Philip Roth - Indignation

I read further: “ ‘Fisher Ames predicted that, with a “Jacobin” President, America would be in for a real reign of terror. Yet the four years that followed were one of the most tranquil of the Republican Olympiads, marked not by radical reforms or popular tumults …’ ” And when I looked up, midway through that sentence, I saw that my mother had fallen half asleep in her chair. There was a smile on her face. Her son was reading aloud to her what he was studying in college. It was worth the train ride and the bus ride and maybe even the sight of Miss Hutton’s scar. For the first time in months, she was happy.

To keep her that way, I kept going. “ ‘ … but by the peaceful acquisition of territory as large again as the United States. The election of 1800–1801 brought a change of men more than of measures, and a transfer of federal power from the latitude of Massachusetts to that of Virginia …’ ” Now she was fully asleep, but I did not stop. Madison. Monroe. J. Q. Adams. I’d read right on through to Harry Truman if that was what it took to ease the woes of my having left her behind alone with a husband now out of control.

She spent the night in a hotel not far from the hospital and came again to visit me the next morning, Monday, before she left by bus for the train to take her home. I was to leave the hospital myself after lunch that day. Sonny Cottler had phoned me the night before. He had only just heard about my appendectomy, and despite the unpleasantness of our last meeting out on the quad — to which neither of us alluded — he insisted on coming out in his car to drive me from the hospital back to school, where arrangements had already been made by Dean Caudwell’s office for me to spend the next week sleeping in a bed in the small infirmary adjacent to the Student Health Office. I could rest there when I needed to during the day and resume attending all my classes other than gym. I should be ready after that to climb the three flights to my room at the top of Neil Hall. And a couple of weeks after that to return to my job at the inn.

That Monday morning my mother looked herself again, unbroken and unbreakable. After I’d finished assuring her about the helpful arrangements the college had made for my return, the first thing she said was “I won’t divorce him, Marcus. I made up my mind. I’ll bear him. I’ll do all I can to help him, if anything can help him. If that’s what you want from me, that’s what I want too. You don’t want divorced parents, and I don’t want you to have divorced parents. I’m sorry now that I even allowed myself such thoughts. I’m sorry that I told them to you. The way that I did it, here at the hospital, with you just out of bed and starting to walk around on your own — that wasn’t right. That wasn’t fair. I apologize. I will stay with him, Marcus, through thick and thin.”

I filled up with tears and immediately put my hand over my eyes as though I could either hide my tears that way or manage with my fingers to hold them back.

“You can cry, Markie. I’ve seen you cry before.”

“I know you have. I know I can. I don’t want to. I’m just very happy …” I had to stop for a while to find my voice and to recover from having been reduced by her words to being the tiny creature who is nothing but its need of perpetual nurture. “I’m just very happy to hear what you said. This behavior of his could be a temporary thing, you know. Things like this happen, don’t they, when people hit a certain age?”

“I’m sure they do,” she said soothingly.

“Thank you, Ma. This is a great relief to me. I could not imagine him living alone. With only the store and his work and nothing to come home to at night, on his own on the weekends … it was unimaginable.”

“It is worse than unimaginable,” she said, “so don’t imagine it. But now I must ask for something in return. Because something is unimaginable to me. I never asked anything of you before. I never asked anything of you before because I never had to. Because you are perfect where sons are concerned. All you’ve ever wanted to be is a boy who does well. You have been the best son any mother could have. But I am going to ask you to have nothing more to do with Miss Hutton. Because for you to be with her is unimaginable to me. Markie, you are here to be a student and to study the Supreme Court and to study Thomas Jefferson and to prepare to go to law school. You are here so someday you will become a person in the community that other people look up to and that they come to for help. You are here so you don’t have to be a Messner like your grandfather and your father and your cousins and work in a butcher shop for the rest of your life. You are not here to look for trouble with a girl who has taken a razor and slit her wrists.”

“Wrist,” I said. “She slit one wrist.”

“One is enough. We have only two, and one is too much. Markie, I will stay with your father and in return I will ask you to give her up before you get in over your head and don’t know how to get out. I want to make a deal. Will you make that deal with me?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“That’s my boy! That’s my tall, wonderful boy! The world is full of young women who have not slit any wrists — who have slit nothing. They exist by the millions. Find one of them. She can be a Gentile, she can be anything. This is 1951. You don’t live in the old world of my parents and their parents and their parents before them. Why should you? That old world is far, far away and everything in it long gone. All that is left is the kosher meat. That’s enough. That suffices. It has to. Probably it should. All the rest can go. The three of us never lived like people in a ghetto, and we’re not starting now. We are Americans. Date anyone you want, marry anyone you want, do whatever you want with whoever you choose — as long as she’s never put a razor to herself in order to end her life. A girl so wounded as to do such a thing is not for you. To want to wipe out everything before your life has even begun — absolutely not! You have no business with such a person, you don’t need such a person, no matter what kind of goddess she looks like and how many beautiful flowers she brings you. She is a beautiful young woman, there is no doubt about that. Obviously she is well brought up. Though maybe there is more to her upbringing than meets the eye. You never know about those things. You never know the truth of what goes on in people’s houses. When the child goes wrong, look first to the family. Regardless, my heart goes out to her. I have nothing against her. I wish the girl luck. I pray, for her sake, that her life does not come to nothing. But you are my only son and my only child, and my responsibility is not to her but to you. You must sever the connection completely. You must look elsewhere for a girlfriend.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Do you? Or are you saying so to avoid a fight?”

“I’m not afraid of a fight, Mother. You know that.”

“I know you are strong. You stood up to your father and he is no weakling. And you were right to stand up to him; between the two of us, I was proud of you for standing up to him. But I hope that doesn’t mean that when I leave here, you will change your mind. You won’t, will you, Markie? When you get back to school, when she comes to see you, when she begins to cry and you see her tears, you won’t change your mind? This is a girl full of tears. You see that the moment you look at her. Inside she is all tears. Can you stand up to her tears, Marcus?”

“Yes.”

“Can you stand up to hysterical screaming, if it should come to that? Can you stand up to desperate pleading? Can you look the other way when someone in pain begs and begs you for what she wants that you won’t give her? Yes, to a father you could say, ‘It’s none of your business — leave me alone!’ But do you have the kind of strength that this requires? Because you also have a conscience. A conscience that I’m proud that you have, but a conscience that can be your enemy. You have a conscience and you have compassion and you have sweetness in you too — so tell me, do you know how to do such things as may be required of you with this girl? Because other people’s weakness can destroy you just as much as their strength can. Weak people are not harmless. Their weakness can be their strength. A person so unstable is a menace to you, Markie, and a trap.”