Philip Roth - Letting Go

To the sun, filtering through the grimy windows, she said, “Why can’t he just kiss me on the lips?”

She got out of bed, thinking: I want everything.

Over her nightgown she put on a robe, the same blue flannel one her parents had given her when she’d gone off to Cornell ages ago. In the kitchen he was standing over the stove, waiting for the coffee; he was already dressed in his suit and tie, and his briefcase was on a chair. The table was set neatly for two, knife on the right, fork on the left. This morning he had cut her orange in quarters and there were two pills beside her bread plate. Dutiful man, he had even folded the paper napkins in half. She did not know of any other husband who so served his wife. He had always worked so hard — at first, before their marriage, for himself, to make money for school, to get good grades; then after their marriage for the two of them. But from the back she saw that his shoulders were still unbent. She came up behind him on her toes and put her arms around his spindly body, her face in the faintly odorous material of his jacket. For some reason their closets smelled the way closets might in which very old maids kept their belongings. And there was nothing to be done about it; she had already tried air-wick and cologne and moth spray, but apparently it was something in the very plaster of the house.

Paul jumped. “Oh Jesus — you scared me.”

“I’m sorry. Good morning. It’s me — sunshine.” She intended her merry words to be at once winning and self-critical, a reference to the night before.

“Honey, please put on slippers,” Paul said. “The floors are cold.”

That simple remark of his almost drove her mad. “Good morning, though … first.”

“Good morning, Libby.”

She looked up into his eyes and found nothing there to make her doubt that he was a generous man. And she loved him! He was so much more adult and genuine, more in contact with life’s realities, than she could ever hope to be.

“Please,” he said, kissing her above the eye, when she lingered beside him, “go put on slippers. I’ve got a class in half an hour.”

“Yes,” she said; she fled toward the hall on her toes, and then she turned, and with her face lifted, with her heart beating, she said, “Paul, isn’t it a wonderful day? It’s sunny for a change. It seems like a very significant day—” That was as much as she could manage to tell him.

She went into their bedroom and from beneath the dresser kicked out her slippers. While she was there she thought she would quickly make the bed. It will please him to see me peppy and active; it will make this dreary room orderly, if not beautiful. But the whole day was before her, no job to go to any longer, no night classes to prepare for, nothing she really had to read, so it might even be a good thing to save the bed for a little later in the morning. She could begin painting those chairs in the kitchen — then she remembered she hadn’t the whole day after all. She had to go downtown. She ran into the kitchen then to be near her husband. If anything significant was going to happen today, it was going to have to happen between them, and in less than thirty minutes. There was no time to waste making beds or worrying over painting chairs. Paint wouldn’t make them look any better anyway. There was no way of cheering this place up. Only Paul.

But back in the kitchen she could not think what he could really do or say that she should allow to dissuade her from what she had planned. Her decision had come much too hard — it had been a week of dialing the number one minute and hanging up the next. She would not permit herself to be tricked by a pleasant breakfast; she wouldn’t let him get away with that. It wasn’t as though all their troubles had begun yesterday.

She remembered yesterday — specifically, the dinner of the night before. Paul had said nothing all the way home, though she knew he had disapproved of her behavior. Wherever they went lately she wound up arguing with people. But it was not her fault! Everyone else had been awful — that son of a bitch Gabe, that woman … But what had they done? What had they said to her? Why did she hate people? She would have to admit that too when she went downtown — that she couldn’t control her responses, that out of the clear blue sky she began to hate people.

“I think I’m going to go out this afternoon,” Libby said, picking at her orange.

“Just dress warmly.”

“Don’t you want to know where I’m going?”

“Out. For a walk …” he said. “I thought you said you were going out.”

“If you’re not interested …”

“Libby, don’t be petulant first thing in the morning.”

“Well, don’t be angry at me for last night.”

“Who said anything about last night?”

“That’s the whole thing — you won’t even bring it up. Well, I didn’t behave so badly, and don’t think I did.”

“That’s over and done with. You were provoked. That’s all right. That’s finished.”

She did not then ask him who had provoked her; she just began cloudily to accept that she had been.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“When?” Now she was petulant, perhaps because she no longer considered it necessary for her to feel guilty about last night.

She saw Paul losing patience. “This afternoon. You said you were going out, and then I didn’t ask you where, you remember … so now where is it you’re going?”

“Just out. For a walk.”

Paul closed his eyes, and touched his palms together, as though he were praying. “Look”—his eyes opened—“you can’t allow yourself to get too upset. We’re doing all we can.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“That adoption business is what I’m talking about. It seems confused now and a little hopeless. But it won’t be. Things will get sorted out. We’ve only just begun — you can’t allow it to get to you so soon.”

“I wasn’t even talking about that,” she said, thinking: I wasn’t even talking about that!

“No,” Paul said, “but anyway, try to relax. I’m going to call that Greek orphan place today.”

“Paul, I don’t mean to be hopeless, but that particular setup sounds so— ”

“We’ll just look into it,” he said sharply.

Adopting a baby had been her idea in the first place, hadn’t it? She could no longer keep perfectly straight in her mind who had said and done what. “Okay,” she said.

“And the Jewish agency is going to send somebody next week.”

“What good will that do?”

“Libby, it’s an interview. It’s part of adopting a baby.”

“Other people just get pregnant—”

“Forget other people!”

“Don’t shout at me.”

“I don’t shout at you.”

“Not outside you don’t,” she said bitterly. “If I made you angry last night, why didn’t you shout at me there? Why do you only quarrel with me at home?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Well …” she said, trying to think of something sensible to say, some simple fact. “Well, that Jewish agency, I don’t see what good it is anyway. They have a three-year waiting list. Who can wait three years? I could have had a baby a long time ago—”

“That’s enough.”

“Well, I could have.”

“So you could have,” he said, raising his hands, then dropping them.

And how bald he had become, she thought, since that time I could have had my baby. How old. She felt suddenly as though they had been married a hundred years. A harsh laugh rang in her ears, and it was only herself laughing to think that it had not even been the abortion that had knocked out her reproductive powers — just her own two kidneys. How much easier for her if it had been something Paul had put his hands to, or that doctor, or her parents. Anyone. But it was only what had always lived inside her. How can he bear me? she thought. I deserve sick kidneys. Why doesn’t he just leave me?