by Philip Roth
“We going to have tuna?” Markie was asking.
“You had tuna yesterday,” Martha answered. “Didn’t Annie give you tuna?”
“I think eggs.”
“No, Mark. You had tuna yesterday. How about a grilled cheese?”
“I’m making something. Does he have a temperature?”
She came back into the room, unbuttoning her coat; her face was rosy from the winter air. “Markie wants to know if you have a temperature.”
“Only a degree and a half. How’s the weather?”
“It’s incredible. It’s ghastly. Your car has some kind of respiratory ailment. Bronchitis—”
“Wouldn’t it start?”
“Not willingly.”
“There was no other mail for me?”
“Uh-uh.” She began to pile her packages at the foot of the bed. “Presents,” she whispered. “I have to go down to the Loop this afternoon and finish up.”
“Look, why don’t you wait a few days? I’ll go with you.”
“I thought shopping bored men.”
“I might get something for Cynthia for Christmas.”
“She works in subtle ways, my daughter. Are you going to neglect poor sweet Markie? And me?”
“You and Markie ought to be comforted by having your way all the time.”
“Oh ought we?” She went over to the door. “I better close this. Mark?” she called. “Are you all right?”
“I’m making something,” he called back.
“Mommy’s right here.” She closed the door and came over to sit down on the edge of the bed. “Here,” she said, picking up one of the packages. “A nurse’s kit for Cynthia; she thinks Sissy is a nurse. And this is for Mark—clay. He has simple pleasures. And then these soldiers, and this little chicken.” She opened the lid of one of the unwrapped boxes. “Here, see? You spin this and the chicken comes out. Actually, I think I got it for myself. And then I got this book. For Cynthia.” She handed it to me. “What do you think? I want your honest opinion. She’s very old for her age.”
“What is it?”
“It’s kind of a beginner’s sex book.”
“Oh yes?”
“It’s supposed to explain everything. Well, take a look. It has little colored drawings of people’s insides, and of mother’s nursing little babies … Well, come on, Gabe, open it. Don’t kid around about this, please.”
It did indeed have little colored drawings of insides, and out-sides too. I flipped through, reading passages along the way.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Listen.” I read from page twenty-four a beginner’s description of the sex act.
“Well,” she said, “what do you think?”
“I don’t know. It may make her the most popular kid in school.”
“Does it strike you as too hot?”
I handed her the book. “Look.”
“What are they?”
“Testicles.”
“Hey, look, don’t you think it’s okay? Six different medical groups recommended it, thousands of psychiatrists—why can’t you think it’s okay? A few weeks ago she was walking around here talking about sexual organs. Yesterday in the co-op she began referring to these in a loud voice as my mammaries. Nice? She’s obviously getting information from somewhere.”
“Here. Look.”
She looked. “Oh Gabe, I don’t know. What should I do, store it away for five years? It’s recommended for kids from eight to eleven. Oh the hell with it.” She began wrapping it up again. “Even after she reads it she’ll get it all backwards anyway.”
“Actually, if you want to hear my personal preference—”
“Go ahead. What is it actually?”
“Actually I prefer kids referring to their po-pos rather than their outer labias. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.”
“You wouldn’t be so casual, jerk, if it was your little girl.”
“I wouldn’t be so nervous either.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You shouldn’t worry so much about her.”
“She’s so nutty about men—”
“She hasn’t shown herself to be particularly nutty over me.”
“She’s interested in you, don’t worry about that.”
“Martha, she’ll have a normal sex life, or abnormal, or subnormal, and this book and you—”
“I must be doing something to her. What does she think? Truly. Honestly.”
“She loves you.”
“You’re being evasive, please don’t.”
“Martha, she has a will like iron. You know that. And she’s intelligent and bright and pretty.”
“The combination sounds like death to me.”
“Well, if that’s so, what’s there to be done?”
“You really believe that, or are you being a polite lover?”
“You’re a good mother, Martha.”
“I’m a rotten crab. I lose my temper and I make them worry about money and, oh forget it—I don’t know. You think I’m all right, do you?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll be all right, all right, as soon as that Sissy gets out of here.”
I waited, and then I said, “And me.”
“I don’t want you to get out of here, Gabe, I really don’t.”
“I have to admit it, Martha—I don’t think I want to go.” I tried to say it playfully, but when she asked, “No?” I answered seriously, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Then stay sick, sweetheart. Run around the block and work up your fever. The thought of you lying here in bed, and me out shopping, it’s a real pleasure. I put the key in the door of your car and I felt like a big shot. I think to myself, if the phone rings, he’ll answer it. You know,” she said, “we crawled into bed too quickly, though. You know that, don’t you?”
“You do a lot of thinking while you shop.”
“You know it though?”
“I know it.”
“Okay,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what that establishes … but something. Look, I’m going to make Mark a grilled cheese sandwich. You too?”
“What are you going to do with this book?”
She turned at the door, and shrugged.
“It’s an imperfect world, Martha, but you didn’t make it.”
“But neither did Cynthia,” she said.
After lunch my temperature shot up, and Dr. Slimmer came to give me another shot of penicillin. We pushed him for a diagnosis of my case, but he took another twelve dollars, whispered some words about an X virus, and drove off in his Thunderbird.
“If he’d only say he didn’t know! Just once. Honest to God, I’m going to start packing for England.”
“Why don’t you get another doctor?”
“I can’t. I love that bastard. He makes me feel so right. You better go to sleep.”
“You too,” I said. “You look tired.”
“I’m tired, but I’m happy. I love feeding you, do you know that? I’d like really to fatten you up. You don’t happen to be losing your hair, do you?”
“Sorry.”
“Because that’s what I really go for, you know—nice bald old fat fellows with big sweet paunches and thick greasy beards.”
“It sounds to me,” I said, “as though you want to settle down.”
She gave me some fruit juice and I went to sleep; but just before I slipped off I had a vision of Markie napping in his crayoned bedroom, and Martha sleeping on the sofa beside the Christmas tree, and me in my own warm bed. What peace, under one roof.
Later in the afternoon Cynthia came home from school, drank her milk, and went off with Markie to the playground to build a snowman. I lay in bed, listening to the radio, and choosing from amongst those offered me only the most ancient of programs. I tuned in to the old ladies selling lumber yards, and to the young girls searching, with perfect enunciation, for the love of English lords, or, later in the day, brain surgeons with baritone voices and tweed coats. “Oh
put on a smile, Mary—here comes that young Dr. Baxter in his tweed coat. Hi there, Doctor …” Yes, there harassing the air waves were those same luckless couples who had struggled through my childhood—for then too a radio had glowed beside my convalescent’s bed—and who turned out to be struggling still. And recovering from a minor ailment, I discovered—being waited upon with orange juice and aspirin, starting books and feeling no cultural obligation to finish them, reading in today’s newspaper what the temperature had been the day before in all the major cities of the world, pouring over the woman’s page and racing results with little foothold in either world—it was all as cocoonish and heartwarming on the south side of Chicago as it had been fifteen years before on the west side of New York.
At dusk, I smelled dinner being prepared in the kitchen. Martha stuck her head in to ask if I was all right, and she must have understood precisely the kind of pleasure I was lolling in. I heard the back door open and close and after five minutes had passed, I heard it swing open again. When she came into my room, she dumped a stack of glossy magazines at the foot of the bed.
“Go ahead,” she told me, “stuff yourself. Mrs. Fletcher says she’s through, I can keep them.”
“What is it?”
“Golden Screen, Movieland, Star World, everything.”
“God bless you, Mrs. Fletcher. How did she know?”
“I managed to convey the expression on your face. How is it up there in Pig Heaven?”
“I love it. Come here.”
“I’m making dinner.”
“Come here. Just for a minute.”
Recuperation! Convalescence! Long live minor ailments! Long live Pig Heaven!
When it was nearly dark outside, the children returned from the playground. My dinner was brought to me on a tray, and in the kitchen I could hear the others eating.
“Mother, he’s swallowing without chewing.”
“Chew first, Markie. You’ll get a pain.”
“I have a pain.”
“No he doesn’t, Mother.”
“Eat slowly, Cynthia. Where’s the fire?”
“What fire?”
“Markie, don’t talk. Eat.”
“When’s Santa Claus?”
“On Wednesday, honey.”
“Boy!” Markie exclaimed.
“There is no such person as Santa Claus.”
Markie sent up a howl.
“Cynthia, that’s silly. For Markie there is.”
“That’s right, Markie,” Cynthia said, “for you there is.”
“I know,” the little boy said.
A wind rattled the window panes back of the drawn shades, but it was of no consequence to me. In her coat and kerchief and snow boots, Martha appeared to take my tray away.
“Good night,” she said.
“Wake me when you come in.”
“You better sleep through. If you are awake—”
“Please wake me. And thank you for dinner, Martha. I appreciate you for being so perfect.”
She went off to work. I dozed for a while and read, while in the living room Markie and Cynthia watched television. At about eight, the front door opened.
Cynthia ran out into the hall to greet whoever had arrived. “Hi!” the child cried. “Hi, Blair!”
Mark joined in. “Blair! Blair! Tell a story!”
Sissy spoke. “Cut it out, kids. Please. We’re busy.”
“Are you moving away?” Cynthia asked.
Sissy started down the hall toward her room; I saw her flick by my own door.
“But where?” Cynthia demanded.
“You go back and watch TV, Cyn, please. Go ahead.”
“Hi, Blair,” Cynthia said, forlornly.
“How are you?” he asked. Then the door to Sissy’s room slammed, and Mark and Cynthia’s slippers padded back toward the living room.
Not much could be heard over the noise of the TV, but some fifteen minutes later there were footsteps down the corridor; then Cynthia again, running out into the hall.
“What are you doing with that, Blair?”
“Open the door, will you?”
“Where are you going?” Cynthia asked, but Blair passed down the stairs.
Cynthia walked to Sissy’s room, scraping her heels; she knocked at her door, and then I couldn’t hear anything.
Now Markie ran by my room; he was wearing his pajamas and his hair was slicked back from his bath. He looked in at me with half his face, then took off down the hall. I heard Sissy and Cynthia talking as they moved toward the front door.
“You can keep the phonograph here, Sis, if you want.”
“Watch it, Cynthia, it’s heavy. Please, honey, move—”
“You want to leave your records? I don’t think Mommy would mind if you left your records.”
“Mommy would mind, all right,” said Sissy, and she went down the stairs. She called back from a flight below, “Don’t close the door.”
There were half a dozen more trips up and down the hall. Finally Blair was saying, “Why don’t you burn all this crap?”
“Shhhhh.”
“I got only one closet, Sister,”
“Oh Blair, how can you be so selfish! I want to go with you! Where am I going to go?”
“You got Dave Brubeck and Jerry Mulligan, Sister—there won’t even be room for me.”
“Oh Blair,” she was weeping. “You’re disloyal …”
They went out the door again.
I heard Cynthia call, “Should I leave it open? Sissy, do you want it open? Are you gone?”
“I’ll be right up,” Sissy answered.
When Sissy returned, she was alone.
“Are you going now?” Cynthia asked.
“Uh-huh.” Sissy had stopped crying. “I just want to check the room.”
Cynthia followed her down the hall. “Where are you going? Where are you going to live? Are you going to go home?”
“I’m going to live on Kimbark.”
“Oh goodie, Stephanie lives on Kimbark!” Cynthia replied. “Are you going to live with Blair? Is he your husband?”
“Cynthia, you know he’s not my husband.”
“Are you going to sleep in bed with him?”
“Of course not!” Sissy shot back. “Look, Cynthia—” But that was all she said; she went into her old room.
Soon they were back on the landing.
“Goodbye, Sissy,” Cynthia said.
“Goodbye, Cynthia. Goodbye, Markie. I’ll see you in Hildreth’s.”
As Sissy started down the stairs, Cynthia called, in a last attempt if not to stop what was happening, at least to slow it down, “Sissy, what’s your real name? Do you have a real first name?”
Sissy stopped a moment. “Aline,” she said. “My first name is Aline.”
“Don’t you like it?” Cynthia asked. “Don’t you like people to call you that?”
“Oh, I don’t mind.” Outside Blair leaned on the horn of the car.
“Can I call you that?” Cynthia asked.
“Cynthia, I have to go now.”
“Do you like Cynthia for a name?”
“Sure—listen, I have to—”
“I think it’s horrible.” Cynthia said, and she was crying. “Don’t you want to stay here any more? You sure you don’t want to sleep here tonight?”
“Cyn, I have to go. I don’t think your mother wants me to live here any more.”
“Oh,” cried Cynthia, “rotten Mommy!”
The horn blew again—and Sissy was gone, having decided at the last, it seemed, to let Cynthia’s judgment of her mother stand. For all the girl’s hard luck and all her weakness of character, it still seemed to me a disgusting and unnecessary trick.
Soon Cynthia was bawling in the other room. Markie came to the door. “I think Cynthia’s sick,” he said.
I did not know what good it would do if I were the one to go in and try to comfort her. Nevertheless, I got out of bed and put on an old bathrobe of Martha’s—the pajamas tha
t barely covered me were hers too—and started to the door. Markie, who had been watching me closely, said gravely, “You need a shave.” He led me into the living room, where his sister lay face down on the floor. The Christmas tree, which I had only seen in brief glances as I went to and fro between the toilet and the bed, was so tall that its pointed top bent against the ceiling. Markie went over to the TV set and put one hand on the volume knob, as though to anchor himself to the Western he’d been watching.
I sat down on the sofa. “I’m sorry you’re so upset, Cynthia. Would you like a handkerchief? Can I do anything for you?”
“You did it. You and Mommy.”
“Did what?”
“Made Sissy go!”
Markie sat down on the floor, and stood up, and sat down again. I tried to give him a reassuring smile.
“How did I make Sissy go?” I asked Cynthia.
“You did.”
“How?”
Cynthia wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and caught a glimpse of me from under her lashes.
“You just did.”
“You’ll have to tell me how I did.”
“You told Mommy to do it.”
“That’s not so, Cynthia. I didn’t tell Martha anything either way.”
“Mommy stinks.”
She waited for a reaction, which was not forthcoming. But it was her own grossness, rather than my silence, that made her stop crying. Some moments passed, and then in a voice a good deal less certain, she said, “She does.”
“Does she?”
“Why did she have to make Sissy go? Sissy’s fun. Sissy’s my friend. She had no right to make her move.”
“It’s her house. She can ask anybody to move out, or to stay, that she likes. Don’t you think adults have rights as well as children?”
“She doesn’t own it.”
“Yes, she does,” I said.
“Ha-ha. The agency owns the house.”
“She owns you, Cynthia. She owns Markie.”
I looked at Markie, who was sitting on the floor now, reflecting.
“My father owns me too,” Cynthia said cautiously.
I went on as best I could; though there was suspicion in her voice, there was a note of inquiry too. “Of course your father owns you too. However, right now you’re living with your mother. Your mother makes your meals, and buys your clothes, and she calls the doctor, and sees you get Christmas presents, and she supports you and protects you. Do you know that, Cynthia? Your mother works to support herself, and you, and Markie.”