Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Otherwise they get attached, and it could cause trouble later. With the adoption. It’s better for everybody this way, the girl included.”

“Absolutely.”

He parked, and just as we were stepping out of the car, a window above us opened and Paul stuck his head out. “We’ll be right down,” he called.

Sid and I sat down on the front steps of the brick building to wait. Across the street some kids were playing in a small weedy lot; next door to us several Negro women with shopping bags in their arms were chatting on the porch; a tall thin elderly man, apparently related to one of the women, was standing down below polishing his car and occasionally tossing a remark back up toward the porch conversation. It was a restful moment, a pleasant summer moment, and there was even the smell of honeysuckle from a bush in the little scrubby yard to our left. But most pleasant of all was a pleasure I began to take in my companion’s organizational abilities. As we sat there waiting for the Herzes, I looked out toward the street and counted one, two, three, four — all Sid’s doors — and I told myself that everything was going to come off smoothly and easily. Why shouldn’t it?

Jaffe had said something to me that I did not hear.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“—says that you’re going East?”

“Martha does?”

“Yes.”

It had only been at dinner the night before that I had definitely decided to go; it must have been after dinner then, between the time Martha had picked up the phone and handed it to me, that she had passed on the information to Jaffe. It was like having your decisions go out over the wire services.

“My father,” I explained, “is getting married. That is, he’s just set the date, and he wants me to come spend some time with him and his fiancée. My mother died a few years back, you see.”

“Well, that’s quite an interesting thing, for an older man like that to remarry.”

“He’s sixty. I imagine it is.”

“How does it feel for you?” he asked pleasantly.

“Oh,” I said — and wondered, as I paused, how much he really did know about my private life beyond the fact that I owned a two-door automobile—“I’m very happy for him.”

“It should be pleasant.”

“Yes.”

“I mean your trip.”

“I don’t think I’ll be gone more than a week.”

He took that fact in. “New York?”

“They’re out on Long Island. East Hampton.”

“Isn’t that where Dick Reganhart lives, Long Island?”

“He’s in Springs.”

“Oh,” said Sid, “is that far?”

“As a matter of fact, it turns out to be about ten miles east.”

Just then someone called down, “Hey, hi!” It was Libby. “You two — one more minute!” Her hair was hanging loose on either side of her face, and she was waving at us with her lipstick.

“Hello,” I said, looking up.

“How are you?” Jaffe called.

“Terrified,” she answered. “I can’t get my lipstick on anything but my nose. I’m shaking all over.” She ducked inside.

Jaffe turned to me. “She’s really quite a spunky girl. They’ve had a lot of troubles apparently.”

I wondered if he was trying to needle me. But his manner was agreeable, and I decided that all he had been trying to do, now as earlier, was to make conversation.

Next he said: “I suppose you’ll get over to see Cynthia and Mark then.”

“I’m sorry—”

“I suppose in the East you’ll get over to see the kids.”

“I don’t really know.”

“If you should, send them my love.”

“Certainly.”

“If they even remember me.”

“Oh,” I said, “I’m sure they will.”

“I hope so,” he said. Maybe he didn’t recognize the irony; maybe he did. “I was very fond of them,” he added, as though they had not departed merely from the Midwest but from this life.

A second later the door behind us opened and Libby and Paul appeared. We all greeted one another. Shaking Paul’s hand, I said, “Congratulations.”

By contrast to the rest of us who were suntanned — Libby included — Paul looked more haggard then ever. Of course it was only two weeks since his return from Brooklyn and his father’s funeral; looking at his hair that needed cutting, and his eyes that needed sleep, I was struck again by the news of his going each day to synagogue to say the mourner’s prayer. “The best of luck,” I said to him.

“Thank you,” he answered.

We continued to grip each other’s hand. It was warming for me to believe that despite the confusions between us — even the coldness, the hostility — we could confront each other on this special day with a decent amount of respect. Suddenly I sensed Paul’s helplessness in a way I never had before — that is, without even the thinnest overlay of suspicion or doubt. I thought I understood what he had felt and been made to feel toward the woman he had chosen, and by choosing, altered. I have been searching for a Libby, and I have found myself one. I have made myself one — Martha. A lacerating idea, but it hung on, and however it worked against me, it led me to my fullest understanding of what had happened between Paul and myself, of what his feelings had been for me. I now had an experience to go by; where Paul Herz had once had Gabriel Wallach, Gabriel Wallach now had Sid Jaffe.

“What are you going to call her?” I asked him.

“Rachel,” he said.

“Because we had to wait so long.” The explanation came from Libby.

“Congratulations, Lib,” I said, dropping her husband’s hand.

She gave me a smile, but neither extended her hand nor took a step toward me. And that was all right too, so long as everything was under control and we all coasted through the morning under the guidance of Jaffe. Sid was standing now with his hands on his hips, a soldierly posture; whenever she looked his way, Libby grinned. She held a hand out straight before her and showed him how it was shaking.

Sid said to Paul, “Well, how does it feel being a father? Have you got the shakes too?”

He had spoken just as I was about to turn back to Paul to say I was sorry to have heard of his father’s death; consequently, I said nothing, for it would have been a most inappropriate comment at that moment. The best thing for me was silence. Not leading, but following. In an hour or two (I told myself this at the very same time that I simply could not believe it) the Herzes would have their baby. Getting into the front seat alongside Jaffe, I found myself remembering a day back in Iowa, the day I had driven Libby out to pick up Paul, whose old Dodge had blown a piston. I remembered having asked Libby if she had any children, and her reply, her Oh goodness, thank God, no. It was our first exchange face to face.

“I’m sorry we kept you waiting,” Libby said, as we started off.

“That’s okay,” Sid said.

“We were just putting up the crib,” she explained. I turned around to look at her while she spoke. “We didn’t want to put it up until today,” she said to me, “not until everything was sure as sure could be. It would have been awful to come home to that crib …”

“Well,” I said, “it’s only a matter now of going down and picking up the baby.”

Libby became quite excited when I said that. She turned to her husband. “Isn’t that something?” He took her hand in his. “Is your heart thumping?” she asked him.

He smiled. “Oh no.”

“Oh I’ll bet,” she said.

Every time we had to stop at a traffic light, Sid turned around in his seat and teased Libby. “Well, are you still with us, Lib?”

“Still here,” she sang.

“Just wanted to check. You look like you’re really ready to take flight.”