Philip Roth - Letting Go

“The Aquarium,” Mark demanded.

“The Museum of Science and Industry, honey,” Martha said. “You can go down in the coal mine.”

“We’ve been down in that coal mine,” Cynthia said, “about a hundred times.”

“I want the fish,” Mark said.

“Oh hell, Markie, don’t whine— not today—” began Martha, and then, making my first statement of the morning to the assembled Reganharts, I said sharply, “If he wants to go the Aquarium, we’ll go to the Aquarium. What’s so hard about that?”

To the consternation of all of us, Mark grabbed my arm and kissed it. I almost drove up on the sidewalk; and in the back seat, even Cynthia, champion of unconditional surrender, broke down and said, “Thank you.” She said it softly, and when I turned my head to tell her she was welcome, I found the child, miraculously, giving me a sympathetic, almost a pitying, look.

After driving Martha and the children home, I drove to my office, where I spent the rest of the morning marking freshman essays. Just before I went off to lunch — and from there to pick up Martha’s kids — I dialed the Herzes.

“Is she terribly upset?” asked Libby.

“I think everything’s under control,” I said.

“Do you have any message for Paul?”

“Whatever I tell you I would tell Paul.”

“We’re very appreciative,” she said, “about Mr. Jaffe.”

“That’s fine.”

“Is she young?” she asked. Then: “Is she attractive? I don’t necessarily mean beautiful—”

“She’s attractive, Libby. She’s nineteen.”

“What about the husband?”

“What?”

“The father. Is he a student?”

“No,” I said.

“I thought he was a student too.”

“He’s an architect,” I said.

She said, “And he’s not going to get in the way?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So we can just sit back now?”

“That’s right.”

“Well … it sounds very good. I didn’t realize he was an architect.”

“It’s all perfect,” I said.

After a moment, she said, “I want to say I’m sorry for my outburst.”

“That’s neither here nor there, Libby.”

“And how is Mrs. Reganhart?”

“She’s fine.”

“Do you want Paul to call you about anything?”

“Jaffe will call him.”

“Of course,” Libby said, “we’re very appreciative.”

“Of course,” I said, and hung up.

It was like being under water, though perhaps that was some illusion I brought to the place, something to do with my sense that day of power and circumstance. At any rate, the corridors arched over, containing our movements, and the oblongs of light which gave a shape, an edge, to the darkness could have been glass-bottomed boats looking in on us; not even the noises were above-ground sounds. Everything — footfalls, laughter, parental reprimands — seemed to pulsate toward one vertically and then break under and over. Mark kept leaning across the railing and rapping on the windows of the tanks to get the attention of the fish. A guard finally told him to cut it out. “You get an angel fish excited,” the guard advised me, since it was I who would have to fork over the cash, “he’ll knock his head against the wall and kill himself.” “I’m sorry,” I said, and we walked on, up one side, past the long metallic fish of the Great Lakes, and down the other, past their rainbowed cousins of the Amazon and Nile. Long-legged Cynthia, a little Egyptian herself in an orange chemise dress and a purple pullover, seemed to pick up grace from watching the patient flutterings of the fins and the rippling gills of the baby shark, as he slid one way and then the other in his green cage.

“They eat people,” Cynthia informed her brother, and then she did something on her toes that she had learned in her ballet class, and coasted on.

It was a simple enough sentence she had uttered, but I don’t think the remark sank in. Mark ran off across the marble floor and disappeared around the corner; we came on him later in front of the sea horse, which he thought was a toy. I was the most permissive of adults, and followed where they led; and though other families arrived and departed, we stayed, for the mother and the father of my companions — the two unruly children, screaming and skipping up and down the echoing halls — were home having a long talk, the outcome of which none of us yet knew. Finally, tired out, I sat down on a bench in front of the hawksbill turtle, a bundle of coats and hats and scarves in my lap. The hawknose dipped and the ancient repulsive skin of the turtle’s neck flashed by, and then the armored bottom went sailing past the window. He receded into the murky waters at the far reaches of the tank, and Markie settled down beside me and promptly fell asleep, his head on my arm. Cynthia approached and asked, so politely, if she could take off her shoes.

“They’re very nice shoes,” I said.

“They’re Indian girls’ shoes from Arizona,” she said.

“Are they too tight?”

“No, they’re perfect.” Nevertheless, one beaded shoe dangled from either hand.

“Why don’t you sit down and rest?” I asked. “The floor is a little cold.”

“Thank you.” She seated herself not beside Markie, but me.

“They are a little tight,” she admitted. “That’s the way the Indian children like them.”

“They’re very colorful and pretty,” I said.

“My father brought them.”

“Did he bring you the dress too?”

“And the sweater. They’re from June.”

“I see.”

“Do you know who June is?” she asked.

“I suppose she’s his new wife, who he’s going to marry.”

“She’s very pretty,” Cynthia said.

“Did you see a picture?”

“In an evening gown.”

“Did Mark?” I asked.

“Mark doesn’t understand everything,” she said. “I think we might get to live in New York,” she told me.

“Your daddy said so?”

“He asked me if I wanted to.”

“I see,” I said.

Cynthia pulled one foot up on the bench and began to knead her big toe. “I suppose my parents are having a talk about us,” she said.

“I suppose they are.”

“I’m not sure Markie wants to go live in New York.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think he knows my father very well. My father has a new mustache.”

“Doesn’t Mark like the mustache?”

“I don’t think he’s used to it.”

“I’ll bet if you lived with him he’d probably get used to it.”

She considered that. “He didn’t used to have one.”

“Well,” I said after a moment, “people change and I guess we finally do get used to it.”

“But he wouldn’t be home with us, you see,” Cynthia said. “He works.”

“All fathers work,” I said. “Most, anyway. My father works.”

Her next question had a fervent, open inquisitiveness about it, and it connected in my mind with that nearly tender glance she had given me in the car, and the fact that she had chosen now to sit down beside me. On this of all days I had stopped being only her mother’s property. “Is he a painter?” she asked me.

“He’s a dentist.”

“Ucch,” said Cynthia.

“He doesn’t hurt though,” I said. “He’s a painless dentist.”

For the first time in our short and disheartening acquaintanceship she tried to please me. “Boy, I’d like him to be my dentist.”

“He lives in New York too.”

What she said then might at first appear to have emerged more appropriately from the mouth of her brother; but the words belonged to Cynthia really, for she was the metaphysical one. “Is he any relation to me?” she asked.