by Philip Roth
“But the Depression was over when I was three, when I was four.”
“What?” her father cried. “Are you kidding?” To his wife he said, “Is she kidding?”
“Lucy,” her mother said, “we did it for you.”
“Oh yes,” she said, moving backward onto her bed, “for me, everything was for me.”
“Lucy, we couldn’t have another baby,” said her mother. “Not when we were so behind, trying so to fight back—”
“But if only he did his job! If he only stopped being a coward!”
“Look,” he said, coming angrily at her, “you don’t even know when the Depression was, or what it was, either—so watch what you say!”
“I do too know!”
“The whole country was behind the eightball. Not just me! If you want to call names, you, call the whole United States of America names!”
“Sure, the whole world.”
“Don’t you know history?” he cried. “Don’t you know anything?” he demanded.
“I know what you made her do, you!”
“But,” her mother cried, “I wanted to.”
“Did you hear that?” he shouted. “Did you hear what your mother just said to you?”
“But you’re the man!”
“I am also a human being!”
“That’s no excuse!”
“Oh, what am I arguing with you for? You don’t know a from z as far as life is concerned, and you never will! You wouldn’t know a man’s job if I did it!”
Silence.
“Hear, Mother? Hear your husband?” said Lucy. “Did you hear what he just said, right out in the open?”
“Oh, hear what I mean,” he cried.
“But what you said—”
“I don’t care! Stop trapping me! I came in here to solve a crisis, but how can I do it when nobody lets me even begin? Or end! You’d rather trap me—throw me in jail! That’s what you’d rather do. You’d rather humiliate me in this whole town, and make me looked down on as the town joke.”
“Town drunk!”
“Town drunk?” he said. “Town drunk? You ought to see the town drunk. You think I’m the town drunk? Well, you ought to just see a town drunk, and then think what you’re saying twice before you say it. You don’t know what a town drunk is. You don’t know what anything is! You—you just want me behind bars—that’s your big wish in life, and always has been!”
“It’s not.”
“It is!”
“But that’s over,” cried Myra.
“Oh, sure it’s over,” said Whitey. “Sure, people just forget how a daughter threw her own father in jail. Sure, people don’t talk about that behind your back. People don’t like to tell stories on a person, oh no. People are always giving other people a chance to change and get their strength back. Sure, that’s what this little scene is all about too. You bet it is. Oh, she’s got me fixed, boy—and that’s the way it’s going to be. That’s how brilliant she is, your so-called college girl scholarship daughter. Well, go ahead, so-called daughter who knows all the answers—solve your own life. Because I’m not good enough for a person like you, and never have been. What am I anyway? The town drunk to her.”
He pulled open the door and went loudly down the stairs. They could hear him bellowing in the parlor. “Go ahead, Mr. Carroll. You’re the only one can solve things around here. Go ahead, it’s Daddy Will everyone wants around here anyway. I’m just extra anyway. I’m just along for the ride, we all know that.”
“Shouting won’t help anything, Duane—”
“Right, right you are, Berta. Nothing will help anything around here.”
“Willard,” said Berta, “tell this man—”
“What’s the trouble, Duane? What’s the fuss?”
“Oh, nothing you can’t fix, Willard. Because you’re the Big Daddy, and me, I’m just along for the ride.”
“Willard, where is he going? Dinner is all ready.”
“Duane, where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go down and see old Tom Whipper.”
“Who’s he?”
“The town drunk, Willard! That’s who the town drunk is, damn it—Tom Whipper!”
The door slammed, and then the house was silent except for the whispering that began downstairs.
Lucy lay without moving on the bed.
Her mother was crying.
“Mother, why, why did you let him make you do that?”
“I did what I had to,” said her mother mournfully.
“You didn’t! You let him trample on your dignity, Mother! You were his doormat! His slave!”
“Lucy, I did what was necessary,” she said, sobbing.
“That’s not always right, though. You have to do what’s right!”
“It was.” She spoke as in a trance. “It was, it was—”
“It wasn’t! Not for you! He degrades you, Mother, and you let him! Always! All our lives!”
“Oh, Lucy, whatever we say, our suggestions, you refuse.”
“I refuse—I refuse to live your life again, Mother, that’s what I refuse!”
Roy’s best man was Joe Whetstone, home from the University of Alabama, where he had kicked nine field goals and twenty-three consecutive extra points for the freshman football team. The maid of honor was Eleanor Sowerby. Unbeknownst to Joe, Ellie had fallen in love at Northwestern. She simply had to tell Lucy, though she made her promise to speak of it to no one, not even Roy. She would shortly be having to write Joe a letter, and she would just as soon not have to think about that during her vacation; it would be difficult enough at the time.
Either Ellie had forgiven Lucy for calling her a dope at Thanksgiving, or else she was willing to forget it during the wedding. All through the ceremony tears coursed down her lovely face, and her own lips moved when Lucy said, “I do.”
After the ceremony Daddy Will told Lucy that she was the most beautiful bride he had seen since her mother. “A real bride,” he kept saying, “isn’t that so, Berta?” “Congratulations,” her grandmother said. “You were a real bride.” That was as far as she would go; she knew now that it was not the grippe that had caused Lucy to be sick in the kitchen sink.
Julian Sowerby kissed her again. “Well,” he said, “I suppose now I get to do this all the time.” “Now I do,” said Roy. Julian said, “Lucky you, boy, she’s a cutie-pie, all right,” in no way indicating that he had once lectured Roy for four solid hours in the taproom of the Hotel Kean on the evils of becoming her husband.
Nor did Irene Sowerby indicate that secretly she believed Lucy had unusual emotions. “Good luck to you,” she said to the bride, and touched her lips to Lucy’s cheek. She took Roy’s hand and held it for a very long time before she was ready to speak. And then she was unable to.
Then her own parents. “Daughter,” was all she heard in her ear; so stiff was she in his embrace that perhaps it was all he said. “Oh, Lucy,” her mother said, her wet lashes against Lucy’s face, “be happy. You can be if only you’ll try. You were the happiest little girl …”
Then both Roy’s parents stepped forward, and after a moment in which each seemed to be deferring to the other, the two Bassarts lunged at the bride simultaneously. The mix-up of arms and faces that ensued at long last gave everyone present something to laugh about.
Lloyd Bassart was the adult who had finally gotten behind the young couple and supported them in their desire to be married at Christmas—sooner than Christmas if it could be managed. This sharp change of attitude had occurred one night early in December when Roy broke down over the phone and in tears told his parents—who had been pouring it on, once again—to stop. “I can’t take any more!” he had cried. “Stop! Stop! Lucy’s pregnant!”
Well. Well. It had required only the two “wells.” If what Roy had just confessed was the actual situation as it existed, then his father did not see that Roy had any choice but to take the responsibility for what he had done. Between a man doing the right thing
and a man doing the wrong thing, there was really no choice, as far as Mr. Bassart could see. Weeping, Roy said it was more or less what he had been thinking to himself all along. “I should certainly hope so,” said his father, and so that, finally, was that.
Three
1
She moved into his room at Mrs. Blodgett’s. Mrs. Blodgett, who had called her a hussy. Mrs. Blodgett, who had called Roy crooked. Mrs. Blodgett, with her thousand little rules and regulations.
But Lucy said nothing. In the weeks and months following the wedding she found herself trying with all her might to do what she was told. You could not question someone’s every word and deed and expect to be happy with them, or expect them to be happy either. They were married. She must trust him; what kind of life would it be otherwise?
Mrs. Blodgett and Roy had worked out the arrangement beforehand: only another five dollars a month for the room. Surely Lucy had to admit that was a bargain, especially since Roy had gotten Mrs. Blodgett to throw in kitchen privileges for the hour between seven and eight in the evening. Of course, they would have to leave the kitchen exactly as they had found it. It was not, after all, the kitchen of a hotel, it was the kitchen of a dwelling place; but apparently Roy had assured Mrs. Blodgett that Lucy was neat as a pin, and knew her way around a kitchen, having worked for three years after school and summers in the Dairy Bar up in Liberty Center. “But that, Mr. Bassart, is my very point, it is not some dairy bar, it is not some—” He assured her then that he would work in the kitchen right along with Lucy. How would that be? In fact, if Mrs. Blodgett had any dishes left over from her own dinner, they could easily wash hers while washing up their own. In the Army he had once had to wash pots and pans for seventeen hours straight on K.P.; as a result, one dish more or less wouldn’t faze him too much, she could be sure.
Mrs. Blodgett said she would extend them the privilege, on a trial basis, and only for so long as they didn’t abuse it.
During the next few months Roy several times went out after dinner and knocked on the parlor door to ask the landlady if she would like to join them in the kitchen for dessert. Privately he said to Lucy that the extra chocolate pudding or fruit cup cost no more than a few pennies, and with someone of Mrs. Blodgett’s changeable disposition, it was worth building up points on your side. Their getting married had more or less restored Mrs. Blodgett’s faith in him, but still and all, where three people were living together under one roof, there was no sense looking for trouble, especially if you could just as easily avoid it by using your head in advance.
She said nothing. They must not squabble over issues that were of no real consequence. She must not criticize him for what—she told herself—was really nothing more than a desire to please. Some people did things one way, and Roy did them another. Weren’t they married? Hadn’t he acted as she had wanted?
TRUST HIM.
To her surprise, hardly a Sunday passed when they did not travel up to Liberty Center to visit his family. Roy said that under ordinary circumstances it wouldn’t be necessary, but what with all the strain of the past months and the hard feelings that had developed, it seemed to him a good idea to try to smooth things over before the baby was born and life really began to get hectic. The fact was that she was a stranger to his family, as he was a stranger to hers. Now that they were married, what sense did that make? They would all be seeing a lot of one another in the years to come, and it seemed to him ridiculous to start off on the wrong foot. It was an easy two-hour ride up, and aside from the gas, what would it cost them?
So she went—to Sunday dinner at the Bassarts’, and on the way out of town, over to say hello to her own family. Silently she sat in the parlor she had hoped never to set foot in again, while Roy engaged her family in fifteen minutes of small talk, most of it for the benefit of her father and Daddy Will. They talked a lot about prefab houses. Her father was supposed to be thinking about building a prefab house, and Daddy Will was supposed to be thinking that it was something her father was capable of doing. Roy said he had buddies down at Britannia who could probably help them draw up plans, when they got to that stage. Contractors were throwing up whole communities of prefabs overnight, Roy said. Oh, it’s a real building revolution, her father said. It sure is, Mr. Nelson. Yep, looks like the coming thing, said Daddy Will. It sure does, Mr. Carroll, they’re throwing up whole communities overnight.
One Sunday evening, while driving back down to Fort Kean, Roy said, “Well, it looks as though your old man is really on the wagon this time.”
“I hate him, Roy. And I will always hate him. I told you long ago, and I meant it: I don’t want to talk about him, ever!”
“Okay,” said Roy lightly, “okay,” and so no quarrel resulted. He seemed willing to forget that he had even brought up the subject—as willing as he was to forget that hatred of which Lucy had sought to remind him.
So they set off, Sunday after Sunday, like any young married couple visiting the in-laws. But why? Why?
Because that’s what they were: she was his wife. And her mother his mother-in-law. And her father, with the thick new mustache and the bright new plans, was Roy’s father-in-law. “But I’d really rather not, Roy, not today.” “Come on, we’re up here, aren’t we? I mean, how would it look if we went away without even saying hello? What’s the big deal? Come on, honey, don’t act like a kid, get in the car—careful, watch the old belly.”
And she did not argue. Could it be she had actually argued her last? She had fought and fought to get him to do his duty, but in the end he had done it. So what more was there to fight about? She simply could not find the strength to raise her voice.
And she must respect him anyway. She must not pick at what he said, or challenge his opinions, or take issue with him, especially on matters where his knowledge was superior to her own. Or was supposed to be. She was his wife; she must be sympathetic to his point of view, even if she didn’t always agree with it, as she surely didn’t when he began to tell her how much more he knew than the teachers at Britannia.
Unfortunately, Britannia hadn’t turned out to be the place it was cracked up to be in all those fancy brochures. For one thing, it hadn’t been established in 1910, at least not as a photography school. They had only decided to branch out into photography after the war, so as to catch a bigger hunk of the G.I. Bill trade. For the first thirty-five years of its existence it had been a drafting school called the Britannia Technical Institute, and two thirds of the students still were guys interested in getting into the building business—which was how Roy came to know so much about the prefab boom. The drafting students, as a matter of fact, weren’t too bad; it was the photography students who were a scandal. Though you had to fill out a long entrance application, and with it send samples of your work, it turned out that there weren’t any real entrance requirements at all. The procedure for photography applicants was just a ruse to make you think that the new department had some sort of standards. And the quality of the faculty, he said, was even more appalling than the quality of the students—particularly one H. Harold LaVoy, who somewhere along the line had got the idea that he was some sort of expert on photographic technique. Some expert. There was more to be learned about composition by flipping through an issue of Look than spending a lifetime listening to a pompous idiot like LaVoy (who some of the guys said might be a fairy, besides. A real queer. For Lucy’s edification, he imitated LaVoy walking down the halls. A bit la-dee-da, didn’t she agree? But even a homo could teach you something if he knew something. But a dumb homo—well, that was just about the end).
LaVoy’s class was at eight in the morning, Roy’s first of the day. He got up and went off to it faithfully every single morning of the first month of the second semester, every morning went off to listen to that nasal-voiced know-it-all going on and on about absolutely nothing that a ten-year-old kid couldn’t figure out if he had a pair of twenty-twenty eyes. “Shadows are produced, gentlemen, by placing object A between the sun and object B.” Brother
. One stormy morning they got as far as the front porch, when Roy turned around, came back into the room, and Army boots, field jacket and all, threw himself back on the bed, moaning, “Oh, I don’t mind a homo, really, but a dumb homo!” He said he could find better uses to make of that hour right here in their room, he was sure. And since his next class wasn’t until eleven, by staying home he would be saving not only the hour LaVoy shot for him, but the two hours following, which he usually spent down in the lounge, watching one of the endless blackjack games that was always in session. It was so smoky and noisy down there that that’s about all you could do. Having a conversation about photography was practically impossible—not that any of his fellow students seemed to be disposed in that direction anyway. Sometimes with those guys it actually seemed to him that he was back in the day room up in the Aleutians.
And what did Lucy do? She went down to the corner and caught the crosstown bus to school for her eight o’clock. Roy said he would drive her over if she wanted; now that she was getting bigger he didn’t like the idea of her taking public transportation, or walking around on slippery streets. But she declined that first morning, and on those snowy mornings thereafter. It was all right, she said, there was nothing to worry about, she preferred not to inconvenience him by taking him away from his studying if that’s what studying was to him, sitting up in bed with a scissors and the magazines his mother saved for him every week, eating handfuls of those Hydrox cookies! But maybe he knew what he was doing. Maybe the school was a fraud. Maybe his colleagues were dopes. Maybe LaVoy was pompous and an idiot, and a homosexual too. Maybe everything he said was true and everything he did was right.
That was what she told herself, walking through the snow to the bus, and then in class, and in the library, and in the coffee shop, where she went by herself for her lunch, after her one-thirty. Most of the girls ate in the cafeteria at noon, as she had when she lived in the dorm, and she preferred now to avoid them whenever she could manage it. Eventually one of them would take a sidelong glance at her belly, and why did she have to put up with that? There was no reason for any of those little freshman twerps to look down their noses at her. To them she might only be the kid who’d had to get married over Christmas, somebody to whisper about and make fun of, but to herself she was Mrs. Roy Bassart, and she didn’t intend to go around feeling ashamed of herself all day long. She had nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of or to regret. So she ate her lunch, alone, at two-thirty, in the last booth of The Old Campus Coffee Shop.
