Philip Roth - Letting Go

Asher paid for the both of them on the bus they took downtown. He dropped thirty pennies into the driver’s hand. “What’s your problem, buddy, a wise guy?” the driver said. “Pennies are money,” Asher said. “Shut your ass and drive.” He seemed in a very depressed state.

After Asher’s mother had died, her son had taken all of her potted plants to live with him in Manhattan. For the two years she was ill he had gone over to Brooklyn every other day to water them; the old lady claimed that the day nurse was an anti-Semite and would either drown her plants, or leave them to dry up and crack. Some of them were now higher than Asher himself, and the pots, spread around three of his walls, weighed up to seventy-five pounds. What furniture there was in the room was beyond description. Before a row of tall windows at the front of the studio stood Asher’s easel, and outside was the El. They had walked up to the building past a row of bars, all of them full of bums.

When Paul and his uncle entered the room, Patricia Ann was wiping the leaves of the plants with an old piece of her lover’s undershorts; she immediately stuffed the dustrag under a pillow on the sofa.

“It’s all right,” Asher told her. “Patricia Ann Keller — my nephew, Paul Herz.”

She shook Paul’s hand. “I never think of Asher having relatives. What do you call him? Uncle Asher?” The laugh this produced in her seemed to have directly to do with her very small bones — as though a wind had blown through them. She was not really very much taller or heavier than Libby. Her gold ballet slippers had an inward, tomboyish turn, and her skirt and sweater left no doubt as to how high and how round were her various parts. Where run-of-the-mill people have the small of their back, she carried a little cannonball of a behind. Her breasts too, packed up nearly on a line with her shoulders, had the suggestion of small metallic spheres. Her face was a not very arresting, meager thing, pretty on the style of high school baton twirlers: the mouth a bow, the chin a point, the eyes blue beads, the nose hardly big enough to support its freckles. Her hair fell onto her shoulders in ringlets, naturally curly.

Asher ran a finger over a philodendron leaf and then dropped into a ratty leather club chair, where he proceeded to kick off his shoes. He dropped his glasses into his left shoe and rolled his thumb and forefinger deep into his closed eyes. His mouth was open and Paul could see his tongue. “Make a little tea, dearie,” he said, very weary.

What a sloppy man, thought Paul. What an unattractive played-out old lecher. How many dearies over the years had dusted his leaves, carried him his tea? Why did they come, what enticed them — the greenery? When they left on Wednesday evenings, what feelings washed up from Asher’s chest into his throat and mouth?

Patricia Ann brought Paul his cup. “You go to college?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I have a stepbrother— Virgil ,” she called over to Asher. Then to Paul, “Virgil Cooper — he used to play basketball for City.”

“Yes?”

“Yeah, but that’s about ten years ago already. Even more.” She carried a cup to Asher. He directed her to put it at his feet and leave him be. “You have a headache, Puss?” she asked him.

“Uh-uh.”

“The plants really got all dusty,” she told him.

“Okay.”

“It’s from the windows being open,” she said to Paul.

“I gotta breathe,” Asher said, more sleepy than rude, and the girl left his side.

A long silence followed.

“Excuse me for being informal.” She pointed to her slippers. “It’s for comfort around the house.” She sat down on a stool beside Asher’s easel and lifted a pair of pumps from the floor. “Would you care for me to put these on?”

“No,” Paul said. “That’s fine.”

“Well,” she said, sighing.

Asher mumbled. Then he mumbled again, in sleep. The day grew darker and darker, and across the room the man’s outline became less distinct.

“It’s cold out,” Patricia Ann said. “You can feel it right through the window. Is it still cold out?”

“Very,” Paul said.

“What college?” she asked.

“Cornell.”

“Oh. In California.”

“No. New York,” Paul said.

“Really?”

“New York State.”

“Oh.” She broke out laughing again, high, anxious, joyless.

Paul couldn’t believe it. He was nervous for himself and ashamed for his uncle and overcome with pathos for the girl. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, she examined and re-examined her nails, and finally she shrugged, as though resigning herself to some tragedy having to do with her cuticles. The El train made five trips down below the window, and in that time nobody spoke. Paul’s curiosity finally went dead under his disbelief. What— what had Asher wanted him to see? Was he missing something? Was this happiness, saintliness, the serenity of which men dream? Was he witnessing a rejection of the baser things, the ambitions, the quests, the greeds? Look, was this or was this not human waste?

It was. And, curiously, the sight of his uncle’s condition brought palpitations to Paul’s heart. The messiness surrounding him, the indignity of it all, suddenly shook his own faith in himself. He experienced dread at the thought of his own life going wrong. He actually allowed himself to wonder if there might not be a less stern path he might take … for just a little while longer. Could he not chase butterflies again in Prospect Park, catch them fluttering in his cheesecloth and coat hanger? Couldn’t he wait outside the showers at Ebbets Field for a glimpse of Pee Wee Reese? Couldn’t he rise and fall, just for a while again, over those sun-tanned ladies in South Fallsburg, New York? Diligent Paul, hopeful Paul, penniless Paul — couldn’t he sit alone in his room composing one thousand heartfelt words for the scholarship committee, promising that he would be a good boy, that he would study if awarded the eight hundred dollars? No! Absolutely not! He was fed up with being a boy. That’s why Asher looked so pathetic; fifty and bald and still wearing his Eton suit. Asher could not confront the world a full-sized man; he could never take a wife, accept the burden. He mistook the gifts for the penalties, the penalties for the gifts, and backed away from life — so life backed away from him. And now look: a receptacle all right, a garbage can, full of dirty talk and volcanic regrets. Paul could not believe in Asher not having regrets; to do so upset his picture of the world.

A light went on. Patricia Ann looked at her watch and then at her Asher, and gave out a soft moan. She tried to turn a smile on the nephew but only revealed impatience and loss. Her Wednesday afternoon was going, going—

“Do you have the time?” she asked.

His kindness went out to her. “I think I’ll leave,” Paul said.

Almost instantly she was at the door.

“It was nice meeting you,” Paul said. “Don’t wake him.”

“I never met a person from Asher’s family before,” she whispered, and then gave the crumpled-up, sleeping figure across the room a loving glance. “It’s very nice,” she said, and took Paul’s hand to shake it. “Asher’s a terrific painter. He’s the most wonderful person I ever met. He’s not like anybody.”

“I know,” Paul said. “I’m very fond of Asher.”

“Me too,” she said. “Are you interested in art very much?”

“Yes.”

“He’s doing me. You know? For — our anniversary. Do you really appreciate art?”

“Well, yes.”

“If you appreciate art, you wouldn’t be embarrassed …”