Philip Roth - Letting Go

“So Cynthia said.”

“How does she like it?”

“I think she likes it,” I said.

“Oh sure, he’s a regular image for a growing child. That’s the pitch. That he’s not the same old Dick. That’s supposed somehow to make me heartbroken and nostalgic for all the times I got slugged.”

I did not ask, and Martha did not say, whether the pitch was simply a pitch.

“I don’t think I’ll tell the kids for a few days. All right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Maybe I can lead into it. Maybe we can lead into it.”

What could I do? Offer to marry her again? For Martha, had that ever been the issue? “I’ll do whatever I can,” I said.

“What he had the gall to say was that it would be a favor to all of us to get the kids out of this environment. I don’t know whether he meant me or the paint flaking off the ceiling. He’s gotten very fancy. You know, he came in sort of shooting his cuffs, flashing the links, and so on. And the girl looks very upper-class Bryn Mawr and horsey. Rich. Wallet-sized photos by Bachrach. He suggested that money was good for children.”

“He said that?”

“He’s a very straightforward fellow. I was going to ask if he’d always known it or if his friends had been keeping it a secret from him for four years.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t that kind of meeting. I even thought he was going to try to kiss me once or maybe feel me up.”

“He didn’t.”

“He didn’t.”

“Did you want him to?”

“He made me very nervous. I was haughty and scared him.”

“So it wasn’t a mess?”

“Quite clean. He doesn’t even curse any more.”

“No fighting, then? No threats?”

She closed her eyes, making her admission. “What was there to fight about?”

At bedtime, Mark offered his lips as usual, and Cynthia as usual turned her cheek, but when my mouth came down to it she whispered some words that I could not understand. Because Martha was only a foot behind me, I did not ask the child to repeat whatever it was she had said. Later we went to bed ourselves, and while we each waited patiently for sleep to put an end to the day, Martha finally asked me how it had gone with Theresa Haug.

In the middle of March they left us. It had been possible during the week before to arouse Markie’s interest and keep it pumped up with exotica about the Empire State Building and Coney Island, plus occasional tales from me entitled “A Manhattan Boyhood.” “Gabe was a little boy in New York,” says Martha, and “Oh yes,” I say, “we went on the subway and we went—”

Cynthia was not so easy to manipulate, being an ace practitioner of the art herself. She began to tease. “I’ll bet there aren’t as many colored kids in my class,” she said. In a letter on blue vellum her new stepmother had informed her that she had been accepted as a student at a private school on West Eleventh Street. She would not even lose a term. “Private school is better anyway,” Cynthia said.

“Private schools are very good,” Martha said.

“Which kind did you go to?”

It was not the first time that we heard the question. Martha did not even look up from the bed upon which she was separating those items of Markie’s wardrobe that were in need of repair. “I couldn’t afford to go to school. I delivered newspapers.”

Cynthia tilted her nose and left the room; she was back minutes later, however, and addressed a statement to the woman who bore her as though that lady were Zephyr himself. “I’ll bet it’s not so damn windy in New York,” she said.

“I’ll bet it’s not,” Martha said. “Don’t say damn.”

“You do.”

“I’m an adult—”

“I’m an adult, you’re a child,” Cynthia mimicked, and moved off with a swift swooping grace, a submarine speeding home for more torpedoes.

Martha tossed a pair of holey socks into the wastebasket at her feet. “Isn’t she the brainy little saboteur,” she said, a judgment, not a question, and another pair of socks followed the first.

“What’s private school?” asked Mark, one eye on the diminishing pile of clothes.

“Private school is what you pay for — oh, Markie, come here, why do you wear this stuff when it’s ripped? Why do you put on this underwear if it’s ripped in the back?”

“Who?”

“You. Your underpants are ripped. Why didn’t you say something? Do you want to show up at your father’s with ripped underwear?”

The child, bewildered, slid his hand down the back of his trousers.

“And take your hand out of there,” said Martha, bone weary.

Markie began to bawl. “Oh baby, it’s Mommy’s fault,” Martha said, dropping a handful of shorts, “it’s my fault, I’m a slob and oh Markie—” She smothered him with kisses while he beat on her face with his hands. “Oh it’s not your fault it’s ripped, baby, it’s mine oh hell—”

Day after day tempers were short, tears frequent, and apologies effusive and misdirected. But finally we were driving to the airport.

“I sit in front with Mommy and Gabe,” Mark said.

“I sit in front,” Cynthia said — an afterthought.

“Me,” the boy said.

“Look, I don’t like three in front,” I said. Martha said nothing at all; she had already slid in beside the driver’s seat.

“I’d get to sit in front anyway,” Cynthia said, “because I’m older.”

“I’m older,” Mark said.

“You’re stupid,” his sister told him.

“Stop it, will you?” I said. “Calm down, both of you.”

We proceeded down Fifty-fifth Street in silence, until overhead we could hear the planes circling to land.

“We’re almost there and I never sat in front yet,” Cynthia said. “Just little stinky Markie.”

Martha only looked at the license plate of the car in front of us. “Please, Cynthia,” I said. “Let’s try to be generous to each other.”

“Oh sure,” she said.

Martha swung around to the back, pointing a finger. “We can’t all sit in front, can we? Just stop it.”

The only comment was Markie’s. “Ha ha,” he said.

At the airport parking lot, I carried three of the suitcases; Martha, hanging a few steps behind, carried the fourth.

Inside the terminal, Cynthia displayed a considerable interest in the departure proceedings. She watched the scales to see how much each piece of luggage weighed, and she made sure that the proper tags were tied to the handles. As the suitcases joggled down the moving platform, she followed them with her eyes until they were out of sight. Then she inquired of the ticket girl if there were toilets and ice water on the plane.

“Is there someone there to pick them up?” asked the girl behind the counter.

“My father,” Cynthia said.

The girl behind the counter smiled her girl-behind-the-counter smile. “ All right then,” she said, and told us which gate the plane would leave from.

In the time that remained I took Mark to the terminal bathroom, where, turning to ask me, “Hey, who owns us?” he managed to pee all over my cuff. When we came out Martha and Cynthia were standing at the newspaper stand, flipping through magazines. The angle of their heads, the way they supported themselves on their legs and moved their arms, would have indicated to anybody that they were mother and daughter. Neither of them was reading or even looking at the pictures. As I approached, Cynthia reached into her little red purse and asked the newsdealer for a copy of Life. She paid for it with a handful of pennies of her own, and it was then that I saw Martha’s composure weaken.

“I have to sit over the wing,” Cynthia told me as we started down the corridor to the departure gate. “I get sick any place else.”