辆） 侧滑( skid的现在分词 )；打滑；滑行；（住在）贫民区 | |
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rumpled
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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cocaine
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| n.可卡因，古柯碱（用作局部麻醉剂） | |
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salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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opts
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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con
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| n.反对的观点，反对者，反对票，肺病；vt.精读，学习，默记；adv.反对地，从反面；adj.欺诈的 | |
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slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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maples
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| 槭树，枫树( maple的名词复数 )； 槭木 | |
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tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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translucent
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groomed
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| v.照料或梳洗（马等）( groom的过去式和过去分词 )；使做好准备；训练；（给动物）擦洗 | |
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yews
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| n.紫杉( yew的名词复数 ) | |
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39
exhaling
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的现在分词 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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40
brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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41
blanched
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| v.使变白( blanch的过去式 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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42
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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43
pastry
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| n.油酥面团，酥皮糕点 | |
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44
kits
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| 衣物和装备( kit的名词复数 )； 成套用品； 配套元件 | |
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45
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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46
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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47
morale
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| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
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48
aquarium
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| n.水族馆，养鱼池，玻璃缸 | |
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49
curbs
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| v.限制，克制，抑制( curb的第三人称单数 ) | |
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50
cindery
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| adj.灰烬的，煤渣的 | |
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51
aggravation
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| n.烦恼，恼火 | |
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52
bums
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| n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生 | |
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53
bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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54
discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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55
tingles
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| n.刺痛感( tingle的名词复数 )v.有刺痛感( tingle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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56
remodelled
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| v.改变…的结构[形状]( remodel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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57
advisers
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| 顾问，劝告者( adviser的名词复数 )； （指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授 | |
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58
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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59
dime
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| n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角 | |
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60
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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61
civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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62
looms
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| n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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63
ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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64
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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65
obtuse
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| adj.钝的；愚钝的 | |
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66
locust
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| n.蝗虫；洋槐，刺槐 | |
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67
inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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68
outlast
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| v.较…耐久 | |
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69
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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70
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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71
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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72
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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73
flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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74
forestall
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| vt.抢在…之前采取行动；预先阻止 | |
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75
rust
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| n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退 | |
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76
barrage
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| n.火力网，弹幕 | |
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77
turreted
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| a.(像炮塔般)旋转式的 | |
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78
shingles
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| n.带状疱疹；（布满海边的）小圆石( shingle的名词复数 )；屋顶板；木瓦（板）；墙面板 | |
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79
borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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80
nadir
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| n.最低点，无底 | |
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81
treacherous
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|
| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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82
ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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83
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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84
beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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85
pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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86
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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87
tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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88
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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89
scouring
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| 擦[洗]净，冲刷，洗涤 | |
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90
murky
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|
| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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91
slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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92
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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93
scoured
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| 走遍（某地）搜寻（人或物）( scour的过去式和过去分词 )； （用力）刷； 擦净； 擦亮 | |
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94
guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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95
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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96
giggles
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| n.咯咯的笑( giggle的名词复数 )；傻笑；玩笑；the giggles 止不住的格格笑v.咯咯地笑( giggle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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97
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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98
addicts
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| 有…瘾的人( addict的名词复数 )； 入迷的人 | |
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99
addict
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| v.使沉溺；使上瘾；n.沉溺于不良嗜好的人 | |
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100
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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101
freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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103
invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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104
docilely
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| adv.容易教地，易驾驶地，驯服地 | |
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105
aspirin
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| n.阿司匹林 | |
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106
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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107
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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108
outgrown
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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109
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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110
grimaces
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| n.（表蔑视、厌恶等）面部扭曲，鬼脸( grimace的名词复数 )v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的第三人称单数 ) | |
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111
tightens
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| 收紧( tighten的第三人称单数 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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112
whittles
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| v.切，削（木头），使逐渐变小( whittle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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113
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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114
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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115
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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116
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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117
joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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118
tacked
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| 用平头钉钉( tack的过去式和过去分词 )； 附加，增补； 帆船抢风行驶，用粗线脚缝 | |
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119
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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120
shortcut
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| n.近路，捷径 | |
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121
ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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122
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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123
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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124
bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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125
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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126
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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127
dilated
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| adj.加宽的，扩大的v.（使某物）扩大，膨胀，张大( dilate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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128
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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129
blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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130
earring
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| n.耳环，耳饰 | |
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131
grunts
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的第三人称单数 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说； 石鲈 | |
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132
faceted
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| adj. 有小面的，分成块面的 | |
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133
dummy
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| n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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134
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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135
titillated
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| v.使觉得痒( titillate的过去式和过去分词 )；逗引；激发；使高兴 | |
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136
triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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137
fabrics
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| 织物( fabric的名词复数 )； 布； 构造； （建筑物的）结构（如墙、地面、屋顶）：质地 | |
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138
varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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139
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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140
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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141
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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142
tinted
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| adj. 带色彩的 动词tint的过去式和过去分词 | |
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143
embalmed
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| adj.用防腐药物保存（尸体）的v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的过去式和过去分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
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144
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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145
ozone
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| n.臭氧，新鲜空气 | |
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146
buddy
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| n.（美口）密友，伙伴 | |
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147
flirtatious
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| adj.爱调情的，调情的，卖俏的 | |
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148
ration
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| n.定量(pl.)给养，口粮；vt.定量供应 | |
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149
paraphernalia
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| n.装备；随身用品 | |
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150
jittery
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| adj. 神经过敏的, 战战兢兢的 | |
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151
numbly
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| adv.失去知觉，麻木 | |
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152
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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153
mistily
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| adv.有雾地，朦胧地，不清楚地 | |
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154
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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155
peeks
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| n.偷看，窥视( peek的名词复数 )v.很快地看( peek的第三人称单数 )；偷看；窥视；微露出 | |
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156
constriction
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| 压缩； 紧压的感觉； 束紧； 压缩物 | |
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157
malevolent
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| adj.有恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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158
singeing
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| v.浅表烧焦( singe的现在分词 )；（毛发）燎，烧焦尖端[边儿]；烧毛 | |
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159
debonairly
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| adj.（通常指男人）愉快而自信的 | |
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160
incarcerated
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| 钳闭的 | |
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161
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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162
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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163
whines
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| n.悲嗥声( whine的名词复数 )；哀鸣者v.哀号( whine的第三人称单数 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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164
frailty
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| n.脆弱；意志薄弱 | |
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165
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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166
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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167
compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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168
sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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169
mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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170
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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171
perch
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| n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于 | |
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172
makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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173
buddies
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| n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人 | |
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174
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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175
nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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176
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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177
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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178
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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179
clobbered
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| v.狠揍， （不停）猛打( clobber的过去式和过去分词 )；彻底击败 | |
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180
conning
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| v.诈骗，哄骗( con的现在分词 )；指挥操舵( conn的现在分词 ) | |
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181
shrilly
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| 尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的 | |
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182
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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183
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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184
placating
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| v.安抚，抚慰，使平静( placate的现在分词 ) | |
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185
wheedles
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| v.骗取（某物），哄骗（某人干某事）( wheedle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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186
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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187
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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188
doze
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| v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐 | |
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189
tundra
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| n.苔原，冻土地带 | |
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190
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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191
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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192
slant
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| v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向 | |
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193
aviator
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| n.飞行家，飞行员 | |
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194
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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195
abjectly
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| 凄惨地； 绝望地； 糟透地； 悲惨地 | |
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196
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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197
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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198
reassurances
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| n.消除恐惧或疑虑( reassurance的名词复数 )；恢复信心；使人消除恐惧或疑虑的事物；使人恢复信心的事物 | |
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199
sneaks
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| abbr.sneakers (tennis shoes) 胶底运动鞋（网球鞋）v.潜行( sneak的第三人称单数 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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200
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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201
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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202
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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203
silhouettes
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| 轮廓( silhouette的名词复数 )； （人的）体形； （事物的）形状； 剪影 | |
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204
furry
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| adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的 | |
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205
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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206
thighed
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| v.（马）嘶( neigh的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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207
bruise
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| n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤 | |
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208
leech
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| n.水蛭，吸血鬼，榨取他人利益的人；vt.以水蛭吸血；vi.依附于别人 | |
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209
disarrayed
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| vt.使混乱（disarray的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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210
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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211
inhales
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| v.吸入( inhale的第三人称单数 ) | |
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212
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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213
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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214
crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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215
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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216
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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217
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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218
muddled
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| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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219
scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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220
siblings
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| n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 ) | |
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221
pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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222
creases
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| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的第三人称单数 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹 | |
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223
vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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224
shudders
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| n.颤动，打颤，战栗( shudder的名词复数 )v.战栗( shudder的第三人称单数 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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225
sodium
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| n.（化）钠 | |
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226
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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227
rims
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| n.（圆形物体的）边( rim的名词复数 )；缘；轮辋；轮圈 | |
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228
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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229
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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230
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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231
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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232
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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233
versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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234
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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235
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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236
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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237
gangsters
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| 匪徒，歹徒( gangster的名词复数 ) | |
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238
cylindrical
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| adj.圆筒形的 | |
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239
nutter
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| n.疯子 | |
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240
cleansing
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| n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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241
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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242
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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243
intersection
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| n.交集，十字路口，交叉点；[计算机] 交集 | |
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244
lengthens
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的第三人称单数 ) | |
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245
placatingly
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