by Philip Roth
To run away to Ponce to live with Sheila after Merry disappeared—no, Sheila had made him come to his senses and recover his rectitude and go back to his wife and as much of their life as remained intact, to the wife even a mistress knew he could not wound, let alone desert, in such a crisis. Yet these other two were going to pull it off. He knew it the moment he saw them in the kitchen. Their pact. Orcutt dumps Jessie and she dumps me and the house is for them. She thinks our catastrophe is over and so she is going to bury the past and start anew—face, house, husband, all new. Try as you will, you can't get under my skin tonight. Not tonight.
They are the outlaws. Orcutt, said Dawn to her husband, lived completely off what his family once was—well, she was living off what she'd just become. Dawn and Orcutt: two predators.
The outlaws are everywhere. They're inside the gates.
9
HE HAD a phone call. One of the girls came out of the kitchen to tell him. She whispered, "It's from I think Czechoslovakia."
He took the call in Dawn's downstairs study, where Orcutt had already moved the large cardboard model of the new house. After leaving Jessie on the terrace with the Swede and his parents and the drinks, Orcutt must have gone back to the van to get the model and carried it into Dawn's study and set it up on her desk before proceeding into the kitchen to help her shuck the corn.
Rita Cohen was on the line. She knew about Czechoslovakia because "they" were following him: they'd followed him earlier in the summer to the Czech consulate; they'd followed him that afternoon to the animal hospital; they'd followed him to Merry's room, where Merry had told him there was no such person as Rita Cohen.
"How can you do this to your own daughter?" she asked.
"I've done nothing to my daughter. I went to see my daughter. You wrote and told me where she was."
"You told her about the hotel. You told her we didn't fuck."
"I did not mention any hotel. I don't know what this is all about."
"You are lying to me. You told your daughter you did not fuck me. I warned you about that. I warned you in the letter."
Directly in front of the Swede sat the model of the house. He could see now what he had not been able to envision from Dawn's explanations—exactly how the long shed roof let the light into the main hallway through the high row of windows running the length of the front wall. Yes, now he saw how the sun would arc through the southern sky and the light would wash—and how happy it seemed to make her just to say "wash" after "light"—wash over the white walls, thus changing everything for everyone.
The cardboard roof was detachable, and when he lifted it up he could look right into the rooms. All the interior walls were in place, there were doors and closets, in the kitchen there were cabinets, a refrigerator, a dishwasher, a range. Orcutt had gone so far as to install in the living room tiny pieces of furniture also fashioned out of cardboard, a library table by the western wall of windows, a sofa, end tables, an ottoman, two club chairs, a coffee table in front of a raised fireplace hearth that extended the width of the room. In the bedroom, across from the bay window, where there were the built-in drawers—Shaker drawers, Dawn called them—was the large bed, awaiting its two occupants. On the wall to either side of the headboard were built-in shelves for books. Orcutt had made some books and put them on the shelves, miniaturized books fashioned out of cardboard. They even had titles on them. He was good at all this. Better at this, thought the Swede, than at the painting. Yes, wouldn't life be so much less futile if we could do it at the scale of one-sixteenth inch to a foot? The only thing missing from the bedroom was a cardboard cock with Orcutt's name on it. Orcutt should have made a sixteenth-inch scale model of Dawn on her stomach, with her ass in the air and, from behind, his cock going in. It would have been nice for the Swede to have found that, too, while he stood over her desk, looking down at Dawn's cardboard dreaming and absorbing the fury of Rita Cohen.
What does Rita Cohen have to do with Jainism? What does one thing have to do with the other? No, Merry, it does not hang together. What does any of this ranting have to do with you, who will not even do harm to water? Nothing hangs together—none of it is linked up. It is only in your head that it is linked up. Nowhere else is there any logic.
She's been tracking Merry, trailing her, tracing her, but they're not connected and they never were! There's the logic!
"You've gone too far. You go too far. You think you are running the show, D-d-daddy? You are not running anything!"
But whether he was or wasn't running the show no longer mattered, because if Merry and Rita Cohen were connected, in any way, if Merry had lied to him about not knowing Rita Cohen, then she might as easily have been lying about being taken in by Sheila after the bombing. If that was so, when Dawn and Orcutt ran off to live in this cardboard house, he and Sheila could run off to Puerto Rico after all. And if, as a result, his father dropped dead, well, they'd just have to bury him. That's what they'd do: bury him deep in the ground.
(He was all at once remembering the death of his grandfather—what it did to his father. The Swede was a little kid, seven years old. His grandfather had been rushed to the hospital the evening before, and his father and his uncles sat at the old man's bedside all night long. When his father arrived home it was seven-thirty in the morning. The Swede's grandfather had died. His father got out of the car, went as far as the front steps of the house, and then just sat himself down. The Swede watched him from behind the living room curtains. His father did not move, even when the Swede's mother came out to comfort him. He sat without moving for over an hour, all the time leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and his face invisible in his hands. There was such a load of tears inside his head that he had to hold it like that in his two strong hands to prevent it from tumbling off of him. When he was able to raise the head up again, he got back in the car and drove to work.)
Is Merry lying? Is Merry brainwashed? Is Merry a lesbian? Is Rita the girlfriend? Is Merry running the whole insane thing? Are they out to do nothing but torture me? Is that the game, the entire game, to torture and torment me?
No, Merry's not lying—Merry is right. Rita Cohen does not exist. If Merry believes it, I believe it. He did not have to listen to somebody who did not exist. The drama she'd constructed did not exist. Her hateful accusations did not exist. Her authority did not exist, her power. If she did not exist, she could not have any power. Could Merry have these religious beliefs and Rita Cohen? You had only to listen to Rita Cohen howling into the phone to know that she was someone to whom there was no sacred form of life on earth or in heaven. What does she have to do with self-starvation and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King? She does not exist because she does not fit in. These are not even her words. These are not a young girl's words. There are no grounds for these words. This is an imitation of someone. Someone has been telling her what to do and what to say. From the beginning this has all been an act. She's an act; she did not arrive at this by herself. Someone is behind her, someone corrupt and cynical and distorted who sets these kids to do these things, who strips a Rita Cohen and a Merry Levov of everything good that was their inheritance and lures them into this act.
"You are going to take her back to all your dopey pleasures? Take her from her holiness into that shallow, soulless excuse for a life? Yours is the lowest species on this earth—don't you know that yet? Are you really able to believe that you, with your conception of life, you basking unpunished in the crime of your wealth, have anything whatsoever to offer this woman? Just exactly what? A life of bad faith lived to the hilt, that's what, the ultimate in bloodsucking propriety! Don't you know who this woman ¿5? Don't you realize what this woman has become? Don't you have any inkling of what she is in communion with?" The perennial indictment of the middle class, from somebody who did not exist; the celebration of his daughter's degradation and the excoriation of his class: Guilty!—according to somebody who did not exist. "You are going to take her away from me? You, who felt sick when you saw her? S
ick because she refuses to be captured in your shitty little moral universe? Tell me, Swede—how did you get so smart?"
He hung up. Dawn has Orcutt, I have Sheila, Merry has Rita or she doesn't have Rita—Can Rita stay for dinner? Can Rita stay overnight? Can Rita wear my boots? Mom, can you drive me and Rita to the village?—and my father drops dead. If it has to be, it has to be. He got over his father's dying, I'll get over my father's dying. I'll get over everything. I do not care what meaning it has or what meaning it doesn't have, whether it fits or whether it doesn't fit—they are not dealing with me anymore. I don't exist. They are dealing now with an irresponsible person; they are dealing with someone who does not care. Can Rita and I blow up the post office? Yes. Whatever you want, dear. And whoever dies, dies.
Madness and provocation. Nothing recognizable. Nothing plausible. No context in which it hangs together. He no longer hangs together. Even his capacity for suffering no longer exists.
A great idea takes hold of him: his capacity for suffering no longer exists.
But that idea, however great, did not make it out of the room with him. Never should have hung up—never. She'd make him pay a huge price for that. Six foot three, forty-six years old, a multimillion-dollar business, and broken for a second time by a ruthless, pint-sized slut. This is his enemy and she does exist. But where did she come from? Why does she write me, phone, strike out at me—what does she have to do with my poor broken girl? Nothing!
Once again she leaves him soaked with sweat, his head a ringing globe of pain; the entire length of his body is suffused with a fatigue so extreme that it feels like the onset of death, and yet his enemy evinces little more substance than a mythical monster. Not a shadow enemy exactly, not nothing—but what then? A courier. Yes. Does her number on him, indicts him, exploits him, eludes him, resists him, brings him to a total bewildered standstill by saying whatever mad words come into her head, encircles him in her lunatic cliches and is in and out like a courier. But a courier from whom? From where?
He knows nothing about her. Except that she expresses perfectly the stupidity of her kind. Except that he is still her villain, that her hatred of him is resolute. Except that she's now twenty-seven. Not a kid anymore. A woman. But grotesquely fixed in her position. Behaves like a mechanism of human parts, like a loudspeaker, human parts assembled as a loudspeaker designed to produce shattering sound, a sound that is disruptive and maddening. After five years the change is only in the direction of more of the same sound. The deterioration of Merry comes as Jainism; the deterioration of Rita Cohen comes as more. He knows nothing about her except that she needs more than ever to be in charge—to be more and more and more unexpected. He knows he is dealing with an unbending destroyer, with something big in someone very small. Five years have passed. Rita is back. Something is up. Something unimaginable is about to happen again.
He would never get across the line that was tonight. Ever since leaving Merry in that cell, behind that veil, he has known that he's no longer a man who can endlessly forestall being crushed.
I am done with craving and selfhood. Thanks to you.
Someone opened the study door. "Are you all right?" It was Sheila Salzman.
"What do you want?"
She pulled the door shut behind her and came into the room. "You looked ill at dinner. Now you look even worse."
Over Dawn's desk was a framed photograph of Count. All the blue ribbons Count won were pinned to the wall on either side of the picture. It was the same picture of Count that used to appear in Dawn's annual ad in the Simmental breeder's magazine. Merry had been the one to choose the slogan for the ad from the three Dawn had proposed to them in the kitchen after dinner one night, COUNT CAN DO WONDERFUL THINGS FOR YOUR HERD. IF EVER THERE WAS A BULL TO USE, IT'S COUNT. A BULL UPON WHICH A HERD CAN BE BUILT. Merry at first argued for a suggestion of her own— you can count on count—but after Dawn and the Swede each made the case against it, Merry chose a bull upon which a herd can be built, and that became the slogan for Arcady Breeders for as long as Count was Dawn's stylish superstar.
On the desk there used to be a snapshot of Merry, age thirteen, standing at the head of their long-bodied prize bull, the Golden Certified Meat Sire, holding him by a leather lead shank clipped into his nose ring. As a 4-H kid she'd been taught how to lead and walk and wash and handle a bull, first a yearling, but then the big boys, and Dawn had taught her how to show Count—to hold her hand up on the strap so that his head was up and to keep a bit of tension on the lead and move it a little with her hand, first so as to show Count off to advantage but also to be in communication with him so that he'd listen a little more than he might if her hand was slack and down at her side. Even though Count wasn't difficult or arrogant, Dawn taught Merry never to trust him. He could sometimes have a strong attitude, even with Merry and Dawn, the two people he was most used to in the world. In just that photograph—a picture he'd loved in the same way he'd loved the picture that had appeared on page one of the Denvilk-Randolph Courier of Dawn in her blazer at the fireplace mantel—he could see all that Dawn had patiently taught Merry and all that Merry had eagerly learned from her. But it was gone, as was the sentimental memento of Dawn's childhood, a photograph of the charming wooden bridge down at Spring Lake that led across the lake to St. Catherine's, a picture taken in the spring sunshine, with the azaleas in bloom at either end of the bridge and, resplendent in the background, the weathered copper dome of the grand church itself, where, as a kid, she had liked to imagine herself a bride in a white bridal gown. All there was on Dawn's desk now was Orcutt's cardboard model.
"Is this the new house?" Sheila asked him.
"You bitch."
She did not move; she looked directly back at him but did not speak or move. He could take Count's picture off the wall and bludgeon her over the head with it and she would still be unruffled, still somehow deprive him of a heartfelt response. Five years earlier, for four months, they had been lovers. Why tell him the truth now if she was able to withhold it from him even then?
"Leave me alone," he said.
But when she turned to do as he gruffly requested, he grabbed her arm and swung her flat against the closed door. "You took her in." The force of the rage was in no way concealed by the whisper that rasped up from his throat. Her skull was locked between his hands. Her head had been held in his powerful grip before but never, never like this. "You took her in!"
"Yes."
"You never told me!"
She did not answer.
"I could kill you!" he said, and, immediately upon saying it, let her go.
"You've seen her," Sheila said. Her hands neatly folded before her. That nonsensical calm, only moments after he had threatened to kill her. All that ridiculous self-control. Always that ridiculous, careful, self-controlled thinking.
"You know everything," he snarled.
"I know what you've been through. What can be done for her?"
"By you? Why did you let her go? She went to your house. She'd blown up a building. You knew all about it—why didn't you call me, get in touch with me?"
"I didn't know about it. I found out later that night. But when she came to me she was just beside herself. She was upset and I didn't know why. I thought something had happened at home."
"But you knew within the next few hours. How long was she with you? Two days, three days?"
"Three. She left on the third day."
"So you knew what happened."
"I found out later. I couldn't believe it, but—"
"It was on television."
"But she was in my house by then. I had already promised her that I would help her. And that there was no problem she could tell me that I couldn't keep to myself. She asked me to trust her. That was before I watched the news. How could I betray her then? I'd been her therapist, she'd been my client. I'd always wanted to do what was in her best interest. What was the alternative? For her to get arrested?"
"Call me. That was the alternative. Call
her father. If you had gotten to me right there and then, and said, 'She's safe, don't worry about her,' and then not let her out of your sight—"
"She was a big girl. How can you not let her out of your sight?"
"You lock her in the house and keep her there."
"She's not an animal. She's not like a cat or a bird that you can keep in a cage. She was going to do whatever she was going to do. We had a trust, Seymour, and violating her trust at that point ... I wanted her to know that there was someone in this world she could trust."
"Ar that moment, trust was not what she needed!. She needed me!"
"But I was sure that your house was where they'd be looking. What good was calling you? I couldn't drive her out here. I even started thinking they would know she would be at my house. All of a sudden it seemed like it was the most obvious place for her to be. I started thinking my phone was bugged. How could I call you?"
"You could have somehow made contact."
"When she first came she was agitated, something had gone wrong, she was just yelling about the war and her family. I thought something terrible had happened at home. Something terrible had happened to her. She wasn't the same, Seymour. Something very wrong had happened to that girl. She was talking as if she hated you so. I couldn't imagine ... but sometimes you start to believe the worst about people. I think maybe that's what I was trying to figure out when we were together."