Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  I saw no girl, however, only a huddle of men—Frank Tozier, Larry Morgan, Victor Honingfeld, and now Cyril Houghton and Swanson. Frank was moving his head—laughing—and then when his chin flicked back I caught sight of Libby within the center of the circle. Her cheeks were on fire, and with one long white hand she was tapping her forehead; then the hand shot above her head in a kind of Gallic explosion—her lips moved, hesitated, moved, and the men leaned back and laughed again. All at once she turned in upon herself, hung her head and became shy. But the next moment she was tilting an ear toward Cyril, who was stroking his mustache and doubtless constructing some double-entendre for Libby’s pleasure. Her throat and neck were bare, and her nose in profile was a stately appendage—its elaborate bony edge, touched by light from the Christmas tree, called out for a finger to be drawn down along it. Her hair was parted in the middle and pulled back off her forehead, and her dress was of red satin. I was sure I had seen it before, but couldn’t remember the occasion. Later in the afternoon I recalled that she had written about it in a letter.

  “She looks fine,” I said to Paul, while Peggy leaned backwards to counter some remark of Bill Lake’s. “She looks very well.”

  “She’s feeling fine,” Paul said. Peggy leaned forward to rejoin us, and it was as though Paul and I had exchanged a message in code, the meaning of which I hadn’t quite understood.

  Across the room Frank Tozier was demonstrating a Latin-American dance step. He whipped his butt around with professional agility, and his feet went patter-patter-wheee on the Spigliano rug. Libby’s hands were clasped together before her chest and her eyes were on Frank’s speedy Italian shoes. When he went into a variation of the step, she moved to the side, tried the original little step by herself, failed, and with a hopeless shrug, abandoned a career on the stage. Almost at once Victor Honingfeld was alongside her, and, taking her elbow, he began his nervous and excited chatter. Libby suddenly looked as though bad news had just come her way. Victor made a circular motion with one hand, and then, the noise of the party dipping for a moment, Libby’s voice, pleading, exasperated, came across the room:

  “He’s not a homosexual writer! How can you say that!”

  Peggy tugged my hand. “Oh listen to him. All that has to happen is Tom Sawyer shakes Huck Finn’s hand, and Mark Twain is a queer!”

  I said to Paul, “Victor’s psychoanalysis may reshape the whole nineteenth century—”

  “It makes me so damn angry,” Peggy said, and she was moving across the room to join the debate.

  Paul and I stood sipping our drinks, looking not at each other but around the room. Given the shape and size of the party, our silence would not have seemed unusual at all, I suppose, had we been either strangers or friends. But since it seemed that our fate was to be something in between, the silence eventually became more than I could bear. I did not see that matters might be improved, however, by my walking off. “You know,” I said, “I’m sorry about that outburst. I was going to telephone—”

  There was no way of sounding casual. Paul looked at me attentively enough, but he had his amazing faculty for taciturnity to fall back on, and he seemed never to be beyond using it. I waited nevertheless, expecting that he might have some generous and forgiving word to say; I was willing again to be the one who had to be forgiven. It was a condition I seemed repeatedly to find myself in, and not only with the Herzes; I seemed to have to be forgiven even when I myself felt somehow wronged.

  “I didn’t know about Libby’s condition,” I said, seeing that he wasn’t going to help me in what I had begun. “I didn’t realize that her kidney disorder meant she couldn’t …”

  For a moment it seemed as though Paul would not finish my sentence for me. Then he said, “She can bear a child; the doctors”—the doctors again—“feel it wouldn’t be safe for her, however, if she did.” Then, significantly, he added, “That’s all.”

  “I don’t mean to interfere,” I replied, “in what isn’t my business.”

  “I understand,” Paul said; while from across the room, I heard Libby saying, “But I don’t care about his life—it’s his work, Victor.”

  And Paul was trying to smile at me. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ve decided anyway, you see, to adopt a baby.”

  “Yes?”

  “So it’s really all right,” he said, but there his smile failed him.

  “Fine.” I was peculiarly bewildered by what Paul had announced. “That’s wonderful.”

  “You won’t say anything. I’d appreciate that.”

  “Of course not.”

  Silence followed. “I mean,” Paul said, and now he looked very fatigued with me, as though it was we two who had been living together for years, “to Libby.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me for whatever mistakes—”

  “We all make mistakes,” he said, sharply.

  “I suppose,” I said, “that’s what helps us to be generous to one another. That all of us make them.” I had to leave the room then, for I was full of emotion, and I did not know how it might express itself. It was good news I had heard—what anyone would have wanted for the Herzes—and yet it was not to good news that I seemed to be reacting. I went out into the Spigliano hallway, unable to say to Paul the very last thought that had crossed my mind: I hope this can make Libby happy.

  “This is Michelle Spigliano, and this is Stella Spigliano, and this is Doctor McDougall, girls, one of Daddy’s teachers.”

  “Merry Christmas, Doctor McDougall!”

  From down the hall I heard Sam say, “Well, isn’t that something, isn’t that nice.” A moment later he was slapping me on the back. “How are you, boy? I called you last week and you didn’t answer. I thought, poor fella, must be sick as a dog. You need anything now? You feeling all right?”

  “I’m much better, Sam.”

  “We old bachelors have to stick together, huh? Okay, Patricia, where’s the cider—” and he and Pat went off to the living room. The Spigliano girls took their seats again, one on either side of the door. I was about to ask them to bring my coat and hat out of hiding when Libby came in from the living room.

  I went up to her, and though I did not take her in my arms, my heart was beating as though I had. She looked up at me with her flushed face; I knew that she had watched me leave the room and had followed in order that we could be alone. My heart was beating so because I thought there was something very crucial she was going to say to me, or I was going to say to her.

  But I told her simply that she was looking very well.

  She answered, “Thank you. I hope you’re better. No one ever really thinks of Gabe as being sick.”

  I let the remark remain unanswered. “I want to be straight with you, Libby,” I said, “I’ve never meant to tease—”

  “That? Oh, it was nothing.” She wouldn’t look at me.

  “You should know I went to see Paul’s parents in Brooklyn.”

  She was startled for no more than half a second; flatly she said, “Thank you very much. That was kind of you.” She smiled then, as though I were Sam McDougall, or one of the Spigliano children. “Excuse me, will you?”

  She went off to wherever she had been intending to go in the first place.

  I behaved badly—with even less wisdom—from then on. I drank too much, and my voice carried, and finally I was putting my arm around Peggy Moberly, which one hasn’t the right to do unless one intends afterwards to lift her up and carry her over a threshold.

  “Why don’t you ever call me?” Peggy asked. “Why do I give the impression that I’m only interested in books?”

  “You don’t give that impression at all, Peg.”

  “You’re a cruel man,” she said, but she took off her glasses anyway. “Don’t you ever want to take me to the movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to take me to dinner tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where will we go?”

  Bill Lake was performing a Cossack dance
in the center of the room. Squatting, arms crossed, head up, he snapped his long legs in and out while the circle that had gathered around him clapped in time. “Hey! Ha! Hey! Ha!” The little Spigliano girls giggled in the doorway. In the corner, Charleen Carlisle and her fiancé were arguing … I should have married Charleen. I should have married Peggy.

  “I should marry you, Peg.”

  “Oh don’t be cruel with me, will you, Gabe?”

  “I’m not being cruel. I’m being nice. Can’t anybody tell the difference?”

  “You know, if you haven’t been feeling well, you shouldn’t drink too much.”

  To that I shook my head. “Not so.”

  “Maybe we should go to have dinner now.”

  “Maybe we should get married.”

  “Gabe, you’re being awful! What’s the matter with you!” She shook a fist at me—spectacles poked out at either end—and left.

  Of course, there was no excuse. We all put in a few good reprehensible days in life—exclusive, that is, of the long-range cruelties—and this I suppose was one of mine. Later on, the party had thinned out—John had performed his folk dance, and we were out of liverwurst and down to plain rye rounds—and I was dancing with Peggy. I kissed her neck, a sheer piece of son-of-a-bitchery.

  “Gabe,” she said, “don’t you be mean to me. Be good to me, Gabe.”

  I held her tight, crushing what little she had against me, and we spun past Pat Spigliano, who was saying to her partner, Larry Morgan—

  “Women are much more sexually excitable over thirty-five, of course—”

  We danced on, two close bodies, two distant spirits. I shall catalogue no further my various indecencies, except to add that after a while I began to sing the particularly weighty lines of certain popular songs into Peggy’s lonely ear.

  We settled finally in a chair near the Christmas tree. Peggy was saying, “I’ve always been interested in Judaism, even in the seventh grade—”

  As Peggy spoke, I saw my few adult years as a series of miscalculations, insincerities, and postures; either that, or I was unforgivably innocent.

  “Oh where,” I sang, “are all the nice Gentile boys.”

  “Gabe, shhhh—what are you talking about? Stop narrowing your eyes like that.”

  “You’re after our men.”

  “Oh Gabe, please cut it out. Please …” For Peggy’s purposes, I had to be either romantic or intelligent.

  “I should have married Doris Horvitz,” I said.

  “Now I’m not kidding—”

  I slid into a grumpy silence—Peggy, damn sweet fool, took my hand and stroked it—and listened to snatches of conversation from back of the Christmas tree. Could you believe it? He was talking about structure.

  “But,” answered Paul Herz, “the point is, John, that the student goes around thinking writing is like tapestry-weaving; a kind of construction work. As far as he can make out, it doesn’t have anything to do with life, with being human—”

  “I don’t”—John was chuckling—“know if it’s our duty to be teaching them, as you like to put it, to be human. I know it’s nice to be engagé—” he said facetiously, and I lost the rest in the crash of a glass on the far side of the room.

  Paul was saying, “—talk about form is an evasion—”

  “—as a critical method has a long history, I suppose, but for myself—”

  “—not talking about impressionism at all, for God’s sake!”

  “What else then?” John asked. “One has to do more than come into class and tell the student, Oh isn’t this wonderful, oh isn’t your heart all aquiver. I suppose to be a creative writer—”

  “Could you do me a favor and stop calling him that?” It was Libby speaking now.

  “I’m sorry. I thought he identified himself—”

  “Do you call Melville ‘a creative writer’?” she demanded. “Is that what you call Dostoevsky?”

  “I meant only to differentiate between those of us who are engaged in criticism—”

  “Well, the difference is obvious!” Libby said. “You don’t have to bother.”

  “Let’s go, Gabe,” Peggy was saying. “You need some food in your stomach. I’m going to get our coats.”

  “You take care of me, old Peg, my coat’s a—”

  “I know which is yours,” she said, smiling.

  I remained in my chair a moment, then rose and stretched and tried to clear my head. Back of the Christmas tree, through the branches and the tinsel and the lights, I saw Paul and Libby in profile.

  She was saying, “Paul, don’t fight with him.”

  “Let’s go home. Let’s get out of this fucking place.”

  “But I was having such a good time—”

  His hand went up and smoothed her cheek; then it passed down, still touching her. I saw his fingers move inside the neckline of her red dress. “Let’s go home, Libby.”

  I turned away. Scanning the room for a friend, I waved at Mona Meyerling, who saluted. Behind me, I heard Libby speak. “Yes yes—oh Paul—” Then she was racing right by me, one hand up to her fiery cheek, a very excited girl.

  And I was in the clutches of Pat Spigliano.

  “—yes, I have to,” I was saying.

  “And we didn’t even get a chance to talk.”

  “We’ll all get together soon,” I said.

  “We must. I keep telling John we have to get together with Gabe—we must have him over for a meal one night. Ahh, did you ever get together with that sweet Mrs.… you know, John’s older student. The waitress.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all get together again. She seemed like a very nice person. A very fine person. How is she doing?”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “Thanks for the party, Pat. It was a regular Spigliano party.”

  “We love giving them, Gabe,” she said, as John came over to us and Peggy appeared with our coats. Behind her was Libby, already in her familiar polo coat and kerchief. She was carrying Paul’s coat on her arm.

  “Goodbye,” Libby said from the doorway, where Paul now joined her. “Thank you, Mrs. Spigliano.”

  “Goodbye,” we all said, and the Herzes went out the door.

  Peggy couldn’t be discouraged from helping me into my coat. I had the feeling that all the people around me were winking at one another. John said, “Feeling sharp enough to drive?”

  “I’m going to leave that to the taxi driver,” I said. Everyone laughed heartily.

  “We love having you, Gabe,” Pat said. “We have to see more of Gabe,” she said to her husband, “and more of Peggy too.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. There was no need to go on, but I did. “I have to see more of Peggy myself.”

  Everyone smiled, and for the first time, because I was being allowed all the prerogatives of a drunk, I felt like one.

  “And we loved your friends,” Pat said. “The creative writer and his wife. They seem like a very nice bohemian couple. I think it’s beneficial for all of us to have a young couple like that around. Though she’s a very bohemian-looking girl, isn’t she? I said to John when he hired them, I’ll bet they’re beatniks, and well,” she said, raising a finger, “I wasn’t far from wrong. I wish they hadn’t felt so out of place.”

  “I guess they didn’t know everybody,” said Peggy, confused.

  “He’s a very off-beat fellow,” John said.

  “I suppose so,” I said, when everyone turned to me.

  “However,” Pat put in, “they seemed very nice.” We all agreed to that, and said our thank yous again. At the door the Spigliano little girls sped us on our way with a choral good night.

  Between the two high holly bushes that flanked the downstairs door, I slipped on the snow. My hat fell over my eyes and Peggy began to laugh. While she helped me to my feet, I saw Paul and Libby again. They were standing in front of the house next door; Paul was stopped in his tracks, and Libby was in front of him, but turned around and facing h
im. His hands were down in his pockets and his head inclined toward the walk.

  The night was cold and empty, and their voices carried. “What is it?” Libby was saying. “What is it? I thought—”

  “I do,” he said. “I do.”

  “What is it then?”

  “I’m all right.” He started walking.

  “Oh, your moods,” Libby said. Then, each with hands in pockets, they moved down the street and out of sight.

  Peggy and I had dinner at a little restaurant on the Near North Side, where there were shaded lamps on every table and the young man at the piano drank Shweppes water and played very softly songs like “Imagination” and “Long Ago and Far Away.” I continued drinking and Peggy’s eyes glistened just from intimacy alone. When the wine came, I caused a disproportionate amount of trouble over its temperature, which launched Peggy into apologizing for me to the waiter, the cigarette girl, and the people at the next table. Later we took a taxi back to the South Side. She held her glasses in her gloves all the way down the Outer Drive, and on the front porch of her rooming house I pushed into her lips with painless, moribund abandon.

  “Oh Gabe,” she moaned into my cold ear, “let’s not go too fast. Don’t make me fall for you too fast.”

  “Okay,” I said, and stumbled home.

  I waited as long as I could bear to, and then sometime after one o’clock I called.

  “Martha, it’s me. Martha, I’ve missed the hell out of you. I made a damn weak, silly error. I let everyone down, myself included. I’m not flying in the face of my instincts any more, Martha. I’m not turning off my fires any more. I’ll follow what I have to follow—I’m stopping being anxious, Martha—we make the laws, we do. I can’t keep being what I’ve been. I want to be happy, Martha. I want to be with you.”

  I stopped, and heard what I thought for a moment was something as noncommittal as a cough. But it was the beginning of tears. She said, “Oh, you’re drunk, baby—but come, come anyway.”