by Philip Roth
And here Myra, who had been recounting to her father all that Duane had said, became teary-eyed, and Willard patted her back and got all filled up too, and thought to himself, “Then it has not been in vain,” and the only thing that made him feel unhappy was that it all seemed to be coming about because little Lucy had gone ahead and married the wrong person for the wrong reason.
Spring. Each evening Duane would get up from the dinner table—slapping at his knees, as though just to rise to his feet was a strengthening experience in itself—and pitting the new self against the old temptations, take a walk all the way down Broadway to the river. At eight on the nose he would be back shining his shoes. Night after night Willard sat across from him in a kitchen chair, watching as though hypnotized, as though his son-in-law was not just another man cleaning his shoes at the end of a hard day, but before Willard’s eyes inventing the very idea of the shoe brush and polish. He actually began to think that instead of encouraging the fellow to move out of the house, he ought now to encourage him to stay. It was becoming a genuine pleasure to have him around.
One night in May the two men got to talking seriously together before bedtime; the subject was the future. When dawn rose neither could remember who had first suggested that maybe it was really time for Duane to go back to the original plan of his life, which was to be out contracting on his own. With new housing developments going up everywhere, a fellow with his electrical know-how would be swamped with work within a matter of weeks. It was a matter of the necessary capital to begin, and the rest would take care of itself.
Several hours later, a sunny Saturday morning, shaved and in suits, they drove to the bank to inquire about a loan. At seven that evening, after a nap and a good dinner, Duane went off for his constitutional. Meanwhile Willard sat down with a pencil and pad and began to figure up the available money, what the bank said they would loan, plus certain savings of his own … By eleven he was filling the paper with circles and X’s; at midnight he got into the car to make, once again, the old rounds.
He found Whitey in the alleyway back of Chick’s Barbershop, along with a strange Negro and a white-wall automobile tire. Whitey had his arms wrapped around the tire; the colored fellow was out cold on the cement. He did all he could to pry Whitey loose from his tire, short of kicking him in the ribs, but it appeared he was having some kind of romance with it. “Now damn it,” Willard said, dragging him toward the car, “let go of that thing!” But Whitey staged a sit-down strike on the curb rather than submit to him and his tire being parted. He said he and Cloyd here had run great risks in procuring it, and besides, couldn’t Willard see? It was brand-new.
He carried fifty pounds more than Willard, and twenty years less, and so, drunk as he was, it was still nearly half an hour back in Chick’s alleyway before Whitey could be detached from what he and his new friend had “borrowed” from God only knew where.
The next morning, for all that he was the color of oatmeal, he came down to breakfast right on time. Wearing a tie. Nevertheless, two weeks passed before mention was made again of bank loans, or personal loans, or the electrical contracting business, and then it was not Willard who brought the matter up. The two were sitting alone in the parlor listening to the White Sox game one Saturday afternoon, when Whitey stood, and glaring at his father-in-law, made his indictment. “So that’s the way it is is, Willard. One lapse, and a man’s whole new life—right down the drain!”
Then in June, while they were all getting ready for bed one night, Myra made a remark to Whitey that did not set very well with him, as it was on the subject of his new life, and hers. Adolph Mertz, who had picked up Gertrude after her lesson that afternoon, had asked if Whitey was still interested in going into electrical contracting; a fellow up in Driscoll Falls was retiring, selling everything he owned at a good price, equipment, truck … Here Whitey swung at her with his trousers and nearly took her eye out with the buckle of his belt. But he hadn’t meant to—he was only warning her not to tease him again about something that wasn’t his fault! Why did she go shooting her mouth off about plans that weren’t finalized? Didn’t she know what the business world was all about? At this stage of the game it was nobody’s concern but his—and Willard’s, no matter how much her father wanted now to sneak out of the whole thing. As a matter of fact, if it was up to Whitey, he would go back to that bank any day of the week. It was Willard who had withdrawn his support and knocked the confidence out of him about the whole idea, after having encouraged him into it to begin with. Actually, it was living in Willard’s house that had undermined his confidence all along, right from the beginning. A grown man being treated like a charity case! Sure, blame it on him—blame it all on him. But who was it who had cried for her Daddy, years back, just because it was a depression and he was out of work, like half the country was, damn it! Who was it that had led them back to her Daddy with his cushy no-risk government job? Who was it that wouldn’t leave for the South with her own husband so as to start a new life? Who? Him? Sure, always him! Only him! Nobody but him!
And as for striking her—this he said when he came back from the kitchen with an ice pack for her eye—had he ever struck directly at her with the intention of doing her harm? “Never!” he cried, getting back into his clothes. “Never once!”
Willard rushed into the hallway as the outraged Whitey started for a second time down the stairs. “Now all of you can just stand around day and night,” said Whitey, buttoning his coat, “and talk and laugh and tell stories about what kind of failure I am—because I’m going!” There were tears rolling down his face, and he was clearly so miserable and brokenhearted that for a moment Willard became totally confused, or enlightened. At any rate he saw the truth more clearly than he ever had before in all these fifteen years: There is nothing the man can do. He is afflicted with himself. Like Ginny.
But when Whitey passed him the second time—having gone back to the kitchen for one last glass of their precious water, if they didn’t mind—he nonetheless let the afflicted fellow proceed out the door, and for good measure, bolted it—and shouted after him, “I don’t care what you are! Nobody strikes my daughter! Not in this house! Or outside either!”
Whitey began knocking around two A.M. Willard appeared in the hallway in his robe and slippers and found Myra at the top of the stairs in her nightdress. “I think it’s raining,” she said.
“Isn’t bad feet enough?” Willard shouted up the stairs at her. “Do you want to be blind too?”
Whitey began ringing the bell.
“But what help is it to anything,” she said, “for someone to stand out in the rain? And the bad feet have nothing to do with him.”
“I ain’t his father, Myra—I am yours! Let him feel a little rain on him! I just can’t worry no more about what help things are doing him or not!”
“But I shouldn’t have brought it up. I knew it.”
“Myra, will you please stop taking the blame? Do you hear me? Because it is not your doing. It is his!”
Berta came into the hall. “If it is your fault, then you go out and stand in the rain too, young lady.”
“Now, Berta—” said Willard.
“That is the solution, Mr. Carroll, whether you like it or not!”
She left her husband and her daughter alone in the hallway. Whitey began to kick against the door.
“Well, that sure takes brains, Myra, doesn’t it? To kick a door, that really takes brains, all right.”
The two of them stood in the hallway while Whitey continued kicking the door and ringing the bell.
“Sixteen years,” said Willard. “Sixteen years of solid this. And listen to him, making an idiot of himself still.”
After five minutes more, Whitey stopped.
“Okay,” said Willard. “That’s more like it. I am not giving in to that kind of behavior, Myra, not now, and not ever either. Now that it is calm I am going to open the door. And us three are going to sit down in the parlor right now, and I don’t care if it tak
es till morning, we are going to get to the bottom of this. Because he will not hit you—or anyone!”
So he opened the door, but Whitey was no longer there.
That was a Wednesday night. On Sunday Lucy came to town. She wore a dark brown maternity dress of some thick material, from which her face emerged like a smooth little light bulb. Everything about her looked so small, as indeed everything was, except for the belly.
“Well,” said Willard cheerfully, “what’s on Lucy’s mind?”
“Roy’s mother told Roy all about it,” she replied, standing in the middle of the parlor.
Willard spoke again. “About what, honey?”
“Daddy Will, don’t think you’re sparing me. You’re not.”
No one knew what to say.
Finally, Myra: “How is Roy’s schooling going now?”
“Mother, look at your eye.”
“Lucy,” said Willard, and took her by the arm, “maybe your mother doesn’t want to talk about it.” He sat her down beside him on the sofa. “How about you tell us about you? You’re the one with the brand-new life. How’s Roy? Is he coming over?”
“Daddy Will,” she said, standing up again, “he blackened her eye!”
“Lucy, we don’t feel any better about it than you do. It is not a pleasant thing to look at, and burns me up every time I see it—but fortunately, there was no real physical harm.”
“Oh, wonderful.”
“Lucy, I am plenty angry, believe me. And he knows it. Word has gotten around to him, all right. He has stayed away three whole days already. Four including now. And from all I understand he is carrying his tail between his legs and is one very ashamed person—”
“But what,” said Lucy, “will be the upshot of all this, Daddy Will? What now?”
Well, the truth was, he had not quite made up his mind yet on that score. Of course, Berta had made up hers, and told him so every night when they got into their bed. With the lights out he would turn one way, then the other, till his wife, who he had thought was asleep beside him, said, “It does not require squirming, Willard, or thrashing around. He goes, and if she wants to, she goes with him. I believe she is now thirty-nine years old.” “Age isn’t the question, Berta, and you know it.” “Not to you it isn’t. You baby her. You watch over her like she was solid gold.” “I am not babying anybody. I am trying to use my head. It is complicated, Berta.” “It is simple, Willard.” “Well, it certainly is not, and never was, not by any stretch of imagination. Not with a teen-age high school girl involved, it wasn’t. Not when it was a matter of uprooting a whole family—” “But Lucy doesn’t live here any longer.” “And just suppose they had gone? Then what? You tell me.” “I don’t know, Willard, what would happen to them then or what will now either. But we two will live a human life for the last years we are on this earth. Without tragedy popping up every other minute.” “Well, there are others to consider, Berta.” “I wonder when it will be my chance to be one of those others. When I am in the grave, I suppose, if I last that long. The solution, Willard, is simple.” “Well, it’s not, and it doesn’t get that way, either, just by your telling me so fifty times a night. People are just more fragile than you give them credit for sometimes!” “Well, that is their lookout.” “I am talking about our own daughter, Berta!” “She is thirty-nine years old, Willard. I believe her husband is over forty, or is supposed to be. They are their own lookout, not mine, and not yours.” “Well,” he said after a minute, “suppose everybody thought like that. That would sure be some fine world to live in, all right. Everybody saying the other person is not their lookout, even your own child.” She did not answer. “Suppose Abraham Lincoln thought that way, Berta.” No answer. “Or Jesus Christ. There would never even have been a Jesus Christ, if everybody thought that way.” “You are not Abraham Lincoln. You are the assistant postmaster in Liberty Center. As for Jesus Christ—” “I didn’t say I was comparing myself. I am only making a point to you.” “I married Willard Carroll, as I remember it, I did not marry Jesus Christ.” “Oh, I know that, Berta—” “Let me tell you, if I had known beforehand that I was agreeing to be Mrs. Jesus Christ—”
So to Lucy’s question as to what the upshot would be—“The upshot?” Willard repeated.
To gather his thoughts, he looked away from Lucy’s demanding eyes and out the window. And guess who just then came strolling up the front walk? With his hair wet and combed, and his shoes shined, wearing his big man’s mustache!
“Well,” said Berta, “Mr. Upshot himself.”
The doorbell rang. Once.
Willard turned to Myra. “Did you tell him to come? Myra, did you know he was coming?”
“No. No. I swear it.”
Whitey rang once again.
“… It’s Sunday,” explained Myra when no one moved to open the door.
“And?” demanded Willard.
“Maybe he has something to tell us. Something to say. It’s Sunday. He’s all alone.”
“Mother,” cried Lucy, “he hit you. With a belt!”
Now Whitey began to rap on the glass of the front door.
Myra, flustered, said to her daughter, “And is that what Alice Bassart is going around telling people?”
“Isn’t that what happened?”
“No!” said Myra, covering her blackened eye. “It was an accident—that he didn’t even mean. I don’t know what happened. But it’s over!”
“Once, Mother, just once, protect yourself!”
“—All I know,” Berta was saying, “are you listening to me, Willard? All I know is that it sounds to me as if he is planning to put his fist through that fifteen-dollar glass.”
But Willard was saying, “Now first off, I want everyone here to calm down. The fellow has been away three whole days, something that has never happened before—”
“Oh, but I’ll bet he’s found a warm corner somewhere, Daddy Will—with a barstool in it.”
“I know he hasn’t!” said Myra.
“Where was he then, Mother, the Salvation Army?”
“Now, Lucy, now wait a minute,” said Willard. “This is nothing to shout about. As far as we know he has not missed a day of work. As for his nights, he has been sleeping at the Bill Bryants’, on their sofa—”
“Oh, you people!” Lucy cried, and was out of the room and into the front hallway. The rapping at the glass stopped. For a moment there was not a sound; but then the bolt snapped shut, and Lucy shouted, “Never! Do you understand that? Never!”
“No,” moaned Myra. “No.”
Lucy came back into the room.
Myra said, “… What—what did you do?”
“Mother, the man is beyond hope! Beyond everything!”
“A-men,” said Berta.
“Oh, you!” said Lucy, turning on her grandmother. “You don’t even know what I’m saying!”
“Willard!” said Berta sharply.
“Lucy!” said Willard.
“Oh no,” cried Myra, for in the meantime she had rushed past them into the hallway. “Duane!”
But he was already running down the street. By the time Myra had unlocked the door and rushed out on the porch, he had turned a corner and was out of sight. Gone.
Till now. Lucy had locked him out, and Whitey had watched her do it to him; through the glass he had seen his pregnant eighteen-year-old daughter driving shut the bolt against his entering. And had never dared return after that. Until now, with nearly five years gone and Lucy dead … He must be waiting down in that station twenty minutes already. Unless he had become impatient, and decided to go back where he came from; unless he had decided that maybe this time he ought to disappear for good.
—The pain shot down Willard’s right leg, from the hip to the toe, that sharp sizzling line of pain. Cancer! Bone cancer! There—again! Yesterday too he had felt it, searing down his calf and into his foot. And the day before. Yes, they would take him to the doctor, X-ray him, put him to bed, tell him lies, give him painkillers, and o
ne day when it got too excruciating, ship him off to the hospital and watch him waste away … But the pain settled in now, like something bubbling over a low flame. No, it was not cancer of the bone. It was only his sciatica.
But what did he expect sitting outside like this? The shoulders of his jacket were covered with snow; so were the toes of his boots. The first sheen of winter glowed on the paths and stones of the cemetery. The wind was down now. It was a cold, black night … and he was thinking, yes sir, he would have to pay attention to that sciatica, no more treating it like a joke. The smart thing was probably to take to a wheelchair for a month or so, so as to get the pressure off the sciatic nerve itself. That was Dr. Eglund’s advice two years ago, and maybe it wasn’t such a silly idea as it had seemed. A nice long rest. Throw an afghan over his knees, settle down into a nice sunny corner with the paper and the radio and his pipe, and whatever happened in the house, let it just roll right by him. Just concentrate on getting that sciatic nerve licked once and for all. Surely that is a right you have at seventy years of age, to wheel yourself off into another room …