Philip Roth - Letting Go

Rosen smiled his smile. “I hope it wasn’t serious.”

“It wasn’t anything really. I might have gotten quite sick—” Why isn’t Paul home? What good is he if he isn’t here now? “I had a kidney condition,” she explained, starting in again. “It’s why the doctors say I shouldn’t have a baby. It would be too strong a risk. You see, I’m the one who can’t have a baby. Not my husband.”

“Well, there are many many couples that can’t have babies, believe me.”

His remark was probably intended to brace her, but tears came to her eyes when she said, “Isn’t that too bad …”

He took a long sheet of paper from his briefcase and pushed out the tip of a ball point pen. The click sounded to Libby very official. She pulled herself up straight in her chair and waited for the questions. But Rosen only jotted some words on the paper. She waited. Finally he glanced up. “Just the number of rooms and so forth,” he said.

“Certainly. Go right ahead. I’ve just been having”—she yawned—“my lazy morning, you know—” She tried to stretch but stifled the impulse halfway. She certainly did not want for a moment to appear in any way loose or provocative. “Not making the bed or anything, just taking the day off, just doing nothing. With a baby, of course, it would be different.”

“Oh yes.” His brow furrowed, even as he wrote. “Children are a responsibility.”

“There’s no doubt about that.” And she could not help it — she did not care if that was so much simple ass-kissing. At least, at last, she’d said the right thing. All she had to do was to keep saying the right thing and get him out of here, and the next time Paul would be home. There were so many Jewish families wanting babies, and so few Jewish babies, and so what if she was obsequious. As long as: one, she didn’t lie; and two, she said the right thing. “They are a responsibility,” she said. “We certainly know that.”

“Your husband’s an instructor then, isn’t that right, in the College?”

“He teaches English and he teaches Humanities.”

“And he’s got a Ph.D?”

He seemed to take it so for granted — was he writing it down already? — that she suffered a moment of temptation. “An M.A. He’s working on his Ph.D. Actually, he’s just finishing up on it. He’ll have it very soon, of course. Don’t worry about that. Excuse me — I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound so instructive. I suppose I’m a little nervous.” She smiled, sweetly and spontaneously. A second later she thought that she must have charmed him; at least if he were someone else, if he were Gabe say, he would have been charmed. But this fellow seemed only to become more attentive. “I only meant,” Libby said, “that I think Paul has a splendid career before him. Even if I am his wife.” And didn’t that have the ring of truth about it? Hadn’t her words conveyed all the respect and admiration she had for Paul, and all the love she still felt for him, and would feel forever? It had been a nice wifely remark uttered in a nice wifely way — why then wasn’t Rosen moved by it? Didn’t he see what a dedicated, doting, loving mother she would be?

“I’m sure he has,” Rosen said, and he might just as well have been attesting to a belief in the process of evolution.

But one had to remember that he was here in an official capacity; you couldn’t expect him to gush and sigh. He must see dozens of families every day and hear dozens of wives attest to their love for their husbands. He could probably even distinguish those who meant it from those who didn’t, from those who were no longer quite so sure. She tried to stifle her disappointment, though it was clear to her she probably would not be able to get off so solid a remark again.

Rosen had set his paper down now. “And so you just — well, live here,” he said, tossing the remark out with a little roll of the hands, “and see your friends, and your husband teaches and writes, and you keep house—”

“As I said, today is just my lazy day—”

“—and have a normal young people’s life. That’s about it then, would you say?”

“Well—” He seemed to have left something out, though she couldn’t put her finger on it. “Yes. I suppose that’s it.”

He nodded. “And you go to the movies,” he said, “and see an occasional play, and have dinner out once in a while, I suppose, and take walks”—his hands went round with each activity mentioned—“and try to put a few dollars in the bank, and have little spats, I suppose—”

She couldn’t stand it, she was ready to scream. “We read, of course.” Though that wasn’t precisely what she felt had been omitted, it was something.

He didn’t seem to mind at all having been interrupted. “Are you interested in reading?”

“Well, yes. We read.”

He considered further what she had said; or perhaps he was only waiting for her to go on. He said finally, “What kind of books do you like best? Do you like fiction, do you like nonfiction, do you like biography of famous persons, do you like how-to-do-it books, do you like who-done-its? What kind of books would you say you liked to read?”

“Books.” She became flustered. “All kinds.”

He leaned back now. “What books have you read recently?” To the question, he gave nothing more or less than it had ever had before in the history of human conversation and its impasses.

It was her turn now to wave hands at the air. “God, I can’t remember. It really slips my mind.” She felt the color of her face changing again. “We’re always reading something though — and, well, Faulkner. Of course I read The Sound and the Fury in college, and Light in August , but I’ve been planning to read all of Faulkner, you know, chronologically. To get a sense of development. I thought I’d read all of him, right in a row …”

His reply was slow in coming; he might have been waiting for her to break down and give the name of one thin little volume that she had read in the last year. “That sounds like a wonderful project, like a very worth-while project.”

In a shabby way she felt relieved.

“And your poetry,” he asked, “what kind of poetry do you write?”

“What?”

“Do you write nature poems, do you write, oh I don’t know, rhymes, do you write little jingles? What kind of poetry would you say you write?”

Her eyes widened. “Well, I’m sorry, I don’t write poetry,” she said, as though he had stumbled into the wrong house.

“Oh I’m sorry,” he said, leaning forward to apologize. “I misunderstood.”

“Ohhhh,” Libby cried. “Oh, just this morning you mean.”

Even Rosen seemed relieved; it was the first indication she had that the interview was wearing him down too. “Yes,” he said, “this morning. Was that a nature poem, or, I don’t know, philosophical? You know, your thoughts and so forth. I don’t mean to be a nuisance, Mrs. Herz,” he said, spreading his fingers over his tie. “I thought we might talk about your interests. I don’t want to pry, and if you—”

“Oh yes, surely. Poetry, well, certainly,” she said in a light voice.

“And the poem this morning, for instance—”

“Oh that. I didn’t know you meant that. That was — mostly my thoughts. I guess just a poem,” she said, hating him, “about my thoughts.”

“That sounds interesting.” He looked down at the floor. “It’s very interesting meeting somebody who writes poetry. Speaking for myself, I think, as a matter of fact, that there’s entirely too much television and violence these days, that somebody who writes poetry would be an awfully good influence on a child.”

“Thank you,” Libby said softly. Of course she didn’t hate him. She closed her eyes — though not the two shiny dark ones that Rosen could see. She closed her eyes, and she was back in that garden, and it was dusk, and her husband was with her, and in her arms was a child to whom she would later, by the crib, recite some of her poetry. “I think so too,” she said.