Philip Roth - Letting Go

I gave too much to you. I don’t think anybody can ever

hurt me the way you have. I don’t know what I’ll do.

That was all: my extra key and these twenty-four words, no one of them too much influenced by her reading of Proust. I unpacked my bags and emptied my pockets of the dental floss my father had given me at the airport, and then walked around my three rooms, picking up seven hairpins, a copy of Swarm’s Way —the corner of page seven turned back — and a tube of the neutral polish that I remembered Marge massaging into her buff pumps. The Proust went back on the shelf, and what she had left behind, including the note, went into the empty garbage pail.

That, of course, was not the end. I then paced from room to room, turning up three more of her hairpins; I suppose I was looking for them. If New York had turned out better, I probably would not have been so susceptible to Marge’s indictment, but as always happened with my father, our final hours together were as strained as our first; the dental floss, in fact, had been something more than hygienic: it was a last-minute attempt to bind us together across some thousand miles of this vast republic. “Take care of your teeth, sonny,” he had said to me, and I had looked back to see that the smile on his face, like the one on the face of the stewardess, involved none of the deeper muscles. “See you when, Washington’s Birthday?” were the last gallant, murderous words he had called out to me as I stepped aboard the plane. That was the state to which I had reduced him, anticipating patriotic holidays.

But that was mild compared to the night before, when my father and Dr. Gruber and I had celebrated the coming of the New Year at the theater. While to my right Gruber howled every time some character on the stage said “Oh God damn you” to some other character on the stage, to my left my father cried. Not until the middle of the last act did I notice. Then I inched my hand over the chair arm that separated us, until I touched his sleeve. Under my Playbill —so that Gruber would not see — I took his hand and held it until the final curtain and the light. I told myself he was impossible and I told myself he was unfair, but in the darkness there was nothing I could tell myself that was able to make him less unhappy.

With all this in the very recent past, I had now to confront the final, condemnatory words of my late mistress. To defend myself I tried to work up defamatory thoughts about her. I had no trouble at all imagining her going around the apartment planting hairpins. But the knowledge that she had soap-opera passions and a moral fiber as soft as her skin only worked to soften my own melting sense of dignity. I went to the window and must have watched an inch of snow pile against the houses across the street. Twice I circled the phone before deciding I would call Marge’s rooming house and explain to her, as calmly and exactly as I could, why it was to her benefit that we discontinue seeing one another.

“Miss Howells?” said Mr. Trumbull, husband of the landlady. “Just a minute.”

In a minute he was back. “Miss Howells don’t live here, no sir.” There was a great deal of television racket behind him, so that I could hardly hear what he was saying.

I tried to be polite. “But she does live there.”

“Just a minute.” When he returned, he said, “Nope. She don’t.”

“You mean she’s left?”

“Just a minute.” When he came back to the phone he told me yep, she’d left.

“Where? When?” I asked.

“None of my business.”

“Look, did she leave a forwarding address?”

“Look, yourself,” he said, “we don’t give out that kind of personal information on the phone. Who is this?”

After I hung up I searched the apartment again, but found nothing that would serve as a clue to Marge’s whereabouts. Had she run away? What was she up to? I fished the note out of the garbage can. I don’t know what I’ll do. I had dismissed the statement earlier as a generalized expression of her frustration; it had not been for exactness that I had valued her. Now I tried to tell myself just exactly what Marge was and was not capable of, and thereby regain my composure. But could she have done something stupid, like kill herself? I thought to call the rooming house again and if possible get Mrs. Trumbull from the TV set to ask her some questions. I even thought for a second about calling Kenosha, or the police. Then I remembered that Marge had had coffee with Paul Herz. I hung back from involving him in what might turn out to be a very complicated personal matter; yet my anxiety was by this time a little greater than my shame, and so I looked up the Herz number and dialed it. The phone rang so long that I was ready to hang up when Libby Herz said hello.

“Libby? This is Gabe Wallach.”

“My goodness, how are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m okay.”

“I heard you were in the hospital. Are you all right now?”

“I’m convalescing.” Her tone informed me just how boring that could be. “How — how did you know?”

“Oh, a friend of Paul’s. Is Paul around?”

“He’s in the bathroom. He’s taking a bath. I’m not even supposed to be out of bed,” she whispered.

“Never mind then. You go back to bed.”

“No, no, it’s all right. The phone ringing is the most exciting thing that’s happened here in a month. I’m all right.”

“It’s not important,” I said.

“Paul will be out soon. Should I give him a message?”

“Would you — Look, I’ll see him tomorrow. It’s not important.”

“Why don’t you come over?” she asked. “Are you busy? Come over and tell us about New York.”

“I’m not busy. But if you’re resting …”

“That’s just it. All I do is rest. Paul will be out of his bath in a few minutes. Uh-uh, he’s getting out. I’d better hang up — I’m not supposed to be out of bed even for the toilet. It’s awful. Hey, do come over!”

Driving through the storm, I realized how groundless were my fears about Marge. She had probably taken a room in the graduate dormitory. Perhaps she was skiing in Colorado, or had moved in with a friend. I realized as I crossed the bridge over the river that it is the futureless who are found buried under two feet of snow or twenty feet of icy water, not girls who put their underwear on the radiator at night so that it will be warm for them in the morning. By the time I had reached the Herzes’ my motive for visiting had nearly disappeared. Nevertheless, while I waited for the front door to open, the wind blew a handful of snow down my coat collar: I closed my eyes and prayed that wherever Margie had decided to take her broken heart, it was warm and safe.

Paul Herz opened the front door wearing his beggar’s overcoat and holding his briefcase.

“Libby’s in the bedroom,” he said.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“You’re letting in the cold,” he said, giving me an agreeable look that only mystified me more. “Come in.”

I stepped in, asking, “Are you going out?”

He held up his briefcase. “I’m afraid I’ve got some work.” He stepped around me and was out the door. “Good night,” he said, “nice to see you.” His head went into his collar, and the overcoat was swinging down the path like a bell.

“Can I drive you anywhere?” I called after him.

Herz turned, but continued walking backwards; the snow had caked instantly on his shoulders. “You better close the door,” he said.

“Gabe?” Libby’s voice called out to me from the other end of the little apartment.

“Yes?”

“Could you close the door? There’s a draft.”