Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Why don’t we,” I said.

“We’ll go. Libby too,” he added.

“If she’s tired, Paul—”

“Libby would like to see the club,” he said. “Libby needs …” But that sentence was not finished either; just the simple subject and that simple verb. With gravity, with tenderness — all this in his dark eyes — he said, “It would be good for Libby.”

I don’t think it would have shocked either of us then if we had embraced. It was the kind of emotional moment that one knows is being shared.

We tramped together through the snow to Goodspeed, and we did not speak. I believed it was crucial for me to stay with him, even though my watch showed that I was going to be late for Martha Reganhart. I believed something was being settled.

Paul stopped some fifteen feet from the entryway. A light from a second floor window spread around us where we stood in the snow. My companion made a megaphone of his hands and whistled two notes up toward the window. Then, softly, he called, “Lib-by … Lib-byyy.”

He actually sang her name. As though he loved her. “Lib-byyyy.…” After a moment passed and no one had appeared, he called through his hands, “Hey, arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon!” But when nothing happened, he turned to me and said, “We better go in.”

I walked behind him thinking only one thought. She is this man’s wife. I followed him up the stairs to the second floor and we turned down the corridor, by the water fountain, and then we stepped into the open doorway of Libby’s office. And there she was, smashing away at the typewriter. Neither Paul nor I moved any further, and neither of us could speak.

Libby was hunched over the machine, wearing — for all that the radiator was bubbling and steaming away across the room — her polo coat and her red earmuffs; her face was scarlet and her hair was limp, and moving in and out of her mouth was the end of her kerchief, upon which she was chewing. Stencils were strewn over the desk and wadded on the floor, and from her throat came a noise so strange and eerie that it struck me as prehistoric, the noise of an adult who knows no words. Yearning and misery and impotence … She was like something in a cage or a cell — that was my first impression. It did not seem as though her own will or her own strength would be enough to remove her from this desk. I watched her fist come down upon the spacer — clump! A stencil was torn free of the carriage with a loud whining that could have come either from the typist or the machine. She threw it onto the floor and then looked up and saw the two of us.

She gasped, she brushed her kerchief over her cheeks, she touched her fingers to her hair, and from behind a mass of clouds, she pretended to be that fair sun her husband had sung out to from beneath the window.

“I’m”—she drew in through her nostrils—“just finishing.” She picked up a fresh stencil. “I’ll only be a minute … Hello,” she finally said.

Paul moved into the office. “Libby—”

But Libby was bending over now, sorting through the papers on the floor. Then, giving up, she raised her body, centered herself on her chair, centered the stencil, lifted her fingers, and her mouth began to widen across her face. Her eyes swam out of focus for a moment, as she turned to say, “I’m just having a little trouble. The typewriter”—she brought herself under control—“sticks.” She looked down and made the smallest of sounds: she whimpered. “Another minute.”

I remained in the doorway, while Paul’s long figure inclined toward his wife. “Are you feeling all right? Are you feeling sick, you’re so flushed—”

She picked her ratty, lifeless kerchief out of her lap, where it had dropped, and blew her nose into it. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m not used to stencils, that’s all …”

“Libby, we’re going to have a drink at the Quadrangle Club. Why don’t you save the stencil for tomorrow?”

“I have to finish.”

“You can finish tomorrow. You can’t sit in here with your coat on. Take off your earmuffs, Libby, and we’ll get the place in order and we’ll all go have—”

She was shaking her head. “The Dean needs it. Paul, please, just sit down.”

“Why do you have your coat on? Are you cold? It’s hot in here. Libby, come on now, please.”

“I’m fine — one more—”

“The Dean can wait,” he said. “You’re letting yourself get upset — it’s not important.”

But she was shifting herself around in her chair until she was in the posture prescribed for efficient typists.

“Please, Libby. It’s after six. You’re weak. You’ve been here since eight-thirty.”

“I’m fine! I’m perfectly fine!” She looked over at me, and she exclaimed, as though I doubted the fact too: “I am!”

“Yes,” I said, though not very forcefully.

“Now.” She centered the stencil in the carriage once again, turned to the manuscript she was copying, and struck the first key. “Ooohhh,” she moaned.

“What, honey? What is it?” Paul asked.

“Why do I keep hitting the half? I keep wanting the p and getting the half! Oh Paulie—” she bawled, ripping the stencil violently from the machine, “I can’t even type!”

He kneeled beside her and tried to quiet her the way a conductor quiets a symphony orchestra; raising and lowering his palms, he said, “Okay now, okay. You can type, you can type just as well as anybody. Come on now — try to hang on. You can hang on now.”

“I am hanging on.”

“I know. Just keep it up—”

“Paul, I’ve made about — honestly, about thirty-five stencils. I just can’t do it! What’s the trouble with me? Haven’t I got any coordination either? Can’t I do anything? ”

“Did the Dean make you stay? Doesn’t he know you’ve been sick?”

“I want to stay.” Her voice now was without passion. “I wanted to stay and finish. But I can’t even do a paragraph. I can’t type one lousy sentence through to the end.”

“You can type,” he said. “You can type perfectly well.” Slowly he began to gather all the discarded papers and deposit them in the waste basket. “The machine sticks. It’s not your fault.”

“It just sticks a little.”

“All right, calm down now.” He rose and offered her his hands to help her from the chair. But Libby crossed her arms over the typewriter, lowered her head onto it, and wept.

Till then I had remained because I knew it would only doubly embarrass Herz if I were to disappear; I was sure that he was as determined as I that we should go ahead with our plans — he too, I thought, had felt that something was being settled. Now I stepped out of the doorway and around into the corridor. I did not even consider how late I was going to be for my engagement. I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes, and I remember saying to myself: I don’t understand.

“You don’t have to work in any office,” Paul was saying. “You just stay at home and rest.”

“I don’t want to rest. I’m only twenty-five. I don’t want to rest all the time.”

“Maybe you could take some classes during the day—”

“It’s one horrible mess after another, isn’t it?” Her hysteria was almost completely run down now; she had simply asked a question. “I think”—I heard her taking deep breaths—“I think I need a glass of water, Paul, and a pill.”

Without moving, I called into the room, “You stay, Paul. I’ll get it.” For when Libby had spoken, I had had the vision of Paul leaving the room, and Libby stepping to the window, and then Libby sailing, sweeping down through the air. I filled a cup at the water fountain and brought it back to the Dean’s office.