Philip Roth - My Life As A Man

“Oh, how can you? Oh get out of here, you, with your crocodile tears. Doctor,” she cried feebly, “help.”

Her head began to thrash around on the pillow-“Okay,” I said, “calm down, calm yourself. Stop.” I was holding her hand.

She squeezed my fingers, clutched them and wouldn’t let go. It had been a while now since we’d held hands.

“How,” she whimpered, “how…”

“Okay, just take it easy.”

“-How can you be so heartless when you see me like this?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m only alive two minutes…and you’re over me calling me a liar. Oh, boy,” she said, just like somebody’s little sister.

“I’m only trying to suggest to you how to alleviate the pain. I’m trying to tell you…” ah, go on with it, go on, “the lying is the source of your self-loathing.”

“Bullshit,” she sobbed, pulling her fingers from mine. “You’re trying to get out of paying the alimony. I see right through you, Peter. Oh thank God I didn’t die,” she moaned. “I forgot all about the alimony. That’s how mortified and miserable you left me!”

“Oh, Maureen, this is fucking hell.”

“Who said no?” said she, and exhausted now, closed her eyes, though not for oblivion, not quite yet. Only to sleep, and rise in a rage one last time.

When I came back into the waiting room there was a man with Flossie Koerner, a large blond fellow in gleaming square-toed boots and wearing a beautifully cut suit in the latest mode. He was so powerfully good-looking-charismatic is the word these days-that I did not immediately separate out the tan from the general overall glow. I thought momentarily that he might be a detective, but the only detectives who look like him are in the movies.

I got it: he too must just be back from vacationing in Puerto Rico!

He extended a hand, big and bronzed, for me to shake. Soft wide French cuffs; gold cuff links cast in the form of little microphones; strange animalish tufts of golden hair on the knuckles…Why, just from the wrists to the fingernails he was something to conjure with-now how in hell did she get him? Surely to catch this one would require the piss of a pregnant contessa. “I’m Bill Walker,” he said. “I flew here as soon as I got the news. How is she? Is she able to talk?”

It was my predecessor, it was Walker, who had “promised” to give up boys after the marriage, and then had gone back on his word. My, what a dazzler he was! In my lean and hungry Ashkenazic way I am not a bad-looking fellow, but this was beauty.

“She’s out of danger,” I told Walker. “Oh yes, she’s talking; don’t worry, she’s her old self.”

He flashed a smile warmer and larger than the sarcasm warranted; he didn’t even see it as sarcasm, I realized. He was just plain overjoyed to hear she was alive.

Flossie, also in seventh heaven, pointed appreciatively to the two of us. “You can’t say she doesn’t know how to pick ‘em.”

It was a moment before I understood that I was only being placed alongside Walker in the category of Good-Looking Six-Footers. My face flushed-not just at the thought that she who had picked Walker had picked me, but that both Walker and I had picked her.

“Look, maybe we ought to have a drink afterwards, and a little chat,” Walker suggested.

“I have to run,” I replied, a line that Dr. Spielvogel would have found amusing.

Here Walker removed a billfold from the side-vented jacket that nipped his waist and swelled over his torso, and handed me a business card. “If you get up to Boston,” he said, “or if for any reason you want to get in touch about Maur.”

Was a pass being made? Or did he actually care about “Maur”? “Thanks,” I said. I saw from the card that he was with a television station up there.

“Mr. Walker,” said Flossie, as he started for the nurse’s desk. She was still beaming with joy at the way things had worked out. “Mr. Walker-would you?” She handed him a piece of scratch paper she had drawn hastily from her purse. “It’s not for me-it’s for my little nephew. He collects them.”

“What’s his name?”

“Oh, that’s so kind. His name is Bobby.”

Walker signed the paper and, smiling, handed it back to her.

“Peter, Peter.” She was plainly chagrined and embarrassed, and touched my hand with her fingertips. “Would you? I couldn’t ask earlier, not with Maureen still in danger…you understand…don’t you? But, now, well, I’m just so elated…so relieved.” With that she handed me a piece of paper. Perplexed, I signed my name to it. I thought: Now all she needs is Mezik’s X and Bobby will have the set. What’s going on with this signature business? A trap? Flossie and Walker in cahoots with-with whom? My signature to be used for what? Oh, please, relax. That’s paranoid madness. More narcissismo.

Says who.

“By the way,” Walker told me, “I admired A Jewish Father tremendously. Powerful stuff. I thought you really captured the moral dilemma of the modern American Jew. When can we expect another?”

“As soon as I can shake that bitch out of my life.”

Flossie couldn’t (and consequently wouldn’t) believe her ears.

“She’s not such a bad gal, you know,” said Walker, in a low stern voice, impressive now for its restraint as well as its timbre. “She happens to be one of the gamest people I know, as a matter of fact. She’s been through a lot, that girl, and survived it all.”

“So have I been through it, pal. At her hands!” A film of perspiration had formed on my forehead and beneath my nose-I was greatly enraged by this tribute to Maureen’s guts, particularly coming from this guy.

“Oh,” he said icily, and swelling a little as he spoke, “I understand you know how to take care of yourself, all right. You’ve got hands too, from what I hear.” He lifted one corner of his mouth, a contemptuous smile…tinged slightly (unless I was imagining things) with a coquettish invitation. “If you can’t stand the heat, as they say-“

“Gladly. Gladly,” I interrupted. “Just go in there and tell her to unlock the kitchen door!”

Flossie, a hand now on either of us, jumped in-“He’s just upset, Mr. Walker, from everything that’s happened.”

“I should hope so,” said Walker. He took three long strides to the nurse’s desk, where he announced, “I’m Bill Walker. I spoke earlier to Dr. Maas.”

“Oh. Yes. You can see her now. But only for a few minutes.”

“Thank you.”

“Mr. Walker?” The nurse, a stout, pretty twenty-year-old, till then all tact and good sense, turned shy and awkward suddenly. Flushing, she said to him, “Would you mind? I’m going off duty. Would you, please?” And she too produced a piece of paper for him to sign.

“Of course.” Walker leaned over the desk toward the nurse. ‘What’s your name?” he asked.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said, going even a deeper scarlet. “Just say ‘Jackie’-that’d be enough.”

Walker signed the paper, slowly, with concentration, and then headed off into the intensive-care room.

“Who’s he?” I asked Flossie.

My question confused her. “Why, Maureen’s husband, between you and that Mr. Mezik.”

“And that’s why all the world wants his autograph?” I asked sourly.

“Don’t-don’t you really know?”

“Know what?”

“He’s the Huntley-Brinkley of Boston. He’s the anchorman of their six o’clock news. He was just on the cover of the last TV Guide. He’s the one that used to be a Shakespearean actor.”

“I see.”

“Peter, I’m sure it’s that Maureen just didn’t want to make you jealous by mentioning him right now. He’s just been helping her over the rough spots, that’s really all there is to it.”