Philip Roth - Letting Go

I had been hoping that the shadowy atmosphere might loosen her up without unhinging her, but once there she still refused to look my way. At the check room I lived through a desperate moment trying to help her out of her coat. Evidently she thought I had lost my mind and was trying to wrestle her down onto the carpet, for she uttered a forlorn hopeless little cry (her first sound) and nearly fell backwards onto me, waving her arms. “Please, please … your coat,” I pleaded, and then she either caught on or gave herself up to still another assault, and I got what I was after, plus her limp body.

Through this confusion, the hat-check girl stood at my side tapping her lacquered nails on the metal checking tokens. She was a crooked-mouthed bitch in a black crepe dress, sporting the packed-in, boxcar variety of voluptuousness; I gave her a dirty look, and then the gaudy coat, and taking Theresa by the arm once again, led her into the dining room. Within the gentle throbbing light, underexercised, overfed merchants were enjoying dinner with their families. The specialty of the house was spareribs, and around the dim room I could see men, women, and children eating daintily with their hands, manipulating their food like Muzak’s violinists their instruments. While Theresa occupied herself with a minute scrutiny of her shoes and mine, I began to believe I had made a small error of tact and taste, and out of a small and petty fearfulness. We should have gone to a drive-in hamburger joint, I thought, and sat in the car, and said what had to be said, and thereby recognized the real and unpretty dimensions of our meeting. There was an unrelentingly sedate good-natured carniverousness in the air here and it somehow led me to reflect upon the cautionary nature of all prosperous people everywhere, myself included. I had convinced myself I would be doing the girl a service by bringing her to a muted middle-class rendezvous, carpeted and melodic, when actually the only person I had set out to spare was the same old person one usually sets out to spare, no matter how complex the strategy.

Theresa carried a long plastic purse with her, about the size and shape of a loaf of bread; its insides were visible to the naked eye. Walking into the dining room, I felt it rhythmically whacking my side, and though I decided to show nothing, at one point the girl herself nearly looked up at me to apologize. But she wasn’t quite able to pull it off; she merely hugged the purse to her and sank back into her pool of shame. Finally — nothing in life being endless — our crossing was over and we sat at a small corner table.

“Miss Haug …” I said. She was searching through her purse and, oblivious to the fact that my mouth was open, continued to search until she came up with an orange Lifesaver which she slipped secretively between her lips. I decided I had to allow her still more time to calm down, to look up. And I realized that Libby — for all I resented and suspected her manner (at the same time I responded to it), for all I had begun to hate both Herzes for the crazed and wild sparing of one another that they engaged in at the expense of others — had perhaps been prophetic in pleading that Paul be spared the job of interviewing the pregnant young woman. Not that I was myself in possession of a calm reasonableness, or even a plan of action; simply, my disappointment in seeing what Theresa was, was not the disappointment of a prospective father. Surely it is possible that Paul Herz might have wept or become angry or gotten up and walked out. I did not see any of these choices open to me. I would let her finish her Lifesaver, order a little dinner, and then begin to extract from her the information and promises necessary, and give her whatever advice she would be needing.

In twenty-four hours I had become a kind of authority on adoption. Leaving the Herzes’ apartment I had not driven back to Martha’s directly, but to the campus, where I had made my way to the law library and settled down angrily with the appropriate texts. That morning I had learned more through a telephone call Martha had made to her lawyer friend, Sid Jaffe. Jaffe had been exceedingly thorough and informative, and after she hung up, Martha told me he had even said that he would try to help her two young friends with the papers and legal work when the time came. “Free,” she added. It had been generous of Jaffe, but facile I thought, and though I could not actually resent the offer, given what it would mean to Paul and Libby, I would have liked to make it clear to Martha what I believed to be her old boy friend’s motive. Instead I found myself displaying a sizable amount of approval (isn’t that wonderful, isn’t that swell) while Martha made several statements almost punishable in the grossness of their nostalgia — statements about Sid’s sweetness and reliability. Though the matter was shortly dropped, my conviction grew that I had been unfairly tested and unfairly judged. That Jaffe was sweet and reliable was perfectly all right with me, but after all, he had not been through with the Herzes what I had been. Anyway, if Jaffe was so sweet and reliable, why hadn’t she taken her two kids and married him?

Of course I said nothing of the sort — though the night before, it happened that I had said something of the sort.

It should be made clear that it had been Martha and not I who had suggested that the same Libby Herz who had given us all such a monstrous evening, should become the mother of Theresa Haug’s bastard child. Some time around four in the morning — this was in bed, after the Herzes’ departure — Martha had no scruple about awakening me to tell me her idea. I sat up a moment, and then in a groggy fury got out of bed and came down upon the floor. I stormed around that room, round and round it; with no consideration for anyone or anything, I raised my voice, feeling in me all the ferocity of someone in a dream getting his sweet revenge. The hell with them! Fuck them — the two of them! I’ve had enough! Too damn much! Let them take care of themselves! Then I got back into bed. Through it all Martha watched me in what must have seemed a moment of pure insanity. Or maybe not; maybe it looked very sane indeed, and practical. For it occurred to me — and why not to her? — that it was not only my involvement with the Herzes that had caused me to erupt as I had. Afterwards there was silence in the bedroom, darkness and winter, and the knowledge that beside me Martha was thinking her thoughts. And I was thinking mine: My life, what is it? My life, where has it gone? One moment I knew myself to be justified and the next vindictive; one moment sensible and the next ignorant and cruel. The battle raged all night, and through it my bruised sense of righteousness, flying a big red flag reading I AM, kept rushing forward — my patriot! my defender! my own self! It cried out that I had every right to be cruel, every right to be through with the Herzes. With everybody. It raised a question that is by no means new to the species: How much, from me?

At long last morning came. Light. In the day the self does not dare fly the banners it gets away with at night. In the day there are Martha’s eyes; there is Mark, visible; there is Cynthia, a brown-haired child three feet nine inches tall. There was a glimpse of Paul Herz’s head as he closed the door to his Humanities class. When he has just had a haircut, the back of a man’s head is where he looks most vulnerable. I am. He is. We are. What will be?

It was not willingly that I went sliding back into what I wanted to slide out of. But back I slid.

Theresa Haug sat up, chancing a small glance — through her small eyes — over at me.