Philip Roth - Letting Go

“Hi,” she said.

“Why, hello — how are you?”

“Better. How are you?”

“I’m fine. What’s the matter?” I asked. “Were you sick? Or are you just feeling generally better?”

“I had a fever.”

“There’s one going around.”

“It’s gone now,” she answered cheerily; too cheerily, for looking at her I saw the after-effects of illness still in her face.

“How’s your husband?”

“He’s fine.”

We both did not know where to go from there. She must have heard, as 1 did, that I had not called Paul Paul.

“You must come see us some night,” Libby suggested.

“I’ve been very busy.”

A strand of hair that was swept away from the side of her head suddenly engaged her; she brushed it with her hand, and pulled everything tighter through the rubber band at the back. “I want to thank you,” she said, “for the car offer. That was very nice. Paul told me.”

“I’m sorry he couldn’t use it.”

With her hair out of the way, she began fiddling with the items in her cart; she had a great deal of oleo but no Breck. “Thank you anyway,” she said, and we both looked off at the shelves of Tide and Rinso.

“How do you get all those groceries home now?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Walk.”

“It’s far.”

“Not that far.”

“Why don’t you wait—” I found myself looking at a crease that extended from the edges of her nostrils to the edges of her mouth, barely visible, but still a mark on the skin. “Maybe you shouldn’t walk …”

“Oh but I’m fine.”

“I can drive you. I’m almost finished.”

When she looked to see how finished I was, I realized that it was clear from my cartful that I was feeding and deodorizing more than one. It was also clear — to me — that the other person was not one toward whom I had a great deal of feeling. It was beginning to seem that toward those for whom I felt no strong sentiment, I gravitated; where sentiment existed, I ran. There was my father; there was even the girl before me. With her, of course, circumstances had combined with judgment to hold me back. But no circumstances had forced me, really, into a liaison with Margie Howells, whose sickroom behavior informed me that even if I had not developed feelings, I had at any rate initiated obligations. Standing there with Libby Herz, I found myself feeling rather shabby.

“Do let me drive you,” I said.

“I’ll wait just outside.”

In the car I put my bundles out of sight on the back seat. I propped up Libby’s bag in front, between us, and asked her how school was.

“I’m not in school any more.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“I decided to quit a couple of weeks ago. A few days after we saw you, I guess.”

“I suppose it’s less hectic.”

She shrugged her shoulders again, and I saw that somehow I was making her nervous. “I’m working in the registrar’s office,” she said. “You’re right, it is less hectic. I mean generally.” And rather than explain, she raced ahead. “I finished your book. You don’t mind if we keep it for a while, do you? Paul hasn’t gotten around to it yet. He’s just starting to get some time.”

“That’s all right.”

“Isabel has a lot of courage in the end,” she said. “You were right. Going back to Osmond, I mean. I don’t know — I think some people might think it was stubbornness. Do you think it was?”

I thought she thought it was, so I said, yes, in a way it probably was. However, I said, stubbornness might be the other side of courage.

“That’s very hard to figure out,” she answered. “When you’re being stubborn and when you’re being courageous. I mean, if you were alone — but there are other people …” The conversation seemed suddenly to depress her. Whenever we talked principle it always wound up seeming as though we were talking about her. I could tell when she spoke next that she had told herself to stop brooding.

“Why don’t you come visit us?” she asked.

I did not answer.

“Don’t judge us by that night,” Libby said. “Please don’t. We, both of us, were preoccupied.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “Actually I’ve just been busy.”

“Paul …” she began slowly, “did appreciate your offering the car.” She looked out the side window as she spoke, and I was reminded vividly of our first interview. “It simply wasn’t a solution for us. I hope you didn’t think he was ungrateful. He did appreciate the ride. He appreciated it very much. He’s — very private. He’s sweet, you know”—she toppled one word on the next—“and, I know, I know he can look a little rude, to strangers—”

“No, no. I didn’t think him rude at all.”

“We’re much better off now, really. I thought it was awfully kind of you, considering what we’d been the night before. I realize,” she said in a voice too loud for a two-door sedan, “that I must have complained all night.”

“Oh no. I just thought you were telling some stories.”

What I said confused me, and confused Libby too. Her voice was hardly natural when she said, “Paul was just overworked. It’s not nearly so bad as I must have made it seem.”

“Doesn’t he teach at Coe any more?” I asked.

“Well, he does — but he won’t be, starting next semester. It’s too much. And I don’t mind working. Really, it’s sort of a nice change. There’s a bus, he found out, that goes up to Cedar Rapids and he’s finishing out the semester taking that. It shoots a lot of his day — but that’s okay anyway because he can read on it — and oh, I know it sounds involved, but now in fact it’s less involved than it was. Before he couldn’t write, and he was up every night marking papers, and he was too upset. We’ll finish one education at a time. I think tempers are better all around.”

“I’m glad everything is going well.”

“Oh yes. You must come to see us.”

“I will.”

“I’m sure Paul would like it.”

Then why the hell hadn’t he asked me himself? I saw him three times a week, and got from him only a hello and goodbye … But his life had only just changed, I told myself, and perhaps it was true that as his several frustrations dropped away, he would come to feel less defensive about me.

“I will come,” I said.

“Come tonight.”

“I don’t think I can make it tonight.”

As we headed up toward the barracks, Libby said, “You’re certainly welcome to bring somebody with you, if you like.”

“Maybe some other night.” Obviously I could not tell her that at the moment there was a sick girl home in my bed. “After Christmas,” I said, hoping that by then there would be no girl in my bed at all.

“Paul will return the book soon,” Libby said. She pointed up to the gray hut that was theirs. “Right here. There are a lot of things to talk about, about Isabel’s character.”

“There are, I know.”

“I’d like to talk about them,” she said. “And do, really, bring anyone you like. I think Paul would like you to bring someone.” When I looked at her pulling the bundle from the car, she tried to avoid my eyes. I knew she did not want me to suggest that I carry the bundle for her.

We two Wallach men, my father and I, stood in place on the tennis court, pushing dull lifeless shots back and forth at one another. Each of us had been trying for over an hour not to inconvenience his opponent by so much as a foot. For four days now, life — off the court as well as on — had consisted of just this sort of polite emotionless volleying. Running into one another in the bathroom, we bowed in our bathrobes. At dinner, eyes glued to utensils, we waited for Millie to serve, then dipped into our grapefruit as though one wrist controlled our separate hands. One of us couldn’t sneeze without the other waving a clean handkerchief in his face.