Philip Roth - Letting Go

But he, unlike her, had no illusions; she knew him to be too good and too patient. She was the nut in the family, and he was the one with his hands full. She let that serve as an accurate description of their life.

“Paul, I won’t be falsely pessimistic if you won’t be falsely optimistic.”

“It’s not being falsely optimistic to say that we’ll work something out. Besides, the waiting list is only two years.”

“No,” she said, nodding, “that’s not falsely optimistic. People adopt babies …”

“Why don’t you go downtown, Libby? Why don’t you go to the Art Institute today? It’s a beautiful day. Get out. Just put on that little tan hat—”

“It’s a beautiful day, I don’t need a hat.”

He set down his coffee cup as though suddenly it weighed too much. “I only thought you looked pretty in that hat.” He left it at that.

She was crushed for having crushed him, especially when he had only been suggesting that she was pretty. Still, if he found her so damned attractive … Everything between them was hopelessly confused.

“I thought I would go downtown.”

He rose. “Fine.”

“So I probably won’t be here when you get back.”

He only leaned down and finished the last of his coffee.

“Don’t you want to talk about last night?” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

What she wanted to ask him was who had provoked her. Often when she tried to puzzle out the circumstances of her life, her mind was a blank. Last night seemed beyond understanding, and yet it was probably so simple. “I behaved rudely—” she began.

“Everybody behaved badly. Shouldn’t we leave it at that?”

“I guess so.”

After Paul left she put the breakfast dishes in the sink, on top of the lunch dishes from the day before. In the bedroom she decided once again to save the bedmaking until later. Her appointment was not until one, so there was plenty of time.

She sat down gingerly upon the sofa in the living room. She still had trouble easing her head back onto the pillows, though she had brushed and brushed them with a whisk broom and been over them many times with a damp sponge. The trouble with their furniture was that it had all been bought one afternoon at Catholic Salvage, a place she could not forget. How Paul had discovered it she still did not know, but one day after they had found the apartment, a bleak but moderately priced four rooms on Drexel, they had taken a bus, and then changed to another bus, to the brick warehouse on South Michigan. They had been the only two white people there — except in the first floor clothing section, where two spinsters, with skin the color and texture of pie crust, stood around a table full of secondhand underwear, fingering and discarding numerous foundation garments. They had already started up the metal stairs to the furniture section when Paul had turned and gone back down to a pipe rack he had spotted in men’s wear; it was then Libby had seen the two pathetic old ladies holding up faded corset after faded corset, and then dropping them from crippled fingers back onto the heap. She turned away from them, tears already in her eyes, to see Paul picking out a blue pin-striped suit from amongst a half dozen limp garments strung along the rack. When she saw that the jacket fitted — with a little give and take here and there — she drew in her breath. Though she knew it didn’t matter, that it was what a person was and not what he wore that counted, she nevertheless had begun to pray: “Mary, Mother of God, please don’t let him buy that thing.” And her prayer had been answered. He came clanging up the stairs in his Army-Navy Store shoes to tell her that the two suits he already had were plenty.

They then proceeded up one more flight and around the vast cement floor, where they picked out a kitchen table, four chairs, a desk, a sofa, a bedstead, springs, a mattress, a chest of drawers, a dresser, a mirror, three lamps, and a rug. Marching up another flight, they chose their dishes and pots and pans. And Paul walked right up and touched everything. In his coat and shoes he had stretched out on half a dozen second-hand mattresses until he had found one with enough life left in it.

“Watch out you don’t fall asleep now, son,” said a Negro man who walked by carrying an old console-model radio.

Paul looked up and smiled; Libby smiled too. She was full of admiration for her husband, not to mention wonder: How can he put his head down there? Ever since grade school she had defended the rights of all men, regardless of race; she had willingly (deliberately?) married a Jew; she had always spoken up for the underprivileged (and this even before she had become one herself). Yet she stood looking down at her husband and thinking: These mattresses have belonged to colored people. I don’t want any … She had only sympathy and tenderness for the sick (and this, too, dating from before she had joined the ranks), but she thought: They have been slept upon by sick people, dying people —I DON’T WANT ANY! To her husband, however, she said nothing; all the while that Paul went around rapping, knocking, testing, she kept her hands in the pockets of her raincoat. She managed to get away without having had to touch anything.

“What do you think?” Paul had asked. “Do we need something else?”

There were blankets and sheets, but she did not choose to mention either until they were home. “That seems like everything to me,” she said.

“Whatever else we need then, we can pick up along the way.”

“Yes — if anything turns up …”

All together what they bought had cost $103, including the rug, which they never unrolled. “I just don’t like the pattern,” Libby said.

“Then why didn’t you say so when we were there?”

“Maybe later I’ll get used to it. Can’t we keep it rolled up a little longer? I don’t mind the floors, really, if you don’t.”

He had let her have her way, though she did not forget that the rug had cost them eight dollars — two of her visits to a doctor.

So with all of this behind her (the knowledge she had of her weaknesses, the decision to overcome the weaknesses), she took the bull by the horns and put her head all the way back onto the sofa. One could come to grips with life if only one used a little reason and a little will power. That was what she admired in Paul: his will.

In her blue flannel robe, with her head held rigidly back (she was not going to give in to her worst side), she watched the sun on the bare floor. What to do until one o’clock? She could, of course, decide the hell with one o’clock and then go ahead and do anything. But she could go ahead and do anything anyway. She could paint the kitchen chairs. However, still unfinished was the dresser, which she had begun to paint a bright yellow some six weeks ago. It seemed now to have been a mistaken bit of economy to have bought such cheap paint, for instead of being bright and gay — brightness and gaiety was what she had told Paul the apartment lacked when she had pleaded with him for money for the paint — the piece was coming out a mean, mustardy color because of the stain beneath. Well, she could go ahead and make the bed then … No, she would save their bed for last. And not out of laziness; she suddenly had a motive: she wanted those sheets and blankets firmly in her mind when she went downtown. What could she do now?

She could read. But the trouble with her reading was that it was too casual; it did not satisfy. She had already decided that to remedy the situation she would have to try to read the works of one writer straight through, in chronological order. Then all of another writer, and so on. She planned to start with Faulkner but she did not have the books yet. So this was no morning then to begin that project — and to start another book would not make sense, since that would delay her entry into Faulkner when she did get a chance to go over to the library. She could do something practical then. She could make out the grocery list; she could—