Goodbye, Columbus

by Philip Roth

  “What is this?” I said.

  “A storeroom. Our old furniture.”

  “How old?”

  “From Newark,” she said. “Come here.” She was on her hands and knees in front of the sofa and was holding up its paunch to peek beneath.

  “Brenda, what the hell are we doing here? You’re getting filthy.”

  “It’s not here.”

  “What?”

  “The money. I told you.”

  I sat down on a wing chair, raising some dust. It had begun to rain outside, and we could smell the fall dampness coming through the vent that was outlined at the far end of the storeroom. Brenda got up from the floor and sat down on the sofa. Her knees and Bermudas were dirty and when she pushed her hair back she dirtied her forehead. There among the disarrangement and dirt I had the strange experience of seeing us, both of us, placed among disarrangement and dirt: we looked like a young couple who had just moved into a new apartment; we had suddenly taken stock of our furniture, finances, and future, and all we could feel any pleasure about was the clean smell of outside, which reminded us we were alive, but which, in a pinch, would not feed us.

  “What money?” I said again.

  “The hundred-dollar bills. From when I was a little girl …” and she breathed deeply. “When I was little and we’d just moved from Newark, my father took me up here one day. He took me into this room and told me that if anything should ever happen to him, he wanted me to know where there was some money that I should have. He said it wasn’t for anybody else but me, and that I should never tell anyone about it, not even Ron. Or my mother.”

  “How much was it?”

  “Three hundred-dollar bills. I’d never seen them before. I was nine, around Julie’s age. I don’t think we’d been living here a month. I remember I used to come up here about once a week, when no one was home but Carlota, and crawl under the sofa and make sure it was still here. And it always was. He never mentioned it once again. Never.”

  “Where is it? Maybe someone stole it.”

  “I don’t know, Neil. I suppose he took it back.”

  “When it was gone,” I said, “my God, didn’t you tell him? Maybe Carlota—”

  “I never knew it was gone, until just now. I guess I stopped looking at one time or another … And then I forgot about it. Or just didn’t think about it. I mean I always had enough, I didn’t need this. I guess one day he figured I wouldn’t need it.”

  Brenda paced up to the narrow, dust-covered window and drew her initials on it.

  “Why did you want it now?” I said.

  “I don’t know …” she said and went over and twisted the bulb off.

  I didn’t move from the chair and Brenda, in her tight shorts and shirt, seemed naked standing there a few feet away. Then I saw her shoulders shaking. “I wanted to find it and tear it up in little pieces and put the goddam pieces in her purse! If it was there, I swear it, I would have done it.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you, Bren.”

  “Wouldn’t you have?”

  “No.”

  “Make love to me, Neil. Right now.”

  “Where?”

  “Do it! Here. On this cruddy cruddy cruddy sofa.”

  And I obeyed her.

  The next morning Brenda made breakfast for the two of us. Ron had gone off to his first day of work—I’d heard him singing in the shower only an hour after I’d returned to my own room; in fact, I had still been awake when the Chrysler had pulled out of the garage, carrying boss and son down to the Patimkin works in Newark. Mrs. Patimkin wasn’t home either; she had taken her car and had gone off to the Temple to talk to Rabbi Kranitz about the wedding. Julie was on the back lawn playing at helping Carlota hang the clothes.

  “You know what I want to do this morning?” Brenda said. We were eating a grapefruit, sharing it rather sloppily, for Brenda couldn’t find a paring knife, and so we’d decided to peel it down like an orange and eat the segments separately.

  “What?” I said.

  “Run,” she said. “Do you ever ran?”

  “You mean on a track? God, yes. In high school we had to run a mile every month. So we wouldn’t be Momma’s boys. I think the bigger your lungs get the more you’re supposed to hate your mother.”

  “I want to run,” she said, “and I want you to run. Okay?”

  “Oh, Brenda …”

  But an hour later, after a breakfast that consisted of another grapefruit, which apparently is all a runner is supposed to eat in the morning, we had driven the Volkswagen over to the high school, behind which was a quarter-mile track. Some kids were playing with a dog out in the grassy center of the track, and at the far end, near the woods, a figure in white shorts with slits in the side, and no shirt, was twirling, twirling, and then flinging a shot put as far as he could. After it left his hand he did a little eagle-eyed tap dance while he watched it arch and bend and land in the distance.

  “You know,” Brenda said, “you look like me. Except bigger.”

  We were dressed similarly, sneakers, sweat socks, khaki Bermudas, and sweat shirts, but I had the feeling that Brenda was not talking about the accidents of our dress—if they were accidents. She meant, I was sure, that I was somehow beginning to look the way she wanted me to. Like herself.

  “Let’s see who’s faster,” she said, and then we started along the track. Within the first eighth of a mile the three little boys and their dog were following us. As we passed the corner where the shot putter was, he waved at us; Brenda called “Hi!” and I smiled, which, as you may or may not know, makes one engaged in serious running feel inordinately silly. At the quarter mile the kids dropped off and retired to the grass the dog turned and started the other way, and I had a tiny knife in my side. Still I was abreast of Brenda, who as we started on the second lap called “Hi!” once again to the lucky shot nutter who was reclining on the grass now watching us and rubbing his shot like a crystal ball Ah, I thought, there’s the sport.

  “How about us throwing the shot put?” I panted.

  “After,” she said, and I saw beads of sweat clinging to the last strands of hair that shagged off her ear. When we approached the half mile Brenda suddenly swerved off the track onto the grass and tumbled down; her departure surprised me and I was still running.

  “Hey, Bob Mathias,” she called, “let’s lie in the sun…”

  But I acted as though I didn’t hear her and though my heart pounded in my throat and my mouth was dry as a drought, I made my legs move, and swore I would not stop until I’d finished one more lap. As I passed the shot putter for the third time, I called “Hi!”

  She was excited when I finally pulled up alongside of her. “You’re good,” she said. My hands were on my hips and I was looking at the ground and sucking air—rather, air was sucking me, I didn’t have much to say about it.

  “Uh-huh,” I breathed.

  “Let’s do this every morning,” she said. “We’ll get up and have two grapefruit, and then you’ll come out here and ran. I’ll time you. In two weeks you’ll break four minutes, won’t you, sweetie? I’ll get Ron’s stop watch.” She was so excited—she’d slid over on the grass and was pushing my socks up against my wet ankles and calves. She bit my kneecap.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Then we’ll go back and have a real breakfast.”

  “Okay.”

  “You drive back,” she said, and suddenly she was up and running ahead of me, and then we were headed back in the car.

  And the next morning, my mouth still edgy from the grapefruit segments, we were at the track. We had Ron’s stop watch and a towel for me, for when I was finished.

  “My legs are a little sore,” I said.

  “Do some exercises,” Brenda said. “I’ll do them with you.” She heaped the towel on the grass and together we did deep knee bends, and sit-ups, and push-ups, and some high-knee raising in place. I felt overwhelmingly happy.

  “I’m just going to run a half today, Bren. We’ll
see what I do …” and I heard Brenda click the watch, and then when I was on the far side of the track, the clouds trailing above me like my own white, fleecy tail, I saw that Brenda was on the ground, hugging her knees, and alternately checking the watch and looking out at me. We were the only ones there, and it all reminded me of one of those scenes in race-horse movies, where an old trainer like Walter Brennan and a young handsome man clock the beautiful girl’s horse in the early Kentucky morning, to see if it really is the fastest two-year-old alive. There were differences all right—one being simply that at the quarter mile Brenda shouted out to me, “A minute and fourteen seconds,” but it was pleasant and exciting and clean and when I was finished Brenda was standing up and waiting for me. Instead of a tape to break I had Brenda’s sweet flesh to meet, and I did, and it was the first time she said that she loved me.

  We ran—I ran—every morning, and by the end of the week I was running a 7:02 mile, and always at the end there was the little click of the watch and Brenda’s arms.

  At night, I would read in my pajamas, while Brenda, in her room, read, and we would wait for Ron to go to sleep. Some nights we had to wait longer than others, and I would hear the leaves swishing outside, for it had grown cooler at the end of August, and the air-conditioning was turned off at night and we were all allowed to open our windows. Finally Ron would be ready for bed. He would stomp around his room and then he would come to the door in his shorts and T-shirt and go into the bathroom where he would urinate loudly and brush his teeth. After he brushed his teeth I would go in to brash mine. We would pass in the hall and I would give him a hearty and sincere “Goodnight ” Once in the bathroom I would spend a moment admiring my tan in the mirror; behind me I could see Ron’s jock straps hanging out to dry on the Hot and Cold knobs of the shower. Nobody ever questioned their tastefulness as adornment and after a few nights I didn’t even notice them.

  While Ron brushed his teeth and I waited in my bed for my turn, I could hear the record player going in his room. Generally, after coming in from basketball, he would call Harriet—who was now only a few days away from us—and then would lock himself up with Sports Illustrated and Mantovani; however, when he emerged from his room for his evening toilet, it was not a Mantovani record I would hear playing, but something else, apparently what he’d once referred to as his Columbus record. I imagined that was what I heard, for I could not tell much from the last moments of sound. All I heard were bells moaning evenly and soft patriotic music behind them, and riding over it all, a deep kind of Edward R. Murrow gloomy voice: “And so goodbye Columbus ” the voice intoned, “…goodbye, Columbus … goodbye…” Then there would be silence and Ron would be back in his room; the light would switch off and in only a few minutes I would hear him rumbling down into that exhilarating, restorative, vitamin-packed sleep that I imagined athletes to enjoy.

  One morning near sneaking-away time I had a dream and when I awakened from it, there was just enough dawn coming into the room for me to see the color of Brenda’s hair. I touched her in her sleep, for the dream had unsettled me: it had taken place on a ship, an old sailing ship like those you see in pirate movies. With me on the ship was the little colored kid from the library—I was the captain and he my mate, and we were the only crew members. For a while it was a pleasant dream; we were anchored in the harbor of an island in the Pacific and it was very sunny. Up on the beach there were beautiful bare-skinned Negresses, and none of them moved; but suddenly we were moving our shin out of the harbor and, the Negresses moved slowly down to the shore and began to throw leis at us and say “Goodbye, Columbus … goodbye, Columbus … goodbye…” and though we did not want to go, the little boy and I, the boat was moving and there was nothing we could do about it, and he shouted at me that it was my fault and I shouted it was his for not having a library card, but we were wasting our breath, for we were further and further from the island, and soon the natives were nothing at all. Space was all out of proportion in the dream, and things were sized and squared in no way I’d ever seen before, and I think it was that more than anything else that steered me into consciousness. I did not want to leave Brenda’s side that morning, and for a while I played with the little point at the nape of her neck, where she’d had her hair cut. I stayed longer than I should have, and when finally I returned to my room I almost ran into Ron who was preparing for his day at Patimkin Kitchen and Bathroom Sinks.

  6

  That morning was supposed to have been my last at the Patimkin house; however, when I began to throw my things into my bag late in the day, Brenda told me I could unpack—somehow she’d managed to inveigle another week out of her parents, and I would be able to stay right through till Labor Day, when Ron would be married; then, the following morning Brenda would be off to school and I would eo back to work. So we would be with each other until the summer’s last moment.

  This should have made me overjoyed, but as Brenda trotted back down the stairs to accompany her family to the airport—where they were to pick up Harriet—I was not joyful but disturbed, as I had been more and more with the thought that when Brenda went back to Radcliffe, that would be the end for me. I was convinced that even Miss Winney’s stool was not high enough for me to see clear up to Boston. Nevertheless, I tossed my clothing back into the drawer and was able, finally, to tell myself that there’d been no hints of ending our affair from Brenda, and any suspicions I had, any uneasiness, was spawned in my own uncertain heart. Then I went into Ron’s room to call my aunt.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Aunt Gladys,” I said, “how are you?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “No, I’m having a fine time. I wanted to call you, I’m going to stay another week.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I’m having a good time. Mrs. Patimkin asked me to stay until Labor Day.”

  “You’ve got clean underwear?”

  “I’m washing it at night. I’m okay, Aunt Gladys.”

  “By hand you can’t get it clean.”

  “It’s clean enough. Look, Aunt Gladys, I’m having a wonderful time.”

  “Shmutz he lives in and I shouldn’t worry.”

  “How’s Uncle Max?” I asked.

  “What should he be? Uncle Max is Uncle Max. You, I don’t like the way your voice sounds.”

  “Why? Do I sound like I’ve got on dirty underwear?”

  “Smart guy. Someday you’ll learn.”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean what? You’ll find out. You’ll stay there too long you’ll be too good for us.”

  “Never, sweetheart,” I said.

  “I’ll see it I’ll believe it.”

  “Is it cool in Newark, Aunt Gladys?”

  “It’s snowing,” she said.

  “Hasn’t it been cool all week?”

  “You sit around all day it’s cool. For me it’s not February, believe me.”

  “Okay, Aunt Gladys. Say hello to everybody.”

  “You got a letter from your mother.”

  “Good. I’ll read it when I get home.”

  “You couldn’t take a ride down you’ll read it?”

  “It’ll wait. I’ll drop them a note. Be a good girl,” I said.

  “What about your socks?”

  “I go barefoot. Goodbye, honey.” And I hung up.

  Down in the kitchen Carlota was getting dinner ready. I was always amazed at how Carlota’s work never seemed to get in the way of her life. She made household chores seem like illustrative gestures of whatever it was she was singing, even, if as now, it was “I Get a Kick out of You.” She moved from the oven to the automatic dishwasher—she pushed buttons, turned dials, peeked in the glass-doored oven, and from time to time picked a big black grape out of a bunch that lay on the sink. She chewed and chewed, humming all the time, and then, with a deliberated casualness, shot the skin and the pit directly into the garbage disposal unit. I said hello to her as I went out the back door and though she did not return th
e greeting I felt a kinship with one who like me had been partially wooed and won on Patimkin fruit. ‘

  Out on the lawn I shot baskets for a while; then I picked up an iron and drove a cotton golf ball limply up into the sunlight; then I kicked a soccer ball towards the oak tree; then I tried shooting foul shots again. Nothing diverted me—I felt open-stomached, as though I hadn’t eaten for months, and though I went back inside and came out with my own handful of grapes, the feeling continued, and I knew it had nothing to do with my caloric intake; it was only a rumor of the hollowness that would come when Brenda was away. The fact of her departure had, of course, been on my mind for a while, but overnight it had taken on a darker hue. Curiously, the darkness seemed to have something to do with Harriet, Ron’s intended, and I thought for a time that it was simply the reality of Harriet’s arrival that had dramatized the passing of time: we had been talking about it and now suddenly it was here—just as Brenda’s departure would be here before we knew it.

  But it was more than that: the union of Harriet and Ron reminded me that separation need not be a permanent state. People could marry each other, even if they were young! And yet Brenda and I had never mentioned marriage, except perhaps for that night at the pool when she’d said, “When you love me, everything will be all right.” Well, I loved her, and she me, and things didn’t seem all right at all. Or was I inventing troubles again? I supposed I should really have thought my lot improved considerably; yet, there on the lawn, the August sky seemed too beautiful and temporary to bear, and I wanted Brenda to marry me. Marriage, though, was not what I proposed to her when she drove the car up the driveway, alone, some fifteen minutes later. That proposal would have taken a kind of courage that I did not think I had. I did not feel myself prepared for any answer but “Halleluiah!” Any other kind of yes wouldn’t have satisfied me, and any kind of no even one masked behind the words “Let’s wait sweetheart,” would have been my end. So I imagine that’s why I proposed the surrogate, which turned out finally to be far more daring than I knew it to be at the time.