Philip Roth - Letting Go

She could write a poem.

The idea pleased her. She would write a poem. Why not? If she could write a poem about the night before—

She grabbed a yellow pad that was on the floor beside the books and ran off with it to the kitchen; she sat down so excited with her project, that she simply swept her hand across the table, brushing away the breakfast crumbs. She would attend to them later — they were unimportant. She had never written a poem before (though sick and in bed in Reading she had tried a story), but the idea of poetry had always stirred her. Toward certain poems she had particularly tender feelings. She liked “To His Coy Mistress” and she loved “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode to Melancholy,” too. She liked all of Keats, in fact; at least the ones that were anthologized.

She wrote on the pad:

Already with thee! Tender is the night

She liked Tender Is the Night , which, of course, wasn’t a poem. She identified with Nicole; in college she had identified with Rosemary. She would have to read it over again. After Faulkner she would read all of Fitzgerald, even the books she had read before. But poetry … What other poems did she like?

She wrote:

Come live with me and be my love ,

And we will all the pleasures prove.

Then directly below:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action — and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous …

She could not remember the rest. Those few lines had always filled her with a headlong passion, even though she had to admit never having come precisely to grips with the meaning. Still, the sound …

She wrote, with recollections of her three years of college, with her heart heaving and sighing appropriately.

Sabrina fair

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassy wave—

And I am black but o my soul is white

How sweetly flows

The liquefaction of her clothes

At last he rose, and twitch’d his mantle blue

Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

I am! Yet what I am none cares or knows ,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost ,

I am the self-consumer of my woes.

And who had written those last lines? Keats again? What was the difference who had written them? She hadn’t.

If she could sculpt, if she could paint, if she could write something! Anything—

The door bell rang.

A friend! She ran to the door, pulling her belt tight around her. All I need is a friend to take my mind off myself and tell me how silly I’m being. A girl friend with whom I can go shopping and have coffee, in whom I can confide. Why didn’t Gabe take up with someone I could befriend? Why did he choose her!

She opened the door. It was not a friend; she had had little opportunity, what with her job, her night classes, and generally watching out for herself, to make any friends since coming to Chicago. In the doorway was a pleasant-looking fellow of thirty or thirty-five — and simply from the thinness of his hair, the fragile swelling of his brown eyes, the narrowness of his body, the neatness of his clothes, she knew he would have a kind and modest manner. One was supposed to be leery of opening the door all the way in this neighborhood; Paul cautioned her to peer out over the latch first, but she was not sorry now that she had forgotten. You just couldn’t distrust everybody and remain human.

His hat in one hand, a briefcase in the other, the fellow asked, “Are you Mrs. Herz?”

“Yes.” All at once she was feeling solid and necessary; perhaps it was simply his having called her “Mrs. Herz.” She had, of course, a great talent for spiritual resurrection; when her fortunes finally changed, she knew they would change overnight. She did not really believe in unhappiness and privation and never would; it was an opinion, unfortunately, that did not make life any easier for her.

“I’m Marty Rosen,” the young man said. “I wonder if I can come in. I’m from the Jewish Children’s League.”

Her moods came and went in flashes; now elation faded. Rosen smiled in what seemed to Libby both an easygoing and powerful way; clearly he was not on his first mission for a nonprofit organization. Intimidated, she stepped back and let him in, thinking: One should look over the latch first. Not only was she in her bathrobe (which hadn’t been dry-cleaned for two years), but she was barefoot. “We didn’t think you were coming,” Libby said, “until next week. My husband isn’t here. I’m sorry — didn’t we get the date right? We’ve been busy, I didn’t check the calendar—”

“That’s all right,” Rosen said. He looked down a moment, and there was nowhere she could possibly stick her feet. Oh they should at least have laid the rug. So what if it was somebody else’s! Now the floor stretched, bare and cold, clear to the walls. “I will be coming around again next week,” Rosen said. “I thought I’d drop in this morning for a few minutes, just to say hello.”

“If you’d have called, my husband might have been able to be here.”

“If we can work it out,” Rosen was saying, “we do like to have sort of an informal session anyway, before the formal scheduled meeting—”

“Oh yes,” said Libby, and her thoughts turned to her bedroom.

“—see the prospective parents”—he smiled—“in their natural habitat.”

“Definitely, yes.” The whole world was in conspiracy, even against her pettiest plans. “Let’s sit down. Here.” She pointed to the sofa. “Let me take your things.”

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said.

“God, no,” she said, realizing it was almost ten. “I’ve been up for hours.” After these words were out, they didn’t seem right either.

With his coat over her arm, she went off to the bedroom by way of the sofa, where she slid into her slippers as glidingly as she could manage. She walked down the hall, shut the bedroom door, and then, having flung Mr. Rosen’s stuff across a chair, she frantically set about whipping the sheets and blankets into some kind of shape. The clock on the half-painted dresser said not ten o’clock but quarter to eleven. Up for hours! Still in her nightclothes! She yanked the sheets, hoisted the mattress (which seemed to outweigh her), and caught her fingernail in the springs. She ran to the other side, tugged on the blankets, but alas, too hard — they came slithering over at her and landed on the floor. Oh Christ! She threw them back on the bed and raced around again — but five whole minutes had elapsed. At the dresser she pulled a comb through her hair and came back into the living room, having slammed shut the bedroom door behind her. Mr. Rosen was standing before the Utrillo print; beside him their books were piled on the floor. “We’re getting some bricks and boards for the books.” He did not answer. “That’s Utrillo,” she said.

He did not answer again.

Of course it was Utrillo. Everybody knew Utrillo — that was the trouble. “It’s corny, I suppose,” said Libby. “My husband doesn’t like the impressionists that much either — but we’ve had it, I’ve had it, since college — and we carry it around and I guess we hang it whenever we move — not that we move that much, but, you know.”

Turning, he said, “I suppose you like it, well, for sentimental reasons.” He seemed terribly interested to hear her reply.

“Well … I just like it. Yes, sentiment — but aesthetics, of course, too.”

She did not know what more to say. They both were smiling. He seemed like a perfectly agreeable man, and there was no reason for her to be giving him so frozen an expression. But apparently the smile she wore she was going to have to live with for a while longer; the muscles of her face were working on their own.