Philip Roth - Letting Go

“I’ll just sit.” He pulled out a chair opposite her; on its seat rested a lavender cushion. Everything was so — careful. Suddenly the order of the place — everything matching — was no longer becoming; it was chilling — though that passed too. “Who stole your car?”

“Some poor dishonest boys, I suppose. The police found it three days ago. It was in a junk yard. They’d sold it. Though a friend of mine says it went there on its own; you know, out of some deep knowledge of its own essence.”

He said, “Oh yes,” and smiled. The words of this friend of hers served to settle his emotions. He did not tremble; he was not chilled. That he did not feel distant from her, that he could see this day as an extension of their first days almost a year before, did not mean that she was not conscious of all that had intervened. Of course he was conscious of all that too; it was just that he was willing to forget it. She was probably only being nice. She had a friend who said such-and-such. He had an impulse to ask her if she was really going to marry this friend; he had every reason to believe she was, except the reasons he had not to …

She had given him an opening, so he went ahead and made talk. “How did it get stolen? Did you leave the key in?”

She frowned, looking up from her plate. “No, I didn’t leave the key in.”

He had somehow offended her. “Well — how then?”

“Well … as a matter of fact,” she said, having decided, it seemed, to go on, “I saw them stealing it. I was working a little late one night — reading The Princess Casamassima in my office — and when I came out to the Midway, there was my car being pushed away, out toward Cottage Grove.”

“Being pushed?”

“Yes. I started running after them, and felt like Barbara Stanwyck or someone, shouting, ‘Stop, thief! Help!’ and so on, and waving my handbag — and then I was out of breath, and they were pushing it faster than I could run, so I turned and came back to the office and called the police. I called the operator, and I told her I wanted the police.” She cut a piece of lettuce and ate it. Footsteps were mounting the stairs; he restrained himself from looking over his shoulder. Martha went on as though she were expecting no one. Her desire to be witty and gay, an ingénue, made him uneasy, but he made it his business to look interested.

“And the operator,” Martha said, “—this is the Chicago part of the story — the operator asked me what I wanted them for, and I told her my car was being pushed away, being stolen, and she said oh no, it was probably the snow-removal people.”

“She did?”

“It hadn’t snowed for nearly a week — which I managed to convince her of finally — and then she asked me where I was calling from, and she gave me the police. The Hyde Park district police, and I told him that my car was being stolen, right then , and that if they just sent a squad car around they could intercept it, but he began to ask me what kind of car it was and where I lived, and I told him, look, they’re stealing it right now. You just have to go there now. And he asked me where exactly it had been parked before it was pushed, and I told him across the Midway, and he said, Oh then it was being stolen really in the Woodlawn district, and I said, but the operator connected me with you, and he said that was because I was calling from Hyde Park — and then there was a lot of clicking and a terrible dreadful dead line, and I was pulling my clothes and stomping the floor, and then I was talking to another Sergeant O’Somebody with a lilting voice from the Woodlawn district — whom I proceeded to tell that my car was being stolen, right then. That was the idea I kept trying to push to the front, you see, that it was being stolen at that very moment. But he took my name and my home address, and he asked where I was calling from, and I told him, and then — well, this goes on and on, you know, from one sweet sergeant to the next. Apparently if I had been able to arrange to call directly from the car while it was being pushed, I could have worked something out with the authorities. Finally I just sat in my office sort of awestruck, and two hours later two policemen showed up at my house, right here, and stood in the doorway and asked what the trouble was.”

“Then how did you get it back?”

“Sid called somebody in the department — you remember Sid? — yes, well”—she was no longer so interested in the telling, but pushed hurriedly on to the end—“and some plain-clothes men came around, and then they — well, they called me at the office three days ago and said they’d located it. I drove down in the police car to a depressing little junk yard on the west side, and honestly, the junk dealer, who’d paid something like ten bucks for it, had tears in his eyes when I got in and the policemen towed me away. The battery had been taken out, and for some obscure reason, the little ash tray.”

“But now you’ve got a battery—”

“Oh it’s in perfect condition.”

“One can see that all right.”

“Oh yes? Wait’ll you see me driving around with my top down and my hair blowing in May. Then you’ll be brimming with envy, and I’ll just shoot by, nose in the cool air.”

“Yes.”

She turned back to her slender dinner — ah, slenderizing for somebody, he thought. What was wrong with the way she had always been?

He waited to see what the effect would be of her gay anecdote. But it had been too gay; it had no effect. He was already beginning to regret having come, though only slightly. “I wouldn’t mind that glass of sherry now,” he said.

“It’s in the closet, if you want to help yourself.”

He poured the sherry and set the bottle on the table. He understood what she had told him: Go ahead, pal, get a look at the closet … at the new me. He could not keep his mind out of her mind. He remained standing and walked around the room while Martha continued with her meal. He pushed aside a branch of the tree and looked over the tinsel at their two automobiles on the street. To make the visit inoffensive, he supposed it was now his turn to be jocular. It was his turn to say that he too was getting along just fine. But what he wanted to pour forth was only the truth. His energies, born again this day, were spinning down.

“I saw you buying this the other night,” he said.

“The tree?”

They were not facing one another. “I was on Sixty-third and I happened to see you.”

“Oh, yes?”

“—smaller than I thought it was.” It was nearly impossible to think of what to say.

“It’s smaller than I thought it was,” she answered. “I’m afraid it was my money’s worth, however.”

Without much heart, he laughed. “It’s good sherry,” he said.

“Are you sure I can’t offer you something? A celery?”

“Thank you, no.” He came around to the chair facing her; he saw no sense in being anything but serious. “Well, Martha, how are you getting on?” It had not been his intention to sound fatherly, but he could not dissolve his feelings into words; he simply couldn’t find the right tone.

She shrugged. “I’m getting on.”

“Are you taking a course still? You said—”

“As a matter of fact I am.”

“What in?”

“Well, Henry James as a matter of fact.” Making her admission, she used her hands in a way that was not very natural to her, or to anyone.

“How do you like him?”

She hesitated; then sat on both his eagerness and her embarrassment. “Not very well, I don’t think.”

If she was going to be offhanded, he would be more offhanded. Tapping his glass, he said, “That’s too bad. I believe I once encouraged you to read some James.”