Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Where’s your friend?” Martha asked, conversationally.

“She’s buying her mayonnaise.”

Several seconds passed before either man publicly acknowledged the presence of the other; then Blair peered over the top rim of his sunglasses. “How’s the crime business, Your Honor? What’s swinging in the underworld?”

“How are you?” Sid asked.

“Oh me, I’m toeing the ethical norm.”

“That’s fine.”

“Man, I make nothin’ but the super-ego scene.”

Mark found the remark very funny; Cynthia curled up in Blair’s arms. Sid sat upright in his chair. There was no question about his being a hundred times the man Blair Stott was, and yet Martha discovered she could not stand him at that moment for being so proper and protective; it seemed a crushing limitation on her life.

Partly out of pique with Sid, she cued Blair. “And how’s the hipster movement in North America? What’s new?” The children looked at her with wide eyes — she was drawing out the funny man for their enjoyment.

“Well, Mrs. Reganhart,” said Blair, whose father was a highway commissioner in Pennsylvania, whose mother was a big shot in the NAACP, and whose masks were two: Alabama Nigger and Uppity Nigger, “well, to tell you the facts, we is all of us taking a deserved rest, for we expended a prodigious, a fantastic, a burdensomely amount of laboriousness and energy, as you might have been reading in the various organs, in placing in the White House that Supreme Hipster of them all, the Grand Potentate and Paragon of What Have You, the good general, DDE. It was a uphill battle and a mighty venture, and mightily did we deliver unto it. We are pushing presently for a hipster for Secretary of the State, and, of course, for Secretary of the Bread. What we are anxious to see primarily is one of our lad’s names on all them dollar bills. You know, This here bill is legal tender, signed, Baudelaire. Of course, in our moment of spiritual need and necessitation — which we is regularly having biweekly, you know — we are also turning our fond and prodigious efforts and attentions to the Holy Roman Church, and praying on our bended knees, with much whooping and wailing, that it is from amongst our ranks that the next Pontiff-to-be will be selectified. As may be within the ken of your knowledge, sugar, up till the present hour there has been an unquestioning dearth of hipster Popes — one must go a considerable way back down the road to find hisself one. Like since Peter, nothin’. The Pope we got now, the thin fella with the glasses — now in my opinion this is a very square Pope, though on the other hand I learn from our sources in Vatican that this same cat was very hip as a cardinal. What we is looking for with fervor and prodigiosity, not to mention piety and love, is someone we can call ‘Daddy’ and look up to. How many years has it been now since Rutherford B. Hayes?”

“Coolidge,” Martha suggested, fearing for the dryness of her children’s underwear; both of them were slithering about in fits of laughter.

“Hip, my dear blond bombshell, but no hipster. Markie, do you agree here with the predilections of my predigitation, or what? You sit so silent, man”—Mark was nearly on the floor—“have you no thriving interest in the life political and the heavenly bodies, or is you numb, Dad, with Coca-Colorama?”

“Coke!” Mark erupted, as Sissy made her entrance, swinging within her clinging black tights her healthy behind, and unscrewing the cap on a jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. She sat down at the booth and offered the jar around; then she dug in while Mark, awe-struck, watched every trip the spoon made from the jar to her mouth. For Martha, his absorption opened up a whole new world of agonies. Sid looked at her. Pleadingly he said, “It’s getting late.”

She heard herself answer, “It’s only five to.”

And Cynthia was shouting, “Blair! Blair!”

Oh father-starved child, modulate your voice! But Martha said not a word. Let them enjoy every last Thanksgiving minute.

“Blair! Tell an army story!”

“A story!” Mark joined in.

“Well, there I was—” Blair said, and the children hushed. “Up to here — no, higher — with dirty dishes and pots and pans laden and encrustated with an umbilicus of grease and various and sundry remnants and remains. I’m speaking of garbage, Markie — do you get the picture?”

“Picture.”

“All right, you got it. I don’t want no faking now. All right, up to here in muck. It was my duty, you understand, not only to native land, but to the ethical norm and the powers that am and was, to alleviate these crockeries of the burdensome load under which they was yoked by virtue of this delirious scum and dirt which so hid their splendor. Well, cheerily then, I am approaching the task when, coming from another part of the edifice, I smell upon my nostril’s entrance there, some sort of conflagration, and I think unto myself, I think: Slime, Scum, Private Lowlife, where there is conflagration there is smoke. Erstwhile, says I, this here mess hall is perhaps out to be victimized by the dreadness of fire. Alors! I am alarmed when into my area I behold a white-glove inspection is moving itself. Great Scott, says I to myself in my characteristic manner, it is a full colonel, a veritable bastion of democracy and he is headed my way, seeking out signs of filth and dirt and thereby disrespectability and so forth. He is followed up upon, lapped up after, in a manner of speaking, by two captains and a major, and several noncommissioned bastions, patriotic and knowledgeable men one and all. Well, I snap to, heave forth, I take the extreme attitude of attention, sucking in even on my hair, while I continue preparing my hot sudsy water — and yet, in the meantime, this distinct aroma of a conflagration is sweeping up into my olfactory system and presenting to me the idea that we is all in a pericolous state of danger. This idea mushrooms in my head, and at last — for I am myself a kind of bastion of our way of life; I always eat Dolly Madison ice cream whenever there is the choice — and so I say, ‘Your Colonelhood, pardon my humble ass—’ ”

“Blair!” Sissy said.

“ ‘Pardon my humble bones, suh, my low condition, my dribbilafaction—’ you seem puzzled, Cynthia honey — you ain’t heard of that?”

“Yes. Oh yes.”

“ ‘Well, pardon all that then, Colonel, my de facto status and all, but I smell—’ But I am cut off in the prime of life — from my larynx and general voice box region my warning is untimely ripped — and all the bastions is shouting at me at once and in unison. What we call A Capella. ‘Shut your bones, man. Do not address till you is yourself addressed, sealed, and dropped down the slot there.’ Me, I suspect them of high wisdom right off, so I sluk off, and cleave unto myself, and oh yes rightly so, for his name’s sake. And they too, in a huff, dealt me a parting glance not deficient in informing me of just who I was and why and what for, yes sir, and they were off to the sagitary, a very snappy group could make your eyes water just the sparkle alone. I was left alone — hang on now, Markie, we is edging up on the end — and all alone it was I who had the glorious and untrammeled experience, the delirious and delectafacatory happiness, the supreme and pleasurable moment — I had for myself, young ‘uns, a little life-arama and the last laugh, when that there edifice, all that government wood, and all them government nails and shingles, all them dishes and greasy-faced pots and pans, the whole works, my children, came burning right on down and into the good earth. Thanks go to the Wise Old Lord, too, for I fortunately escaped with my life, and I stood out there on that little ol’ company street, and I watched that there mess hall expire and groan and puff itself right out. It burned right on down to the ground, children, and into it, Amen.”