American Pastoral

by Philip Roth

  * * *

  maddening. After five years the change is only in the direction of more of the

  same sound. The deterioration of Merry comes as Jainism; the deterioration of

  Rita Cohen comes as more. He knows nothing about her except that she needs more

  than ever to be in charge—to be more and more and more unexpected. He knows he

  is dealing with an unbending destroyer, with something big in someone very

  small. Five years have passed. Rita is back. Something is up. Something

  unimaginable is about to happen again.

  He would never get across the line that was tonight. Ever since leaving Merry in

  that cell, behind that veil, he has known that he’s no longer a man who can

  endlessly forestall being crushed.

  I am done with craving and selfhood. Thanks to you.

  Someone opened the study door. “Are you all right?” It was Sheila Salzman.

  “What do you want?”

  She pulled the door shut behind her and came into the room. “You looked ill at

  dinner. Now you look even worse.”

  Over Dawn’s desk was a framed photograph of Count. All the blue ribbons Count

  won were pinned to the wall on either side of the picture. It was the same

  picture of Count that used to appear in Dawn’s annual ad in the Simmental

  breeder’s magazine. Merry had been the one to choose the slogan for the ad from

  the three Dawn had proposed to them in the kitchen after dinner one night, count

  CAN DO WONDERFUL THINGS FOR YOUR HERD. IF EVER THERE WAS A BULL TO USE, It’s

  COUNT. A BULL UPON WHICH A HERD

  can be built. Merry at first argued for a suggestion of her own— you can count

  on count—but after Dawn and the Swede each made the case against it, Merry chose

  a bull upon which a herd can be built, and that became the slogan for Arcady

  Breeders for as long as Count was Dawn’s stylish superstar.

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  On the desk there used to be a snapshot of Merry, age thirteen, standing at the

  head of their long-bodied prize bull, the Golden Certified Meat Sire, holding

  him by a leather lead shank clipped into his nose ring. As a 4-H kid she’d been

  taught how to lead and walk and wash and handle a bull, first a yearling, but

  then the big boys, and Dawn had taught her how to show Count—to hold her hand up

  on the strap so that his head was up and to keep a bit of tension on the lead

  and move it a little with her hand, first so as to show Count off to advantage

  but also to be in communication with him so that he’d listen a little more than

  he might if her hand was slack and down at her side. Even though Count wasn’t

  difficult or arrogant, Dawn taught Merry never to trust him. He could sometimes

  have a strong attitude, even with Merry and Dawn, the two people he was most

  used to in the world. In just that photograph— a picture he’d loved in the same

  way he’d loved the picture that had appeared on page one of the Denville-

  Randolph Courier of Dawn in her blazer at the fireplace mantel—he could see all

  that Dawn had patiently taught Merry and all that Merry had eagerly learned from

  her. But it was gone, as was the sentimental memento of Dawn’s childhood, a

  photograph of the charming wooden bridge down at Spring Lake that led across the

  lake to St. Catherine’s, a picture taken in the spring sunshine, with the

  azaleas in bloom at either end of the bridge and, resplendent in the background,

  the weathered copper dome of the grand church itself, where, as a kid, she had

  liked to imagine herself a bride in a white bridal gown. All there was on Dawn’s

  desk now was Orcutt’s cardboard model.

  “Is this the new house?” Sheila asked him.

  * * *

  “You bitch.”

  She did not move; she looked directly back at him but did not speak or move. He

  could take Count’s picture off the wall and bludgeon her over the head with it

  and she would still be unruffled, still somehow deprive him of a heartfelt

  response. Five years earlier, for four months, they had been lovers. Why tell

  him the truth now if she was able to withhold it from him even then?

  373

  “Leave me alone,” he said.

  But when she turned to do as he gruffly requested, he grabbed her arm and swung

  her flat against the closed door. “You took her in.” The force of the rage was

  in no way concealed by the whisper that rasped up from his throat. Her skull was

  locked between his hands. Her head had been held in his powerful grip before but

  never, never like this. “You took her in!”

  “Yes.”

  “You never told me!”

  She did not answer.

  “I could kill you!” he said, and, immediately upon saying it, let her go.

  “You’ve seen her,” Sheila said. Her hands neatly folded before her. That

  nonsensical calm, only moments after he had threatened to kill her. All that

  ridiculous self-control. Always that ridiculous, careful, self-controlled

  thinking.

  “You know everything,” he snarled.

  “I know what you’ve been through. What can be done for her?”

  “By you? Why did you let her go? She went to your house. She’d blown up a

  building. You knew all about it—why didn’t you call me, get in touch with me?”

  “I didn’t know about it. I found out later that night. But when she came to me

  she was just beside herself. She was upset and I didn’t know why. I thought

  something had happened at home.”

  “But you knew within the next few hours. How long was she with you? Two days,

  three days?”

  “Three. She left on the third day.”

  “So you knew what happened.”

  “I found out later. I couldn’t believe it, but—”

  “It was on television.”

  “But she was in my house by then. I had already promised her that I would help

  her. And that there was no problem she could tell me that I couldn’t keep to

  myself. She asked me to trust her. That was before I watched the news. How could

  I betray her then? I’d been her therapist, she’d been my client. I’d always

  wanted to do

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  * * *

  what was in her best interest. What was the alternative? For her to get

  arrested?”

  “Call me. That was the alternative. Call her father. If you had gotten to me

  right there and then, and said, ‘She’s safe, don’t worry about her,’ and then

  not let her out of your sight—”

  “She was a big girl. How can you not let her out of your sight?”

  “You lock her in the house and keep her there.”

  “She’s not an animal. She’s not like a cat or a bird that you can keep in a

  cage. She was going to do whatever she was going to do. We had a trust, Seymour,

  and violating her trust at that point… I wanted her to know that there was

  someone in this world she could trust.”

  “At that moment, trust was not what she needed! She needed me!”

  “But I was sure that your house was where they’d be looking. What good was

  calling you? I couldn’t drive her out here. I even started thinking they would

  know she would be at my house. All of a sudden it seemed like it was the most

  obvious place for her to be. I started thinking my phone was bugged. How could I

  call you?”

&nb
sp; “You could have somehow made contact.”

  “When she first came she was agitated, something had gone wrong, she was just

  yelling about the war and her family. I thought something terrible had happened

  at home. Something terrible had happened to her. She wasn’t the same, Seymour.

  Something very wrong had happened to that girl. She was talking as if she hated

  you so. I couldn’t imagine … but sometimes you start to believe the worst

  about people. I think maybe that’s what I was trying to figure out when we were

  together.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Could there really be something wrong? Could there really be something that she

  was subjected to that could lead her to something like that? I was confused too.

  I want you to know that I never really believed it and I didn’t want to believe

  it. But of course I had to wonder. Anyone would have.”

  “And? And? Having had an affair with me—what the hell did you find out, having

  had your little affair with me?”

  375

  “That you’re kind and compassionate. That you do just about everything you can

  to be an intelligent, decent person. Just as I would have imagined before she’d

  blown up that building. Seymour, believe me, please, I just wanted her to be

  safe. So I took her in. And got her showered and clean. And gave her a place to

  sleep. I really had no idea—”

  “She blew up a building, Sheila! Somebody was killed! It was all over the

  goddamn television!”

  “But I didn’t know until I turned on the TV.”

  * * *

  “So at six o’clock at night you knew. She was there for three days. And you do

  not contact me.”

  “What good would it have done to contact you?”

  “I’m her father.”

  “You’re her father and she blew up a building. What good was it going to do

  bringing her back to you?”

  “Don’t you grasp what I’m saying? She’s my daughter!”

  “She’s a very strong girl.”

  “Strong enough to look after herself in the world? No!”

  “Turning her over to you wasn’t going to help any. She wasn’t going to sit and

  eat her peas and mind her business. You don’t go from blowing up a building to—”

  “It was your duty to tell me that she came to your house.”

  “I just thought that would make it easier for them to find her. She’d come so

  far, she’d gotten so much stronger, I thought that she could make it on her own.

  She is a strong girl, Seymour.”

  “She’s a crazy girl.”

  “She’s troubled.”

  “Oh, Christ! The father plays no role with the troubled daughter?”

  “I’m sure he played plenty of a role. That was why I couldn’t… I just thought

  something terrible had happened at home.”

  “Something terrible happened at the general store.”

  “But you should have seen her—she’d gotten so fat.”

  “I should have seen her? Where do you think she’d been? It was your

  responsibility to get in touch with her parents! Not to let the

  · 376 ·

  child run off into nowhere! She never needed me more. She never needed her

  father more. And you’re telling me she never needed him less. You made a

  terrible error. I hope you know it. A terrible, terrible error.”

  “What could you have done for her then? What could anyone have done for her

  then?”

  “I deserved to know. I had a right to know. She’s a minor. She’s my daughter.

  You had an obligation to get to me.”

  “My first obligation was to her. She was my client.”

  “She was no longer your client.”

  “She had been my client. A very special client. She’d come so far. My first

  obligation was to her. How could I violate her confidence? The damage had

  already been done.”

  * * *

  “I don’t believe you are saying any of this.”

  “It’s the law.”

  “What’s the law?”

  “That you don’t betray your client’s confidence.”

  “There’s another law, idiot—a law against committing murder! She was a fugitive

  from justice!”

  “Don’t talk about her like that. Of course she ran. What else could she do? I

  thought that maybe she would turn herself in. But that she would do it in her

  own time. In her own way.”

  “And me? And her mother?”

  “Well, it killed me to see you.”

  “You saw me for four months. It killed you every day?”

  “Each time I thought that maybe it would make a difference if I let you know.

  But I didn’t see what difference it would really make. It wouldn’t change

  anything. You were already so broken.”

  “You are an inhuman bitch.”

  “There was nothing else I could do. She asked me not to tell. She asked me to

  trust her.”

  “I don’t understand how you could be so shortsighted. I don’t understand how you

  could be so taken in by a girl who was so obviously crazy.”

  “I know it’s difficult to face. The whole thing is impossible

  377

  to understand. But to try to pin it on me, to try to act like anything I could

  have done would have made a difference—it wouldn’t have made a difference in her

  life, it wouldn’t have made a difference in your life. She was running. There

  was no bringing her back there. She wasn’t the same girl that she’d been.

  Something had gone wrong. I saw no point in bringing her back. She’d gotten so

  fat.”

  “Stop that! What difference did that make!”

  “I just thought she was so fat and so angry that something very bad must have

  gone on at home.”

  “That it was my fault.”

  “I didn’t think that. We all have homes. That’s where everything always goes

  wrong.”

  “So you took it on yourself to let this sixteen-year-old who had killed somebody

  run off into the night. Alone. Unprotected. Knowing God knows what could happen

  to her.”

  “You’re talking about her as if she were a defenseless girl.”

  “She is a defenseless girl. She was always a defenseless girl.”

  * * *

  “Once she’d blown up the building there’s nothing that could have been done,

  Seymour. I would have betrayed her confidence and what difference would it have

  made?”

  “I would have been with my daughter! I could have protected her from what has

  happened to her! You don’t know what has happened to her. You didn’t see her the

  way I saw her today. She’s completely crazy. I saw her today, Sheila. She’s not

  fat anymore— she’s a stick, a stick wearing a rag. She’s in a room in Newark in

  the most awful situation imaginable. I cannot describe to you how she lives. If

  you had only told me, it would all be different!”

  “We wouldn’t have had an affair—that’s all that would have been different. Of

  course I knew that you might be hurt.”

  “By what?”

  “By my having seen her. But to bring it all up again? I didn’t know where she

  was. I didn’t have any more information on her. That’s the whole thing. She

  wasn’t crazy. She was upset. She was angry. But she wasn’t crazy.”

  · 378 ·
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  “It’s not crazy to blow up the general store? It’s not crazy to make a bomb, to

  plant a bomb in the post office of the general store?”

  “I’m saying that at my house she wasn’t crazy.”

  “She’d already been crazy. You knew she’d been crazy. What if she went on to

  kill somebody else? Isn’t that a bit of a responsibility? She did, you know. She

  did, Sheila. She killed three more people. What do you think of that?”

  “Don’t say things just to torture me.”

  “I’m telling you something! She killed three more people! You could have

  prevented that!”

  “You’re torturing me. You’re trying to torture me.”

  “She killed three more people!” And that was when he pulled Count’s picture off

  the wall and hurled it at her feet. But that did not faze her—that seemed only