Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  “Because you could come East with me. How does that sound? We’ll stay with my father and Mrs. Silberman. I’m sure they’d like it. I’d like it.”

  “I just started work.”

  “Delsey wouldn’t mind. Tell him you’re going to visit your children.”

  “You don’t even know whether or not Springs is close.”

  “The whole stretch of island is only a hundred miles.”

  “I’ll be all right. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t you call tonight if you want to.”

  “Why don’t you let me decide for myself!” She got up and jumped down two levels of rocks until she was standing at the water’s edge, her back to me.

  “Whatever you decided,” I called down after her, “you decided for yourself!”

  She turned only her head. “Oh did I?”

  That was the exchange, brief but to the point.

  She made her way back to the blanket later and said, “I’m just having a few bad hours.” She put her hand on mine again. “It’s simply a matter of keeping control.”

  “Would you like to have a drink?” I touched her arm, and when she moved toward me willingly, I touched her face. “Would you like to go home and take a shower and get dressed? We’ll go out to dinner someplace where it’s cool—”

  “It’s too beautiful now. I want to stay.”

  “Whatever you want,” I said.

  “Gabe, really, though,” she said in a moment, “if you want to take a little trip … Nobody who doesn’t have to stay in Chicago for a whole summer should be allowed to feel that he must.”

  “I don’t want to take a trip!”

  “Okay then, it’s just an academic discussion. They’re nice to have too,” she said, but I wasn’t charmed.

  Or softened, or forgiving. “Though sometimes you’re able to convince me that a trip wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “Then—”

  “Then what?” I demanded.

  “Nothing … I didn’t say it, see? The better part of wisdom is to be short on suggestions,” she said, with a cold look on her face.

  “Is that directed against me by any chance, that remark? I don’t know that I’ve made any suggestions to you.”

  “You’re a suggestion,” she said, flatly.

  “I’m terribly sorry about that.”

  “You’re not.”

  “No, I’m not. I never made any promises.”

  “I said you were a suggestion, not a promise.”

  “Oh Christ, let’s stop this. Why don’t you come East with me? We’ll go together—that’s right, this is an outright suggestion—and you can see the kids—”

  “Right now,” she said, standing and patently ignoring my remarks, “you know what I’d like to do? First, I too would like us to stop being accusative—imperative, whatever it is we are. Two, I’d like to get home and take that shower; and three, I’d like to go out to dinner, some place where we can eat outside.”

  “We could drive East in a day.”

  “Delsey needs me now.”

  “Delsey has a big heart. Tell him why you’re going.”

  “I don’t think it would really be a good idea.”

  I got up too and put on my shirt. “If that’s what you want.”

  As we started toward the car, she said, “But don’t think you can’t go—”

  “I don’t.”

  At home Martha said she wanted to pin up her hair, and she asked would I take the first shower. When I was finished I stepped onto the bath mat and opened the door an inch to let the steam out. Martha was on the phone, saying to the operator that she had been cut off again. She hung up and the phone rang; she picked it immediately off the receiver. I pushed open the door another few inches.

  “Hello—hello, Dick? It’s Martha again. We were cut off. I said we were cut off—we still have a lousy connection.… How are the kids doing? … And Markie? … Are they in, can I talk to them? … I know it’s Saturday … What! … Well, can’t you wake them up? … For Christ’s sake, Dick, I’m their mother—what? … I said I’m their mother, I’m calling long distance.… I know it’s an hour later—will you please wake them up! … Then let them sleep late in the morning—please, this is costing money.… Okay, okay, yes.…” Silence. Then, “Hello—hello, Cynthia? Honey, it’s Mother … Mother—what’s wrong with this connection! Cynthia, baby, can you hear me? Come on, try to wake up. Rub your eyes or something—Mark, is that you? … Speak louder, darling. Speak into the phone … Cynthia, Cynthia, are you still there? Speak into the phone, darlings. Look, how are you? … Did you go swimming today? … I said, Did you go swimming today? Cynthia, let him talk—what? … Cynthia, sweetie, why don’t you write? … Well, ask him for paper.… Of course he’ll give you paper.… Where are all your envelopes I gave you with the address on them? … What? … Who left them where? I can’t hear you if you both talk.… Oh children, stop arguing, please, this is long—what? … Of course, darling, you send it, I’d love to see it.… Stephanie is fine, uh-huh.… Cynthia, please, it doesn’t matter if he hasn’t finished it. You send it anyway. Okay, operator, fine … Cynthia, you write, do you hear me? And watch your brother in the water.… Are you both all right? Do you need anything? … That’s fine.… He’s here, honey. No, dear, no, no.… Goodbye, honey—look, let me talk to your daddy—Mark? Markie? Let me—hello? Is anybody there …?”

  She put the phone back on the hook, I turned the knob on the bathroom door and closed it.

  While Martha was taking her shower the phone rang again. Later, when she came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, I said nothing to her about my phone call, just as she had said nothing to me about hers. At first I was secretive out of a feeling that enough had happened for one day. But then sitting in the living room, waiting for her to dress, I wondered if I was not trying to spare Martha the possibility of feeling an ugly, an inappropriate emotion. Given our conversation at the lake and the phone call to Long Island, her response to my news might not be tonight what it would doubtless be in the morning.

  It had become warmer all at once, and I sat without my jacket, my feet up on the window sill, watching the storm clouds begin to fill the sky over Fifty-fifth Street. Soon it started to rain and thunder, and grow darker. I sat in the dark with no light until a small lamp was flipped on behind me. I turned; Martha had come into the room, ready for dinner. The light was soft and fell in a flattering way upon the dress she was wearing; I could not remember having seen it before.

  “You’re looking beautiful,” I said to her.

  She remained standing where she was. “Thank you.”

  “A blond girl,” I said, “with a suntan and her hair up—”

  “And in a new white sharkskin dress.”

  “It’s very lovely.”

  “See my shoes?”

  “They’re nice. It’s all very lovely.”

  “I’ve never worn them before.”

  “Maybe we should wait until it stops raining.”

  “All right.” She sat down across from me and put her gloves on the little end table.

  After a moment I asked, “Would you like a drink?”

  But she didn’t seem to have heard. “This is what I wanted,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And I like it—do you know that?”

  “I thought you did.”

  “All that sun and the water and the peace, and then a man in a fresh batiste shirt and a silk tie waiting for me in the living room so we can go to dinner. Even the rain, even the thunder.”

  “We’ll go as soon as it lets up.”

  After a while there was a jagged lightning streak across the sky, and a crash, and our one little lamp went out; in the kitchen the refrigerator stopped humming.

  “It’ll go on in a minute,” I said.

  “I called the kids,” Martha told me.

  “Did you?”

  I could see only her white dress in the dark and her white shoes.
“When you were in the shower,” she said.

  “How are they?”

  “Markie left all his envelopes in the rest room of a Texaco station. But they sounded fine … Gabe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think if you go East you better go alone.”

  “You want me to go though?”

  “A little time apart,” she said, after a moment, “might not hurt.”

  “Will it help?”

  “What’s to be helped?”

  “You’re the one, I thought, who’d been indicating that we’re at some sort of crisis.”

  “I don’t think we are,” she said.

  “I didn’t think so either.”

  “I told you I liked it. It was an agreeable day. I did laugh.”

  The light went on, and Martha stopped speaking; and I was moved, even made lustful in a curious self-contained way, by the cold beauty she radiated.

  “You look very voluptuous and healthy in that dress,” I said, “and in control.”

  “When we come home we’ll make love. Not now.”

  “You’re being very gallant, Martha, and very self-possessed tonight.”

  “Oh I know.”

  Suddenly she wearied me. “I think the storm’s rather laid a pall on me.”

  “Let’s go then,” she said. “I’ll cheer you up. Plus my suntan and my blond hair and my self-possession, I am also a lot of laughs.”

  “Theresa Haug had her baby,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Libby called. Sid called her. She had a baby girl.”

  “When did she call?”

  “While you were in the shower.”

  “And you weren’t going to tell?”

  “I thought I’d save it.”

  “It sounds as though the news depresses you.”

  “It leaves me feeling peculiarly washed-out, Martha.” Which was true; I found myself having something like the reaction I had feared for Martha. I couldn’t understand it.

  “Aren’t you happy?” she asked.

  “I suppose I am. Libby was very excited. I just feel played out. That’s all.”

  “We can sit here a while longer, if you want.”

  So we sat there, while outside the storm slowly rolled away. “I suppose,” I said, “I should have a feeling of accomplishment.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Of being unnecessary.”

  She did not say anything, and I could not tell if it was clear to her that the strange feeling I had was envy, envy for the Herzes.

  “Just old fleeting depression,” I said.

  “I understand.”

  “This comes,” I hurried to say, “on top of my father’s letter—”

  “Yes?”

  “—and,” I said, “my overhearing your conversation with the kids.” So my two secrets were out. Why not?

  “Oh,” she said. And then, “Well, what was the difference? You were taking a shower. It was as good a time as any.”

  “The difference is obviously that you didn’t want me to know that you wanted to call, that you had called. That you had broken down, given in, or however it is you choose to put it.”

  “You didn’t want me to know the Herzes had a baby. So we’re even.”

  Even, we sat back in our chairs. Until I asked, “How long do you think we’re going to be able to keep this kind of business up?”

  “I suppose something will happen some day.”

  “I don’t know what.”

  She understood. “I don’t care, really, if I never get married, Gabe. I’ve had that. I told you—I like this. Marriage is really quite beside the point. You know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I knew it a long time ago. I knew it the day they got on that plane. I probably knew it before then, but that was a very forceful event. I supposed that you knew it too.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “I don’t think we should worry about it then,” she said. “It’s still raining a little. Do you still want to make love to me?”

  “Not exactly. Not now.” It wasn’t intentionally that I had repeated her words.

  “But why don’t you do it anyway?” she said. “I think we should do whatever suits our needs. My needs, all right? I would like to be seduced right now. Undressed slightly against my will, my nice new dress thrown on the floor, and bango. That’ll put a little glow around dinner later.”

  “You want me to service you?”

  “I wasn’t being cynical. I meant it.”

  “That doesn’t make it a hell of a lot less cynical, I shouldn’t think.”

  “So I want it all,” she said, musing. “If you’re bothering about yourself, then the best thing is go ahead and really bother. All the way. I walked past the big shoe-bazaar place on Fifty-third yesterday and I bought another pair of sandals. They were nice and they were inexpensive, but that’s not the point. The point is I have a perfectly good pair in the closet and bought these anyway.”

  “That doesn’t seem too terribly indulgent.”

  “Everything adds up. I’ve still got my debts to pay,” she said. “I am the girl who wants to be serviced. What are you?”

  “He who wants to service—at least that’s what I’m left with.”

  “Who wants to?”

  I did not answer.

  “Are you being duplicitous?” she asked. “Do you want to leave me?”

  “I want the same things I’ve always wanted, Martha. They just get more and more illusive. I don’t feel myself quite able to pull anything off.”

  “You got the Herzes their baby finally. Though that doesn’t satisfy you either, you told me.”

  “I didn’t make my feelings clear. It satisfied me, it’s good news. Except,” I confessed, “it left me feeling a little envious.”

  That was the truth, and it left me defenseless.

  “You’re just a family man at heart,” she said.

  “Please don’t be too smart.”

  “How can I help it? I could have serviced you, you see, with a ready-made unit.”

  “That isn’t quite what I meant, Martha. You didn’t even want that yourself.”

  “Nor did you,” she said quickly.

  “We influenced one another. Can we leave it at that?”

  “Would you like to leave me, Gabe?”

  “If I wanted to I would. At least I’d make a stab at it.”

  “Would you? I’m a tough cookie, you know.”

  “But so am I.”

  “I suppose that’s what we’re up against. Two tough cookies like us, each getting his way. The end result will be that one of us will invite the other to take a look out the window, and then give a nice shove forward.”

  “Or go nuts. Or hate one another’s guts. There are lots of possibilities.”

  “Surely we can just work out some simple way of humiliating one another,” she said. “I’ll screw the janitor or something.”

  “I’m not crazy about the turn the conversation is taking.”

  “I’m not either.”

  “It’s stopped raining.”

  “You look very handsome,” she said to me, standing up. “Did I tell you that? Put on your jacket, let me see.”

  “Maybe,” I said, while I smoothed out my trousers and buttoned my coat, “if I do get away for a week—”

  “Yes.” She opened her purse and looked to see if she had the keys; she always did this, even though I had keys of my own. “Yes, and maybe you’ll come back and everybody will love everybody again.”

  “You’re much more direct than I am, Martha. And maybe smarter—”

  “You just don’t have to be so direct, that’s all.”

  “No?”

  “You’re stronger than I am, Gabe—and it’s clear what you hold against me anyway.”

  “It’s not all that clear to me. But whatever you think it is, why don’t you save it?”

  We walked down the s
tairs, and while I held the car door open, she said to me, “Is it clear, however, the few little things I have against you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Am I being reasonable?”

  After a moment I said, “I don’t think so. No.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Then is it reasonable for you to detest me for letting them go?”

  “I don’t detest you for letting them go.”

  “For involving you in letting them go.”

  “That’s not true either—”

  “Well, you don’t feel the same, Gabe. I think you liked me noble better. But then,” she said, giving me no time to reply, “I would have preferred you that way too. We have to be satisfied with what we get.”

  “True.”

  I closed the door and came around to the street side of the car. “I won’t say anything,” Martha told me, as I got in, “and you don’t say anything, and when we get to the restaurant we’ll start in fresh. Let’s not ruin the night. Just look up there, how lovely it is.”

  “Martha’s looking marvelous,” Sid Jaffe was saying to me five days later as we drove together to pick up the Herzes.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “She likes her job?”

  “I think so. Delsey is very nice, a very amiable fellow.”

  “How are the kids doing, do you know?” he asked.

  “She called only a few nights ago. They’re out at the seashore.”

  “So they’re all right?”

  “It sounds as though they’re fine.”

  At a red light Sid settled back into his seat, taking his hands from the wheel a moment. “Another beautiful day,” he said.

  “It’s been a nice summer.”

  “I haven’t been out of the office enough to find out.” His smile indicated that that was generally the way things went with him.

  “You ought to take a vacation,” I suggested.

  He sighed then, comically, but he clearly liked the picture of himself as a hard-working, industrious man. Though our meetings had been few and inconsequential, I rather admired Jaffe, admired, in fact, what he seemed to admire about himself. Generally I saw him down by the lake on Sundays; it was there that we had been introduced by Martha. He had a long striped towel that he stretched out on when sunning, and a portable radio in a little leather case on which he listened to the ball game; every hour or so, he would tuck his papers under the radio, walk down to the water, dive in, and swim long, even laps by himself, going clear out of sight for a time. Coming up from the water, his bald head dripping and shining, he would take a trip past our blanket at least once during the day to stop and say hello. He never allowed himself the pleasure of a visit, however, never once sat down—though there were occasions during the afternoon when I would happen to look up and see him, fifty yards off on his striped towel, glancing our way; that is, Martha’s way. Late in the afternoon, he would do a round of sit-ups, take a last swim, and then unobtrusively leave for home.