Philip Roth - Everyman

He did not retain for long the spiteful desire for his brother to lose his health – that far he could not go as an envier, since his brother's losing his health would not result in his regaining his own. Nothing could restore his health, his youth, or invigorate his talent. He could, nonetheless, in a frenzied mood, almost reach a point where he could believe that Howie's good health was responsible for his own compromised health, even though he knew better, even though he was not without a civilized person's tolerant understanding of the puzzle of inequality and misfortune. Back when the psychoanalyst had glibly diagnosed the symptoms of severe appendicitis as a case of envy, he was still very much his parents' son and barely acquainted with the feelings that come with believing that the possessions of another might better belong to you. But now he knew; in his old age he had discovered the emotional state that robs the envier of his serenity and, worse, his realism – he hated Howie for that biological endowment that should have been his as well.

Suddenly he could not stand his brother in the primitive, instinctual way that his sons could not stand him.

He had been hoping there would be a woman in the painting classes in whom he might take an interest – that was half the reason for giving them. But pairing up with one of the widows his age toward whom he felt no attraction proved to be beyond him, though the robustly healthy young women he saw jogging along the boardwalk when he took his morning walk, still all curves and gleaming hair and, to his eyes, seemingly more beautiful than their counterparts of an earlier era had ever been, were not sufficiently lacking in common sense to exchange with him anything other than a professionally innocent smile. Following their speedy progress with his gaze was a pleasure, but a difficult pleasure, and at bottom the mental caress was a source of biting sadness that only intensified an unbearable loneliness. True, he had chosen to live alone, but not unbearably alone. The worst of being unbearably alone was that you had to bear it – either that or you were sunk. You had to work hard to prevent your mind from sabotaging you by its looking hungrily back at the superabundant past.

And he'd become bored with his painting. For many years he'd dreamed of the uninterrupted span of time that his retirement would afford him to paint – as had thousands and thousands of other art directors who'd also earned their livelihood working in ad agencies. But after painting almost every day since moving to the shore, he had run out of interest in what he was doing. The urgent demand to paint had lifted, the enterprise designed to fill the rest of his life fizzled out. He had no more ideas. Every picture he worked on came out looking like the last one. His brightly colored abstractions had always been prominently displayed in the Starfish Beach show of local artists, and of the three that were taken by a gallery in the nearby seaside tourist town, all had been sold to the gallery's best customers. But that was nearly two years ago. Now he had nothing to show. It had all come to nothing. As a painter he was and probably always had been no more than the "happy cobbler" he happened to know he'd been dubbed by the satirical son. It was as though painting had been an exorcism. But designed to expel what malignancy? The oldest of his self-delusions? Or had he run to painting to attempt to deliver himself from the knowledge that you are born to live and you die instead? Suddenly he was lost in nothing, in the sound of the two syllables "nothing" no less than in the nothingness, lost and drifting, and the dread began to seep in. Nothing comes without risk, he thought, nothing, nothing – there's nothing that doesn't backfire, not even painting stupid pictures!

He explained to Nancy, when she asked about his work, that he'd had "an irreversible aesthetic vasectomy."

"Something will start you again," she said, accepting the hyperbolic language with an absolving laugh. She had been permeated by the quality of her mother's kindness, by the inability to remain aloof from another's need, by the day-to-day earthborn soulfulness that he had disastrously undervalued and thrown away – thrown away without beginning to realize all he would subsequently live without.

"I don't think it will," he was saying to their daughter. "There's a reason I was never a painter. I've run smack up against it."

"The reason you weren't a painter," Nancy explained, "is because you've had wives and children. You had mouths to feed. You had responsibilities."

"The reason I wasn't a painter was because I'm not a painter. Not then and not now."

"Oh, Dad-"

"No, listen to me. All I've been doing is doodling away the time."

"You're just upset right now. Don't insult yourself – it's not so. I know it's not so. I have your paintings all over my apartment. I look at them every day, and I can promise you I'm not looking at doodlings. People come over – they look at them. They ask me who the artist is. They pay attention to them. They ask if the artist is living."

"What do you tell them?"

"Listen to me now: they're not responding to doodlings. They're responding to work. To work that is beautiful. And of course," she said, and now with that laugh that left him feeling washed clean and, in his seventies, infatuated with his girl-child all over again, "of course I tell them you're living. I tell them my father painted these, and I'm so proud to say that."

"Good, sweetie."

"I've got a little gallery going here."

"That's good – that makes me feel good."

"You're just frustrated now. It's just that simple. You're a wonderful painter. I know what I'm talking about. If there's anybody in this world equipped to know if you're a wonderful painter or not, it's me."

After all he'd put her through by betraying Phoebe, she still wanted to praise him. From the age of ten she'd been like that – a pure and sensible girl, besmirched only by her unstinting generosity, harmlessly hiding from unhappiness by blotting out the faults of everyone dear to her and by overloving love. Baling forgiveness as though it were so much hay. The harm inevitably came when she concealed from herself just a little too much that was wanting in the makeup of the ostentatiously brilliant young crybaby she had fallen for and married.

"And it's not just me, Dad. It's everybody who comes. I was interviewing babysitters the other day, because Molly can't do it anymore. I was interviewing for a new babysitter and this wonderful girl I ended up hiring, Tanya – she's a student looking to earn some extra money, she's at the Art Students League just like you were – she couldn't take her eyes off the one I have in the dining room, over the sideboard, the yellow one – you know the one I mean?"

"Yes."

"She couldn't take her eyes off it. The yellow and black one. It was really quite something. I was asking her these questions and she was focused over the sideboard. She asked when it was painted and where I had bought it. There's something very compelling about your work."

"You're very sweet to me, darling."

"No. I'm candid with you, that's all."

"Thank you."

"You'll get back to it. It'll happen again. Painting isn't through with you yet. Just enjoy yourself in the meantime. It's so beautiful where you are. Just be patient. Just take your time. Nothing's vanished. Enjoy the weather, enjoy your walks, enjoy the beach and the ocean. Nothing's vanished and nothing's altered."

Strange – all the comfort he was taking from her words and yet he wasn't convinced for a second that she knew what she was talking about. But the wish to take comfort, he realized, is no small thing, particularly from the one who miraculously still loves you.

"I don't go in the surf anymore," he told her.