Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Knew it all the time.”

“Ah, the hell you did,” he said. Then he hugged me; and he hung on. He rubbed his bristly cheek against mine and started to say something, but had to stop and deal with a little trouble in his throat. At last he said, “Everything’s going to be all right. I’m a young man, I’m going to be all right. Knock on wood, I’ve got my health. I’m not going to be a burden to you any more.”

“You’re no burden,” I said, but already he was moving back into the dark living room, where I heard Gruber holding forth. “That’s Lady Godiva and a bottle of Chianti wine in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I wouldn’t go up in that thing for a million dollars. I’ve got news for you, if they’re not careful—”

The phone in Chicago was answered by a small girl with a mouthful of food. The operator said that New York was calling for Mrs. Reganhart; would the little girl please stop clicking the receiver and call her mother to the phone. The phone dropped and the child screamed, “Oh, Mommy! It’s Daddy!”

My confusion did not really become full-scale until the mother answered with a timid and uncharacteristic “Yes? … Operator? This is Martha Reganhart.”

“It’s not Daddy, however,” I said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

“Shall I hang up?”

“Certainly not — my child’s drunk on Mott’s apple juice. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“ Where are you?”

“Daddyland. New York.”

“Oh, do excuse her. She gets overexcited when she’s not in school. I think she’s reacting to the company,” she whispered.

“Who’s there?”

“An old friend. He stimulates the children.”

“And you?”

“No, no. No — that’s true. Listen, I’m sounding tragic.” But she wasn’t; only forlorn. “How’s Thanksgiving? How’s your father’s party? Is there really a father and a party or is some tootsie nestled beside you in her underwear?”

“I call in the absence of the latter.”

“It’s very sweet of you to call. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“I’m having a nice unhappy one.”

“Just a minute, will you?” She left the phone, but nevertheless I could hear her voice. “No, it is not Daddy! I am telling you the truth, Cynthia! Go talk to Sid, he’s all alone. Cynthia!” She sighed into my ear. “I’m back.”

“Good.”

Why it was good I couldn’t say; neither of us spoke.

“Well,” she admitted finally. “What else is there to say?”

She was right, of course, for we hardly knew each other; I had not realized how strange it was for me to be calling her long distance until I was in the middle of the call. I had taken her to dinner some weeks back, and we had laughed and joked until the waiters stared, but that had not increased our knowledge of each other very much. Then she had called to ask me — and a nervous little exchange it had been — to come to Thanksgiving dinner. And now this. Strangely, I found myself wanting to believe that I had some rights to her total concern and attention.

I said, “I just wanted to say Merry Thanksgiving to you.”

“Thank you.”

I was preparing to hang up when she asked, “Shall I go ahead and invite you to another meal? Will you eat leftovers when you come back?”

“I’ll be back Monday.”

“Come then for dinner.”

“Thank you, I will.” Then I said, “Who’s Sid?”

“He’s a man who just asked me to marry him.”

“I see.”

“You’ll come Monday night.”

“As long as you’re still single, I suppose so.”

“Single as ever,” she said.

“Does that upset you?”

“Specifically no; generally I’m not sure. This is some long-distance conversation.”

“Long distance should be outlawed anyway. Were you expecting a call from your husband?”

“My ex -husband — from whom I have no expectations whatsoever.” I heard a loud noise rise up behind her. “Oh God, my son just hit my daughter with a chair or something. Give my love to the girl in her underwear.”

“You give my love to Sidney.”

“We can’t possibly be jealous over anything,” she said, “so we shouldn’t really play at it. Should we?”

“I’m a little deranged today, Martha. I wonder if we’ll ever manage to be level with one another.”

“You come Monday, Gabe. I’ll be single.” Then, all at once, she did level with me. “They shouldn’t outlaw long distance. I feel you’ve saved my life.” It was the sort of statement I had come to expect her to qualify with an irony; she didn’t, however, and so neither did I.

Instead I said, as though it were some revelation of character, “There is a father and a party, you know. And I look forward to seeing you.”

But even while I spoke, she was explaining, “Sid is Sid Jaffe — he was my lawyer. He got me my divorce half-price, and I’m very indebted to him, Gabe, and the children are crazy about him, as crazy as they can be about anybody, anyway. And I have to stop talking on your money. Forgive me, please.”

I remained seated at the phone table. There were some eight hundred miles between us, and yet our acquaintanceship had taken a sharp and serious turn. And when I had come out into the hallway I hadn’t even been intending to call her! She had been the escape hatch, to put it crudely, through which I could crawl from that new and startling image of my father. During the previous spring he had gone to see a psychotherapist; he had been advised to travel; he had been advised to spend large quantities of money, to enjoy the company of women, and if possible to give up all mystical activities for a period of six months. He had even asked me to take his long trip with him, and when I offered my job as an excuse, he had settled upon Gruber. And now, face to face with the results of that trip, I had called Chicago.

I reached down and brought out the big Brooklyn telephone directory, mostly out of a feeling that if there was any call I should have made, it was the one I had been asked to make. Millie was charging past me, still starchy and angry and efficient. “You call this an American Thanksgiving?” she asked. “Smells to me like New Year’s Eve. Your father’s become ultra-European, you know,” she said, turning up her nose.

“Times change, Millie.”

“Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving, young man!”

Light fell into the hallway from the living room, dull, apricot light, very comforting to find creeping along the rug and up your toes. The conversations I could hear from the lighted room sounded revitalized; aside from Mrs. Norton, nobody had made a move for the exit, though it was nearly four thirty. All their houses were empty; they stayed on.

I opened the Brooklyn directory and found the name I was after. I marked it, realizing that if I had turned to Martha Reganhart to escape my father, I had also called her so as to escape an old friend as well. Libby Herz had asked me to call — to call upon — her husband’s parents. I have found in my life that I often phone one person when I expect myself, or others expect me, to be phoning someone else; it is what the telephone company calls displacement.

Libby and I had managed well enough, respectably enough, since her arrival in Chicago. Though I had discovered that the feeling we had for one another had not changed after three years and one letter, I nevertheless got through the early fall without doing anything I can think of to make the feeling concrete. Then, just before leaving Chicago for Thanksgiving, I had run into her quite accidentally on Madison Street. I was going into Brooks Brothers, and she was headed for Goldblatt’s and then the Downtown College, where she was taking a course. My shopping expedition happened to have been of no little significance, for I was after a hat. A real man’s hat, you know — brim, crown, the works. It was to be my first; I was full with the knowledge that my father was waiting for me in New York, fresh from his world travels (“with a surprise” he had guaranteed me on the phone), and I had somehow reasoned that it would be to my advantage to confront him behatted. I felt at once gay and doubtful about the venture, and when I ran into Libby I asked her to come in with me to give her opinion. Even to myself I do not think of it as an invitation innocent of charm, nor do I think of her acceptance as so innocent either.