Philip Roth - Letting Go

Her shoulders drooped. “Where?” she asked finally.

“Wherever you like,” he said.

“You won’t mind,” she said in a thin voice, “if I just sit for today.”

He extended one of his hands and said with a mild kind of force, “Why don’t you sit.” Oh, he was nice. A little crabby, but nice. She kept her shoes on and sat down in the straight chair.

And then her heart took up a very sturdy, martial rhythm. She looked directly across the desk into a pair of gray and inpenetrable eyes. She had had no intention of becoming evasive in his presence; not when she had suffered so in making the appointment. But the room was a good deal brighter than she had thought it would be, and on top of her fear there settled a thin icing of shyness. She was alarmed at having all her preconceptions disappointed; and she was alarmed to think she had had so many preconceptions. She could not remember having actually thought about Dr. Lumin’s height, or the decor of his office; nevertheless there was a series of small shocks for her in his white walls, his built-in bookshelves, his gold-colored carpet, and particularly in the wide window behind his desk, through which one could see past the boulevard and down to the lake. She had not been expecting to find him with his shade raised. The room was virtually ablaze with light. But of course — it was only one o’clock. One-twenty.

“I stopped off at Saks on the way up. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

With one of those meat-cutter’s hands, he waved her apology aside. “I’m interested — look, how did you get my name? For the record.” It was the second time that day that she found herself settled down across from a perfect stranger who felt it necessary to be casual with her. Dr. Lumin leaned back in his swivel chair, so that for a moment it looked as though he’d just keep on going, and fall backwards, sailing clear through the window. Go ahead, she thought, fall. There goes Lumin … “How did you find out about me?” he asked.

With no lessening of her heartbeat, she blushed. It was like living with an idiot whose behavior was unpredictable from one moment to the next: what would this body of hers do ten seconds from now? “I heard your name at a party,” she said. “You see, we’ve just come to Chicago. A few months ago. So I didn’t know anyone. I heard it at a party at the University of Chicago.” She thought the last would make it all more dignified, less accidental. Otherwise he might take her coming to him so arbitrarily as an insult. “My husband teaches at the University of Chicago,” she said.

“It says here”—the doctor was looking at a card—“Victor Honingfeld.” His eyes were two nailheads. Would he turn out to be stupid? Did he read those books on the wall or were they just for public relations? She wished she could get up and go.

“Your secretary asked on the phone,” she explained, “and I gave Victor’s name. He’s a colleague of my husband’s. I — he mentioned your name in passing, and I remembered it, and when I thought I might like to — try something, I only knew you, so I called. I didn’t mean to say that Victor had recommended you. It was just that I heard it—”

Why go on? Why bother? Now she had insulted him professionally, she was sure. He would start off disliking her.

“I think,” she said quickly, “I’m becoming very selfish.”

Swinging back in his chair, his head framed in the silver light, he didn’t answer. “That’s really my only big problem, I suppose,” said Libby. “Perhaps it’s not even a problem. I suppose you could call it a foible or something along that line. But I thought, if I am too selfish, I’d like to talk to somebody. If I’m not, if it turns out it is just some sort of passing thing, circumstances you know, not me, well then I won’t worry about it any more. Do you see?”

“Sure,” he said, fluttering his eyelashes. He tugged undaintily at one of his fleshy ears and looked down in his lap, waiting. All day people had been waiting on her words. She wished she had been born self-reliant.

“It’s been very confusing,” she told him. “I suppose moving, a new environment … It’s probably a matter of getting used to things. And I’m just being impatient—” Her voiced stopped, though not the rhythmic thudding in her breast. She didn’t believe she had Lumin’s attention. She was boring him; he seemed more interested in his necktie then in her. “Do you want me to lie down?” she asked, her voice quivering with surrender.

His big raw face — the sharp bony wedge of nose, the purplish overdefined lips, those ears, the whole huge impressive red thing — tilted up in a patient, skeptical smile. “Look, come on, stop worrying about me. Worry about yourself,” he said, almost harshly. “So how long have you been in Chicago, you two?”

She was no longer simply nervous; she was frightened. You two. If Paul were to know what she was doing, it would be his final disappointment. “October we came.”

“And your husband’s a teacher?”

“He teaches English at the University. He also writes.”

“What? Books, articles, plays?”

“He’s writing a novel now. He’s still only a young man.”

“And you, what about yourself?”

“I don’t write,” she said firmly. She was not going to pull her punches this second time. “I don’t do anything.”

He did not seem astonished. How could he, with that unexpressive butcher’s face? He was dumb. Of course — it was always a mistake to take your troubles outside your house. You had to figure things out for yourself. How? “I was working,” she said, “I was secretary to the Dean, and I was going to school, taking some courses at night downtown. But I’ve had a serious kidney condition.”

“Which kind?”

“Nephritis.” She spoke next as a historian, not a sympathy-monger; she did not want his sympathy. “I almost died,” she said.

Lumin moved his head as though he were a clock ticking; sympathy, whether she wanted it or not. “Oh nasty, a nasty thing …”

“Yes,” she said. “I think it weakened my condition. Because I get colds, and every stray virus, and since it is really dangerous once you’ve had a kidney infection, Paul said I should quit my job. And the doctor, the medical doctor”—she regretted instantly having made such a distinction—“said perhaps I shouldn’t take classes downtown at night, because of the winter. I suppose I started thinking about myself when I started being sick all the time. I was in bed, and I began to think of myself. Of course, I’m sure everyone thinks of himself eighty percent of the time. But truly, I was up to about eighty-five.”

She looked to see if he had smiled. Wasn’t anybody going to be charmed today? Were people simply going to listen? She wondered if he found her dull — not only dull, but stupid. They tried to mask their responses, one expected that; but perhaps she was no longer the delightful, bubbly girl she knew she once had been. Well, that’s partly why she was here: to somehow get back to what she was. She wanted now to tell him only the truth. “I did become self-concerned, I think,” she said. “Was I happy? was I this? was I that? and so forth, until I was totally self-absorbed. And it’s hung on, in a way. Though I suppose what I need is an interest really, something to take my mind off myself. You simply can’t go around all day saying I just had an orange, did that make me happy; I just typed a stencil, did that make me happy; because you only make yourself miserable.”

The doctor rocked in his chair; he placed his hands on his belly, where it disappeared into his trousers like half a tent. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “What, what does your husband think about all this?”