Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  I removed the thermometer from my mouth. “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” and she fled to the hallway.

  “Cynthia?”

  “Yes?” She turned just her head.

  “Cynthia … Don’t you want to hear if I have a temperature or not?” It was not the child’s fault, of course, that she had had her juices set for her father just when I happened to come along. I had certainly been willing till now to let her take whatever attitude she chose toward me. But softened by my condition, feeling as kind as I felt weak, and suddenly lonely too, I wanted Cynthia’s suspiciousness to disappear. I wanted her to fit into the orderly world of my illness.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s almost a hundred and two. It’s not good, but it’s better.”

  Masked as she was, I couldn’t make out her expression. She put in an obedient thirty seconds, then cleared her throat and told me, “I once had a hundred five.”

  “Yes?”

  “Markie once had a hundred three.”

  “Cynthia, let’s be friends, all right?”

  “I’m friends,” she said, and, shrugging her shoulders, went off to bed.

  I was still sipping bouillon when Sissy came home. She went past my door, and then came back and stuck her head in.

  “Wha—?” she said.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I thought you said something.” She leaned against the door, a trench coat covering her white hospital uniform. “I’m sorry, you know,” she said. “I wish you’d tell her I’m sorry.”

  “What?” I said. The only opinions I had of the girl were those I had inherited from Martha.

  “That I’m sorry.”

  “Sissy, I don’t know what you’re sorry about. I really don’t.” Sissy’s appearance, my confrontation with Cynthia, and the effort of drinking the bouillon combined all at once to make me intensely fatigued. But Sissy seemed to have no idea that the reason I had been in bed all day was because I wasn’t feeling well. I suppose working in a hospital produces a certain amount of insensitivity to suffering.

  “Look, I didn’t mean anything,” said Sissy, settling in, “It’s her place.”

  “Sis, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m supposed to move,” Sissy announced, looking hurt that I hadn’t known right off. I managed to recall now what Martha had told me way back in the morning.

  “Well,” I said vaguely, “I’m sorry.”

  “Some stupid thing I said I suppose. Like I don’t even remember and still I’ve got to move.”

  “It must have been pretty awful.”

  “It was an argument. I don’t see what I have to move about!”

  “Sissy, you better not stay too long. Apparently I’ve got a communicable disease. I’m really not up to all these moral issues.”

  “I mean she doesn’t have to jump down my throat!” And she left the room, seeing that I was no help.

  And finally Martha, in her blue Hawaiian House uniform, sitting on the edge of my bed.

  “Better?”

  “I was … I don’t know how I am now.” I had been awakened by her presence in the room.

  “You feel warm again.”

  “You better watch out—you’ll catch it.”

  “I’m a mother. I’m immune by law.”

  “Yesterday,” I said, after a moment, “was my birthday.”

  “Really?”

  I had just thought of it. “I’ve just remembered,” I said, “that it was.”

  “Happy birthday. Are you pulling my leg?”

  “No.”

  She lay down beside me, on top of the covers. “Only for a minute,” she said. “I’m sleeping with the Christmas tree. We bought a Christmas tree, Markie and I. It’s a birthday tree for you, how’s that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been in a fog for about a week.”

  “How old does it make you?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Splendid.”

  “Your daughter brought me bouillon. We had a little talk.”

  “She’ll calm down,” Martha said. “She’ll get used to you.”

  “Oh, she was fine.”

  “Maybe you ought to go back to sleep.”

  “Do you want to sleep with me?”

  She smiled. “I’m sore, and you’ll die, and we’ll both have to be buried by Dr. Slimmer. But that was nice, Gabe, so … Gabe, was I selfish and aggressive and thoughtless?”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “It’s a pleasure, you know, your being sick.”

  “This is how people decide to become invalids. Everybody just appears in doorways with soup and kisses, and the rest of the time you daydream and sleep. Except very early in the mornings—what’s your maid doing here at dawn? She scared me nearly to death.”

  “She says she likes to travel at five because that’s the only time the streets aren’t dangerous. Maybe she’s right. She’s actually not much more misguided than anybody else I know. Gabe? Gabe, I reached some conclusions today.”

  “Yes?”

  “No conclusions really, just a few simple truths. Just your staying—it’s so nice and different. It changes us. Going to sleep with a man and not waking up with him is really pretty frightening. It stinks. I’m not a kid any more.”

  “I don’t know how much more of that four A.M. business I could have taken anyway. I think this fever may be some psychosomatic form of surrender. When I get better, we’ll have to work out some new system. There’s no law that people have to make love at night—”

  “There isn’t, except it might not have been too genteel starting right off with afternoons. Honey, I’ve got a little boy running around all day.”

  “Then,” I said wearily, “we’ll have to work out something. I don’t know.”

  “Go to sleep now,” she said. “Don’t worry about strategy. Take a pill.”

  I leaned toward Martha, for I wanted just to touch her.

  “No, no, go to sleep … Gabe—listen, last night I said the hell with it. I said I had rights. I said this to myself. You make me feel I have rights. I do care for you. I won’t be like that again.”

  “It wasn’t bad, Martha.” Then I said, “It was only strange.”

  “I scared myself.”

  “Oh, not so much,” I said, smiling. “Not so much.”

  “A certain amount, yes.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “I’ve got to watch myself. I’m a mother of two.”

  “Four. There’s Sissy and there’s me.”

  “Sissy’s going.”

  “She wants to stay. She came in and told me.”

  “Did she take her clothes off, the little nudist?”

  “What happened?”

  “I told you. I came to see some simple truths.”

  “She said she’d said something.”

  “No, she just made some smart remark to the effect that if you could stay over why couldn’t Blair stay over, too. I just don’t think she should hang around any more. It isn’t even her, finally. It’s a roomer. This is my home, you know? Did your family have roomers?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, mine didn’t either. On top of everything else, it leaves me feeling déclassée.”

  “Martha, I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “You’ll leave when you’re well.”

  “I owe you for the doctor.”

  “Twelve bucks, that son of a bitch.” She leaned over and kissed me. “Happy birthday. Go to sleep.”

  I was moved by her, almost to tears. “Martha, you’re a generous, competent, warm-blooded, splendid girl.”

  “Now if I wasn’t déclassée I’d be perfect.”

  “I hope you realize that this sickness is a tribute to you.”

  “Oh yes,” she said, getting up and smoothing my blankets, “to me and our mutual loneliness—”

  “That looks to be over.”

  �
��We’ll see how wonderful everything is when your temperature goes down.”

  “It’s never going down. I’m going to be fed bouillon by your daughter in her nightdress forever.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Come here, Martha dear, just one minute. Come on, dearie.”

  “You’re going to die, you know. You’re going to keep this up and you’re going to die.”

  However, I know I’m not going to die until I’m very old, and Martha trusted in my knowledge.

  In the night the phone rang. I turned on the lamp beside the bed and looked out the window. It was four-thirty. There was not a sound in the apartment. Had I been dreaming? I dropped back into sleep, warm, protected, content.

  But in the morning I knew who it was that I had been expecting to telephone. All the day before he had probably been ringing my apartment to wish me a happy birthday.

  After Martha had brought me my breakfast, she plugged the phone in the bedroom, at my request. Then she started back into the kitchen, where Sissy, she told me, was crying for forgiveness. I could see she was on the verge of changing her mind about her boarder, and since I was myself preoccupied, we only touched hands, and then went about catching up on private business.

  I asked the operator to give me the charges when the call was finished, and then waited to hear my father’s voice. We had not spoken with one another since Thanksgiving, and suddenly I had a premonition that he was sick, that in fact he was going to die.

  Millie, our maid, answered.

  “He’s gone away,” she told me.

  “Where to, Millie? I didn’t know.”

  “Grossinger’s,” she said, disapprovingly.

  “He’s all right, isn’t he? He’s not sick, is he?”

  “Oh, he’s all right.”

  “What’s the matter, Millie?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did Dr. Gruber go up with him?”

  “Dr. Gruber, no.”

  “Did she go with him, Millie?”

  “I don’t know who went with him.”

  “Okay, Millie. When will he be back? Christmas?”

  “He told me not to expect them till after New Year’s.”

  “I see … Okay, Millie. Look, you don’t have to stay around the apartment, you know. Get out, enjoy yourself. Go down to Macy’s, go look at all the windows. Fifth Avenue will be full of lights.”

  “Hasn’t he sent you a card either?” she asked. “He used to go away, he used to send a picture post card. I suppose he has more important things on his mind.”

  “I suppose so.”

  After a moment she said, “It’s a damn shame.”

  “All right, Millie, you just get out and enjoy yourself.”

  “Happy birthday,” she said to me.

  While I waited for the operator to ring back with the charges, the front door opened and I heard Sissy’s voice. “You can go to hell, Martha! You have no right!”

  “I have every right and you watch your language.”

  “You’re sexually immature—”

  “Close the door, Sissy, you’re letting in a draft. Close it!”

  “Who cares!” Sissy cried, and the door slammed after her.

  The next thing, Cynthia was at the front door, sobbing.

  “Come on, Cynthia, now stop it. You don’t want to go to school with red eyes, do you?”

  “I don’t care. Where’s Sissy going?”

  “She’s only moving, sweetheart. She’s going to go to a new apartment.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want her to move. I don’t want her to move away.”

  “She has to … Now, come on—”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s too crowded here.”

  “Well then he’s going too, isn’t he?”

  “Cynthia, when you’re a grown woman and there’s another grown woman around, and she’s single—Cynthia, it’s just the way it is. I’m a grown woman, my baby.”

  “But I’m a child, though,” Cynthia said, weeping.

  “Ohhhh, come on,” said Martha, gently, “you hardly know Sissy. You have other friends. You have Stephanie, you have Barbie, you have Markie, you have me—”

  “I don’t want her moving away.”

  “Cyn, you have to get ready now. You have to go to school. Come on, blow your nose.”

  The child blew. “Will I ever see Blair again? Now where’s he going?”

  “Of course you’ll see Blair again. You’ll see him in Hildreth’s.”

  “He’ll go away, I know it!” For the second time that morning, the door slammed in Martha’s face.

  Then it opened again. “Cynthia, be careful, there’s ice—”

  “I know it,” the child called back.

  It was a while before Martha came in to see me. I took a pill and drank the last of my coffee, and decided it was time to dress and drive myself home and be sick there. But when I started to get out of bed, my limbs just couldn’t do the job.

  Martha appeared, wearing her coat, and I pretended not to notice the shape her eyes were in.

  “I have to go shopping,” she said. “Do you want anything?”

  “You know, I feel much better. I think perhaps at noon I’ll drive home.”

  “Slimmer said stay in bed. You can’t go out in this weather; it’s snowing. It’s awful.”

  “I can’t stay here forever.”

  “Who’s talking about forever? You just can’t go out now.”

  “Sissy doesn’t have to move, Martha, because I’m staying here.”

  “Sissy has to move because I’m staying here. Please, don’t mind that scene. You shouldn’t be feeling guilty about anything,” she said, kissing my forehead. “I mean even the things you should be, you shouldn’t be. It’s a privilege of the shut-in.”

  “But it has to do with me. I know it does.”

  “You only precipitated what had to be. I should be thankful to you.”

  “What about the rent?”

  “What about it?”

  “You told me Sissy helped with it.”

  She made a gesture with her hands that I can only characterize as hopeless. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Martha, I feel responsible,” I said. “I know I’m making Cynthia unhappy too.”

  “You’re not making me unhappy! You’re not making little Markie unhappy. He’s out in the hall right now, just dying to take your temperature. Majority rules around here. Cynthia is going to have to start to learn the facts of life. Don’t worry about her—she’s going through a whining stage, that’s all. It’s only a battle of wills, and I can’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t be the winner. I’m twenty years older than she is, I earn the money around here, and I do the major part of the worrying, and she’ll be fine, just fine.”

  “I don’t want you to feel obliged to me. I’m perfectly up to being sick alone.”

  “You’re a liar too. Gabe, don’t we have some rights? It’s not killing anybody, is it, you being here? Dear heart, I’ve been a terribly, crushingly good girl. I’ve been a pain in the ass to half a dozen healthy, willing, attractive men. I’ve been so careful it’s coming out of my ears. And I was right to be, I’m not sorry a bit. But bringing Sissy in was a mistake—making love to you wasn’t.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I feel my life is right side up again.” She let out a sigh then, which, in its way, thrilled me. “I’m really quite taken with you, old man.”

  “I’m taken with you, Martha. But I don’t want you to start chucking people out, and so forth and so on, and becoming miserable …”

  “I’m not miserable.”

  “I’ll admit I’m not unhappy myself.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said, smiling.

  “And now would you do me a favor, since I’ve set your life so straight? Would you stop by my apartment and see if there’s any mail?”

  “Sure.”

  “Take my
car. The key is in my trousers. Why don’t you use the car? Otherwise the battery will go dead.”

  It had been several years in the doing, but I had managed at last to pawn off that machine on someone.

  After Martha left, Markie came in, carrying my thermometer as though it were a wand. I thanked him and he went into the living room where he said he was making Christmas cards.

  I called Spigliano’s office and got the departmental secretary.

  “They were wondering where you were,” she said accusingly.

  “I’m sick, Mrs. Bamberger. I probably won’t be in until the end of the week. Is Mr. Spigliano in?”

  “No. I’ll leave him the message.”

  “Would you ask somebody to pick up the papers today from my nine-thirty class?”

  “Mr. Herz is in the office—shall I ask him?” Without waiting for an answer, she left the phone.

  Then she was back. “Mr. Herz says he’ll pick them up for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “He says do you want him to drop them off at your apartment.”

  “He can just leave them in my office.”

  When I hung up—from a conversation that had struck me at first as only irritating—I felt strangely dependent upon Martha Reganhart. The strong attachment I had for her, I’d had almost from the very start; what was unsettling was that my needs seemed really to have begun to outdistance my feelings. And it occurred to me—a thought equally as unsettling—that she might herself be in a similar predicament. I wondered if our intimacy would have been so immediate, had it not been for the other circumstances of our lives. It seemed to me that we should try at least to slow things up a bit. I found myself hoping that when she returned she would be holding in her hand a picture post card of Grossinger’s indoor swimming pool, with the words Happy Birthday written across the back. But she returned with an armful of bundles for herself and only a bill from the phone company for me, and I had a morbid vision of my mother’s bones in the earth. Martha dumped all her gayly wrapped packages on the floor, and then because Markie was calling her, she flew out of the room to attend to his needs. And there in the bed, with no post card to read, I knew that both my father and I had been cut loose from the past.