Philip Roth - Letting Go

“What makes you think I’m sorry for myself, Willie?”

“Mona,” he said, lapsing into his W. C. Fields voice, “get the boy a drink. The boy needs a drink. Have you noticed Charleen’s boy friend, with the liquidy eyes — over there, with the damp lips? Also, Wallach, self-concerned. A big dumb beautiful girl like Charleen, married to an introspective dermatologist—”

Mona was standing now; she was dressed up, and because I like her so much I’d rather not describe her outfit. “How are you feeling?” she asked. “Better?”

“I think I’m fine,” I said.

“—all the ills and perversions of the world,” Lake was saying, “sloth, u sura—”

“What do you want?” Mona asked. “A bourbon?”

“Look, I’ll get it.”

“—sodomy, pseudohermaphroditism — my God, the olisbos itself was no mystery to the Greeks—”

“Sit down,” Mona said, “and keep him quiet.”

She took the distance between the chair and the liquor table in six graceless shambles. Bill Lake babbled on, “—and what about the French? In 1750 two lowly little pederasts burned in the Place de Grève —” and I looked over the Spigliano’s new apartment, which, surprisingly, turned out to be quite charming. On the top floor of an old red brick house on Woodlawn, it had white walls, slanting ceilings, leaded windows, and lots of room. Fifty or sixty people were standing in little knots around the Christmas tree and the fireplace and the liquor supply. Mixing one of his elaborate cocktails for Walker Friedland and his wife was the master of the place, John Spigliano. With his round dark face and shiny eyes, and a big smile to honor one of Walker’s stories, he looked like an amiable, friendly, harmless, helpful little man — and yet I knew that, like his mate, he could not speak that you did not see a knife slipping between the shoulders of someone you liked — of someone you had thought John liked. Of course it is a mistake to expect academics to behave better than other people; but whether it is that I am a snob or a romantic or a naïf, or whether I was too idolatrous of the people who educated me, I always expect that John is going to walk over to me one day and say that he has made up his mind and wants to join up with the human members of our race. Though I like to think of Spigliano emotions and Spigliano aspirations and rewards as having little to do with myself or anybody I care about, it is true nevertheless that he is a grand source of irritation to many of us who must work alongside him. Perhaps it’s that we envy him the simple decision he has made to be a bastard.

Standing alongside John and facing Walker was Walker’s wife, a stunning blonde with long legs, a high hairdo, A-plus posture, and a somewhat mannered approach to a cigarette that toppled her chic over into self-consciousness and produced in Bill Lake (so he said, tapping my shoulder) a desire to go over and offer her a laxative. She was, of course, only a sophomore in the College and was doing the best she could; if she had only known how Cyril Houghton — who was ostensibly talking to Swanson, the Swede — was casting glances at her rear end, she might have been able to relax a little. She had certainly as much influence as any of us, and more than most.

Mona was marching back with my drink in her hand, when directly beside me I heard Peggy Moberly speaking.

“She’s absolutely marvelous,” Peggy was saying to someone. “She’s just the most charming person. We’re going to have lunch together on Wednesday.”

“Fine,” a man answered.

“Really, she’s lovely—”

“Thank you.”

“And so gay. I’m simply crazy about her.”

“Yes”—I now recognized the male voice—“she’s a very sweet girl.”

Suddenly Peggy had turned and put her hand on my hair. “I thought you were sitting there. What are you being a wallflower about? How are you feeling? I called your place — I was going to come over and make you a decent meal — and you didn’t even answer. I thought, oh God, poor Gabe is dying—”

I stood up. “I just wasn’t answering the phone, Peg. Hello, Paul.”

Paul was wearing the nipped-in double-breasted sharkskin suit he’d worn the day of his arrival in Chicago. He looked severe and lean, and he held himself erect not so much to get the edge on the rest of the party, as to be removed from it — not haughty, just separate. “How are you feeling?” he asked me.

“I’m much better,” I said. “Just some virus, I suppose.”

It was our first exchange since the night in Libby’s office three weeks before. We had managed to see each other only at staff meetings, and there even to find seats out of each other’s line of vision. It was a hard task at a round table.

“This man’s wife,” Peggy said, and without the aid of her glasses she squinted across the room, “is the loveliest-looking person. The most spirited girl—”

“We’re old friends,” I said.

“Oh yes, of course. Gabe brought Paul!” she announced, girlishly, to herself. “Oh Peggy, what are you saying,” this also to herself. I took her hand and squeezed it. Peggy Moberly was one of those people who expect everything of a party; and if everything doesn’t show up soon enough, they start dragging it in by the heels. She seemed now nearly worn out with good intentions: the curl was gone from her hair, the straps of her slip were visible, and her ankles looked to be giving out too. In the end she reached into her purse for her glasses and put them on — the final capitulation to reality. Resigned about herself, she raised both our hands toward the other side of the room and said, “She’s quite the hit, that girl.”

I saw no girl, however, only a huddle of men — Frank Tozier, Larry Morgan, Victor Honingfeld, and now Cyril Houghton and Swanson. Frank was moving his head — laughing — and then when his chin flicked back I caught sight of Libby within the center of the circle. Her cheeks were on fire, and with one long white hand she was tapping her forehead; then the hand shot above her head in a kind of Gallic explosion — her lips moved, hesitated, moved, and the men leaned back and laughed again. All at once she turned in upon herself, hung her head and became shy. But the next moment she was tilting an ear toward Cyril, who was stroking his mustache and doubtless constructing some double-entendre for Libby’s pleasure. Her throat and neck were bare, and her nose in profile was a stately appendage — its elaborate bony edge, touched by light from the Christmas tree, called out for a finger to be drawn down along it. Her hair was parted in the middle and pulled back off her forehead, and her dress was of red satin. I was sure I had seen it before, but couldn’t remember the occasion. Later in the afternoon I recalled that she had written about it in a letter.

“She looks fine,” I said to Paul, while Peggy leaned backwards to counter some remark of Bill Lake’s. “She looks very well.”

“She’s feeling fine,” Paul said. Peggy leaned forward to rejoin us, and it was as though Paul and I had exchanged a message in code, the meaning of which I hadn’t quite understood.

Across the room Frank Tozier was demonstrating a Latin-American dance step. He whipped his butt around with professional agility, and his feet went patter-patter- wheee on the Spigliano rug. Libby’s hands were clasped together before her chest and her eyes were on Frank’s speedy Italian shoes. When he went into a variation of the step, she moved to the side, tried the original little step by herself, failed, and with a hopeless shrug, abandoned a career on the stage. Almost at once Victor Honingfeld was alongside her, and, taking her elbow, he began his nervous and excited chatter. Libby suddenly looked as though bad news had just come her way. Victor made a circular motion with one hand, and then, the noise of the party dipping for a moment, Libby’s voice, pleading, exasperated, came across the room: