by Philip Roth
I know he’s a southerner, but I got great faith in Lyndon Johnson. If it was Humphrey I’d breathe easier about Israel—but what can we do? Anyway, look, he was close to Roosevelt all those years, he had to learn something. He’s going to be all right. I don’t think we got anything to worry about. Do you?” “No.” “I hope you’re right. This is awful. And you take care of yourself. I don’t want you to be strapped, you understand?” “I’m fine.”
Susan and I stayed up to watch television until Mrs. Kennedy had arrived back in Washington on Air Force One. As the widow stepped from the plane onto the elevator platform, her fingers grazed the coffin, and I said, “Oh, the heroic male fantasies being stirred up around the nation.” “Yours too?” asked Susan. “I’m only human,” I said. In bed, with the lights off, and clasped in one another’s arms, we both started to cry. “I didn’t even vote for him,” Susan said. “You didn’t?” “I could never tell you before. I voted for Nixon.” “Jesus, but you were fucked up.” “Oh, Lambchop, Jackie Kennedy wouldn’t have voted for him if she hadn’t been his wife. It’s the way we were raised.”
In September 1964, the week after Spielvogel had published his findings on my case in the American Forum for Psychoanalytic Studies, the Warren Commission published theirs on the assassination. Lee Harvey Oswald, alone and on his own, was responsible for the murder of President Kennedy, the commission concluded; meanwhile Spielvogel had determined that because of my upbringing I suffered from “castration anxiety” and employed “narcissism” as my “primary defense.” Not everyone agreed with the findings either of the eminent jurist or of the New York analyst: so, in the great world and in the small, debate raged about the evidence, about the conclusions, about the motives and the methods of the objective investigators…And so those eventful years passed, with reports of disaster and cataclysm continuously coming over the wire services to remind me that I was hardly the globe’s most victimized inhabitant. I had only Maureen to contend with—what if I were of draft age, or Indochinese, and had to contend with LBJ? What was my Johnson beside theirs? I watched the footage from Selma and Saigon and Santo Domingo, I told myself that that was awful, suffering that could not be borne…all of which changed nothing between my wife and me. In October 1965, when Susan and I stood in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park, trying to make out what the Reverend Coffin was saying to the thousands assembled there to protest the war, who should I see no more than fifteen feet away, but Maureen. Wearing a button pinned to her coat: “Deliver Us Dr. Spock.” She was standing on the toes of her high boots, trying to see above the crowd to the speaker’s platform. The last word I’d had from her was that letter warning me about the deluxe nervous breakdown that I would soon be getting billed for because of my refusal “to be a man.” How nice to see she was still ambulatory—I supposed it argued for my virility. Oh, how it burned me up to see her here! I tapped Susan. “Well, look who’s against the war.” “Who?” “Tokyo Rose over there. That’s my wife, Suzie Q.” “That one?” she whispered. “Right, with the big heartfelt button on her breast.” “Why-she’s pretty, actually.” “In her driven satanic way, I suppose so. Come on, you can’t hear anything anyway. Let’s go.” “She’s shorter than I thought—from your stories.” “She gets taller when she stands on your toes. The bitch. Eternal marriage at home and national liberation abroad. Look,” I said, motioning up to the police helicopter circling in the air over the crowd, “they’ve counted heads for the papers—let’s get out of here.” “Oh, Peter, don’t be a baby—“ “Look, if anything could make me for bombing Hanoi, she’s it. With that button yet. Deliver me, Dr. Spock—from her!”
That antiwar demonstration was to be my last contact with her until the spring of 1966, when she phoned my apartment, and in an even and matter-of-fact voice said to me, “I want to talk to you about a divorce, Peter. I am willing to talk sensibly about all the necessary arrangements, but I cannot do it through that lawyer of yours. The man is a moron and Dan simply cannot get through to him.”
Could it be? Were things about to change? Was it about to be over?
“He is not a moron, he is a perfectly competent matrimonial lawyer.”
“He is a moron, and a liar, but that isn’t the point, and I’m not going to waste my time arguing about it. Do you or don’t you want a divorce?”
‘What kind of question is that? Of course I do.”
“Then why don’t the two of us sit down together and work it out?”
“I don’t know that we two could, ‘together.’”
“I repeat: do you or do you not want a divorce?”
“Look, Maureen—“
“If you do, then I will come to your apartment after my Group tonight and we can iron this thing out like adults. It’s gone on long enough and, frankly, I’m quite sick of it. I have other things to do with my life.”
‘Well, that’s good to hear, Maureen. But we surely can’t meet to settle it in my apartment.”
“Where then? The street?”
“We can meet on neutral ground. We can meet at the Algonquin.
“Really, what a baby you are. Little Lord Fauntleroy from Westchester—to this very day.”
“The word Westchester’ still gets you, doesn’t it? Just like ‘Ivy League.’ All these years in the big city and still the night watchman’s daughter from Elmira.”
“Ho hum. Do you want to go on insulting me, or do you want to get on with the business at hand? Truly, I couldn’t care less about you or your opinion of me at this point. I’m well over that. I have a life of my own. I have my flute.”
“The flute now?”
“I have my flute,” she went on, “I have Group. I’m going to the New School.”
“Everything but a job,” I said.
“My doctor doesn’t feel I can hold a job right now. I need time to think.”
“What is it you ‘think’ about?”
“Look, do you want to score points with your cleverness, or do you want a divorce?”
“You can’t come to my apartment.”
“Is that your final decision? I will not talk about a serious matter like this in the street or in some hotel bar. So if that is your final decision, I am hanging up. For God’s sake, Peter, I’m not going to eat you up.”
“Look,” I said, “all right, come here, if that’s all we’re going to talk about.”
“I assure you I have nothing else to converse about with a person like you. I’ll come right from Group.”
That word! “What time is ‘Group’ over?” I asked.
“I’ll be at your place at ten,” she said.
“I don’t like it,” said Spielvogel, when I phoned with the news of the rendezvous I’d arranged, all on my own.
“I don’t either,” I said. “But if she changes the subject, I’ll throw her out. I’ll have her go. But what else could I say? Maybe she finally means it. I can’t afford to say no.”
“Well, if you said yes, it’s yes.”
“I could still call her up and get out of it, of course.”
“You want to do that?”
“I want to be divorced, that’s what I want. That’s why I thought I had better grab hold of the opportunity while I had it. If it means risking a scene with her, well, I’ll have to risk it.”
“Yes? You are up to that? You won’t collapse in tears? You won’t tear your clothes off your back?”
“No, no. That’s over.”
“Well, then,” said Spielvogel, “good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Maureen arrived promptly at ten P.M. She was dressed in a pretty red wool suit—a demure jacket over a silk blouse, and a flared skirt—smarter than anything I’d ever seen her in before; and though drawn and creased about the eyes and at the corners of the mouth, her face was deeply tanned—nothing urchinlike or “beat” about this wife of mine any longer. It turned out that she had just come back from five days in Puerto Rico, a vacation that her Group had insisted on her taking. On my money, you
bloodsucker. And the suit too. Who paid for that hut putz-o here!
Maureen made a careful survey of the living room that Susan had helped me to furnish for a few hundred dollars. It was simple enough, but through Susan’s efforts, cozy and comfortable: rush matting on the floor, a round oak country table, some unpainted dining chairs, a desk and a lamp, bookcases, a daybed covered with an India print, a secondhand easy chair with a navy-blue slipcover made by Susan, along with navy-blue curtains she’d sewn together on her machine. “Very quaint,” said Maureen superciliously, eyeing the basket of logs by the fireplace, “and very House and Garden, your color scheme.”
“It’ll do.”
From supercilious to envious in the twinkling of an eye— “Oh, I would think it would do quite nicely. You ought to see what I live in. It’s half this size.”
“The proverbial shoe box. I might have known.”
“Peter,” she said, drawing a breath that seemed to catch a little in her chest, “I’ve come here to tell you something.” She sat down in the easy chair, making herself right at home.
“To tell—?”
‘I’m not going to divorce you. I’m never going to divorce you.”
She paused and waited for my response; so did I.
“Get out,” I said.
“I have a few more things to say to you.”
“I told you to get out.”
T just got here. I have no intention of—“
“You lied. You lied again. You told me on the phone less than three hours ago that you wanted to talk—“
“I’ve written a story about you. I want to read it to you. I’ve brought it with me in my purse. I read it to my class at the New School. The instructor has promised to try to get it published, that’s how good he thinks it is. I’m sure you won’t agree—you have those high Flaubertian standards, of course—but I want you to hear it. I think you have a right to before I go ahead and put it in print.”
“Maureen, either get up and go, under your own steam, or I am going to throw you out.”
“Lay one finger on me and I will have you put in jail. Dan Egan knows I’m here. He knows you invited me here. He didn’t want me to come. He’s seen you in action, Peter. He said if you laid a finger on me I was to call him immediately. And in case you think it’s on your lousy hundred dollars that I went to Puerto Rico, it wasn’t. It was Dan who gave me the money, when the Group said I had to get away.”
“Is that a ‘Group’ you go to or a travel agency?”
“Ha ha.”
“And the chic outfit. Therapist buy you that, or did your fellow patients pass the cup?”
“No one ‘bought’ it for me. Mary Egan gave it to me—the suit used to be hers. She bought it in Ireland. Don’t worry, I’m not exactly living the high life on the money you earn through the sweat of your brow four hours a week at Hofstra. The Egans are my friends, the best friends I’ve ever had.”
“Fine. You need ‘em. Now scram. Get out.”
“I want you to hear this story,” she said, reaching into her purse for the manuscript. “I want you to know that you’re not the only one who has tales to tell the world about that marriage. The story—“ she said, removing the folded pages from a manila envelope—“the story is called ‘Dressing Up in Mommy’s Clothes.’”
“Look, I’m going to call the police and have them throw you out of here. How will that suit Mr. Egan?”
“You call the police and I’D call Sal Valducci.”
“You won’t call anybody.”
“Why don’t you telephone your Park Avenue millionairess, Peppy? Maybe she’ll send her chauffeur around to rescue you from the clutches of your terrible wife. Oh, don’t worry, I know all about the bee-yoo-tiful Mrs. McCall. A bee-yoo-tiful drip— a helpless, hopeless, rich little society drip! Oh, don’t worry, I’ve had you followed, you bastard—I know what you’re up to with women!”
“You’ve had me what?”
“Followed! Trailed! Damn right I have! And it cost me a fortune! But you’re not getting away scot-free, you!”
“But I’ll divorce you, you bitch, any day of the week! We don’t need detectives, we don’t need—“
“Oh, don’t you tell me what I need, dealing with someone like you! I don’t have a millionairess, you know, to buy me cuff links at Carder’s! I make my way in this world on my own!”
“Shit, so do we all! And what cuff links? What the hell are you talking about now?”
But she was off and running again, and the story of “the Carder cuff links” she would carry with her to her grave. “Oh just your speed, she is! Poor little rich girls, or little teenage students all gaga over their artistical teacher, like our friend with the braids in Wisconsin. Or that Jewish princess girl from Long Island. And how about the big blonde German nurse you were fucking in the army? A nurse—just perfect for you! Just perfect for our big mamma’s boy with the tearful brown eyes! A real woman, and you’re in tears, Peter. A real woman and—“
“Look, who set you up in business as a real woman? Who appointed you the representative of womankind? Stop trying to shove your bloody Kotex down my throat, Maureen—you’re not a real anything, that’s your goddam trouble! Now get out. How dare you have me followed!”
She didn’t budge.
“I’m telling you to go.”
“When I’m finished saying what I came here to say I will leave—and then without your assistance. Right now I’m going to read this story, because I want you to understand in no uncertain terms that two can play this writing game, two can play at this kind of slander, if it’s slandering me you have in your vindictive mind. Quid pro quo, pal.”
“Get—out.”
“It’s a short story about a writer named Paul Natapov, who unknown to the readership that takes him so seriously, and the highbrow judges who give him awards, likes to relax around the house in his wife’s underwear.”
“You fucking lunatic!” I cried, and pulled her up from the chair by one arm. “Now out, out, out you psychopath! There— there’s the only thing that’s real about you, Maureen, your psychopathology! It isn’t the woman that drives me to tears, it’s the nut! Now out!”
“No! No! You’re only after my story,” she screamed—“but tear it to shreds—I still have a carbon in Dan Egan’s safe!”
Here she flung herself to the floor, where she took hold of the legs of the chair and began kicking up at me, bicycle fashion, with her high-heeled shoes.
“Get up! Cut it out! Go! Go, Maureen—or I’m going to beat your crazy head in!”
“Just you try it, mister!”
With the first crack of my hand I bloodied her delicate nose.
“Oh, my God…” she moaned as the blood spurted from her nostrils and down onto the jacket of her handsome suit, blood a deeper red than the nubby wool.
“And that is only the beginning! That is only the start. I’m going to beat you to an unrecognizable pulp!”