Philip Roth - Letting Go

Claire lifted a finger as though to touch Libby’s crown, and Paul realized that they were not talking about Libby’s clothes; Carita was where she had had her hair set. He had imagined that she had fixed it herself before the bathroom mirror in Queens. His astonishment led him into a grave contemplation of the future. All his thinking of the last few days had been grave in tone, and large in scope. He was no longer thinking ahead strictly in terms of semesters and summers.

In the meantime the young women had proceeded into a discussion of Delman’s shoes. Finally, Libby excused herself and went off to the powder room — doubtless, thought Paul, to work her eyes up a little more.

Claire put her hand on her cousin’s. “She’s wonderful, Paul. I think she’s the most wonderful thing that could have happened to you. She’s so charming, and so alive, and so pretty. Her skin, her hair …”

“We wish you all the luck,” Claire’s husband said, and he snapped his head at Paul, meaning it. “I think we have to go home, hon,” he said to his stout, good-looking young wife.

“Baby-sitters,” Claire said. She spoke wearily, but it was an affect; she was obviously charmed by her own maternal obligations. She rose, a matron at twenty-one. She went around to her father, who pushed back his chair and rose too. At fifty-five Uncle Jerry might have been her beau; he stood straight and was dressed like his son-in-law in a narrow suit and a narrow tie. All that marred his crisp good looks was a distressing willingness in the eyes.

When Claire and her husband had left, he said, “Harold is a fine boy. A very solid boy.”

“He seems very nice.” Paul tried to concentrate on his uncle instead of himself; he was divided in his feelings about Libby’s return to the table. When she had gotten up to leave he had actually felt relief, so uncertain was he about what she might say next. And he seemed to have become uncertain on the basis of her not setting her hair at home! He waited for her to return with a conscious ambivalence.

“He’s especially fine for Claire,” Jerry said. “He holds her in check. You may not have known it, but she had an exuberant streak in her in college.”

“Yes?”

“Paul, she was a very promiscuous girl at Syracuse. She could have made a mess of herself. When I left Selma,” Jerry said, “she lost a father image, there’s no doubt about that. But had I stayed longer, she would have lost it anyway. Worse things might have happened.” Paul wondered, until Jerry told him. “None of us,” his uncle said, “are without incestuous feelings. And it isn’t the feelings, you see — it’s how you act them out.”

Jerry seemed to feel that he had explained something; Paul only felt the desperate sordid decency of admitting to such motives. “This young man,” Jerry was saying, “he’s no whiz, no spectacular ball of fire. But he’s steady and he’s a mensch , and he’s done wonders for Claire. You ought to see her with that baby. She relates so beautifully it could make you cry.”

“I’ll bet she’s fine.”

“She’s become an outstanding mother.”

“Yes,” Paul said, “I’m glad we all had a chance to be together.”

“I’m glad we all had a chance to meet Libby. I think you’ve got a fine girl.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank yourself. It’s not often young people know what they want. It’s not often you find a young person who’s discovered the essentials. They run around and play around — like Claire — trying each other out. It’s not a healthy thing, what’s happening with this generation. They ‘get laid,’ they ‘screw,’ ” he said, “and those expressions express just about what they do. A lot of grabbing and pawing, Paul, but very little touching. But I see your Libby and I see Claire now, and they look like two girls who know what that means, to touch.” Uncle Jerry’s eyes were wet suddenly. In the cultivated atmosphere of the dining room, with a steak sizzling at the next table and the candlelight shimmering on the long curtains, and outside the white flakes falling on the park, Jerry was not able to prevent the tears from sliding down his face. After he dried them, Paul expected he might see a pale spot where his uncle’s coloring had been rubbed off by the napkin. Uncle Jerry, forever struggling up for air in the dark sea of maladjustment and poor mental health, had shed two tears for Love. Love was the name painted on the ship that would come along and pull him safely to shore. It had rescued his daughter, and now he was telling Paul it had rescued him, and one sunny day perhaps it would come along and rescue Jerry too. He would find a woman who was not a mother-figure, like the oversized Selma, nor a daughter-figure, like the short-lived twenty-seven-year-old; just a woman who could touch him.

Paul realized that since dinner had begun he had been looking at his uncle through Asher’s eyes. Now he tried looking at himself through Asher’s eyes. Just then Libby came back to the table, and so she was seen through Asher’s eyes too. When Paul tried to look at her through Jerry’s eyes, it occurred to him that that may have been how he had been looking all along. It was no longer clear in his mind whether he could consider himself a realist or a romantic.

“Are you all right?” Paul whispered, as he pulled her chair out for her.

“I just put some nose drops in to get some air,” she said, but he smelled a perfume on her that he had never smelled before. “I was talking to Claire and Jack in the lobby,” she said to Jerry.

“All this time?” asked Paul.

“Yes. They’re awfully nice,” she said to Jerry.

“They’re all a father could hope for,” Jerry answered, and from there he and Libby proceeded, for the rest of the evening, to discuss the theater. Jerry sat there, awed and charmed and won, while Libby’s fingers waved above her water glass, and her eyes in turn grew grave and puzzled and gay. In the hour that followed, Paul heard her say art , and he heard her say beauty , and he heard her say truth three times. Twice she said objective correlative. But, of course, it did not matter that she echoed him; of course she was still learning. She had come a long way already from the Pi Phi house, on whose steps he had found her a little less than a year ago. In courting her he had changed her, he had worked at changing her; but now he wondered if she would ever be the genuine article. Was she bright? Was she true? Would she grow? Trying to improve her had he only made a monkey of her? What a time to be asking himself such questions!

He tried to admire her for winning so completely the affection of his uncle, but he was not able to.

*

On the subway back to Queens he asked her how much it cost to have one’s hair set at the Carita Salon.

“Eight dollars.”

“Just to heap it up like that?”

“They wash it and they set it — and then there’s the tip. They have to tease my hair, it’s so straight.”

“Is the teasing figured into the bill, or is that free?”

“Did I behave badly?” Libby demanded. “Did I talk too much? I realized I was talking a lot. Oh Paul, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not happy with me.”

“Don’t you think eight dollars is a lot to spend on hair?”

“… Yes.”

“Do you really, or is that to please me?”

“Both.”

“And don’t charm me, will you? I’m not Jerry.”

“Paul, what’s the matter? I did talk too much.”

“No.”

“Then what? Because I went to Carita? Because I talked about it with Claire? Please tell me.” She was a self-improver, and that strain in her character (which once he had loved and now suddenly it seemed he loathed) showed through her request. “Please, Paul, tell me,” she said.