Philip Roth - Letting Go

In the examination room both Herzes stood at attention before his desk. When he motioned for them to sit down, only Libby obliged. The doctor himself — chiseled features, leathery skin, a large brown mustache — placed himself on the edge of his desk, one leg swinging athletically. Paul noticed his hands: large and sculpted.

“Well,” the doctor said, “what’s the fundamental condition here?”

“We think my wife is pregnant. We want an abortion.”

The only noise in the room was made by Libby — a small sound, neither of denial or agreement. Following a moment of blinding fatigue, Paul took command. “We had a rabbit test,” he said. “The result was positive.”

“Uh-huh.” The doctor stood up, cracked his knuckles and furrowed his brow, thoroughly professional. “When was your last period?” he asked Libby.

They had themselves been over and over this ground; she answered instantly. “January sixth to January eleventh.”

“Young man,” said Dr. Smith, “why don’t you step out of the room?”

He hung back for only a second, then did not look at Libby as he left. The nurse was stretched out on a leather chair in the waiting room. Above her hung a painting of two men duck hunting. One of her shoes dangled from either hand, and from her feet rose an appalling but universal odor. Not the doctor, but the nurse, was along the lines of what he had been expecting. In all her pores, all he saw was dirt, dirt and germs. He began to read in one of the osteopathic magazines about Dr. Selwyn Sales of Des Moines, the Osteopath of the Month.

“Don’t be nervous,” the nurse said. “Doctor Tom does beautiful work.”

“I’m sure.”

“His whole life is osteopathy. No family, no outside clubs, don’t even pick up a book unless it’s osteopathy. He wouldn’t tell you himself, but he’s a power in the field. People come to him from all over the world. He’s already been asked to talk in Missouri twice.”

“What’s in Missouri?”

All at once, he had an enemy. She narrowed her eyes at him — or brought her great cheeks up to cover the bottom lids. “What do you think, it’s a picnic for a doctor like Doctor Tom? This here is a dedicated man. Women tumble at his feet — but his whole life is osteopathy. He has a rotten foe in that AMA. Think they own everything. You know an osteopath is better trained than a medical doctor, you know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know much about osteopathy,” he said apologetically, but too late.

“You know who controls the AMA, don’t you? A man comes along like Doctor Tom, a man with an American background like his, six generations of Smith Smith Smith, and then you see them putting their noses together, turning the pressure on.”

He flipped through the osteopathic magazine to the editorial page. Somewhere down the column he spotted the name: Dr. Thomas Smith.

“We have a woman comes in here with an allergy condition. MDs have been taking her for a ride for years. Dr. Goldberg’s wife got six minks already, and this poor lady still can’t breathe. She can’t sleep, can’t eat, and I’ll tell you, she was growing poor from the way those country-club doctors was bleeding her. She finally saw Doctor Tom, and what was it but a problem of manipulation. A lesion in the joints of the neck. Right here. And this is the kind of thing the AMA is against, this is the kind of battle Doctor Tom has on his hands. You don’t make a mistake when you come to an osteopath. I’ll tell you where medicine comes from — it comes from Europe! Osteopathy is American, through and through. Someday, you wait, the osteopath will have his day. It’s a damn shame — all that training, and they make our boys go into the service as privates. You know who’s pulling the strings down in Washington, don’t you? You know who’s got the influence—”

Doctor Tom’s head came through the door. “Mr. Herz?”

Libby was sitting up on the examination table, fully dressed except for her shoes. Doctor Tom was standing by the calendar on the wall. “When’s best for you?” he asked. “Tomorrow night all right? About eight?”

“She’s definitely pregnant?” Paul asked, for he had stepped back into the office hoping for a miracle.

“Uterus is enlarged, breasts tender, a little swollen — the morning sickness, the rabbit test …” He smiled, cracking his knuckles. He looked over at Libby; she said nothing.

“Doctor—” Paul asked, “how much?”

“For a D and C, four hundred dollars. For the anesthetic, fifty more. We do it right here in the office, Mrs. Kuzmyak assists me. You’ll be in and out in an hour.” The time element seemed to fill him with pride.

“Who administers the anesthetic?”

“Mrs. Kuzmyak.”

“She’s—” But he left off, and fortunately the doctor seemed not to have guessed what he was going to say.

“She’s fine right away,” Doctor Tom said. “You go home from here, and she can go back to work next day.”

At last, Paul looked directly at his wife. Immediately she directed her attention to the calendar pinned to the wall. “It’s safe?” he asked.

The doctor smiled. “Two hundred percent.”

“The police—”

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Doctor Tom, bringing a giant fist down into his palm, “a D and C is not illegal. What the AMA and that crowd thinks is their business.”

“I meant about the law.”

“You come in here at eight, Mr. Herz, I’ll have you out by nine. You go home, your wife here gets a good night’s sleep — if you want, let her stay off her feet the next day, and that’s it. You have nothing to worry about.” He crossed his arms and raised his chin. His lower lip came out, reaching up for his mustache. Was he nervous? Hadn’t he ever done this before? Why didn’t he answer the questions?

All Paul said was, “Four fifty is a little high.”

“Listen, young man”—the voice was gentle and chastising—“you can find somebody for a hundred and fifty if you want to look down dark alleys. But this is your wife we’re dealing with. I should think you would want the best.”

“Yes, yes, absolutely.”

“Tomorrow night at eight?”

“Lib?” Paul asked.

But Libby said nothing. While he waited for her to speak, his mind traveled all the way back — to Lichtman, to Uncle Asher, to his own parents. In a fit of defiance he shook the doctor’s hand.

“Have a light lunch,” said Doctor Tom, coming over and putting just a finger on Libby’s clenched hand. “No dinner, an enema at five, and I’ll see you at eight.”

The anesthetist, Mrs. Kuzmyak, was gone from the waiting room when they left. Either it was Paul’s strong imagination or the odor of Kuzmyak’s feet, but something of her managed to cling to the place even in her absence. He found himself cursing her. The smelly pig! The fat frustrated bitch!

Oh God!

From the street, through the leafless hedge, they could see that a light was on behind the stained shade in their room.

“I turned them all off,” Paul said. “Did you turn them on?”

“No.”

“You must have, Lib—”

“I didn’t,” she said. “Oh Paul …”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Everything.”

“I probably left it on. It’s all right.” But he was suddenly so full of his own thoughts that he did not even take her hand. He opened the outside door with his key, and they walked down the narrow stairway to the basement. Outside their door he could not find his other key on his chain; as in the phone booth, his eyes blurred over. He remembered having seen a squad car on the corner when they had alighted from the bus. Earlier there had been a man in a hat outside Dr. Smith’s apartment building — and he had looked too long at Libby, hadn’t he? Had they been followed? Caught? He saw the life which he had so earnestly and diligently constructed falling away to nothing. He should have known … all the crumbling that had been going on over the months. He should have been stronger, wiser! Now the scandal, jail, poor poor pale Libby—