Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Miss Haug,” I said once again, and without even a fight she surrendered to her gracelessness and immediately twisted one of the buttons off her blouse. The next problem seemed so large as to be facing all the diners in the room: what to do with the button? I thought, She wants me to call her Mrs. Haug — is that it? and the girl sat there dangling the button by its broken thread, spellbound by the sheer, unrelenting sweep of her misfortune. Finally I found myself extending my hand. She dropped the button into my palm and I deposited it into my coat pocket.

Her hands dove out of sight, and a strange rattling arose. I realized after a moment that its source was her skirt, a gold, luminous, bespangled garment that apparently dispatched noises upon making contact with a foreign object. Under the skirt a half-dozen crinolines were supposed to add joie de vivre , but the buoyant air imparted only heightened her unromantic proportions. I began feeling less and less hopeful about the chance of our exchanging two complete sentences; then my mind took a giddy turn and I could hear someone disrobing Theresa Haug: freeing her from her orchestral skirt, flicking open her remaining buttons, unsnapping all that seemed to hold in a piece her upper half. There was some chilling fragility about her which suggested that the elaborate network of straps and frills beneath her sheer blouse was there for unfortunate orthopedic reasons. I looked at her only with sympathy and noticed the silver cross that met the rise of her slip; the metal touching flesh made me conscious of the actuality under the clothes. It was incredible; under those layers of shiny cloth lived a woman with sexual parts. It was only a short step to wondering about the man who had seduced her. Seduction? What could the fellow have wanted? Found?

The waitress was now beside us. “How about something to eat?” I asked.

She barely opened her mouth, but nevertheless managed to say no.

I tried to slide a menu under her eyes. “Not even a sandwich? I wouldn’t be hurt if you settled for a sandwich.”

I smiled. She didn’t. The waitress, a wall-eyed blonde in no great rapport with the world’s sorrows, coughed.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“Uh-uh.”

“I’m going to have coffee and a piece of apple pie. How does that sound to you?” I waited only a second more, then spoke directly into the waitress’s boredom. “Would you bring us coffee and pie?”

“Two or one?”

“Two.”

Theresa signaled neither pleasure nor its opposite; if you ordered her pie, she’d eat pie.

And so it turned out. When the waitress lowered our dishes onto the tablecloth, whose soft white glow we had both been wordlessly facing for three minutes, Theresa picked up her fork, dislodged a tiny square of crust, halved it, halved the half, then pressed the back of the fork into the crumbs, a few of which attached themselves to the prongs. She carried them to her lips and finally ate in a little birdy way that I gradually realized was her conception of manners. Who had seduced her, I wondered, catching sight of her tongue? Who had wanted to?

It was an endless time before she had swallowed the few flakes of crust. “Would you like a glass of water?” I asked. “She’s forgotten our water … Excuse me, but would you like an Alka-Seltzer?”

“Uh-uh.”

“You’re all right?”

She closed her eyes, then batted the lashes. “They … have … nice … pie,” she finally articulated. “Home baked.”

“Yes, it’s awfully good, isn’t it? Do they have home-baked pie in the Hawaiian House?”

She proceeded to deliver a series of shrugs and head-bobs to indicate yes, no, and finally that she wasn’t sure. She returned to her plate, separating into pieces a crumb of pie that in itself was almost invisible.

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” I said.

“… It’s nice and tasty.”

“But don’t force yourself,” I said, unnerved. “If you’ve already had dinner …”

“Is there a powder room for ladies?”

“I think so. Don’t you feel well? Would you like some help?”

“I want to comb my hair.” She was standing, and I wondered if she were going to pass out. In a rush, my napkin sliding to the floor, I rose and took a step toward her; the girl’s face registered its first emotion: panic.

“What is it?” I asked.

Her pale face had, incredibly, paled. “Where you goin’?” she demanded.

“Nowhere.”

“I thought you were goin’.”

The people at the table beside ours looked up over their spare ribs like harmonica players. “ You were going,” I said softly.

“Uh-huh. I was goin’ to wash up.”

“I was just standing,” I said, feeling my own color change.

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you just go ahead?”

She walked off, holding her purse in one hand and her table napkin in the other.

I sat down — sank down in my chair. Muzak swathed me in cotton batting and the gentle flickerings of the candles erased the flaws in the faces of the other diners. Everyone looked younger than he was, and my memory went reeling back to those first few evenings (or were they Saturday afternoons?) I had ever taken out a girl, back to all those Chinese restaurants on the upper West Side, where with a squared-off handkerchief in my breast pocket and a scented lacquer of my mother’s holding fast my recalcitrant hair, I waited for my sixteen-year-old companions to return from the powder room so that we could get on with the egg roll. Later I came to interpret all those toilet trips of my first dinner partners as a sort of coquetry on a very primal level — the mysteries of the body’s lower half for the anxious, throbbing adolescent boy to ponder — and it occurred to me it might be something like that for Theresa Haug as well. So far our evening had certainly been like some wearisome blind date: the boy trying bravely to live up to parental expectations of gallantry; the girl staking her all on an imbecilic shyness, which was at bottom only a misguided and sullen sort of flirtation. All that abysmal helplessness … all the fastening of my mind upon the word seduction. I reached into my pocket for a handkerchief and came up instead with the button off Theresa’s blouse.

When she returned to the table I did not stand and so we managed to get by without incident. I noticed reddish blotches directly beneath her eyes, and then on her arms too.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked.

“Better,” she said.

“You’re not”—I went ahead, feeling guilty now for having shoved the pie upon her—“you don’t happen to be allergic to apple?”

Of all things, she became coy; her hands began to flutter all over. I realized now that Theresa Haug had an age. She was no more than nineteen.

“What is it, Theresa?”

Her mouth flickered at either end; I was present at the birth of a smile. “Yes?” I said.

“Oh — I just try to bring up some color — in my face?” She ended on a high, questioning note. “In the winter I go so white …”

“Are you from the South?”

“Uh- huh. ” The emphasis I took for regional pride. “You ain’t,” she said.

“I’m from New York.”

“Mister?”

“Yes—”

“Are you the doctor? Aren’t you goin’ to examine me— where? ”

“Well, look … I’m not the doctor. I should have made it clear.”

“I thought you was the doctor.”

“Well, no. I’m a friend of the people—”

“I’m supposed to see the doctor,” she moaned.

“You will,” I said. “Please don’t worry. That’s all going to be taken care of. I’m a friend of the people who are interested in adopting your baby. The baby. Martha said you were interested in giving up the child for adoption.”