Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  “What about Daddy?” Cynthia asked.

  “Daddy has decided to live in Arizona. He decided that a long time ago. I don’t think that Daddy is a consideration here. He doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m saying, Cynthia.”

  “Is Gabe our new Daddy?” Markie asked.

  “He’s mother’s dearest dearest friend. He’s your dearest friend.”

  “Yes,” Markie said.

  “Okay?”

  “Will he sleep in bed with you?” Cynthia asked.

  In the kitchen I sat at the uncleared table, drinking my coffee; in the children’s room I heard Martha say that I would.

  “Where’s Arizona again?” Mark asked.

  “In the southwest of the United States. I showed you on the map.”

  Cynthia spoke next, her words a surprise. I did not expect that she would choose so quickly to be distracted. “What’s the capital?” she asked.

  “Tucson. Phoenix,” Martha said. “I’m not sure.”

  “What’s the capital of Illinois?” Cynthia asked.

  “Springfield.”

  “Why don’t they make it Chicago?” asked Cynthia.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

  “Gabe knows,” Markie said.

  “He probably does,” Martha said.

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t,” Cynthia said.

  “Well, it’s not important.”

  But it was; I pushed my chair away from the kitchen table and went into the children’s room, where the little lamp between the beds illuminated the wall upon which Martha’s kids had poured out all their talent and aspirations. In a dim light, the crayoned stick figures, the stick houses, and round radiant suns and gloomy moons had about them a charm and gaiety that at this particular moment had no effect upon the seriousness of my mood or mission. Cynthia was sitting up in bed, wearing over her pajamas one of her Christmas presents—a red Angora sweater; she was surrounded by her nurse’s kit, her Spanish doll, and the Monopoly set, upon which the first game had been played that afternoon by Martha, me, Cynthia, and Cynthia’s friend Stephanie. Mark’s head was on his pillow and his hands were tucked under his crisp sheets. He was looking very happy about being in bed. A wad of clay sat on the pillow beside his head, there because he had “made” it in the morning, and had bawled loud and long throughout the day whenever separation had been suggested. It had fallen into his soup at dinner, but now that was all forgotten.

  Martha stood by the window, hefty in a pair of faded dungarees, with her hair pulled into one long dramatic braid down her back. She was rocking on the outer edges of her blue sneakers, and her body was arranged in what I had come to think of as her posture: right hand on the chin, left hand just below the hip, fingers spread down and out over the can. Though she had earlier requested that I not be present for this scene—and though I had willingly agreed—she looked in my direction with a face upon which worry turned to relief, relief to hope. She smiled, a what-do-we-do-next smile, and sighed.

  “Do I or don’t I know what?” I asked.

  Cynthia said, “Why isn’t Chicago the capital?”

  “Of America?”

  “Of Illinois.”

  “That’s a tough question.” I looked over to where Markie lay in his neat little bed. “Probably,” I said, “because it gets too cold for a capital here. Capitals are where the big shots live; I suppose they like it warm. What do you think, Mark? Does it look warm outside to you?”

  He propped himself up on his elbows. “I can’t see. Mommy’s by the window.”

  Martha moved to the side; she looked at me as though I had announced I would now pull a rabbit from a hat, without even having a hat, let alone the rabbit.

  Snowflakes were tapping against the pane. “Does it?” I asked.

  “No,” Markie said, though he looked up at me willing to be corrected.

  “Does it to you?” I asked Cynthia.

  With a lofty sophistication, she said, “It’s snowing.” But for a flicker of a second she had almost smiled.

  “All right,” I said. “Who in his right mind would make this place a capital?”

  After a moment Cynthia spoke again. “Where are you going to sleep?”

  “With Martha,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Martha, moving now between their beds, “you should close your eyes, sweethearts. You had a very tiring day. Come on, Cyn, take off your sweater.”

  “I think I want to wear it.”

  “Honey, it’s brand new. You can wear it tomorrow.”

  “I want to wear it now!”

  Martha took my hand. “Wear it, Cynthia,” she said. “And go to sleep.” She leaned over and kissed each child. “Good night.”

  “Can Gabe kiss us?” Markie asked.

  “Sure,” his mother said.

  I leaned down and kissed Markie, who stuck his lips directly into mine. I put my lips to the cheek that Cynthia had turned toward me.

  “Good night, Cynthia,” I said. “You’ll have fuzzy dreams in that sweater.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Cynthia said; and Martha turned off the light.

  3

  “I loaned her a hundred,” Martha said.

  “And so is that what all this irritation with me is about?”

  “I’m not irritated with you.”

  “Because we can call them up, Martha. We can tell them not to come.”

  “What’s that have to do with anything? The roast is in the oven. We invited them. Let’s leave it that way.”

  “Then what is it, Martha?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is she going to do with the money? Are you going to get that money back?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Martha, sit down and forget those potatoes a minute.”

  “Your friends will be coming—”

  “And what’s this ‘my friends’ business? We discussed whom we would have. You went through all your friends, and you said you didn’t want any of them.”

  “Divorced women depress me. Please,” she said, “I have to finish here.”

  “What’s eating you? Sit down. What is it?”

  At last she looked directly at me. “Oh hell—I don’t have any money for the January rent.”

  “Sit down. You gave what’s-her-name, Theresa, the rent money?”

  She moved into a chair opposite me at the kitchen table, holding a spatula in her hand.

  “Most of it,” she answered.

  “Including what I gave you?”

  “Are you going to cause a fuss about that?”

  “I’m not causing a fuss over anything.”

  “Well, you only gave me forty bucks,” she said, “so obviously the other sixty was mine. And the rent’s a hundred and thirty, so I mean forty bucks doesn’t get me very far.”

  “We’ve been through all this. Didn’t Sissy give you forty a month?”

  “I didn’t ask you to give me that money. You don’t have to give me a penny.”

  “Who said you asked me?”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “All right, fine. I told you I’d pay Sissy’s share.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and got up and went over to the sink. “Sissy only lived in one room,” she informed me.

  “Then I’ll pay half the rent. If that’s what you want me to do, why don’t you say so?”

  She turned and faced me. “You’ve still got your other apartment.”

  “Don’t worry about my other apartment. If I want to be a hot shot and have one and a half apartments, that’s my business.”

  “Why do you have to keep the other one?” she asked. “Isn’t it silly, isn’t it a waste?”

  “It’s eighty-five bucks a month—I do it for the sake of my colleagues. He that filches from me my good name, and so on. Please, if I don’t mind the eighty-five … Please, don’t fret, Martha. If you’re upset, if you don’t want people for dinner—”

  “Who said I didn’t want people? Who mentioned people?”


  “—because it’s not too late. I can call them and cancel the whole thing. We can eat the roast ourselves.”

  “They’re as good as anybody else,” she mumbled, and plowed into the breakfast and lunch dishes that were still stacked in the sink.

  “What kind of attitude is that? Turn that damn water off, please. I thought you were enthusiastic about having somebody for dinner. I thought you thought it would be a great pleasure for us, very domestic.”

  “Everything’s domestic enough, thank you.”

  “Look, it was your idea to have somebody for dinner. What are you being so bitchy about? You said it would be a pleasure.”

  “It probably will be.”

  “Martha, I’m going to make out a check. We’ll split the rent.”

  “You don’t have to pay anything, really. You don’t even have to pay Sissy’s forty.”

  “I want to.”

  “Her moving had nothing to do with you. I told you that.”

  “I’ll split the rent. I’ll give you a check for twenty-five dollars more, is that agreeable to you?”

  “… I suppose so.”

  “Well, what’s the matter now? Do you want me to pay the whole rent?”

  “Oh forget it.”

  “Excuse me if I’m being obtuse. What is it you want to say to me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well”—she raised her hands, as though she had done everything possible to spare me—“honestly, Gabe, all this dividing in half is pretty damn silly. I mean we divide the grocery bill, and you’ve got an appetite like a horse.”

  “What?”

  “Last night you ate all the green beans, you ate two-thirds of the tuna yesterday afternoon—”

  “What’s going on here? Cynthia ate all the ice cream, every last drop, just this afternoon, and did I start shouting about dividing the bills? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Why don’t you just leave Cynthia out of it? There’s no need to be so hard on that poor kid. At least she can have some vanilla ice cream out of this deal, for God’s sake.”

  “I haven’t been so hard on Cynthia, let’s get that straightened out. Nobody’s been hard on Cynthia, and least of all me. The truth of it—since we’re going to speak truths—is that I’m paying half the groceries and feeding one mouth, and you’re paying half and feeding three mouths. So I’m entitled to a few God damned green beans, all right?”

  “Well, you’re living here for practically nothing.”

  “I paid you forty bucks.”

  “Half of a hundred and thirty ain’t forty.”

  “I’ll pay sixty-five. I said I’d pay sixty-five.”

  “What about the other apartment?”

  “Let me worry about my other apartment, will you?”

  “I mean if you’ve moved in here, you might as well move all the way in.”

  “I have moved all the way in.”

  “Not with another apartment, you haven’t.”

  “I’ve explained to you, Martha. It’s simply a matter of the University, my position, a matter of appearances and dignity—”

  “It’s not dignified enough, is it, living with me?”

  “Oh the hell with it. You’re just being contrary, so the hell with it.”

  I went into the living room, where the table that Martha and I had pulled onto the middle of the rug was being set by Cynthia. With a painstaking concern for symmetry, the child was aligning and realigning the dinner plates between their appropriately squadroned knives, forks, and spoons. She might just as well have been defusing a bomb, for the expression on her face. As she circled the table, she smoothed out the tiniest wrinkles in the white cloth.

  Markie was not around, having gone off to the playground with Stephanie and her grandmother; Cynthia had begged that she be allowed to stay at home and help with the preparations. Already she had vacuumed rugs and gone around emptying ash trays, and for one optimistic moment I believed that since she knew it was friends of mine who were coming to dine, that with these labors she was making a bid for an end to hostilities between us. Not that she hadn’t been deferential to me for the two weeks I had been in her house, but it was Cynthia’s kind of deference. At dinnertime, for example, she would shove the bread my way before I had even asked. She had not made the smallest offer of lips or face—neither a kiss or a smile—nor did she now. Watching her labor over the table, I concluded that all her dogged helpfulness was actually designed to ally herself with her mother against me. Martha and I had been sniping at each other for two days now, and Cynthia, a worldly and attentive baby, probably wanted only to make clear whose side she would be on, in the event of a full-scale war.

  I left her posing in aesthetic contemplation over an arrangement of serving dishes she had made in the center of the tablecloth. In the kitchen I sat down at the table, pushed aside a coffee cup, and wrote out a check.

  “This is for you,” I said.

  “I don’t need any checks.”

  “You’ve got to pay the rent, so don’t be silly.”

  “I’ll explain that I’m broke. I’ll pay double next month.”

  “Here’s a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Stop being an ass. Twenty-five I owe you, the hundred is a loan. When your friend Theresa pays you back, you pay me back.” I went up to where she stood, leaning against the sink, and put the check in the pocket of her apron. “What did she need the hundred for?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t inquire. A down payment on an abortion is probably a damn good guess. Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been being nervous about the rent.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me? If you feel rushed and upset, if you want me to—if you’re feeling harried—I’ll just call and say you’re not feeling well.”

  “Listen, if you want to call because you don’t want them, then go right ahead. Don’t try to slough it all off on me. I made dinner, and I’m ready, so it’s fine with me. I thought they were your friends. I thought you thought we’d all enjoy ourselves.”

  “I thought you might like them, yes. I thought they would like to meet you.”

  “Then let’s stop calling on the phone and telling them I’m sick. I’m not sick.”

  “Martha, please don’t worry about that hundred dollars. If that girl just takes off, if she’s going to buy a ticket for a train somewhere, you just forget it.”

  “I didn’t bring you here to support me.”

  “I didn’t come here to support you! All I’m saying is, don’t worry about the hundred. What the hell are we arguing about? All right? Just say all right, all right?”

  “All right.”

  When the roast was nearly finished and Martha was dressing in the bathroom, the phone rang. She ran to it and spoke for some ten minutes, standing in her slip and bare feet.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “It’s not important.”

  “That Theresa girl,” I said. “How did you get so involved with her? Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “She needs more money, doesn’t she?”

  “Well, I don’t have any more!” Martha shouted, and went back into the bathroom.

  Certainly there were others we could have invited. Anyone at all, really, could have sat down with us, eaten our food, sipped our coffee, and then gone off to carry into the streets the news of our unabashed, forthright, and impractical union. We needed only one couple—married preferably—to stand for the world and its opinions, one pair of outsiders to whom we could display our fundamental decency and good intentions, to whose judgment we could submit evidence of an ordered carnality and a restrained domestic life. Just one couple to give us society’s approval, if not the rubber stamp … For it must have been all of this that we were after when one sunny morning a week after I had moved in, Martha woke up and said, “Let’s have somebody for dinner!” and I said, “What a splendid idea!”

  That the cou
ple we chose—I chose—was Libby and Paul was not really as thoughtless and unimaginative as it may seem. If anything, it was too imaginative, too thoughtful—or too thought out. Only a moment after our evening together began, I knew how it was going to end. I still maintain, however, that for every reason one can think of why all these people would never have liked one another, there was a perfectly good one why they should have. Paul Herz could be a witty man, certainly a pensive and attentive man. Libby could be lively and gay. Martha could always laugh. And as for me, I was more than willing to be any sort of middleman in order to bring to an unbloody conclusion a painful chapter in my life. But certain chapters and pains are best left unconcluded. They can’t be concluded—all one needs is to know that at the time.

  The first disappointment was Martha; she wore the wrong clothes. I had thought she had been planning to don her purple wool suit, toward which I had both a sentimental and aesthetic attachment, or at least the skirt to the suit and her white silk blouse. But when she rushed past me to answer the knock at the front door, it was not a woman that moved by but a circus—a burst of color and a clattering of ornaments. She had managed to tart herself up in a full orange skirt, an off-the-shoulder blouse with a ruffled neck, strands of multicolored beads, and on her feet what I shall refer to in the language of the streets (the streets around the University) as her Humanities II sandals. So that none of us would miss the point, she had neither braided her hair nor put it up. It was combed straight out, and when she tossed her head, the heavy blond mane draped down her back and almost brushed her bottom. Somehow her outfit managed to call into question the very thing we wished (or I wished) to impress upon Libby and upon Paul—the seriousness of our relationship. That the Herzes’ lives were often more threatened than my own had led me on occasion to believe that their lives were also more serious than my own; whatever the mixture of insight and bafflement that had produced in me such an idea, it contributed also to the quality of my affections and anxieties where these two needy people were concerned.

  The visitors peered out of the stairway; they were Paul and Libby Herz, they said, but was this Mrs. Reganhart’s apartment? Apparently Martha looked to them as though she could not be a Mrs. anything, which may indeed have been what was in her head as she had dressed herself before her bedroom mirror. Perhaps what she had wanted to look precisely like was a free spirit, someone un-worried and without cares—for a change, nobody’s mother. But what she resembled finally—what I was sure the Herzes thought she looked like—was some tootsie with whom I had decided to pass my frivolous days. Through the early stages of their visit I felt some circumstantial link between myself and a gigolo or pimp. Despite several energetic attempts to govern my unconscious, I began during dinner to make a series of disconnected remarks all of which turned out to have a decidedly smutty air. “So I laid it on the line to the Chancellor’s secretary—” “Remember Charlotte Foster from Iowa City? Well, she turned up in Chicago and blew me to a meal—” And so on, through the pimento and anchovies and into the roast itself. All I had to do really was shut up; we would then have been bathed in a silence that could probably have been no more destructive of pleasure than was my banal chatter.