Philip Roth - Letting Go

“I did have a little qualm when we came in here.”

“When I said my name is Herz?”

“About three seconds after that.” She put her hand on the table and he knew enough to cover it with his own. “I won’t have any dessert, darling,” she whispered.

Embarrassment settled over them. They returned to their food. He was finding this altogether different from any dinner they had ever eaten at home. Was it two or three times now that she had called him “darling”?

“Do you know what I discussed with Gabe last week?”

He looked up to see that her face had subsided to its everyday shade. Her lovely skin … “What?”

“I didn’t tell you. The night he brought the present for the baby — don’t you think he’s changed, Paul?”

“Who? I’m having trouble keeping up with you martini-ized.”

“He seems very crushed, Gabe does. He’s lost a lot of his, I don’t know … air.”

“He’s had some bad luck with his father.”

A moment passed. “Did he tell you that?” Libby asked.

“You told me that.”

“Oh yes …” she said. “You forget about other people’s troubles when you have your own.” For a moment he felt as though she were judging him. Until she added, “Suddenly I’m aware of him in a new way. I asked him to baby-sit out of sympathy, really.”

“Glenda didn’t go home to Milwaukee then?”

“Yes, she did go away. But I needn’t have thought of Gabe, you see.”

“I wondered …” He did not mean to sound like Othello, never having felt like him before. “I wondered how you decided on him.”

“Then — why didn’t you ask?”

“I thought you’d arranged it,” he began to explain, somewhat flustered, “arranged it all beforehand.”

“Well, you should have asked. I think he gets a lot of pleasure out of Rachel. He asked if you believed in God.”

He was not jealous; he was annoyed. “How did that come up?” He had never in his life been jealous, a fact of his character which he had long ago absorbed. It contributed to his picture of himself as a man who did not have all the human fires. He had come to think of himself as less special than he once had.

Nevertheless, it seemed that what he had just tried was to make Libby think that he was jealous! He wondered if he could be feeling under attack only because of the woman at the other table, who brought to his mind old failures, misunderstandings of his youth. It was a youth that he himself saw as long past; having ceased to excuse himself for what he was, he no longer needed it as a crutch. It was a help to him too that others, seeing that he was half bald and wore old clothes, did not even mistake him for a young man.

“We were talking about religion,” his wife said. “His family, you know, was very German Jewish and removed. I would have liked to have met his mother — you know, I once — I think she had a great effect on him.”

“You once what?”

“We were talking about Chanukah. I didn’t know what to say, Paul. There are some things we haven’t discussed a lot lately. You and I.”

“I think we’ve probably become a little used to each other by now.” Smiling.

“We just don’t talk as much, though. That’s a fact. That’s all. We do hardly talk.”

“I think if we feed you a martini every night—”

“And you?” she said quickly.

“You see, it doesn’t take on me.”

“I know,” she said lugubriously.

Dinner might have been finished and the check paid without any further conversation, had not the blond woman and her party walked over to their booth. “Excuse me, aren’t you Paul Herz?”

“Yets—” Trying to rise, he got caught between the table and the seat. Half standing, taller than Libby but shorter than his visitor, he said, “Yes — you look very familiar—”

“My name”—he saw Libby looking back and forth as the woman spoke—“is Frankland. I’m Marge — Howells.”

“I thought that’s who you might be—” And then both rushed so to introduce their mates that no one heard anyone else’s name, and they all had to be introduced a second time. The other couple, friends of the Franklands’, stood back and watched. Slowly Marge Howells began to look like herself, or as much of her as he could remember. He had never really taken a long look at her, even back in Iowa; that had not been the nature of their meeting. Here, across the room, she had looked older, haughtier. Paul asked Marge, and Marge Paul, what each was doing in Chicago. It turned out that the Franklands lived in Evanston.

“I’m teaching,” Paul said, answering her next question.

Tim Frankland, a physician, had a habit of extending his lower lip beyond his upper lip; he combined this now with a brief nod. “No kidding,” he said.

“At the University,” Libby said.

Frankland paid his first bit of attention to her. “Down on the South Side,” he said, pointing at the floor.

“That’s right,” Paul said.

“Tim is doing research this year,” Marge told them. “We’ve been in Evanston for three or four years.” She turned, but only half looked at her husband. “Isn’t that right, darling?”

At the very same moment that he heard Marge say “darling”—and disbelieved it — Paul felt himself powerfully married to his wife. “We’ve been in Chicago for a year, a little more than a year.”

The other couple with the Franklands now moved out of the dining room, saying they would meet Tim and Marge in the lobby. Silence followed their departure.

“Well, it’s been three or four years,” Marge said, “since we’ve met, I think.”

Dr. Frankland gave a very stiff, very polite grin to everyone.

“Where is it we met before?” Libby asked.

“Iowa City,” Marge said.

“Do you have children?” Paul asked.

“One. A girl.”

“We have a girl too,” Libby said. “Six months.”

“Jocelyn is three,” Marge said to Paul.

“Time flies,” Dr. Frankland said to Libby, as though she might not have known. “Yours will be three before you realize it.”

“Do you ever see your friend?” Marge asked. “You remember—”

“Gabe Wallach.”

“Yes. How’s he doing? Do you ever hear from him?”

“He’s teaching at Chicago too,” Paul said.

“No kidding,” Tim Frankland said.

“Oh,” said Marge, “Tim has heard all these names.” She did not smile with much confidence.

“That was when Marge was revolting against her family. Your bohemian period, dear.” But the remark was meant for the edification of the crowd; there were obviously certain areas of the past with which Dr. Frankland didn’t have too much sympathy.

“Gabe’s baby-sitting for us tonight, as a matter of fact,” said Libby.

“I thought he’d be married—”

Libby made the announcement as though it gave her pleasure. “No, he isn’t.”

“Still knocking the girls over.” The words were spoken by Dr. Frankland.

“I suppose so,” Paul said.

Apropos of nothing, or so it seemed, Libby said, “He’s a very generous person.”

“It’s a coincidence,” Marge said, “all of us being in Chicago, isn’t it?”

“We were in Pennsylvania for a while,” Paul said.

“We should all get together,” Marge answered.

“Yes,” Paul said, when no one else did, “that would be fine.”

“Yes … It was nice running into you,” Dr. Frankland said. “We’re in the book, of course.”

“So are we,” Libby said, as though that tied the score.

“What do you call your daughter, Paul?”

“Rachel,” Libby said.

At this the two women were called upon to take a sudden interest in one another. Marge was the one who smiled.