Letting Go

by Philip Roth

  Near tears, she answered, “Thank you.”

  “I can only ask for a little more.” Another woman would, at this moment, have struck him, or left him; knowing this made him feel no more noble about his plea.

  “Everything seems to be changing,” said Libby, “but you.”

  “Then I must be changing too, Lib. I have changed.”

  “How?”

  He did not ever think of such easy solutions as Marge Howells; he did not think of solutions. “I don’t know,” was all he said.

  “You still don’t love me, do you?”

  “That’s an unfair … an inexact way to put it, for both of us.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  His responses were not satisfying either of them; he might just as well be silent. Libby asked, “Am I ruining our evening? Oh hell—”

  They finished up what food remained on their plates.

  “If you did believe in God,” she said, sliding her fork on the empty plate, “I wouldn’t feel it was an important question at all. You know that?”

  “Because you do?”

  “I don’t. I can’t. I don’t even want to. But you’re different. I don’t even know what you are—but I love you, Paul. And I don’t care that you don’t love me. I know you’re a good man.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t love you,” he began.

  “I don’t care. Let’s pay the bill—let’s take a walk. I feel chaotic inside. I’m sorry if I’ve ruined our ten-dollar dinner.”

  “Please,” she said, as they walked west toward the theater, “I can’t keep one foot in each camp any longer.”

  She waited, but did not hear him ask that she explain. It was difficult to tell whether he was not listening, or was thinking, or had chosen simply to ignore her.

  “I can’t keep provoking other men, Paul. I’m just spilling out everything—and I’m sorry. How much was dinner, eleven dollars? I know I’m responsible for wasting it. When I was a child I always wound up crying on my birthday—there would always be an argument, somehow or other. I had a way, I have a way, of ruining significant days. I suppose I shouldn’t have had that drink what with these kidneys inside me. I was just edgy enough, and now I’m just drunk enough—and I want you to talk to me. Please, we’ll walk all the way to the movie, and please, you just talk. Up at Cornell you could persuade me of anything. Persuade me now.”

  “About what?”

  “About you. I keep thinking that either you believe in God or you love me. It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to, but it comes into my head, and I might as well say it. Weak as I am, Paul, I’ve always said things. Blurted them out. It’s our sixth anniversary,” she said after a moment. “Persuade me, will you? You just can’t cut me out of your life!”

  The air was cold; they were walking directly into a light wind. Neither looked at the other. “I can’t give you positive answers,” he said. “I’m not sure either way, about either.”

  “Stop sparing me too, all right?”

  “Libby, since my father’s death, since that trip, it’s been me who’s felt as though he’s been being born. Perhaps you have, but so have I. And I’ve not come out yet.”

  “When—?”

  “I don’t know.” He raised his hands impatiently. “I’m trying to speak indirectly …”

  “Why do you go to the synagogue then? Why do we stay married? I keep thinking, Well he believes—”

  “Faith is private; why do you have to feel so impassioned about mine?”

  “When you came back from New York I thought everything was going to change. I thought religion—”

  “I’m not so sure any more about the religion I came back with from New York. Things have gotten better. That’s precisely it.”

  “Don’t think,” she said gloomily, “they’ve gotten that much better.”

  “And that’s why I still go to synagogue. They haven’t gotten that much better.”

  “I don’t think I’m understanding everything you’re saying. Are you saying that if we were both perfectly happy, then you wouldn’t go at all?”

  “I suppose, in a way, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Well, what do you do there—do you pray? Why do you even go there? Are you praying for things to get better, so you can just forget all about it?”

  “Things won’t get ‘better,’ Libby.”

  “That’s not so! They have gotten better. If you would just give yourself up to us!”

  “First you told me not to spare you—”

  “But you’re being unreasonable. You don’t try to make things better. You’re distracted from me!”

  “I’m never not thinking of you, Libby; that’s not so.”

  “I’m not talking about thinking about me.”

  “Look, I don’t understand my actions any more than anybody else. I’m not going to try to defend myself for not having the feelings you want me to.”

  “I don’t want you to have any feelings but the normal ones.”

  “If I can’t feel what I have to, I do what I have to.”

  “I don’t see how you can do them then.”

  “I force myself.”

  “Oh Paul, I hate you for saying that.”

  “I go and sit in the synagogue, Libby—”

  “Yes—now tell me why, damn it?”

  “Because I don’t feel complete about myself. Everything seems … incomplete.”

  “Yes?”

  “And I don’t go because I expect to be completed either.”

  “I don’t understand your God,” she said, heartbroken.

  “I’ve been mystified lately by things looking as though they’re getting better. It’s shaken my faith.”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke? Are you going to toy with me, tonight? Lately I feel indulged—I don’t even mean indulged; I mean too underestimated even for me.”

  “I’m not making jokes.”

  “Well, I don’t believe in doom! You believe in doom—that’s what you’re saying. Don’t you love Rachel at least? Don’t you feel anything toward her?”

  “I love Rachel.”

  “So? And?”

  “And what?”

  “Well, can’t you believe in pleasure? Can’t we have a pleasant life together? Is that so hard? I don’t think you have any right to justify your—whatever it is, concerning me and our marriage—”

  “I haven’t tried to justify—”

  “Let me finish—it’s a very involved thought and I’m a lousy thinker. Please, Paul. What you’re saying—I don’t even know if I’ve got it—but you’re saying that you and I are supposed to be unhappy because that’s in the nature of things. Well, it may be in the nature of things, but it’s not in my nature! I’m just dying to be happy, I just can’t wait very much longer. I wish you’d stop dragging your heels about it, too. Please, Paul, if you’d just relax.”

  “Oh, Libby …”

  “Well what?”

  “I can’t make myself be what I’m not.”

  “Oh that’s an excuse! That’s—philosophy! I’ve made myself be what I’m not—don’t you know that? You can’t act this way, Paul, you’re stronger than I am. You’ll just have to be!”

  Whatever his next thoughts were, he kept them to himself.

  “What kind of God is that anyway!” she demanded.

  “I can only believe as much as I can manage to believe for what must appear to somebody else—even my wife, Libby—to be very private reasons. I didn’t believe they were so eccentric, however.”

  “I think you just go to the synagogue to get away from me.”

  “Please … I go there to say the mourner’s prayer.”

  “You said you don’t pray.”

  “That’s right. I don’t pray.”

  “Oh Paul—”

  “I mourn, all right? You see, this is difficult to talk about.”

  “Well—but don’t mourn: fix things up!”

  “Certain things I have to ac
cept.”

  “But then I have to accept the things you have to! That’s what’s unfair, don’t you see? You’re being,” she said hopelessly, “terribly unfair … and pompous,” she added faintly.

  “You see, are we getting anywhere with this conversation?”

  “I’m getting confused. You’re going at things upside down. You’ve given up,” she said, incredulously.

  “I’ve perhaps given in.”

  “Well, that’s the same damn thing. That’s worse.”

  “We’re not going to understand one another—” But when she stopped walking, when she closed her eyes, he took her hand and added, “Tonight.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t think you know what you believe.”

  “I don’t know all I believe.”

  “Well,” she said weakly, “I hope you see that’s not making me very happy.”

  “You think too much about being happy.”

  “But that’s all there is, Paul.”

  When they emerged later from the movie, she took her husband’s arm. The push and hurry of the crowd behind them reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. How very far she had come …

  “Did you think it was funny?” she asked.

  “I thought the first half was. I thought the second half was lousy.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  To her surprise, his fingers were touching her face. Did she have a smudge on her cheek? For a moment she could not believe that he was only touching her. And when she could, she was afraid to speak. She hung on to his arm, treating her treat as though it were an everyday occurrence; praying.

  “We’d better take a cab,” he said, leading her to the curb.

  “Oh darling, this night is costing a fortune.”

  “Gabe isn’t going to charge us, is he?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then we’ve saved all that.”

  The movie seemed to have cheered him up; she hesitated to believe that it was she who might have helped initiate some change—though, God knows, she had not spoken so openly to him in years. Could it possibly be so easy? Probably he had only made up his mind to please her. But what she was asking of him was not much more, really, than that, She had only to make it clear to him now what exactly she knew to be necessary for her pleasure …

  To be kissed. In the back of the taxi, driving to the station, she wanted to be kissed. Recognizing the desire as sentimental did not decrease its poignancy a bit. Everything she wanted tonight she wanted poignantly. After some minutes had passed, she felt that she might have to settle for just being in the cab beside him, driving through the rush of the holiday streets to the station.

  And so she settled for it. A taxi, after all, was a treat in itself. She had not ridden in one since the night five years before when they had left that doctor’s office in Detroit. And that was all so distant that she might never have stepped foot in a cab before tonight. She had difficulty, anyway, associating herself with any of those other Libbies, the young, stupid, helpless Libbies … though Libby Herz was always and forever sloughing off old Libby Herzes—bidding a fond farewell sometimes to what she had been as little as twenty-four hours earlier. Still she couldn’t help feeling that this night was truly different. This week had been truly different. New strength had flowed into her simply from a decision to have new strength flow into her. At least it seemed as simple as that, driving in the cab, her coat pushed up against her husband’s, her hand finding his. The news from Gabe’s own mouth that he was going abroad must have something to do with it too, if Paul had in the past been distracted from her, she could not deny that she had had certain distractions of her own. But she knew that no matter what was dealt out to them in the future—and she did happen to see only good things coming their way now—she would never write to him, as she had in Pennsylvania, or dream about him, as she had in Iowa, or see him as being any more than he was, which was what she had always done, of course. She was even pained with herself for that damn charming little note she had slipped into his hands as she and Paul had been about to go off for dinner. However, it was not easy for one as passionate as she was, she thought, to be cured overnight of an old and crucial attachment. Nor for someone as needy as she had been.

  But she did not need Gabe any longer. She could not afford to, especially when he was not at all as powerful as he had led her, or she had led him to lead her, to imagine. She herself had a family that needed her. She was going to help Paul to love her. Now that they were already entering what she had begun to see as the first settled period of their life, she would dedicate herself to destroying her husband’s isolation. He did not have to be separate any longer. She would convince him of happiness.

  But when they left the cab her mood altered. She supposed she was a little disappointed at having traveled three miles in the back of a dark cab unkissed. But aside from that, Paul had actually said or done nothing to weaken her hope in him. When he paid for the cab, in fact, she felt as she had when he had addressed the headwaiter—very wifely. The sight of her husband taking his change from the driver convinced her that they would never be divorced. No, it was not Paul … It only seemed that she had ridden as far as she could on the crest of that single martini. Buoyancy left her, she knew she was that girl who had driven in the other cab five years back, and that she would be the same girl five years hence. And she knew that Paul knew it.

  When they settled on a bench in the busy waiting room of the train station, it was ten thirty-five.

  “I’d better call Gabe,” she said.

  Paul had picked up a newspaper off the bench; he sat there rattling it, not reading it. “About what?” he asked.

  “To see if everything is all right.” Uncontrollably she had begun to worry.

  “I’ll call.”

  She must, suddenly, be looking so frightened that he felt duty bound to be nice to her; she imagined that he himself was so upset now that he couldn’t sit still … until he leaned over and kissed her.

  “Paul …” It was no longer necessary to call. She was absolutely bouncing from mood to mood.

  But he was already moving away, toward an arrow which pointed to the phone booths. Having soared upward a moment earlier, she now plunged down, as she had two moments before. She understood his touching her face outside the movie theater, and his kissing her just now, as being linked up with some defense he was building against the appearance of his mother. The big clock overhead showed that Mrs. Herz was only seven or eight minutes away … But if he felt stronger by way of kissing her, wasn’t that something? No? The trouble with his moments of affection was that that’s all they were, moments. One hug didn’t have any connection with the next kiss. She closed her eyes. She did not understand everything that was happening. Was anything even happening? On the street she had asked a few questions, and he had agreed to give a few answers. Though in the restaurant he had practically knocked her over by asking, “What do you want to know, Libby?” Then a moment later, as she struggled to think of what it was she wanted to be told, she had seen him becoming Paul again. To think that she had pried him open for good—or even for more than ten seconds—was to overestimate her own meager powers.

  Only one of her powers was not so meager. It was no small ability to be able to forget the past. I will forget the past. I will make Paul forget the past. I will convince him of happiness.

  When he returned he sat down and checked his watch against the clock on the wall.

  “Well, how is he doing?” She smiled.

  “Oh—he’s doing all right.”

  “You sound as though he’s not doing all right at all. Don’t you think he can really change a diaper?”

  “Well, he’s doing all right,” he said.

  “Is the baby sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has she gotten up for a bottle?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Well, darling, didn’t you ask? Maybe Gabe forgot where—”


  “He didn’t forget.”

  “Paul, don’t be nervous about your mother.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Don’t be. That’s all past.”

  “I know …”

  “We’ll indulge her every whim. We won’t allow her to wash a dish. I’m nervous, but I don’t feel uncertain.”

  He was standing. “I’m going to the men’s room, Lib.”

  “Honey, don’t you feel well?” Her love for him was so intense, she could have wept for his discomfort.

  “I just want to go to the men’s room before the train arrives.” He went off in the direction he had gone before.

  She loved him; they would begin again—he could be made to want to. She was feeling more influential than she ever had in her life. It must come of being a mother. It must come of moving out from under pressure, from their crises having passed. Oh she would help him now! Her Paul!

  Then he was running toward her, just as the loudspeaker filled the waiting room with news of the arrival of the New York train. She raced to meet him—my Paul!—and together they raced to the track. He was saying something to her which she could not hear in the rush of people—and then Mrs. Herz was upon them. The old woman was clinging to her son. An arm flew out, Libby slipped within it, and both women were sobbing into Paul’s coat. She felt Paul’s hand on her back; his thin straight body was a support for her head. No other hand touched her, but she was old enough now—yes!—not to expect everything. She did not expect everything; only what was coming to her. She had been patient.

  They took another taxi all the way home. Mrs. Herz talked about the train ride, and Libby asked her questions that had only to do with the trip. Paul was virtually silent.

  They climbed the stairs and came into the apartment to find what Paul already knew, but for which he had found no way whatsoever to prepare his companions. Though he was not a man to believe in miracles, though he trusted his senses, he had not been able to believe that it would be the way it was when they walked through the door. If he could not understand it, it would not be. But though he could not understand it, it was.

  Libby began to run from room to room. His mother stood where she was. When Libby came back into the living room there were a few moments in which no one spoke a complete sentence, though everyone spoke. Then Mrs. Herz had picked up her suitcase and stood holding it. The two women began to scream. Paul said, “Please sit. Both of you, sit. Sit down!”