Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Hi!” She pushed her hair up with both hands. “Come in — shhhh, though.” Her fingers went up to her lips.

He whispered, “I just want to drop something off.”

“What?”

He had been holding the package behind him. Coyly. “This.” They were in the living room, beside the false fireplace, inside of which sat piles of books. Candles burned in a long tin holder on the mantle, flitting light over half of Libby’s face. A hard glare from a gooseneck lamp fell on the frazzled upholstery of the couch and chairs. The room seemed a vast and barren place; no rug still, and little furniture — though café curtains had been hooked on to several of the windows.

Libby rattled the gayly wrapped box. “What is it?”

He pointed down the hall, to what had formerly been Paul’s study. “For the smallest Herz.”

With a jerky movement of her head, she shot her hair back and flopped down on the sofa. But the hair fell forward, along the fragile line that ran from the corner of her eyes to the corner of her mouth, a line he had first appreciated long ago. “How sweet, Gabe.” She held the package in her lap, fingering the ribbon. “Chanukah gelt,” she said.

For a moment he was puzzled; then her suggesting that he had meant to present Rachel with a gift for the Jewish holiday disappointed him. She did not appreciate the good-natured spontaneity of the purchase — that looking for a wedding present, he had settled on a baby present. “Just a little toy,” he said.

“For Chanukah—”

He interrupted, smiling. “Is it Chanukah time again?”

“You like too much to tease me about that.”

“When I got up this morning I was thinking how much I felt like Purim.”

“What you don’t want to say is that you really brought it for Christmas.”

He let the matter drop. Earlier in the year, when they all had begun to act like friends again, he had submitted to a thorough examination on the subject of his lack of faith. He was to be accused now, and only half-playfully, of celebrating the Christian heresy. Libby herself was in the clutches of another divinity. He simply smiled, again.

“May I open it for her?” Libby asked.

While she worked away at the ribbon, he asked where Paul was. But she wasn’t giving him much attention; the present she was so feverishly opening might have been for herself. “He’ll be back — what sweet wrapping paper — we haven’t seen — ooops, I don’t want to tear it — seen you for what, a month? — you have to come to dinner — though you can drop in when — aahhh—” Two sheets of tissue paper floated down around her house slippers. “Oh she’ll love it,” she said, lifting the dog from the box. “Gabe, it’s such a charming little — Do you wind this, yes?”

“Just turn the key.”

“It plays?”

“I think so.”

“Gabe, thank you so much,” she said, as a tune tinkled out of the animal. “She’ll be crazy about it.”

“I was a little afraid it might be too old for her — the key turning—”

“She happens to be a brilliant six-month-old. Would you like to see her?”

“Should you wake her?”

“We can watch her sleep. I spend hours watching her sleep.”

“If that’s okay with you—”

“You haven’t seen her for ages,” Libby whispered, as he followed her down the hall. “She’s grown and grown …”

In Rachel’s room they stood side by side over the crib. Striped curtains were pulled across the windows; a double row of framed Mother Goose pictures hung from the wall. Since his last visit — the night Libby had called the office and asked Paul to bring him home for a drink to celebrate Rachel’s third month in the family — a new floor of black and white linoleum squares had been laid. When Libby brushed by the curtains, they gave off a crisp sound. The floor shone … She might have ruffled him earlier by muddling the reasons for his gift-bearing, but that was no longer important. It hadn’t really been so spontaneous a purchase anyway. It was, in fact, for this moment that he had driven from the Loop directly to the Herzes. He waited beside the crib for those feelings that he believed he deserved to have. He waited.

“Her hair gets blacker,” Libby whispered, “and her eyes get bluer … She’s a Rachel, isn’t she? Can’t you see her drawing water from a well—” The infant stirred; Libby’s wistfulness ceased for a moment. She resumed, in a voice barely audible, “—out of a well in what-do-you-call-it, Dan, Nineveh? Isn’t she something?”

“She’s a honey.”

“She’s our baby,” Libby said.

They watched the child sleep. The “our” had not been unintentional, of that he felt sure; it was simply Libby’s final refusal to give up a claim on anyone. She kept her hold on you — for if she was not in desparate need at the moment, there was always the future. She was what she had charged him with being: the tease. He scowled at her in the dim room, remembering that letter full of sweetness she had sent to him from Reading. He believed he must still have it somewhere. He couldn’t bear her, really. Our baby. Nineveh!

However, he had not dropped in unannounced, bearing an offering, to work up old grievances. He had come for the satisfactions that a new child is said to give. He had expected to be able to look down into the crib and know that all was not wrong in the world, or in himself. But no such assurance was forthcoming.

Yet he had helped to rescue Rachel, he had helped to place her in this crib … But nothing happened, no matter what weights he placed on his own scales. He stood beside Libby, looking down at Rachel, at the white sheet, at the wool blanket, at the incredible infant hands … Then he saw his solace, what it was that would set his days right. During these last few months he had been continuing to live the restricted bachelor existence — necessary, of course, to a discovery of taste, pleasures, limitations — when he was just about ready for a more expansive career. Till now everything had been by way of initiation. Bumbling toward a discovery of his nature, he had made the inevitable errors of a young man. But he was ready now to be someone’s husband, someone’s father. Looking down at Rachel, he was convinced that he had been feeling edgy of late only because he was on the edge of something. What else? It explained much that seemed inconclusive, uncertain, about the past.

Turning, Rachel made a weak nasal sound. It was slight, but human and penetrable; it broke through the thin skin of his reflections. What looked to be truth poured through: he was imagining in the name of the future what should have been a past; he could have left young manhood, stopped bumbling, whenever he chose …

When Libby put the musical dog at the end of the mattress, he was unprepared for the urge he felt to reach in and take it back. He found himself reduced to elemental emotions and passions. He had been hoping that the child would render him less culpable than he had been feeling since dinner. Now he turned from Rachel’s dog. He still did not have a present for his father and Mrs. Silberman. Nothing has changed.

In the hallway, Libby asked, “Isn’t she darling? An honest opinion now. A few unbiased words to an objective mother.”

“Unbiased, I’d say she’s perfect.”

“For which statement you will be allowed the pleasure of being her baby-sitter some night. We prefer unbiased baby-sitters.”

His desire earlier to take the toy away caused him to speak now with too much eagerness; he knew he was too eager to play her game, but he did. “That might be fun. I think I’d enjoy it.”

“Are you an unbiased diaper man?”

“Well, I do have what they call a slight fecal aversion—”