Death in a Bathtub

Rabbit Angstrom is a man awash in a sea of meaningless life. I have covered already his struggles with race and an evolving world in Rabbit Redux.  But, there is one instance where rabbit finds meaning, loss and a necessity. One thread that Updike spins throughout the tetralogy is the death of Rabbit’s infant daughter, Rebecca.

She dies shortly after her birth in Rabbit Run. She has no speech and no character development. This child is a sticking point of feud for Rabbit and Janice because they already have one child that they are ill prepared to care for in Nelson and they cannot manage as a family with two children. Rebecca is unwanted from the start; poor thing never had a chance. Janice and Rabbit have a row, Rabbit leaves and Janice settles into the bath with Rebecca. Peace and calm are found in the soothing mist and warmth of the tub for Janice. However, this proves too calming as Janice drops the baby as she falls asleep and wakes up in a gray tub with a drowned infant. Janice is paralyzed, though not a nurturing mother to wither of her children, she is floored by her action (or inaction, really the proof of negligence or knowledge is left to the reader; as a positive person I like to think the she fell asleep under pressure and did not intend to drown the child) and is in shock at the outcome. Rabbit thinks for years after of the scene in his home and his final act of pulling out the drain plug to allow the murderous liquid to run down the drain and into the sewer. His act of first rolling up his sleeve and considering the water that killed his progeny is horrifying to me. Looking a killer in the face is difficult, but when the killer is a liquid enclosed in a benign basin like the bathtub must be the hardest of all. The water did no more than it was supposed to; it warmed the bodies of mother and daughter, cleansed their skin and gave them calming comfort. It would be different if a human had killed the babe or if a raging inferno had claimed her soul. But water. In a bathtub. Horrifying that it occurred that way. Harry feels more than guilt and anger. He blames Janice and yells at her, but really he blames himself for more. He goes so far as to blame himself for impregnating in his words “that mutt of a Springer with her thin bangs and tan skin,” he runs away at her funeral giving the first novel its name.

Rabbit Redux is full of guilt and shame. Janice sleeps around and moves out to forget the horrors. She cannot forgive herself or Harry for the loss of a child. Nelson feels neglected with a different form of survivor’s guilt than normal because though he is the child that survived, he feels anger than he is forgotten by his parents. In their loss they don’t care for their only remaining child as they should. Harry allows him too much exposure to drugs, sex and radical ideas. Janice for her part completely cuts him out except to take him shopping. Nelson is not given the upbringing he deserves and his parents pay in the end with his cocaine addiction and how he loses the family business in the end. Instead of shame and loss, the parents should have remembered Rebecca and thanked God that they have a child remain.

Rabbit is Rich finds Angstrom expansive in both waist size and demeanor. Harry has hopped into some luck as a successful Toyota dealer. He sells cars without passion though. He also has sex without passion all around town and plays dispassionate golf. He is middle-aged and killing himself with 1970’s hydrocarbons and foodstuffs. However, though he sucks down massive amounts of TV dinners and leaded gasoline smog, he cannot forget the daughter that he lost. Rain makes him think of Rebecca as does Janice’s midafternoon drunk that comes around six days a week.  Wasting her liver away with Campari, Janice cannot forget the crime she committed against her baby and she does not forgive Harry for she thinks that their fights and her stress caused it. Harry cannot leave the memory behind; it is though a ghost child follows him everywhere. He gets so nervous that he leaves in the middle of the night and drives through Pennsylvania to Virginia in search of peace. His thoughts are heavy. And though he drives many miles, slams doors, eats at diners and sleeps in cheap motels he knows that eventually he must return. He is shackled to his town, his cars and his woman as well as the horrifying scene he found in his bathroom so long ago. It is as though he drives with a bathtub chained to the back of his car; every mile and every exit, every turn and every route he takes but he cannot shake the truth. That bathtub, ominous and brooding, full of life and death as well as the dead body of an infant girl, Rabbit can shake none of this. For richer or poorer, better or worse, sick and in health, Rabbit remembers the tub and reaching into the lukewarm killer to release it into the world.