Philip Roth - Letting Go

Thirty minutes later he was threading his way in and out of monotonous, endless streets; the glare of the sun made them no less dreary. He saw only lusterless houses, insulated from light, life, the seasons. In the muddy little squares of front yard — snow-filled on his last visit — children sat and shivered, or hopelessly slid their tricycles through the soft earth. Some men were in the streets washing their cars, arms moving mechanically up and down, water ringing on hub caps, steam twirling off roofs. He peered at every street sign, while slowly the blue sky and white sun drew away, restoring a proper and wintery distance between heaven and earth. Even the stinking weather was against him. His anger and disgust burned steadily away. That he had not stopped to think of his other affairs — he had rushed down the stairs, into the car, and off — did not decrease his passion any; his fury had many causes. For one thing (this dawned slowly) he was lost.

A half-dozen men in faded field jackets and heavy shoes were congregated around the pumps of a gas station; he pulled off the road and up beside them. When he leaned toward them to speak, a whizzing sensation fanned out from his eye through the left half of his skull. Under the gaze of these idle men he grew conscious of his small bandage. The wound throbbed; leaving Martha’s, he should have driven directly home and washed the cut. He could not even remember the name of the movie he had gone to see instead; he had not really seen it.

He wasn’t thinking. He had to start to think. Yet he did not want to calm down, if that’s what thinking would accomplish. If he wasn’t being prudent, that was all right with him.

He asked directions — his foot all the while tapping the gas — and received a curt reply from a short man with a not very high opinion of him. But he had asked curtly in the first place. He listened, then drove off — some words having to do with his bandage following after him. While he was swinging away, a foot kicked the rear fender. Sons of bitches. As though nobody else had troubles.

But he had only gone off the curb. He felt himself not permitting himself to calm down.

Today? The nineteenth. Six days before he was to go East; four shopping days, sang the radio, till Christmas. Carefully he had planned this day. Lovingly. Resurrectingly! Looking himself over in the mirror as he was about to depart — for his shot first, then the Loop — he had only decided to phone on the chance that Theresa herself might be home, just to make certain, to check up. And the nerve of that dumb bastard! Who the hell did he think he was!

He pulled up behind a two-toned Plymouth, tan and white. Woolly tassels framed the rear window, and two tailpipes stuck out from the car’s underside. The machine had a high polish. He looked the automobile over, tried a door and found it locked. The urge he had was undefined, but destructive. Before starting up the stairs he thought of getting back in his car and driving around Gary, from one diner to another, until he found Theresa. He could deal with her, then she would deal with her husband.

Breezing out of the alley on a tricycle came the blue-eyed Bigoness girl. She looked flatly up at him, where he stood at the top of the stairs. He went into the house, working out in his mind the blood relationship between this child and Rachel. There was none. He rang the bell once, then leaned all his weight against it until he heard shoes galloping down the stairs.

“Vic? Yo, Vic?” Bigoness beat down one flight, then another, until he was confronted with the enemy. He came to a powerful halt, practically rearing backwards.

“You—”

“That’s right—”

Outrage: “Where were you! Around the corner?”

“I telephoned from Chicago. I think we’d better have a talk. Right now.”

“Right now I got other things.”

“Well, you’re going to have to have this thing too.”

“You don’t tell me what I got to have or don’t—”

He took an official tone. “It’s now three o’clock. I have to be back in Chicago—”

“Nobody told you to come down here in the first place.”

“I told myself. You told me.”

“The hell I—”

“We had better move our conversation upstairs. I take it your wife isn’t home?”

“Look, I told you — I spent it. Little Walter got sick as a dog. What do you expect, I’d let him die? Let a little kid run a hundred and four— ”

“I think we should be talking in private.” A door had opened on the next landing. His eye released a small crack of pain. He should have gone first for his shot.

“—let the kid die?” Bigoness was shouting, dramatically. “You got a sick kid, man, you call a doctor, you buy medicines—”

“Nevertheless, I gave you the money for a purpose.”

“I didn’t sign anything, did I?”

“Just your word.”

His what? Bigoness gaped.

“A promise, Bigoness. An agreement.”

“I said I’d think about it. Don’t tell me I signed something!”

“You said you’d do it.”

“You’re thinking of some other customer, Jack. Something came up … Look, I’m waiting on a phone call, will you—” Bigoness reached for the door.

His eye gave him another ten seconds of pain. He would get blood poisoning. A movie? Why a movie? He was doing things backwards, today too. He should have gone first for the shot, then come here. “Let’s,” he said calmly, wedging his foot in the door, “talk a minute upstairs. Maybe we can still reach some sort of agreement.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’d better try.” He would be out of here by four, meet the girl at five … His date now seemed even more crucial to his life than his shot. Dropping his head, he stepped through the door. He had an immediate and overwhelming sense of the vulnerability of his back. Why had he dropped his head — so Bigoness wouldn’t strike him on the chin, on the eye?

Upstairs he paused momentarily at Bigoness’s door; his heart struck, like a clock hitting the hour; he moved through.

“Hey—”

The TV set was on; the place smelled of furniture polish. He pictured Bigoness rubbing down the living room suite and watching give-away shows all day. To his own astonishment, he stepped forward and turned off the sound.

“I’m busy—”

“I see your car’s been washed,” Gabe said. “You can’t be that busy.”

“Me washing my car is none of your business.”

“My business is that you have a car.”

“Oh man, everything is your business.”

“You have a car, yet you took money for train fare—”

“I never said I didn’t have a car. I like to take trains, that’s all.” He had no intention of being comic.

“You like to take money apparently.”

“God damn you, I never stole in my life!”

He saw with relief that Bigoness had not shut the door behind him; it became easier to get his words out. “I’m saying that you had no right to take all that money in the first place. In the second place, you had no right to spend it and then tell me you and your wife can’t come up to Chicago a week from Monday because you can’t afford to. That money was so you could afford to.”

“I said I had—”

“Just let me finish. Third — you see — you had no right to go back on your word.”

“You done now?”

“For the moment.”

“I ain’t signing any papers.”

So much weariness and so much rage rose within him that the one canceled out the other.

“I don’t want to get mixed up in anybody else’s troubles.” It was Bigoness who had spoken.

“You are mixed up in them.”

“No, sir,” said Bigoness, shaking his head.

“Your wife’s mixed up in them.”