Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  “Fine. How is the sole?”

  “I love sole. I forget until I eat it how fond of it I am. I’m feeling absolutely exuberant.”

  “On one martini,” he said, and wished he could stop himself from sounding paternal. It was an impulse that seemed to grow in proportion to Libby’s desire to converse with him.

  “It’s true, you know. Something about my kidneys makes me drunk much faster than normal people.”

  “So you don’t feel normal either?”

  “The day I strike people as normal …”

  His response was so immediate that he had not even time to ask himself whether it might not, in fact, be true. “You strike me as normal tonight.”

  “Oh good. But I feel different.” Leadingly: “I don’t know if you do …”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Happy?” She spoke the word so girlishly as to diminish the risk; she might have been asking nothing more than if he liked his food.

  “Yes,” again without hesitation.

  “I’m so … happy isn’t the word.”

  “I don’t think it is for me either,” he admitted.

  She went right on. “I’m trembling inside. Way inside, beneath the martini.”

  “You look very composed.”

  “Never as composed as you. Do you mind if I speak under the influence of alcohol?”

  He could not have felt more sober himself, which accounted in part for the trouble he was having keeping up with her decision to be gay. He had grown so used to her fidgety that he did not really remember her animated. But tonight she managed to be full of excitement, and still to look as though under her red dress all her limbs were securely attached to her slight frame. If he was not able to look directly at her, it was only partly because she struck him as unfamiliar. It was also that he could not be sure what she was going to say to him, or ask of him, next. Probably she was not too sure either—which doubtless explained why the embarrassment was shared. At first he had believed that their discomfort tonight had only to do with their not being used to extravagances. He had difficulty recalling the last time they had gone out for the purpose of “having fun.” He had to go far back—and in going far back, he concluded that he was mistaken about the identity of the woman at the other table. At precisely the same moment he felt more disposed than ever to protect Libby. He would concentrate only on her. He felt her continuing to concentrate only on him. She had been concentrating on him, barreling down on him, for days; and for just as many days he had been doing his best to look the other way, to slide out from under her gaze by treating her like his child. Her total attention had gotten to him—

  No. It was his mother’s arrival that was causing the trouble. He had already figured out Libby’s place in his life; consequently, he did not believe she could rattle him. “When we came in,” Libby was saying, “and everyone was waiting in line for a table—when you went up and said, ‘My name is Herz, I have a reservation,’ it was one of those moments when I just felt terribly married.”

  “And you liked that?” Again, fatherly, as though he knew all there was to know about her—and at the moment when he was not sure, suddenly, quite what he did know.

  “It was a small thrill,” she said. “Tonight’s a larger thrill.” He did not respond, and she rushed to say, “Unless—are we going to spend too much?”

  He had to reassure the two of them; if Libby could not rattle him any longer, money could. “But we have so many things to celebrate, Lib.”

  “I did have a little qualm when we came in here.”

  “When I said my name is Herz?”

  “About three seconds after that.” She put her hand on the table and he knew enough to cover it with his own. “I won’t have any dessert, darling,” she whispered.

  Embarrassment settled over them. They returned to their food. He was finding this altogether different from any dinner they had ever eaten at home. Was it two or three times now that she had called him “darling”?

  “Do you know what I discussed with Gabe last week?”

  He looked up to see that her face had subsided to its everyday shade. Her lovely skin … “What?”

  “I didn’t tell you. The night he brought the present for the baby—don’t you think he’s changed, Paul?”

  “Who? I’m having trouble keeping up with you martini-ized.”

  “He seems very crushed, Gabe does. He’s lost a lot of his, I don’t know … air.”

  “He’s had some bad luck with his father.”

  A moment passed. “Did he tell you that?” Libby asked.

  “You told me that.”

  “Oh yes …” she said. “You forget about other people’s troubles when you have your own.” For a moment he felt as though she were judging him. Until she added, “Suddenly I’m aware of him in a new way. I asked him to baby-sit out of sympathy, really.”

  “Glenda didn’t go home to Milwaukee then?”

  “Yes, she did go away. But I needn’t have thought of Gabe, you see.”

  “I wondered …” He did not mean to sound like Othello, never having felt like him before. “I wondered how you decided on him.”

  “Then—why didn’t you ask?”

  “I thought you’d arranged it,” he began to explain, somewhat flustered, “arranged it all beforehand.”

  “Well, you should have asked. I think he gets a lot of pleasure out of Rachel. He asked if you believed in God.”

  He was not jealous; he was annoyed. “How did that come up?” He had never in his life been jealous, a fact of his character which he had long ago absorbed. It contributed to his picture of himself as a man who did not have all the human fires. He had come to think of himself as less special than he once had.

  Nevertheless, it seemed that what he had just tried was to make Libby think that he was jealous! He wondered if he could be feeling under attack only because of the woman at the other table, who brought to his mind old failures, misunderstandings of his youth. It was a youth that he himself saw as long past; having ceased to excuse himself for what he was, he no longer needed it as a crutch. It was a help to him too that others, seeing that he was half bald and wore old clothes, did not even mistake him for a young man.

  “We were talking about religion,” his wife said. “His family, you know, was very German Jewish and removed. I would have liked to have met his mother—you know, I once—I think she had a great effect on him.”

  “You once what?”

  “We were talking about Chanukah. I didn’t know what to say, Paul. There are some things we haven’t discussed a lot lately. You and I.”

  “I think we’ve probably become a little used to each other by now.” Smiling.

  “We just don’t talk as much, though. That’s a fact. That’s all. We do hardly talk.”

  “I think if we feed you a martini every night—”

  “And you?” she said quickly.

  “You see, it doesn’t take on me.”

  “I know,” she said lugubriously.

  Dinner might have been finished and the check paid without any further conversation, had not the blond woman and her party walked over to their booth. “Excuse me, aren’t you Paul Herz?”

  “Yets—” Trying to rise, he got caught between the table and the seat. Half standing, taller than Libby but shorter than his visitor, he said, “Yes—you look very familiar—”

  “My name”—he saw Libby looking back and forth as the woman spoke—“is Frankland. I’m Marge—Howells.”

  “I thought that’s who you might be—” And then both rushed so to introduce their mates that no one heard anyone else’s name, and they all had to be introduced a second time. The other couple, friends of the Franklands’, stood back and watched. Slowly Marge Howells began to look like herself, or as much of her as he could remember. He had never really taken a long look at her, even back in Iowa; that had not been the nature of their meeting. Here, across the room, she had looked older, haughtier. Paul asked Marge, and Marg
e Paul, what each was doing in Chicago. It turned out that the Franklands lived in Evanston.

  “I’m teaching,” Paul said, answering her next question.

  Tim Frankland, a physician, had a habit of extending his lower lip beyond his upper lip; he combined this now with a brief nod. “No kidding,” he said.

  “At the University,” Libby said.

  Frankland paid his first bit of attention to her. “Down on the South Side,” he said, pointing at the floor.

  “That’s right,” Paul said.

  “Tim is doing research this year,” Marge told them. “We’ve been in Evanston for three or four years.” She turned, but only half looked at her husband. “Isn’t that right, darling?”

  At the very same moment that he heard Marge say “darling”—and disbelieved it—Paul felt himself powerfully married to his wife. “We’ve been in Chicago for a year, a little more than a year.”

  The other couple with the Franklands now moved out of the dining room, saying they would meet Tim and Marge in the lobby. Silence followed their departure.

  “Well, it’s been three or four years,” Marge said, “since we’ve met, I think.”

  Dr. Frankland gave a very stiff, very polite grin to everyone.

  “Where is it we met before?” Libby asked.

  “Iowa City,” Marge said.

  “Do you have children?” Paul asked.

  “One. A girl.”

  “We have a girl too,” Libby said. “Six months.”

  “Jocelyn is three,” Marge said to Paul.

  “Time flies,” Dr. Frankland said to Libby, as though she might not have known. “Yours will be three before you realize it.”

  “Do you ever see your friend?” Marge asked. “You remember—”

  “Gabe Wallach.”

  “Yes. How’s he doing? Do you ever hear from him?”

  “He’s teaching at Chicago too,” Paul said.

  “No kidding,” Tim Frankland said.

  “Oh,” said Marge, “Tim has heard all these names.” She did not smile with much confidence.

  “That was when Marge was revolting against her family. Your bohemian period, dear.” But the remark was meant for the edification of the crowd; there were obviously certain areas of the past with which Dr. Frankland didn’t have too much sympathy.

  “Gabe’s baby-sitting for us tonight, as a matter of fact,” said Libby.

  “I thought he’d be married—”

  Libby made the announcement as though it gave her pleasure. “No, he isn’t.”

  “Still knocking the girls over.” The words were spoken by Dr. Frankland.

  “I suppose so,” Paul said.

  Apropos of nothing, or so it seemed, Libby said, “He’s a very generous person.”

  “It’s a coincidence,” Marge said, “all of us being in Chicago, isn’t it?”

  “We were in Pennsylvania for a while,” Paul said.

  “We should all get together,” Marge answered.

  “Yes,” Paul said, when no one else did, “that would be fine.”

  “Yes … It was nice running into you,” Dr. Frankland said. “We’re in the book, of course.”

  “So are we,” Libby said, as though that tied the score.

  “What do you call your daughter, Paul?”

  “Rachel,” Libby said.

  At this the two women were called upon to take a sudden interest in one another. Marge was the one who smiled.

  Frankland felt called upon to be magnanimous. “That’s a nice old-fashioned European name.”

  “Whom does she resemble?” Marge asked.

  “Paul,” said Libby.

  “I’m afraid Jocelyn looks just like me.”

  “Well, we have to be going,” Tim Frankland said. “I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting—”

  “Oh yes—”

  “Goodbye. Say hello to Gabe Wallach—”

  “Oh yes—”

  Libby waited until they were barely out of earshot. “I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting,” she said, in a fair imitation.

  “I had a feeling you didn’t like them.”

  “I didn’t mean to be too obvious, but that man’s a horror. And she—I don’t know. At the end I suddenly thought she wasn’t so bad. Who is she? I don’t remember her at all. I thought we’d met her at Cornell.”

  “She was a friend of Gabe’s.”

  “That’s what I thought, after I found out it was Iowa. Gabe certainly has catholic tastes.”

  “Of course, it was a long time ago.”

  “She couldn’t have been any—Well, she didn’t strike me as very genuine. Did she you?”

  “She’s all right, I suppose.”

  “Well, she chose old Tim—I wouldn’t be so sure. ‘I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting.’ Hey, that’s not too bad, is it?” She did it again. “Did we know her well?” she asked suddenly.

  “I met her once with Gabe. I don’t think you did.”

  “Oh,” she said, “this isn’t the girl friend of his you once helped move, is it, when I was sick? The girl he dropped, ker-plunk.”

  “I think,” Paul said, “that was somebody else.”

  “The more I learn about Gabe,” Libby said, “the stranger he seems. I don’t know if he has any substance or what.”

  “There are girls like her in everybody’s past, I suppose.”

  “Well, sweetheart, who was there in yours?”

  After a moment, he said, “Doris. I’ve told you about Doris …”

  “But you were in high school. Gabe was a man.”

  “Well …”

  “Gabe knows a lot about some things,” said Libby, “but then he seems to have so little imagination about others. He didn’t even begin to know what I was saying when I spoke about religion, for instance.”

  “You said …” He was looking directly at his wife now; he had forced himself to while she spoke of Gabe’s past, and he for some reason made references—veiled, to be sure—to his own. “You said you didn’t know what to tell him.”

  She was surprised. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said that you didn’t know what I thought.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you think …”

  “Well …” He had led himself into this. “What do you want to know?”

  “What?”

  Marge Howells had come and gone, and nothing had happened to him. It was not shame that was filling him with the incredible desire to answer questions. “I’m not hiding anything,” he said, and indeed he did feel perfectly innocent.

  “Paul … no?”

  The moment passed, though it left its mark. “Well, no.” He was not sure he could believe himself—though he was not completely unsure. Marge had come and gone and nothing had happened to him. “So what do you want to know?” he asked jokingly.

  “… I don’t know. What do you do when you go to the synagogue?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

  “I sit there.” She might as well be told that. He was afraid, however, of other questions she might ask, though he could not really inform himself as to what they might be. He continued to close back upon himself. “I sit there,” he said again.

  “You say the prayer.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You did that Friday I went—”

  “I did that Friday. I knew you expected certain things. I don’t when I’m alone.”

  “You see—now there’s something I didn’t know that …”

  “Well, we’re married, Libby, but we’re separate too.”

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t think that’s too unusual.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking defeated. “I don’t know what’s usual and unusual. I’m still trying to figure marriage out. Excuse me—I don’t want to keep embarrassing you by being naïve. I didn’t mean to embarass you by saying Rachel resembled you either—”

  “I don’t th
ink that’s what’s embarrassing us.”

  “I keep blushing tonight, Paul. And you’re my husband.”

  “We’re just both excited about this whole week.”

  “Yes … I’m not saying I’m not happy.”

  “We’re just not used to things working out.” He wondered if that could be it. “It’s something we’ll have to become adjusted to.”

  “I’m a little drunken, darling, but you’re sober, and you mean that, don’t you? I keep having the strange feeling that our troubles are over. That I’ve been being born and born for years and years, and now I’m out. That’s a weak statement from a woman who’s supposed to be somebody else’s mother, I know it probably makes me sound ill-equipped … What I mean is that if things will calm down for a while, I will be equipped. I’m embarrassed about the past. I keep saying ‘embarrassed’ only because it’s the only damn word I can think of. I really want to talk to you, Paul. The last few days I’ve thought and thought, because they seem so significant … Can’t we begin to talk a little?”

  “Sure.”

  “I want you to tell me sometimes what you’re thinking. That’ll make all the difference—”

  “Yes, but, Libby, you understand—” He knew he had opened this floodgate himself; he had allowed himself the pleasure of optimism, and now he was paying. It would all wind up, tonight or tomorrow or next week, with Libby crying.

  “I don’t expect to know everything. If I can know … If I don’t have to stay home all day imagining it. Everything else is all right now—now it’s simply you and me that needs working out.” She was trying to grin; he was trying to collect himself. But he couldn’t; some inroad had been made. “I tell people about what you think,” Libby said, “and I don’t even know what you do think. Are we religious or aren’t we?” With that question she looked quite beaten again. “There—that’s one simple little thing—”

  “You see, we’re not one person. We’re two.”

  “—because we have to communicate somehow.”

  “Of course—”

  “I don’t think every marriage has to be lustful. I understand that differently now. I’ve made myself understand it differently. But if it’s not that, then it’s going to have to be something else.”

  “Libby—you’ve had a lot of patience …”