Philip Roth - Letting Go

“She says she likes to travel at five because that’s the only time the streets aren’t dangerous. Maybe she’s right. She’s actually not much more misguided than anybody else I know. Gabe? Gabe, I reached some conclusions today.”

“Yes?”

“No conclusions really, just a few simple truths. Just your staying — it’s so nice and different. It changes us. Going to sleep with a man and not waking up with him is really pretty frightening. It stinks. I’m not a kid any more.”

“I don’t know how much more of that four A.M. business I could have taken anyway. I think this fever may be some psychosomatic form of surrender. When I get better, we’ll have to work out some new system. There’s no law that people have to make love at night—”

“There isn’t, except it might not have been too genteel starting right off with afternoons. Honey, I’ve got a little boy running around all day.”

“Then,” I said wearily, “we’ll have to work out something. I don’t know.”

“Go to sleep now,” she said. “Don’t worry about strategy. Take a pill.”

I leaned toward Martha, for I wanted just to touch her.

“No, no, go to sleep … Gabe — listen, last night I said the hell with it. I said I had rights. I said this to myself. You make me feel I have rights. I do care for you. I won’t be like that again.”

“It wasn’t bad, Martha.” Then I said, “It was only strange.”

“I scared myself.”

“Oh, not so much,” I said, smiling. “Not so much.”

“A certain amount, yes.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“I’ve got to watch myself. I’m a mother of two.”

“Four. There’s Sissy and there’s me.”

“Sissy’s going.”

“She wants to stay. She came in and told me.”

“Did she take her clothes off, the little nudist?”

“What happened?”

“I told you. I came to see some simple truths.”

“She said she’d said something.”

“No, she just made some smart remark to the effect that if you could stay over why couldn’t Blair stay over, too. I just don’t think she should hang around any more. It isn’t even her, finally. It’s a roomer. This is my home, you know? Did your family have roomers?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, mine didn’t either. On top of everything else, it leaves me feeling déclassée.”

“Martha, I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“You’ll leave when you’re well.”

“I owe you for the doctor.”

“Twelve bucks, that son of a bitch.” She leaned over and kissed me. “Happy birthday. Go to sleep.”

I was moved by her, almost to tears. “Martha, you’re a generous, competent, warm-blooded, splendid girl.”

“Now if I wasn’t déclassée I’d be perfect.”

“I hope you realize that this sickness is a tribute to you.”

“Oh yes,” she said, getting up and smoothing my blankets, “to me and our mutual loneliness—”

“That looks to be over.”

“We’ll see how wonderful everything is when your temperature goes down.”

“It’s never going down. I’m going to be fed bouillon by your daughter in her nightdress forever.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Come here, Martha dear, just one minute. Come on, dearie.”

“You’re going to die, you know. You’re going to keep this up and you’re going to die.”

However, I know I’m not going to die until I’m very old, and Martha trusted in my knowledge.

In the night the phone rang. I turned on the lamp beside the bed and looked out the window. It was four-thirty. There was not a sound in the apartment. Had I been dreaming? I dropped back into sleep, warm, protected, content.

But in the morning I knew who it was that I had been expecting to telephone. All the day before he had probably been ringing my apartment to wish me a happy birthday.

After Martha had brought me my breakfast, she plugged the phone in the bedroom, at my request. Then she started back into the kitchen, where Sissy, she told me, was crying for forgiveness. I could see she was on the verge of changing her mind about her boarder, and since I was myself preoccupied, we only touched hands, and then went about catching up on private business.

I asked the operator to give me the charges when the call was finished, and then waited to hear my father’s voice. We had not spoken with one another since Thanksgiving, and suddenly I had a premonition that he was sick, that in fact he was going to die.

Millie, our maid, answered.

“He’s gone away,” she told me.

“Where to, Millie? I didn’t know.”

“Grossinger’s,” she said, disapprovingly.

“He’s all right, isn’t he? He’s not sick, is he?”

“Oh, he’s all right.”

“What’s the matter, Millie?”

“Nothing.”

“Did Dr. Gruber go up with him?”

“Dr. Gruber, no.”

“Did she go with him, Millie?”

“I don’t know who went with him.”

“Okay, Millie. When will he be back? Christmas?”

“He told me not to expect them till after New Year’s.”

“I see … Okay, Millie. Look, you don’t have to stay around the apartment, you know. Get out, enjoy yourself. Go down to Macy’s, go look at all the windows. Fifth Avenue will be full of lights.”

“Hasn’t he sent you a card either?” she asked. “He used to go away, he used to send a picture post card. I suppose he has more important things on his mind.”

“I suppose so.”

After a moment she said, “It’s a damn shame.”

“All right, Millie, you just get out and enjoy yourself.”

“Happy birthday,” she said to me.

While I waited for the operator to ring back with the charges, the front door opened and I heard Sissy’s voice. “You can go to hell, Martha! You have no right!”

“I have every right and you watch your language.”

“You’re sexually immature—”

“Close the door, Sissy, you’re letting in a draft. Close it!”

“Who cares!” Sissy cried, and the door slammed after her.

The next thing, Cynthia was at the front door, sobbing.

“Come on, Cynthia, now stop it. You don’t want to go to school with red eyes, do you?”

“I don’t care. Where’s Sissy going? ”

“She’s only moving, sweetheart. She’s going to go to a new apartment.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want her to move. I don’t want her to move away.”

“She has to … Now, come on—”

“Why?”

“Because it’s too crowded here.”

“Well then he’s going too, isn’t he?”

“Cynthia, when you’re a grown woman and there’s another grown woman around, and she’s single — Cynthia, it’s just the way it is. I’m a grown woman, my baby.”

“But I’m a child, though,” Cynthia said, weeping.

“Ohhhh, come on,” said Martha, gently, “you hardly know Sissy. You have other friends. You have Stephanie, you have Barbie, you have Markie, you have me—”

“I don’t want her moving away.”

“Cyn, you have to get ready now. You have to go to school. Come on, blow your nose.”

The child blew. “Will I ever see Blair again? Now where’s he going?”

“Of course you’ll see Blair again. You’ll see him in Hildreth’s.”

“He’ll go away, I know it!” For the second time that morning, the door slammed in Martha’s face.

Then it opened again. “Cynthia, be careful, there’s ice—”

“ I know it,” the child called back.

It was a while before Martha came in to see me. I took a pill and drank the last of my coffee, and decided it was time to dress and drive myself home and be sick there. But when I started to get out of bed, my limbs just couldn’t do the job.