Philip Roth - My Life As A Man

Peter get her? Peter take her to Elmira? Peter deal with her mother? Why, if it’s true, Flossie, if this isn’t the most brilliant bit of dissimulation yet staged and directed by Maureen Tarnopol, if you are not the best supporting soap-opera actress of the Psychopathic Broadcasting Network, then Peter leave her. Why Peter even bother with her? Peter let her lie there and rot!

As I still didn’t know for sure whether our conversation was being recorded for Judge Rosenzweig’s edification, I said, “Of course I’ll get her, Flossie. Do you want to come with me?”

“I’ll do anything at all. I loved her so. And she loved you, more than you could ever know-“ But here a noise came out of Flossie that struck me as indistinguishable from the wail of an animal over the carcass of its mate.

I knew then that I wasn’t being had. Or probably wasn’t.

I was on the phone with Flossie for five minutes more; as soon as I could get her to hang up-with the promise that I would be over at her apartment to make further plans within the hour-I telephoned my lawyer at his weekend place in the country.

“I take it that I am no longer married. Is that correct? Now tell me, is that right?”

“You are a widower, friend.”

“And there’s no two ways about it, is there? This is it.”

“This is it. Dead is dead.”

“In New York State?”

“In New York State.”

Next I telephoned Susan, whom I had left only half an hour earlier.

“Do you want me to come down?” she asked, when she could ask anything.

“No. No. Stay where you are. I have to make some more phone calls, then I’ll call you back. I have to go to Flossie Koerner’s. I’ll have to go up to Boston with her.”

“Why?”

“To get Maureen.”

“Why?”

“Look, I’ll call you later.”

“You sure you don’t want me to come?”

“No, no, please. I’m fine. I’m shaking a little but aside from that everything’s under control. I’m all right.” But my teeth were chattering still, and there seemed nothing I could do to stop them.

Next, Spielvogel. Susan arrived in the middle of the call: had she flown from Seventy-ninth Street? Or had I just gone blank there at my desk for ten minutes? “I had to come,” she whispered, touching my cheek with her hand. “I’ll just sit here.”

“-Dr. Spielvogel, I’m sorry to bother you at home. But something has happened. At least I am assuming that it happened because somebody told me that it happened. This is not the product of imagination, at least not mine. Flossie Koerner called, Maureen’s friend from group therapy. Maureen is dead. She was killed in Boston at five in the morning. In a car crash. She’s dead.”

Spielvogel’s voice came back loud and clear. “My goodness.

“Driving with Walker. She went through the windshield. Killed instandy. Remember what I told you, how she used to carry on in the car in Italy? How she loved grabbing that wheel? You thought I was exaggerating when I said she used to actually try to kill us both, that she would say as much. But I wasn’t! Christ! Oh, Christ! She could go wild, like a tiger-in that little VW! I told you how she almost killed us on that mountain when we were driving from Sorrento-do you remember? Well, she finally did it. Only this time I wasn’t there.”

“Of course,” Spielvogel reminded me, “you don’t know all the details quite yet.”

“No, no. Just that she’s dead. Unless they’re lying.”

“Who would be lying?”

“I don’t know any more. But things like this don’t happen. This is as unlikely as the way I got into it. Now the whole thing doesn’t make any sense.”

“A violent woman, she died violently.”

“Oh, look, a lot of people who aren’t violent the violently and a lot of violent people live long, happy lives. Don’t you see-it could be a ruse, some new little fiction of hers-“

“Designed to do what?”

“For the alimony. To catch me-off guard- again!”

“No, I wouldn’t think so. Caught you are not. Released is the word you are looking for. You have been released.”

“Free,” I said.

“That I don’t know about,” said Spielvogel, “but certainly released.”

Next I dialed my brother’s number. Susan hadn’t yet taken off her coat. She was sitting in a straight chair by the wall with her hands folded neatly in her lap like a kindergartener. At the sight of her in that posture an alarm went off in me, but too much else was happening to pay more than peripheral attention to its meaning. Only why hasn’t she taken off her coat?

“Morris?”

“Yes.”

“Maureen’s dead.”

“Good,” my brother said.

Oh, they will get us for that-but who, who will get us?

I have been released.

Next I got her mother’s number from Elmira information.

“Mrs. Charles Johnson?”

“That’s right.”

“This is Peter Tarnopol calling. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Maureen is dead. She was killed in a car crash.”

“Well, that’s what usually comes of runnin’ around. I could have predicted it. When did this happen?”

“Early this morning.”

“And how many’d she take with her?”

“None. Nobody. She was the only one killed.”

“And what’d you say your name was?”

“Peter Tarnopol. I was her husband.”

“Oh, is that so? Which are you? Number one, two, three, four, or five?”

“Three. There were only three.”

‘Well, generally in this family there is only one. Good of you to call, Mr. Tarnopol.”

“-What about the funeral?”

But she’d hung up.

Finally I telephoned Yonkers. The man whose son I am began to choke with emotion when he heard the news-you would have thought it was somebody he had cared for. “What an ending,” he said. “Oh, what an ending for that little person.”

My mother listened in silence on the extension. Her first words were, “You’re all right?”

“I’m doing all right, yes. I think so.”

“When’s the funeral?” asked my father, recovered now, and into his domain, the practical arrangements. “Do you want us to come?”

“The funeral-I tell you, I haven’t had time to think through the funeral. I think she always wanted to be cremated. I don’t know yet where…”

“Maybe he’s not even going,” my mother said to my father.

“You’re not going?” my father asked. “You think that’s a good idea, not going?” I could envision him reaching up to squeeze his temples with his free hand, a headache having all at once boiled up in his skull.

“Dad, I haven’t thought it through yet. Okay? One thing at a time.

“Be smart,” my father said. “Listen to me. You go. Wear a dark suit, put in an appearance, and that’ll be that.”

“Let him decide,” my mother told him.

“He decided to marry her without my advice-it wouldn’t hurt now if he listened when I told him how to stick her in the ground!”

“He says she wanted to be cremated anyway. They put the ashes in the ground, Peter?”

“They scatter them, they scatter them-I don’t know what they do to them. I’m new to this, you know.”

“That’s why I’m telling you,” my father said, “to listen. You’re new to everything. I’m seventy-two and I’m not. You go to the funeral, Peter. That way nobody can ever call you pisher.”

“I think they’ll call me pisher either way, those disposed in that direction.”

“But they can never say you weren’t there. Listen to me, Peter, please-I’ve lived a life. Stop being out there on your own, please. You haven’t listened to anybody since you were four-and-a-half years old and went off to kindergarten to conquer the world. You were four-and-a-half years old and you thought you were the president of General Motors. What about the day there was that terrible thunderstorm? Four-and-a-half years old-”