Philip Roth - Letting Go

Her glands and pores worked faster even than her mind; in a moment her body was encased in perspiration. “I don’t understand.”

“About your going around all day eating oranges and asking yourself if they make you happy.”

“I eat,” she said, smiling, lying, “the oranges privately.”

“Ah-hah.” He nodded.

She found herself laughing, just a little. “Yes.”

“So — go ahead. How privately? What privately?” He seemed suddenly to be having a good time.

“It’s very involved,” Libby said. “Complicated.”

“I would imagine,” Lumin said, a pleasant light in his eye. “You’ve got all those pits to worry about.” Then he was shooting toward her — he nearly sprang from his chair. Their faces might as well have been touching, his voice some string she herself had plucked. “Come on, Libby,” Lumin said, “what’s the trouble?”

For the second time that day, the fiftieth that week, she was at the mercy of her tears. “Everything,” she cried. “Every rotten thing. Every rotten despicable thing. Paul’s the trouble — he’s just a terrible terrible trouble to me.”

She covered her face and for a full five minutes her forehead shook in the palms of her hands. Secretly she was waiting, but she did not hear Lumin’s gruff voice nor feel upon her shoulders anyone’s hands. When she finally looked up he was still there, a thick fleshy reality, nothing to be charmed, wheedled, begged, tempted, or flirted with. Not Gabe; not Paul; not an extension of herself.

She pleaded, “Please just psychoanalyze me and straighten me out. I cry so much.”

He nodded and he said, “What about Paul?”

She almost rose from her seat. “He never makes love to me! I get laid once a month!” Some muscle in her — it was her heart — suddenly relaxed. Though by no means restored to health, she felt somehow unsprung.

“Well,” said Lumin, with authority, “everybody’s entitled to get laid more than that. Is this light in your eyes?” He raised an arm and tapped his nail on the bright pane of glass behind him.

“No, no,” she said, and for no apparent reason what she was to say next made her sob. “You can see the lake.” She tried, however, to put some real effort into pulling herself together. She wanted to stop crying and make sense, but it was the crying that seemed finally to be more to the point than the explanations she began to offer him in the best of faith. “You see, I think I’ve been in love with somebody else for a very long time. And it isn’t Paul’s fault. Don’t think that. It couldn’t be. He’s the most honest man, Paul — he’s always been terribly good to me. I was a silly college girl, self-concerned and frivolous and unimportant, and brutally typical, and he was the first person I ever wanted to listen to. I used to go on dates, years ago this is, and never listen — just talk. But Paul gave me books to read and he told me thousands of things, and he was — well, he saved me really from being like all those other girls. And he’s had the toughest life. His parents have been bastards, perfect bastards. That’s true— miserable cruel bastards! ” Though her eyes seemed hardly able to deliver up any more tears, they somehow managed. “Oh honestly,” she said, “my eyeballs are going to fall out of my skull, just roll right on out. Between this and being sick … I never imagined everything was going to be like this, believe me …”

After a while she wiped her face with her fingers. “Is it time?” she asked. “Is it two?”

Lumin seemed not to hear. “What else?”

“I don’t know.” She sniffed to clear her nose. “Paul—” Medical degrees and other official papers hung on either side of Freud’s picture. Lumin’s first name was Arnold. That little bit of information made her not want to go on. But he was waiting. “I’m not really in love with this old friend,” she told him. “He’s an old friend, we’ve known him since graduate school. And he’s — he’s very nice, he’s carefree, he’s full of sympathy—”

“Isn’t Paul?”

“Oh yes,” she said, in what came out like a whine. “Oh so sympathetic. Dr. Lumin, I don’t know what I want. I don’t love Gabe. I really can’t stand him if you want to know the truth. He’s not for me, he’s not Paul — he never could be. Now he’s living with some woman and her two kids. Two of the most charming little children you ever saw, and those two are living together, right in front of them. She’s so vulgar, I don’t know what’s gotten into him. We had dinner there — nobody said anything, and there was Gabe with that bitch.”

“Why is she such a bitch?”

“Oh”—Libby wilted—“she’s not that either. Do you want to know the bitch? Me. I was. But I knew it would be awful even before we got there. So, God, that didn’t make it any easier.”

He did not even have to bother; the next question she asked herself. “I don’t know why. I just thought, why shouldn’t we? We never go out to dinner, we hardly have been able to go out anywhere — and that’s because of me too, and my health. Why shouldn’t we? Do you see? And besides, I wanted to,” she said. “It’s as simple as that. I mean isn’t that still simple — to want to? But then I went ahead and behaved worse than anybody, I know I did. Oh, Gabe was all right — even she was all right, in a way. I understand all that. She’s not a bitch probably. She’s probably just a sexpot, good in bed or something, and why shouldn’t Gabe live with her anyway? He’s single, he can do whatever he wants to do. I’m the one who started the argument. All I do lately is argue with people. And cry. I mean that keeps me pretty busy, you can imagine.”

Lumin remained Lumin; he didn’t smile. In fact he frowned. “What do you argue about? Who are you arguing with?”

She raised two hands to the ceiling. “Everybody,” she said. “Everything.”

“Not Paul?”

“Not Paul — that’s right, not Paul. For Paul,” she announced. “Everybody’s just frustrating the hell out of him, and it makes me so angry. It makes me so furious! That John Spigliano! Gabe … Oh I haven’t even begun to tell you what’s happened.”

“Well, go on.”

“What?” she said helplessly. “Where?”

“Paul. Why is this Paul so frustrated?”

She leaned forward, and her two fists came hammering down on his desk. “If he wasn’t, Doctor, oh if they would just leave him alone! ” She fell back, breathless. “Isn’t it two?”

At last he gave her a smile. “Almost.”

“It must be. I’m so tired. I have such lousy resistance …”

“It’s a very tiring thing, this kind of talking,” Lumin said. “Everybody gets tired.”

“Doctor,” she said, “can I ask you a question?”

“What?”

“What’s the matter with me?”

“What do you think’s the matter?”

“Please, Dr. Lumin, please don’t pull that stuff. Really, that’ll drive me nuts.”

He shook a finger at her. “C’mon, Libby, don’t threaten me.” The finger dropped, and she thought she saw through his smile. “It’s not my habit to drive people nuts.”

She backed away. “I’m nuts already anyway.”

For an answer he clasped and unclasped his hands.

“Well, I am,” she said. “I’m cracked as the day is long.”

He groaned. “What are you talking about? Huh? I’m not saying you should make light of these problems. These are real problems. Absolutely. Certainly. You’ve got every reason to be upset and want to talk to somebody. But”—he made a sour face—“what’s this cracked business? How far does it get us? It doesn’t tell us a hell of a lot, would you agree?”