Philip Roth - Letting Go

Paul said, “I get it too.”

“Are you being sarcastic again?”

He shook his head. He was no longer the sharp-tongued backseat Don Juan. Hardly. He slumped a little in his chair, for he felt there was something in this room that he had expected for himself. Never — not in Detroit, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Iowa City, not even in Brooklyn as a boy — had he felt very permanent about himself. And that was sad and ironic, for he had married early for reasons that were not really so out of the ordinary.

“I get it seeing you, Paul,” Doris was telling him. “I got it seeing Peanuts and those kids, and his wife, such a terrific-looking girl. And what makes it something is that some accident, something here or there, and you might even have married the other person. I don’t mean that kind of accident — I mean some quirk, anything. You think that’s dumb, don’t you?”

“No — I’m just not sure about the last part.” He wasn’t very sure about any of it, but he was not unwilling to let the girl go on and on; it was nice having a little respite from life. He had married at twenty as though to bully his way into manhood; now a little vacation from manhood was a pleasure. Everybody deserves a few minutes off now and then anyway. One deep breath, then off to the hospital …

“What last part?” Doris asked.

He had to think. “Marrying people by accident.”

“Paul, if you want to say that you couldn’t have married me because I’m not smaaht enough, look, go right ahead. I’ll admit I don’t read every book that comes out, and I’m not a bohemian or a beatnik, so if that’s what you think, you’re perfectly justified.”

“You want to fight with me, Doris?”

“You’re the one who’s fighting.”

“All I meant was that there probably is some real chemistry between two people who decide to marry.”

“Boy, you read too many novels,” she said. “It’s not all sex.”

“All right.” If he could only think of a place to go, he would leave. Suddenly she filled him with the same weariness and boredom that she had in 1948. What was the name of the hospital? Where would he leave his suitcase? Where would he sleep? Why, downstairs, in his old bed, where else?

“Well, that’s what you meant,” she said.

“I only meant some necessary connection. Some serious service one does for the other.”

“How—” she asked, pouring him another cup of coffee. “How,” she asked very offhandedly, “would you explain that in terms of me and Maur?”

“I don’t know you and Maury.”

“You remember us.”

“Hell, Doris”—his irritation was less with the conversation than with his own willingness to stay for yet another cup—“we’ve all changed.”

“Well, so have you!”

“That’s what I meant.”

“You were a very excitable guy then, and now, I don’t know, I just don’t think you look so excitable any more. I suppose you matured.”

“I struck you, did I, as young?”

“Well, you think it’s a joke and that I’m stupid, but as a matter of fact, if you want to know the truth, at twenty Maury was much more of a man, I thought, than you. A much more settled fella, with real goals.”

“Well,” Paul said, raising his hands, “he seems to have reached them.”

“He’s doing very nicely, thank you. I can’t make out if you’re sarcastic or not.”

“Not! Come on, Doris, ten years have gone by, what’s this sarcastic business!”

“Well, I’m not ashamed of how Maury’s doing. He may not be a”—at the last second she seemed to swap one word for another—“Rockefeller, but he’s a very good husband to a girl. He makes a girl very happy. It’s very nice, believe me, to have somebody who’s very proud of you. I know plenty of girls whose husbands never really admire them dressed up, or don’t take pride in the way their wives fix their hair or in their wives’ taste — which is very important to a woman — and I’m not one of them.”

“You look very happy.”

“Well, you do too!”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything, Doris.”

“Well,” she rushed to say, blushing now, “you must love your wife very much to have given up everything for her.”

Having stayed this long, having chosen to be unrealistic and indulgent, he should have expected it. “What did I give up?” he asked.

“I’m not criticizing.”

“I only wanted to know what you thought I had to give up.”

“I only meant to say that you must love your wife very much.”

He had no choice. “I do,” he said.

“Well … then …” But she couldn’t lay off, this girl whom he had caressed and caressed. “That must make it all worth it.”

“It does,” he heard himself saying.

“I suppose she’s an intellectual too.”

“Look, Doris, it’s hard to tell what you have in your mind when you say ‘intellectual.’ ”

“Like you.”

“Well, she is like me.”

“Very serious,” Doris suggested.

“She’s quite serious. That’s right.”

“Well, maybe she is.”

“What does that mean? She is. She’s a serious girl. She’s a very valuable person.”

“Well,” Doris said, “it’s up to the individual. Personally I just don’t think you happen to have liked Jewish girls. I don’t think you respected them, to be frank, if you want the truth.”

“My wife is Jewish.”

“I meant,” said Doris, not flinching, “by birth.”

“I don’t think that has much to do with it.” Get up! Go! Why punish yourself!

“You might not think so,” Doris said, “but a lot of it is in your subconscious. It’s a reaction. It happens to a lot of Jewish guys. Especially smart ones.” After a second, she added, “The ones who think they’re smart.”

“It’s possible, Doris,” he said, “that people choose mates for other reasons.” She didn’t seem to believe it; she closed her eyes once again. “Complicated reasons,” he said.

“That’s complicated to me, all right. You take a fella, a normal fella, and you expect he’s going to first off be attracted to a girl of his own particular faith, right? Then he turns around and does the opposite. You couldn’t want anything more complicated if you wrote away for it.”

“As a matter of fact, you could.”

Defiantly, as though she had him chained to his chair, she asked, “For instance?”

“Oh, for instance why did you marry Maury?”

“Well,” she said, losing breath and coloring, “he’s Jewish at least.”

“Never mind, Doris. Let’s forget all this.”

“Why did you marry her? ” Doris demanded. “I mean if it wasn’t just a reaction, why did you?”

“Love.” After he had spoken he experienced a terrible moment of confusion. But he said again, “Love.”

“So then why don’t you have any children?”

The question startled him further. “We don’t want any children.”

“I don’t believe it, a Jewish fella.”

“You’ve got too much faith, Doris, in us poor Jewish fellas.”

“You’re not the same fella, Paul, that’s the truth. If a man and his wife have a solid relationship then they have children.”

He did not wish to tell anybody in Brooklyn of Libby’s kidney trouble; besides it did not seem to him that this was actually why they had no children. “Doris, that may not be so in all cases. Isn’t that a possibility?”

“Listen, you make love to a girl different, if you want to know, when there are children involved. And I think I’ve had more experience than you! You’re just not the same fella, and that’s all I’m trying to say.”

At last he pulled his weakened self up out of his chair. He felt he had heard just about everything that had been thought and said about him in the last five years. He set down his cup.