“That’s not a dream,” her son says. “That’s how it is.”

And she sits up straighter on the pillows, stiff, scolding. Her mouth gets that unforgiving downward sag he used to fear more than anything—more than vampires, more than polio, more than thunder or God or being late for school. “I’m ashamed of you,” she says. “I never thought I’d hear a son of mine so bitter.”

“It was a joke, Mom.”

“Who has so much to be grateful for,” she goes on implacably.

“For what? For exactly what?”

“For Janice’s leaving you, for one thing. She was always. A damp washrag.”

“And what about Nelson, huh? What happens to him now?” This is her falsity, that she forgets what time creates, she still sees the world with its original four corners, her and Pop and him and Mim sitting at the kitchen table. Her tyrant love would freeze the world.

Mom says, “Nelson isn’t my child, you’re my child.”

“Well, he exists anyway, and I have to worry about him. You just can’t dismiss Janice like that.”

“She’s dismissed you.”

“Not really. She calls me up at work all the time. Stavros wants her to come back.”

“Don’t you let her. She’ll. Smother you, Harry.”

“What choices do I have?”

“Run. Leave Brewer. I never knew why you came back. There’s nothing here any more. Everybody knows it. Ever since the hosiery mills went south. Be like Mim.”

“I don’t have what Mim has to sell. Anyway she’s breaking Pop’s heart, whoring around.”

“He wants it that way, your father has always been looking. For excuses to put on a long face. Well, he has me now, and I’m excuse enough. Don’t say no to life, Hassy. Let the dead bury the dead. Bitterness never helps. I’d rather have a postcard from you happy than. See you sitting there like a lump.”

Always these impossible demands and expectations from her. These harsh dreams. “Hassy, do you ever pray?”

“Mostly on buses.”

“Pray for rebirth. Pray for your own life.”

His cheeks flame; he bows his head. He feels she is asking him to kill Janice, to kill Nelson. Freedom means murder. Rebirth means death. A lump, he silently resists, and she looks aside with the corner of her mouth worse bent. She is still trying to call him forth from her womb, can’t she see he is an old man? An old lump whose only use is to stay in place to keep the lumps leaning on him from tumbling.

Pop comes upstairs and tunes in the Phillies game on television. “They’re a much sounder team without that Allen,” he says. “He was a bad egg, Harry, I say that without prejudice; bad eggs come in all colors.”

After a few innings, Rabbit leaves.

“Can’t you stay for at least the game, Harry? I believe there’s a beer still in the refrigerator, I was going to go down to the kitchen anyway to make Mother some tea.”

“Let him go, Earl.”