Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Prospero’s daughter—” But he could not give undivided attention to the task of remembering the daughter’s name. His eyes, unable to come to rest on the face opposite his own, kept moving off to a table very near the wooden booth in which they sat. A woman in the party of four dining only a few feet away struck him as familiar; yet neither she nor her companions looked like anyone he might know. She had blond hair and a pointed chin, and a topaz pin clipped to her dark suit. Though she seemed to be engaged by every syllable spoken at her table, she had the air of someone who knows she is being looked at.

But he did not care to have the air of someone who is staring, and he tried to stop. Because of what this evening meant to Libby, because he had promised before they had left the house (promised himself, while Gabe was shown the bottles, the warming pan, the baby powder) that he would do nothing to spoil these few hours, he pretended to think of the name of Shakespeare’s heroine, all the while trying to give a name to the woman at the next table. Eventually she looked over and their eyes met. He swung rapidly back to Libby — catching her eye with equal embarrassment. It was not, however, the same embarrassment that had been settling and resettling over their table since they had entered the restaurant; it was not shared.

“—easier than imagining yourself Hamlet, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe that’s because I’m a woman.”

“I don’t know,” he said, trying to get the drift of her words.

“I wonder if it’s not a theory at all, but a failure of my own mind. That’s always a possibility.”

“You’re too hard on that mind of yours.”

“Oh, darling Paul, I know what I am. Well — truly— you can probably understand what it’s like to be Desdemona, can’t you, as well as Othello?”

“That question has a slight drunken lilt to it.”

“Are these silly questions?”

“Well, no.”

But his response had apparently not been quick enough, gentle enough, loving enough, reassuring enough; apparently not, for her brow was instantly furrowed. “I think,” he said, gentle, loving, reassuring, “I missed what you started to say at the beginning …”

“Aren’t you listening?” she asked, directly.

“I am.”

“I said it’s easier to identify with Shakespeare’s — Are you really at all interested in this?”

“Yes.” He had no right to disappoint her tonight. “We used to talk about Shakespeare all the time.”

“I know.”

He realized that his remark had done nothing to reassure her about the present. Without exactly feeling shame, he felt disloyal to their earliest days. Then he did not even have to glance over: he knew who the woman with the topaz pin was. He remembered the name of the Shakespearean heroine too, but did not choose to interrupt again whatever it was that Libby wanted to get on to.

“Go ahead — I’m sorry,” he said.

“I didn’t think — I thought I was boring—”

“I was thinking about my mother’s coming. Excuse me. Go on … do.”

Out of respect for his troubles, she looked apologetic; he knew what would make her forgiving. Yes, he had learned how to move her about as he wanted. “It’s not important,” she was saying. “Now that I consider it — turn upon it,” she said, smiling, bubbling up instantly, “the broad beam of my intelligence, I don’t even think it holds water. The fact is you can’t really believe in Ophelia either. I was being morbidly romantic. I was being high.”

“You said you could identify with Ophelia?”

“I said one could. Then ”—she flushed—“I said I could. Easier than Hamlet, I meant though, whom I find incredible. Is this heresy?”

“No—”

“Miranda!”

“Oh — yes.”

“Prospero’s daughter.”

“Oh yes, that’s it.”

“Oh brave new world — isn’t that The Tempest too?”

“I think so.”

“Isn’t that funny …” She went back to eating. “Though Miranda is quite incredible too. If it’s fair to Shakespeare to talk about credibility in terms of that play — How are your frog’s legs?”

“Fine. How is the sole?”

“I love sole. I forget until I eat it how fond of it I am. I’m feeling absolutely exuberant.”

“On one martini,” he said, and wished he could stop himself from sounding paternal. It was an impulse that seemed to grow in proportion to Libby’s desire to converse with him.

“It’s true, you know. Something about my kidneys makes me drunk much faster than normal people.”

“So you don’t feel normal either?”

“The day I strike people as normal …”

His response was so immediate that he had not even time to ask himself whether it might not, in fact, be true. “You strike me as normal tonight.”

“Oh good. But I feel different.” Leadingly: “I don’t know if you do …”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Happy?” She spoke the word so girlishly as to diminish the risk; she might have been asking nothing more than if he liked his food.

“Yes,” again without hesitation.

“I’m so … happy isn’t the word.”

“I don’t think it is for me either,” he admitted.

She went right on. “I’m trembling inside. Way inside, beneath the martini.”

“You look very composed.”

“Never as composed as you. Do you mind if I speak under the influence of alcohol?”

He could not have felt more sober himself, which accounted in part for the trouble he was having keeping up with her decision to be gay. He had grown so used to her fidgety that he did not really remember her animated. But tonight she managed to be full of excitement, and still to look as though under her red dress all her limbs were securely attached to her slight frame. If he was not able to look directly at her, it was only partly because she struck him as unfamiliar. It was also that he could not be sure what she was going to say to him, or ask of him, next. Probably she was not too sure either — which doubtless explained why the embarrassment was shared. At first he had believed that their discomfort tonight had only to do with their not being used to extravagances. He had difficulty recalling the last time they had gone out for the purpose of “having fun.” He had to go far back — and in going far back, he concluded that he was mistaken about the identity of the woman at the other table. At precisely the same moment he felt more disposed than ever to protect Libby. He would concentrate only on her. He felt her continuing to concentrate only on him. She had been concentrating on him, barreling down on him, for days; and for just as many days he had been doing his best to look the other way, to slide out from under her gaze by treating her like his child. Her total attention had gotten to him—

No. It was his mother’s arrival that was causing the trouble. He had already figured out Libby’s place in his life; consequently, he did not believe she could rattle him. “When we came in,” Libby was saying, “and everyone was waiting in line for a table — when you went up and said, ‘My name is Herz, I have a reservation,’ it was one of those moments when I just felt terribly married.”

“And you liked that?” Again, fatherly, as though he knew all there was to know about her — and at the moment when he was not sure, suddenly, quite what he did know.

“It was a small thrill,” she said. “Tonight’s a larger thrill.” He did not respond, and she rushed to say, “Unless — are we going to spend too much?”

He had to reassure the two of them; if Libby could not rattle him any longer, money could. “But we have so many things to celebrate, Lib.”