Philip Roth - Letting Go

No, the hand to which my father had placed his lips had arrived draped on the arm of Dr. Gruber’s vicuña coat. At first I had taken her for a visiting relative of Gruber’s. Her name was Silberman, but Fay was the little word, the only word, that left my father’s lips after he had raised his head to speak. Fay was obviously tight, and tight a shade beyond the others. Every hair of her bluish-gray coiffure, piled and elegant, was in place, but she was not so lucky with her eyes, whose lids obscured half the bleary pupils, nor with her mouth, nor with her jaw which, set off by a splended pearl necklace, hung down just a little.

Dr. Gruber had already plugged in the slide projector. Millie was pulling shut the curtains, a little wearily, like a seaman running up the sail for the twentieth time that day. Shut out gradually was the grapy, wistful, end-of-holiday sky. The bartender was unrolling the white screen, and Millie heaved to the last inch of curtain, and I was left with a last inch of sky, streaky and somber and unforgettable. I had then one of those moments that one feels he will possess till death, but are somehow gone by morning. My most poetic emotions took hold of me — as a result, I think, of a general giving in, an uncomplicated and unconditional surrender I allowed myself after all the genial, good-natured crap I had been handing out through the day, since the previous night, in fact, when I had stepped off the plane. I caught that last inch of sky, and if skies have messages that one did; it told me lives go on.

A slide flashed; color, various and make-believe, came back into the living room.

“This is Venice,” Dr. Gruber announced.

“Florence!” cried a woman behind him.

“Listen, Fay, all you saw was the vino.”

“It’s Florence, lover-boy,” came Fay’s voice, “nevertheless.”

Dr. Gruber cleared his throat. “This is Florence,” he said. “The water got me confused. That’s the Arnold. It’s very beautiful at night. And that’s their old bridge. The Germans blew up the other ones. The Italians hate the Germans.”

Next slide. The bartender peered around at the screen, while running a dishtowel over some glasses.

“The Bubbly Gardens,” Dr. Gruber said. He raised his hand, making a shadow across the picture. “Also Florence. It was too hot to walk around there, though. Very famous gardens. Right in the center of Florence there.” He changed the slide.

“What’s that?” Everyone was laughing.

“Ah, that’s cannelloni! Good old cannelloni! I ate it morning, noon, night, every day. That’s my hand, see, with the fork in it? Cannelloni! Mother’s milk!”

He turned to show everyone his mouth, curled up, raising the ends of his mustache. He changed to the next slide and we were back in the Boboli.”

“We saw that,” called Fay. “Get to the ones with me in it—”

“That’s only a thousand, sweetie-pie,” answered Dr. Gruber.

“Ah, there I am,” explained Mrs. Silberman. And there she was, in her orange life jacket, one elbow resting on the ship railing, the whole great gorgeous Atlantic sky a backdrop for her blue rinse.

“This is Madame Pompadour in her evening gown,” Dr. Gruber informed us. “This is where the lovers met — our first life drill there on the Queen Elizabeth. Terrific service. And that’s her, you see, Queen Elizabeth herself, caught by Mordecai in an unguarded moment. We had to wait ten minutes for her to comb out her eyelashes.”

“Not funny,” moaned Mrs. Silberman, Greta Garbo now in the dark reaches of the room. “Next slide, Dr. Gillespie.”

“Mordecai in the market. He bargained that fellow there down to fifteen dollars for a straw hat for our companion. Mordecai’s the guy with all his teeth. Ah — there’s Queen Liz in her straw hat. Behind her is the Official Gallery there in Florence, which we didn’t get a chance to get inside. Queen Elizabeth was shopping.”

“Where’s Queen Elizabeth?” asked some confused man, coming up out of a nap.

“What?” I heard the Queen herself whispering; and then she broke into laughter, laughter that for a moment shocked me, so much did it sound like tears.

“Rome!” a voice shouted.

“That’s all of us”—Gruber threw a shadow again across the picture—“in the Roman Forum.”

“Get your hand out of the way.”

“That’s all of us in the Roman Forum,” he said. “Ain’t a helluva lot of it left, you see, but that’s where it all happened thousands of years ago. Caesar’s buried there—”

“That’s Venice!” Mrs. Silberman announced.

“Shhhhh.” My father was trying to quiet her giggling.

“That’s Vienna, Stanley,” she called to Dr. Gruber. “Right outside Cannelloni—”

“Quiet in the rear,” Dr. Gruber said over his shoulder. “That’s the Forum.” The slide flipped on.

“That’s — oh, that’s that little town right outside Florence. That’s where we ate lunch. You see, there I’ve got it again, that’s me eating my cannelloni.” Gayly, Gruber moved ahead. “That’s … oh, Christ, that’s Oslo. Turn the lights on, will you? Mordecai, you got these all mixed up.”

“That’s Australia,” Fay was saying. “That’s Cannelloni, Australia.” But now the lamps on two end tables were aglow, and everyone was sitting up and blinking.

As I rose to leave the room, I looked back to see my father glaring down at his companion. She was sleeping — or pretending to — with her mouth open and her cheek resting on his shoulder. He did not see me look, but he must have seen me leave, for in a moment he was standing next to me in the hall.

He said, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Your face looks different. Where are you off to?”

“Nowhere. I have to run an errand later.” I had made certain to keep the errand — which I wasn’t even certain I would run — out of my mind all day. Now it came to my lips spontaneously, as unnecessary excuses are apt to. Adding mistake to mistake I said, “I was going to use the phone.”

“Go right ahead.”

“You don’t mind—”

“Not at all—”

“—if I call Chicago.”

“Call Cannelloni, Australia,” he said, giving me a smile brimming with uncertainty. More soberly he said, “Just don’t run off there on the next plane.”

I touched his shoulder. “What are you talking about? I’m here for the whole weekend. I just want to say Happy Thanksgiving to a friend.”

“A woman,” he said, taking my hand.

“A woman who invited me for Thanksgiving dinner. What do you think of that? I gave her up for you.”

“That’s my boy,” he said, rapping me on the arm with soft knuckles. “That’s fine. That’s terrific.” Then he moved so close that he stepped on my toes. In a conspiratorial voice he said, “Fay Silberman, Gabe, is a very nice woman. A very fine person. She’s had a lot of tragedy in her life. One sunny day she goes outside their place in South Orange and her husband is being driven all over the lawn in their power mower. He’s dead in his seat. It was a horrible thing. He crashed into a tree with that damn machine. She’s had a hell of a time. She’s a good companion. You didn’t think I could get around a whole continent with just Gruber, did you?”

“She seems very nice.”

“Give her a chance, Gabe.”

“I didn’t say anything, honestly.”

“You don’t seem to be having a good time all of a sudden.”

“I ate too much,” I said, trying to smile. “I’m fine.”

“Thanksgiving is a very hard day for all of us. She just drank too much. This was a great shock to her. It’s not even a year. What do you think, Penn whipped Cornell like that?”