Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  “Well, I prepare the food,” she said. “You don’t pay for that. The gas I cook with I happen to pay for. The same goes for the electric lights in the kitchen. Be reasonable, please.”

  I leaned toward her over the foot of the bed. “You’re kidding me or something, aren’t you? Look at me—aren’t you? What do you want me to do—hire you as a cook?”

  “You treat me like one, why not?”

  “Do I? Look at me, damn it! Do I? Do you think,” I demanded, “I’d hire a cook with two kids?”

  She pushed her cigarette into the ash tray beside the bed. “I don’t know if this is working out.”

  I tried deep breathing—a metaphoric way, I suppose, of pumping up the will. “Martha, if you’re willing, we ought to wait until tomorrow. We’ll both feel more ourselves in the morning. This has been a bad day from the start. The money mix-up, and Theresa, and the Herzes. Paul Herz is a strange fellow, impossible to get to, and Libby—Libby’s very tough to figure out.”

  “Not so tough.”

  “Maybe not. I suppose she got very screwed up seeing your kids. Two handsome children getting ready for bed, Cynthia’s book … It probably upset her.”

  “Those two handsome children seem to have the remarkable ability of upsetting everybody.”

  “I can’t be responsible for her, Martha.” I went back to the window and found myself staring into the drawn shade.

  “That’s your type though, isn’t it?” Martha said. “The svelte, skinny Mediterranean ones.”

  “Christ, why don’t you go to sleep and take your rotten temper with you.”

  “What—did you have an affair with her? Is that what she was up to with all that pecking away at you? Why didn’t she look at me, I’d like to know? Can’t anybody talk directly to me? Am I just the new lay—do you do this often, old man, so everybody’s in on it except the dumb blowsy mistress herself?”

  “I’m going to turn the light off. You’re not jealous, which you know, and you’re not making sense. I don’t go for these midnight accusations.”

  “You don’t really dig us big fat Nordic slobs, though, do you?”

  I looked at her. “I’m crazy about fat Nordic slobs, as a matter of fact.” I went over and switched off the bedside light, but then I could not bring myself to get into the bed beside her. I sat on the edge.

  “This just isn’t working out,” she said.

  “What isn’t working out?”

  “Cynthia is very upset.”

  “Cynthia was upset before I got here.”

  “Not the same way.”

  “All right then,” I said, rising. “Then I’ll move out. We’ll break it off. This is ridiculous, Martha. What is it you want anyway?”

  “I don’t want you to move out!” she said.

  “Then what do you want?”

  Suddenly she had flipped on the light and was squatting on the blanket. Her nightgown was hiked up to her knees upon which were planted her fists. “Stop raising your voice!” she demanded. “Everybody just hates for those kids to get some sleep! What do you mean you’ll move out? What do you think this is, a hotel? You’ll move in one week and out the next? I’ve got kids to think about. This is no flophouse, you!”

  “Why didn’t you think about your kids when I moved in?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I did,” I said. “I thought about it plenty!”

  “Well then, keep thinking about them, buddy. Don’t be so fast to pack your bags.” Her hair had fallen over her face, and she shook it back, showing a face puffy with rage. She stood up, violently grabbed a cigarette from the night table, and lit it. She began to tramp around the room, all her pounds and inches coming down through her bare feet onto the floor. She puffed at the cigarette, giving no thought to the flutter of ashes onto her nightgown.

  I said nothing for several minutes. Then calmly: “You were the one who said it wasn’t working out, Martha. Not me. I came back here tonight prepared to forget that stupid Armagnac fuss, dedicated to barreling through this miserable night, and starting in again tomorrow. You suggested I leave.”

  “The hell I did,” she said. “Can’t you remember from one minute to the next? Nobody told you to leave—you volunteered to pack your bags.”

  “And what do you expect somebody to do if you tell them a hundred times that it isn’t working out? Don’t you think tonight’s been a mess and a trial for me too? Do you think you can just go around telling people it isn’t working out and that they’re going to stand there? What a night! What a day! You, that lousy Armagnac, Theresa whatever the hell her name is—

  “Haug. And that’s my affair, not yours.”

  “That’s fine with me. Frankly I’m sick of other people’s troubles. Libby Herz, sitting there with those brooding sullen eyes, and why? Because I didn’t steal her away from Paul back in Iowa? Well, don’t look at me as though I’m nuts—I don’t know either. I’m really finding it difficult to keep up with what certain people want of me. As a matter of fact I didn’t sleep with her, Martha, and I didn’t have an affair, though one night about three or four years ago, I don’t even remember any more, I kissed her. I admit to the crime: I kissed the girl. But I never got her down in bed—though you might want to know it crossed my mind. I don’t have a pure and rarefied soul, and I’m not without base instincts—but I’ll also tell you that I didn’t do it, and that’s a fact. But you see, now apparently she wanted me to. I was supposed to come along and rescue her!”

  Martha looked immeasurably skeptical. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because she was married to her husband, Martha. To that big skinny silent prick, Paul.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t see anything. For some reason that makes me a beast in your eyes, and a coward. I’ve been going around for years thinking I acted honorably, and now it’s my fault I didn’t put it to her.”

  “Nobody said that.”

  “Well, I’m no social worker. I’m tired of meddling in people’s lives!”

  “It isn’t meddling, I shouldn’t think, when people are in trouble.”

  “What is it you want me to come out for, adultery?”

  “Don’t sound moralistic, please. Not you. The minute you see a stray female you take her to the hardware store to have duplicate keys made to her apartment.”

  “That’s right. I have no feelings. It was heartless of me to have you cook a roast for dinner, because it made the Herzes feel shame and dismay. I shouldn’t have talked about the wine, because that made Herz unhappy too. I can assure you he’s home now hating my guts for that damn roast beef.”

  “He ought to hate me too,” she said, “I paid half!”

  “We should have had smelts then! Smelts and stale bread and, I don’t know—orange pop! And you shouldn’t have worn those jazzy gypsy clothes either—you should have worn something gray and washed-out, something with a rip in it.”

  “I’ve got plenty of washed-out numbers with rips in them, thank you.”

  “Ah, don’t start in on me with the poverty business, Martha, because I’m not in a charitable mood.”

  “Poverty hell. I’m only asking you to pay your way.”

  “Well, what is it—do you want me to leave a ten-dollar bill on the dresser every morning? Is that what’s going on here?”

  She turned and walked away at last, her head back, dragging on her cigarette. “Watch yourself, Gabe. Please watch yourself. I’m not a stone wall.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just not a stone wall myself.”

  “Nobody is—let’s assume that!”

  “And maybe you ought to stop raising your voice too. Mark gets up and peeks in the door enough as it is.”

  “What can I do about that?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either. The child’s interested. He has a natural curiosity. He never had so many doors closed in his face before. We ought to at least have given him a little breaking-in period.”

&n
bsp; “Come on, Martha, will you—you choose to close the door as much as I do. Suddenly even sex looks one-sided to you. Please don’t start switching it around so that I’m responsible for any confusions your kids might have. I haven’t been here long enough. I’m not Dick Reganhart. I didn’t do it. Just as it’s my fault Libby’s kidneys went bad on her, as though I have something to do with the fact that there are no Jewish babies. Did you see that that was addressed to me? Jewish girls don’t get knocked up as often—what are we all supposed to do about that!”

  Martha blew out a mouthful of smoke before she’d even had a chance to inhale it. “And what’s that supposed to mean, Stonewall?”

  “What supposed to mean?”

  “You think it was easy quitting school, do you? You think it was easy marrying him? When that prissy little minister pronounced us abstract expressionist and wife I saw the whole black future, and kept my mouth shut. I got knocked up all right, but I acted like a woman about it. I’m glad I had Cynthia. She’s a fine child, a fine lovely bright child, even if it takes her a year to warm up to you. Ten years! What do you think she is, a chameleon? She’s loyal to her father—which happens to be admirable. She happens to be an admirable child, and don’t you forget it.”

  “I didn’t mean anything about you and Dick, Martha, and I’m sorry if you misunderstood.”

  “Well, you sure as hell go out of your way not to mean anything. I don’t have such a lousy record, you know. I had that child, I didn’t have it scraped down some drain somewhere, back in some dark alley. And then I woke up one morning and that son of a bitch was on top of me again, and I didn’t have an abortion then either. These are lives, for God’s sake. I love those kids. I’m glad I’ve got them, overwhelmingly glad. I work nights and I hate it—you don’t know how I hate it. But I’m glad I’ve got those kids. They’re something, damn it. At least they don’t go packing their bags all the time. Men are a great big pain in the ass. Somebody ought to take all their luggage away and burn it. Then where would they be! I’ll tell you something about feelings, my friend—nobody’s got any any more. All they’ve got is suitcases! And stay the hell away from me with your big tit-holding hands—I have a right to cry. Don’t soothe me, damn it!” She sat down in the chair by the window, and without covering her face, she wept.

  “Martha, hang on. Try to hang on. Somehow Theresa Haug, the Herzes—”

  “Oh Gabe,” she wept, “the hell with Theresa Haug. The hell with all that Armagnac. I want you to marry me or give me up. I’m too old to screw around like this.”

  4

  The first knowledge she had that day was that their room was swelling with a gleaming gray January light, but she kept her eyes closed to it and she waited. Eyes closed there was no crippled chest of drawers across the way, no half-painted dresser, no smelly rug rolled up in the corner, no curled paint petals flaking off the ceiling onto the pillow; there was only the knowledge that it was morning, a new day, and with it all the possibilities. Some mornings he touched her. Most mornings she touched him and then he touched her. This morning she was willing to wait. She would wait. She made a hmmm sound to let him know she was awake. But she sensed nothing new against her skin, nothing but sheets and blanket and the frail sun. She rolled over, making another sound, a slow moan of lust and comfort, a request for a simple pleasure. She continued to keep her eyes closed. Then she thought (after a decent interval): There are compromises to be made in life. One can’t expect everything. He is a faithful, hard-working, dear, terribly talented, intelligent, hard-luck man. It isn’t his fault … She moved her head an inch closer to his pillow, and then her whole body, but casually, as though she were only being tossed toward him by the oceanic process of awakening. The sun caught her full in the face. Good. She had to go all the way to the Near North Side and at least it wouldn’t be miserably cold. If, however, he touched her, if his mouth slid over her breasts, if his body pressed her down, then she would not have to go at all. She didn’t want to really, even if it was sunny. He need only reach out … But the compromises—she must compromise a little. One must begin to, certainly, at twenty-five. One couldn’t go through life whining and demanding, day in and day out. She knew certain things about herself that she did not like: she cried too much; she was envious, she was always sick—she was a hopeless hypochondriac, in fact. She knew she had the wrong values. She thought about money all the time. She thought about nice clothes. She thought about nice furniture. She had always imagined that when she was married she would have a dinner service for twelve of Spode china. Spode. The word, like sun on the skin, warmed her, had a dreamy happy glow about it—she would be married, and her husband would be tall (as he was), and he would be kind and soft-spoken and strong and full of integrity (as he was), and dark (as he was), and there would be a long dinner table with a white cloth and candles, and the Spode, and weekend guests to whom she would call out, “Extra bath towels are in the linen closet just outside your room,” and beyond the kitchen would be a garden of her own, with chrysanthemums and nasturtiums and petunias and fresh herbs, which she would cut with scissors for their salad. In the early evenings, when her husband had turned off the lamp in his study (and he did have a study, and in it he was writing a book), she would take him out through the kitchen door into the garden, and in the blending of the earth’s dusk and their contentment, they would hold hands and smell her flowers … But at the age of twenty-five one had to begin to understand about compromise. Though she was not proud of herself for very many things (she would have to admit that too when she went downtown: that she was not proud of herself, which made her feel terrible) still she might have reason to become proud were she able to learn to compromise, and to like it. Yes, the second half as well, for surely if one didn’t like it, if one couldn’t stand it … But one must stand it. And it was simple. She had only to take it upon herself to move an inch and another inch and then—her eyes still closed—another inch and one more, and now reach out with her fingers, and now lay her hand, softly, lovingly … He was not there. She opened her eyes. No Paul. Only his pajamas lying on the floor. She heard him making breakfast in the kitchen. Make me! Make love to me! I’ll make breakfast!

  To the sun, filtering through the grimy windows, she said, “Why can’t he just kiss me on the lips?”

  She got out of bed, thinking: I want everything.

  Over her nightgown she put on a robe, the same blue flannel one her parents had given her when she’d gone off to Cornell ages ago. In the kitchen he was standing over the stove, waiting for the coffee; he was already dressed in his suit and tie, and his briefcase was on a chair. The table was set neatly for two, knife on the right, fork on the left. This morning he had cut her orange in quarters and there were two pills beside her bread plate. Dutiful man, he had even folded the paper napkins in half. She did not know of any other husband who so served his wife. He had always worked so hard—at first, before their marriage, for himself, to make money for school, to get good grades; then after their marriage for the two of them. But from the back she saw that his shoulders were still unbent. She came up behind him on her toes and put her arms around his spindly body, her face in the faintly odorous material of his jacket. For some reason their closets smelled the way closets might in which very old maids kept their belongings. And there was nothing to be done about it; she had already tried air-wick and cologne and moth spray, but apparently it was something in the very plaster of the house.

  Paul jumped. “Oh Jesus—you scared me.”

  “I’m sorry. Good morning. It’s me—sunshine.” She intended her merry words to be at once winning and self-critical, a reference to the night before.

  “Honey, please put on slippers,” Paul said. “The floors are cold.”

  That simple remark of his almost drove her mad. “Good morning, though … first.”

  “Good morning, Libby.”

  She looked up into his eyes and found nothing there to make her doubt that he was a generous man. And she loved
him! He was so much more adult and genuine, more in contact with life’s realities, than she could ever hope to be.

  “Please,” he said, kissing her above the eye, when she lingered beside him, “go put on slippers. I’ve got a class in half an hour.”

  “Yes,” she said; she fled toward the hall on her toes, and then she turned, and with her face lifted, with her heart beating, she said, “Paul, isn’t it a wonderful day? It’s sunny for a change. It seems like a very significant day—” That was as much as she could manage to tell him.

  She went into their bedroom and from beneath the dresser kicked out her slippers. While she was there she thought she would quickly make the bed. It will please him to see me peppy and active; it will make this dreary room orderly, if not beautiful. But the whole day was before her, no job to go to any longer, no night classes to prepare for, nothing she really had to read, so it might even be a good thing to save the bed for a little later in the morning. She could begin painting those chairs in the kitchen—then she remembered she hadn’t the whole day after all. She had to go downtown. She ran into the kitchen then to be near her husband. If anything significant was going to happen today, it was going to have to happen between them, and in less than thirty minutes. There was no time to waste making beds or worrying over painting chairs. Paint wouldn’t make them look any better anyway. There was no way of cheering this place up. Only Paul.

  But back in the kitchen she could not think what he could really do or say that she should allow to dissuade her from what she had planned. Her decision had come much too hard—it had been a week of dialing the number one minute and hanging up the next. She would not permit herself to be tricked by a pleasant breakfast; she wouldn’t let him get away with that. It wasn’t as though all their troubles had begun yesterday.

  She remembered yesterday—specifically, the dinner of the night before. Paul had said nothing all the way home, though she knew he had disapproved of her behavior. Wherever they went lately she wound up arguing with people. But it was not her fault! Everyone else had been awful—that son of a bitch Gabe, that woman … But what had they done? What had they said to her? Why did she hate people? She would have to admit that too when she went downtown—that she couldn’t control her responses, that out of the clear blue sky she began to hate people.