Philip Roth - Letting Go

“I didn’t know you had such extravagant tastes. My haircuts cost me a buck.”

“It was a special occasion.” She began to cry. “I’m sorry I did it. I am …”

“I can’t afford stuff like that, Libby. We’re going to have to live a frugal life. A sensible life. I’m beginning to wonder if we’re in agreement. I begin to wonder if you understand—”

“Oh honey,” she said, and put her head into his shoulder. “I’m stupid.” And she reached up for her mound of hair and pulled it down.

His heart lurched, but he kept his mouth shut; some pins clattered to the floor of the subway car, and she became the old Libby, hair to her shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Paul. Oh truly — I was putting on a performance to please everybody,” she moaned. “I feel like a windmill. I feel running and pursued and just like I’m bouncing all over the place. I’m just exhausted, and this cold won’t go away, and all I tasted all night were nose drops. Everybody said the wine was excellent and so I said so too.” She had buried her head in his chest and he was stroking her hair. He did it to comfort her; he got no pleasure from the spongy resilient quality of that black hair whose crowy smoothness had always expressed something to him about the simple desires, the solid yearnings of the girl he had discovered, and who had so quickly and so passionately become dedicated to him.

After a while she took his hand and held it in her lap. “Paul?”

“Yes.”

“—I don’t think I can wait until May, or June. If I’m going to marry you I think it better be now. We’ll move into your room and we’ll be married and all this will be over. I can’t stand it any more. Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry about my hair.” She kissed his five fingers to prove it. “I knew you were upset about it. I knew it was that.”

A Puerto Rican at the end of the car was reading a newspaper. He had looked up to watch the girl cry; now that she had pulled herself together he looked back into the paper again.

“Your uncle,” she was saying, “is so nice and everybody else is so awful, and he’s so unhappy.”

“And so are you.”

“And so am I, and so are you, and we’re perfectly nice people too. He hasn’t got anybody—”

“He’s got Claire.”

“Oh she’s a phoney!” Libby cried, softly. “And so am I,” she said. “I saw it in your eyes. Oh, you phoney, you were saying, why don’t you cut it out. And I couldn’t, Paul. I tried but I couldn’t. I hate your Uncle Asher!” she announced. “I hate him! He’s a disgusting man!”

“All right, Lib, calm down. Nobody’s paying any attention to him at all.”

She might have been hesitating, or she might have been calculating, but finally she whispered into his scarf, “You are.”

“I am what?” he demanded.

“I can’t talk without you getting some sour little look on your face. You’re not you.”

“You’re imagining it.” He sat up very straight, so that it became necessary for her to pull her face away. “You’re just upset.”

She was willing to be convinced. “Am I?”

“I think so.”

“Because he doesn’t even know me! Paul, Paul — what’s wrong with me? What does everybody have against me!”

“I shouldn’t have told you about him. Everything is all right.”

“Paul, let’s get married and go back to school tomorrow … Let’s go back married. Please.”

His immediate vision was of the two of them trying to live in his tiny room. Libby’s father would cut off next semester’s tuition; his own family would refuse to be present at graduation … But more pleasant visions followed. For it would only continue to be as it had been before: they would study together in the library and sleep together in his room. Only now Libby could move in the rest of her clothes and stay clear through till morning. They wouldn’t have to meet for breakfast; they would already be there, together. As for the families, they had obligations that they would finally admit to. And next year he would get some sort of graduate fellowship for himself; he had already sent off applications to Columbia, Penn, Michigan, and Chicago, well in advance of the closing date. Probably Libby’s father would continue to pay her tuition through her senior year—

Or would he?

It was not the first time the question had occurred to him. To whom would the registrar address Mrs. Herz’s bills? But even if it was to himself, they had already figured out on a blank page at the back of Libby’s American Literature notebook that, what with summer jobs, fellowships, and part-time work, they would have enough to pay their bills, and maybe even some left over to buy an old car. They had worked out a budget in the library one idyllic night before the vacation, when the gorges and the trees were heavy with snow, and the moon was nearly full. Now on the empty subway, the overhead bulbs went black a moment, and he wondered if their estimates could have been right. They had figured up food, rent, tuition, laundry, amusements … He could think of no item they had overlooked; there was actually no reason he could think of not to marry tomorrow instead of in May. But it was with a distinct sensation of being torn apart that he agreed.

“Oh Paul …” She wept now in a different key.

“We’ll get a license tomorrow and the blood business, and then we’ll get married at City Hall. Only a few days.” He kissed her hand. “Cheer up,” he instructed them both.

But she didn’t cheer up. By the time they left the subway there was a scattering of Kleenex around her shoes; she gave an especially heartrending sob as they emerged into the raw, slushy night. He steered her across the street into a coffee shop, and not until she had drunk half a cup did he attempt conversation; he waited until her chest and throat noises had subsided, and only an occasional tear made an appearance beneath her murky eyes.

“What is it?” he asked. “What now?”

“Paul … I don’t think — this may sound silly … I don’t think I could survive City Hall.” She even amused herself by the sheer torpor of the remark. But her smile, curling around two fresh tears, lifted him little.

“It takes five minutes,” he said, closing his eyes.

“But I’m no orphan! I’m no culprit!” she said vehemently. “People get married at City Hall when they want to hide something. When they’re running somewhere. When girls are pregnant they get married at City Hall. I’m not pregnant — I was spared that particular tragedy — why must I act like I wasn’t! I’m not pregnant, damn it!” She dragged some grains of mascara across her nose with her Kleenex. Moral outrage was now sweeping hysteria away: she expelled a powerful breath, having thought probably of five more things she wasn’t and wouldn’t be compromised into being. “I’m not letting people— parents —force me to — to act as though I’m ashamed. To take away my dignity,” she said, his student — his own words. “I’m not, Paul. You know we shouldn’t allow them …”

He heard the conviction rush out of her like wind; she had looked up to see that he was holding his forehead in his hands.

“Paul? What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” He did not show her his eyes. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know …”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “I’ve run out of suggestions.”

“How about,” Libby said, after a moment, “what do you think — of a rabbi?”

“Why?”

“Oh Paul, wouldn’t he be more official, more everything we want? Wouldn’t it show them something if we decided to be married by a rabbi? I’m not being defiant, I just won’t cower in some corner when I get married! What kind of thing is that? You get married once. I think it should have some weight to it.”