Philip Roth - My Life As A Man

‘When Dan Egan gets home, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“You better run, my dear. Fast and far.”

“You better wash yourself-and then go!”

“I want a drink.”

“Oh, Maureen, please. You stink!”

“I NEED A DRINK! YOU TRIED TO MURDER ME!”

“YOU’RE TRACKING SHIT EVERYWHERE!”

“Oh, that’s typical of you!”

“DO AS I SAY! WASH YOURSELF!”

“NO!”

I brought out a bottle of bourbon and poured each of us a big drink. She took the glass and before I could say “No!” sat right down on Susan’s slipcover.

“Oh, you bitch.”

“Fuck it,” she said, hopelessly, and threw down the drink, barroom style.

“You call me the baby, Maureen, and sit there in your diaper-ful, defying me. Why must you defy me like this? Why?”

“Why not,” she said, shrugging. “What else is there to do.” She held the glass out for another shot.

I closed my eyes, I didn’t want to look at her. “Maureen,” I pleaded, “get out of my life, will you? Will you please? I beg you. How much more time are we going to use up in this madness? Not only my time but yours.”

“You had your chance. You chickened out.”

“Why must it end in murder?”

Coldly: “I’m only trying to make a man out of you, Peppy, that’s all.

“Oh, give it up then, will you? It’s a lost cause. You’ve won, Maureen, okay? You’re the winner.”

“Bullshit I am! Oh, don’t you pull that cheap bullshit on me.”

“But what more do you want?”

“What I don’t have. Isn’t that what people want? What’s coming to me.”

“But nothing is coming to you. Nothing is coming to anyone.”

“And that also includes you, golden boy!” And leaking through her underpants, she finally, fifteen minutes after the initial request, marched off to the bathroom-where she slammed and locked the door.

I ran up and hammered on it-“And don’t you try to kill yourself in there! Do you hear me?”

“Oh, don’t worry, mister-you ain’t gettin’ off that easy this time!”

It was nearly midnight when she decided on her own that she was ready to leave: I had to sit and watch her try to clean the blood from the pages of “Dressing Up in Mommy’s Clothes” (by Maureen J. Tarnopol) with a damp sponge; I had to find her a large paper clip and a clean manila envelope for the manuscript; I had to give her two more drinks, and then listen to myself compared, not entirely to my advantage, with Messrs. Mezik and Walker. While I went about removing the odoriferous slipcovers and bedspread to the bathroom clothes hamper, I was berated at length for my class origins and allegiances, as she understood them; my virility she analyzed while I sprinkled the rush matting with Aqua Velva. Only when I threw all the windows open and stood there in the breeze, preferring to breathe fumes from outside rather than inside the apartment, did Maureen finally get up to go. “Am I now supposed to oblige you, Peter, by jumping?” “Just airing the place-but exit however you like.” “I came in through the door and I will now go out through the door.” “Always the lady.” “Oh, you won’t get away with this!” she said, breaking into tears as she departed.

I double-locked and chained the door behind her, and immediately telephoned Spielvogel at his home.

“Yes, Mr. Tarnopol. What can I do for you?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, Dr. Spielvogel. But I thought I’d better talk to you. Tell you what happened. She came.”

“Yes?”

“And I beat her up.”

“Badly?”

“She’s still walking.”

“Well, that’s good to hear.”

I began to laugh. “Literally beat the shit out of her. I’d bloodied her nose, you see, and spanked her ass, and then I told her I was going to kill her with the fireplace poker, and apparently the idea excited her so, she crapped all over the apartment.”

“I see.”

I couldn’t stop laughing. “It’s a longer story than that, but that’s the gist of it. She just started to shit!”

Spielvogel said, after a moment, “Well, you sound as though you had a good time.”

“I did. The place still stinks, but actually, it was terrific. In retrospect, one of the high points of my life! I thought, ‘This is it, I’m going to do it. She wants a beating, I’ll give it to her!’ The minute she came in, you see, the minute she sat down, she virtually asked for it. Do you know what she told me? ‘I’m not going to divorce you, ever.’”

“I expected as much.”

“Yes? Then why didn’t you say something?”

“You indicated to me it was worth the risk. You assured me you wouldn’t collapse, however things went.”

“Well, I didn’t…did I?”

“Did you?”

“I don’t know. Before she left-after the beating-she called her lawyer. I dialed the number for her.”

“You did?”

“And I cried, I’m afraid. Not torrentially, but some. I tell you, though, it wasn’t for me, Doctor-believe it or not, it was for her. You should have seen that performance.”

“And now what?”

“Now?”

“Now you ought to call your lawyer, yes?”

“Of course!”

“You sound a little unstrung,” said Spielvogel.

“I’m really all right. I feel fine, surprisingly enough.”

“Then telephone the lawyer. If you want, call me back and tell me what he said. I’ll be up.”

What my lawyer said was that I was to leave town immediately and stay away until he told me to come back. He informed me that for what I had done I could be placed under arrest. In my euphoria, I had neglected to think of it that way.

I called Spielvogel back to give him the news and cancel my sessions for the coming week; I said that I assumed (please no haggling, I prayed) that I wouldn’t have to pay for the hours that I missed-“likewise if I get ninety days for this.” “If you are incarcerated,” he assured me, “I will try my best to get someone to take over your hours.” Then I telephoned Susan, who had been waiting by her phone all night to learn the outcome of my meeting with Maureen-was I getting divorced? No, we were getting out of town. Pack a bag. “At this hour? How? Where?” I picked her up in a taxi and for sixty dollars (it would have gone for three sessions with Spielvogel anyway, said I to comfort myself) the driver agreed to take us down the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic City, where I had once spent two idyllic weeks as a twelve-year-old in a seaside cottage with my cousins from Camden, my father’s family. There, within the first twelve hours, I had fallen in love with Sugar Wasserstrom, a sprightly curly-haired girl from New Jersey, a schoolmate of my cousin’s, prematurely fitted out with breasts just that spring (April, my cousin told me from his bed that night). That I came from New York made me something like a Frenchman in Sugar’s eyes; sensing this, I told lengthy stories about riding the subway, till shortly she began to fall in love with me too. Then I let her have my Gene Kelly version of “Long Ago and Far Away,” crooned it right into her ear as we snuggled down the boardwalk arm in arm, and with that, I believe, I finished her off. The girl was gone. I kissed her easily a thousand times in two weeks. Atlantic City, August 1945: my kingdom by the sea. World War Two ended with Sugar in my arms-I had an erection, which she tactfully ignored, and which I did my best not to bring to her attention. Doubled-up with the pain of my unfired round, I nonetheless kept on kissing. How could I let suffering stop me at a time like this? Thus the postwar era dawned, and, at twelve, my adventures with girls had begun.