Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  “It’s so unaesthetic—it’s such a pain in the neck. It’s so unspontaneous.”

  “And she romanticized them into a family of ten.”

  “Maybe I’m not pregnant. People miss whole months sometimes. If we can’t figure out how, then I’m probably just missing a whole month. Maybe it’s from working at a new job—”

  “We can figure out how. I can figure out how.”

  “It’s safe then! Four days at the beginning, four at the end. We always did that.”

  “We were lucky.”

  “It’s biologically impossible—”

  “They swim, Libby. They hide in nooks and crannies, waiting.”

  “I just know I’m not. I can’t be. We are careful.”

  “Libby, you’re careful when you use that thing the way it’s supposed to be used, when you don’t skimp on the goddam jelly.”

  “The jelly’s expensive. The jelly costs two dollars a tube!”

  “So what! Did I ever say anything? Did I ever say don’t buy more jelly? Buy it! Use it! Squander it! That’s what it’s for!”

  “But the diaphragm does all the work.”

  “Oh Libby.”

  “Well, I can’t stand it! I have to put it in me! Right in the midst of everything and I have to stop and fill that plunger! I hate it!”

  “And what do you prefer—this?”

  “They don’t have anything to do with one another. I mean I do use the goo and I do use the thing and we are careful.”

  “Go in the bathroom. Go take a look. Let’s not argue.”

  “I just looked.”

  “Anything?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s not really mean?”

  “Well—nothing. But I’m sure tomorrow. I have a pimple on my forehead and one starting under my chin. I break out—”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, I used to.”

  “Libby, what are we going to do?”

  “I’ll be all right. I know I will.”

  “It was that first day, Libby.”

  “But it’s so wonderful when I don’t have to worry about anything, when we just do it whenever we want, without all that crap.”

  “How are we going to afford you pregnant? How are we going to afford a baby?”

  “But people miss whole months—”

  “I don’t see what good it’ll do.”

  “The good is we’ll know, one way or another.”

  “We’ll know anyway, if I miss another month. I don’t see what’s to be gained.”

  “What’s to be gained is we’ll know. Am I making myself clear, Lib, or do I have to say it again? We’ll know.”

  “The test costs ten dollars.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right. This room costs that much a week. I may menstruate tomorrow and then it would just be ten bucks out the window.”

  “So let it be out the window.”

  “But, Paul, suppose I am pregnant. For ten dollars you can probably buy diapers—we’ll need the ten dollars. Can’t we wait? Can’t we forget it for a while? We come home from work and that’s all we talk about. I don’t see you all day and that’s all we ever talk about.”

  “We’ll have the test and well know and then we can talk about other things.”

  “So we’ll know. Then what! When we know it’ll be worse!”

  “It’ll be better.”

  “It’ll be worse, Paul. It’ll be much worse.”

  “Paul, that’s not so. You misunderstood.”

  “Don’t please be a blockhead. We’ve got other things to think about.”

  “Honey, look up at me. Honey, positive means the rabbits responded positively. That I’m not pregnant.”

  “Libby, the guy on the phone said positive.”

  “And that’s what I mean. Positive. Negative would mean I’m pregnant. Doesn’t that make sense?”

  “Negative means no.”

  “No I’m pregnant, or no I’m not pregnant?”

  “No you’re pregnant.”

  “That’s right. No would mean I was pregnant. The test is to see whether you’re not pregnant. No means you are. Yes you’re not. The result is positive, though. Positive is good.”

  “Libby, you’re getting things hopelessly confused.”

  “You are. Paul, I’m sure. It’s negative you don’t want. I knew I wasn’t pregnant, honey. I just knew I couldn’t be.”

  “But you are. You’re negative—”

  “No, no, Paul, positive. You see, you’re confused.”

  “Well, stop jabbering a minute! You’re positive, right? They take your urine, they shoot it in the rabbit—”

  “Rabbits.”

  “Rabbits! All right. Then they wait for some kind of reaction. If the reaction is positive, you’re pregnant. If it’s negative, you’re not. You were positive.”

  “Paul, they give the shot to the rabbits. If I’m all right, normal, then they react positively. Doesn’t that make sense to you? If I want to see if you’re all right, and I give you a shot and get a negative reaction, well, that’s bad.”

  “Libby, you can’t even add a column of figures. You’re being illogical.”

  “You are. You’re not thinking. Positive is good.”

  “Lib … Lib, I’ll call the guy again. If you want me to I’ll call him and ask.”

  “I just know it’s so.”

  “I’ll call him.”

  His job on the assembly line was to unite the half of the hinge on the trunk with the half of the hinge on the body. He had dreaded it all beforehand; whenever he had had to contemplate the change coming up in his life, he had to breathe deeply to keep control. During the week before he had dropped out of graduate school—while he and Libby were preparing to leave Ann Arbor—he had had claustrophobic dreams about being locked in small rooms, about submarines and strangulation. Beside him, Libby had moaned in deep dreams of her own. But now during the eight endless hours on the line, he was visited with an unexpected solemnity and calm. The submarine quality was there all right, the underwater lifeless feeling, as though none of this was happening in time; nevertheless the actual experience worked on him like a tonic. In place of dread came a sense of righteousness. He had at last raised a hand to the cruel world. Hinging a trunk to a car was not much, but it was something; he was earning a living. It did not even upset him—as he had been sure it would—to have Libby waiting on tables over in the executive dining room of the Chevrolet plant. At first she had been dumbstruck at having had to leave school in the middle of her senior year; but now each night when she came home from work she soaked her feet with a very gallant smile on her face. Truly, she inspired him—which did not necessarily mean that he had developed a sentimental attachment to their circumstances. Out of his hatred for their clammy basement room on West Grand Street, he had developed a hatred for all Detroit.

  In the room itself, the lights had to be turned on even during the day. The yellow from the bulbs penetrated their furniture and curtains so as to bring out every inch of ugliness. Only old people moved about in the other rooms of the three-story house, and when they hawked up mucus into the sinks, the sounds carried through the thin walls. Ancient men urinated in the bathroom down the hall, leaving the door open, leaning on their canes; often they were sick in the night, and those noises carried too. Surely if Paul had had a rich uncle and that uncle had died leaving him a fortune, he would have quit on the spot and moved the two of them back to Ann Arbor, where he had left two term papers half-written. But since no such uncle was alive even to expire, since even his possessionless father had dispossessed him, he accepted his fate, and seemed to derive from it a feeling of resiliency. If such lousy circumstances as these couldn’t humble him, what could? For all the beans they prepared on the hot plate, and for all the movies they decided they couldn’t afford to see, he felt his love for Libby flowering again. They did not argue as often as they had in Ann Arbor when they had begun to feel the fin
ancial squeeze. Perhaps they were only too exhausted now at night to sink their teeth in one another—but even the exhaustion proved something.

  But when Paul called him back, the pharmacist assured him that positive meant only one thing: Libby was positively pregnant. Immediately Paul’s trunk-hinging stopped soothing him because it stopped engaging him. Cars fled past him as he added and subtracted in his head. The doctor plus the hospital plus the circumcision plus diapers, powders, formulas …

  In how many months would she have to stop work?

  How much are maternity clothes? Are they necessary?

  How much would an apartment cost? Could they possibly stay on in the room? Instead of two years servitude in Detroit as planned, would they now be stuck here forever? A baby carriage plus a bassinet—

  In the midst of his calculations, a passing auto frame nearly chopped off his left hand. He was spurting blood from the wrist when they rushed him to the infirmary. The doctor there, a curly-haired dark Italian, gave him the name of the abortionist.

  He was home by noon. He had wanted to stay on for the afternoon, but the doctor said that considering everything (they had discussed everything for some fifteen minutes) he should go home, if only to pull himself together. With the light off he lay in bed and turned over and over in his hands the small slip of paper upon which the doctor had written a very few words. Paul studied the name: Dr. Thomas Smith. An alias? With his picture in the Post Office? He fell asleep finally, having first imagined various unsavory faces over Dr. Smith’s blood-stained white jacket.

  Levy awakened him. Mr. Levy never smiled but was very friendly; it was only out of Libby’s softness for all those with canes and crutches that he had become an acquaintance of theirs. Paul had to admit that being able to say hello to somebody in the corridors did make the place less depressing. However, Levy—sunburned, bald, hawk-nosed—did not strike Paul as someone to particularly feel sorry for; he was too peppy, and furthermore they suspected that he tried to peek at Libby in the toilet.

  Now Levy’s face was in the doorway. “How come you’re home? I thought something was up.”

  “I cut my hand. They gave me the afternoon off.”

  “Whew! What a cut!” said Levy, advancing. “You got a bandage like a mummy.”

  “I’m all right.” He sat up, shaking the grogginess out of his head; the doctor had given him some numbing drug. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Want me to make you a little Lipton’s tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “It don’t cost extra to boil water,” Levy said, spreading his fingers across the chest of his oversized, monogrammed shirt. “The tea-bag is a treat from me. You got a pretty wife.”

  The remark irritated him. Levy was forever dropping his cane outside the bathroom keyhole in the morning, while Libby was brushing her teeth; sometimes it took him up to five minutes to retrieve it. So far they had been willing to believe the old man the victim of stiff knees and an arthritic back; if they did not jump to accuse him, it was because they felt sorely how unused they were to the inconveniences of rooming house living, of which Levy was only one. When Levy complimented him, Paul tried to smile—and the old man went off for the tea.

  It seemed for a while that he would not return; when he did, carrying a tray with cups and kettle, he was accompanied by a pal.

  “This is Korngold. Lives next door.”

  Korngold shook his head as though he were not Korngold and lived in India. But his hands shook too; everything shook, poor man. Where he wasn’t brownish liver spots he was white as ashes. And his weight was not in keeping with his height; he was underfed, and leaning on his cane (not gold-headed like Levy’s) he looked stretched and dried. It was truly pathetic to hear him get out, “Don’t rise, please. It’s a pleasure, my deep pleasure,”

  Paul moved off the bed, feeling invaded. There was a typewriter on the little oilcloth-covered table, and a pile of papers; recently he had begun to try writing stories. Levy lifted typewriter and papers and set them on the floor In their place he set down his afternoon tea.

  “Let’s pull ourselves up here,” he said. “Korngold, take off your coat. No wonder you cough up phlegm left and right.”

  “I cough up phlegm ’cause that Nazi hands out heat in a teaspoon. My chest kills me night and day.”

  “Then move. This room is a gem, was empty a whole month. I told you, Move in, Korngold.”

  “I was thinking. It’s a ten-dollar place. I don’t have to live fancy. Next door is seven fifty.”

  “You was thinking, all right. Now these lovely people moved in and you still live by that son of a bitch.” Levy turned and almost bowed to Paul. “Sugar?”

  Still groggy, with the feeling that he had mislaid something—that he was, in fact, the thing mislaid—Paul said yes, please.

  “I take plain,” Korngold said.

  Levy said, “I know how you take.”

  “Lemon sticks in my heart,” explained Korngold.

  They each pulled a chair up to the table. It was too late to remove a slip of Libby’s that was draped on the back of Levy’s chair; Levy sank heavily down onto the white silky cloth. Korngold in the meantime was lifting his cup to his mouth. Three sips, and his shirt front and chin were soaked.

  Levy said, “Mr. Herz, Korngold would like a word with you.”

  “It’s a long story,” Korngold said slowly. “It involves a lot of son of a bitches, a lot of crooks and bastards. Let me finish my tea.”

  “He had a wife,” said Levy, “was nobody’s business.”

  “Only half of it,” Korngold murmured. “A son, tell him about my son.”

  “And a son to boot.” Levy caught a glimpse of the slip over his shoulder.

  “And,” said Korngold, swallowing hard, “a daughter-in-law. A bastard like that you shouldn’t leave out.”

  “Three such people picking at one man’s insides,” Levy said. “The son is on the inside with the Nike missile, coining it, we understand. Lives like a pagan, everything fancy. Korngold freezes by that Heinie son of a bitch, counting pennies, and the son has houses, we understand, all over Florida. Plus a daughter in Smith College.”

  “Europe he’s been to twice.”

  “Europe twice,” Levy repeated. “I’m coming to Europe under waste.” He opened and closed his palms. “Korngold’s life has been ruined by the serpent’s tongue. Disappreciation from all sides. Seventy years in January.”

  “Aaach,” said Korngold, “and its worse than that. Even going to the toilet is a terrible production.”

  “Korngold’s plan is a letter.”

  “Two letters,” said Korngold softly, “is the plan …”

  “A letter first to the son,” said Levy, very businesslike. “What kind of son are you and so forth.”

  “Maybe a photograph,” Korngold said, his empty cup in his gaunt hand rattling in the saucer. “Let him see my condition,” he said, a little proudly.

  Levy considered the suggestion for hardly a moment. “That depends,” he said. “But a sharp note, you know?”

  “Then the other letter …” Korngold reminded him, touching Levy’s sleeve.

  “Then a letter to the Senate. What kind of man is this who we put secrets in his hands, should guide and steer our country, and has no respect for his father.”

  “Let them do an investigation,” said Korngold, “he thinks he’s such a foolproof big shot.”

  “Give him the works where it hurts,” Levy said, and rose halfway out of the chair, his hands on Libby’s slip. “But the second letter we don’t send right off now. Give him a chance to make an offer.”

  “He don’t deserve it.”

  “Korngold, turn the other cheek to the son of a bitch. I’m telling you what’s practical. I’m talking about keeping a hot iron for striking over his head!” He sat back down and leaned toward Paul. “Korngold is a sick man in need of help. Has got one suit this fellow, and for a dry cleaning sits around for a week in his bathrobe, which also ain
’t particularly brand new. What kind of son is that when Russia has a smash head-on program in science?” He did not even wait to be understood; self-righteously he said, “I think us and the Senate may see eye to eye!”

  “Exactly right,” said Korngold, almost weeping.

  “Korngold is in need of a companion.”

  The needy man looked at Paul for some word. When none came, he smiled. “A man like Levy can run two lives. A first-rate business head. A sharp wonderful man.”

  Levy hooked his fingers into his belt buckle, monogrammed ALL. “So you’ll write the letter?” he asked.

  “To whom?” Paul said. “What?”

  “The son. I brought paper what’s got my name on it. Typed,” said Levy, “would be very impressive.”

  “I don’t get exactly what you want,” Paul said.

  Levy extracted a folded paper from his coat pocket. “Here’s a facsimile. Just fix my contractions is probably all that’s needed.” Though addressing Paul, he had spoken his last words toward Korngold, who seemed to brighten.

  “He was some attorney in his day,” Korngold told Paul. “Got gangsters off the hook. How can we miss?”

  The letter in his hand—Levy over his shoulder—Korngold begging solace directly in his eyes—how could he protect himself? He read.

  Dear Mr. Korngold:

  Mr. Max Korngold, your father, has asked for me to contact you on the subject: his condition. What kind of son could leave a man seventy in January to live so? For twenty-five a week life would improve for him by way of a companion. He needs looking after for such simple incidents as toilets and meals even bed sheets are a problem. I am active with the Senator from Michigan and could pull strings by a full scale investigation of what you are up to in your private life—your spending for one thing. My secretary has ready in her hands a letter that the Senate will see eye to eye with me on when I send it special delivery. Why not be a good son and spare us all a mess? If not you will pull down your world out of selfishness and greed. Gone will be your homes up and down Florida. What is twenty-five a week to a man like you? Answer right now or my secretary will call the Senate in the morning long distance no expense spared.