Letting Go (43 page)

In front of her building I did not even turn off the motor.

“All day I’ve been saying to myself: tonight I am going to have illicit relations with Gabriel Wallach.”

“That makes me very proud,” I said, “but my throat feels as though it’s been ripped open.”

“I had Abercrombie’s deliver a new set of whips and thumbscrews.”

“Martha, every night you roll over and go to sleep. Every night I have to go out into this weather and drive home and try to get a few hours sleep—”

She was whistling; nothing like eight hours of work to pep her up.

“I’ve got two classes to teach in the morning,” I said. “I just haven’t the strength.”

“I’m not asking you to lift weights, poor baby.”

I kissed her, and she said, “Come up for just an hour.”

“But my body
fails
me …”

She took my hand and touched it to her cheek. “Why don’t you just leave everything to me,” she said.

“Oh sweet Martha—”

“Why don’t you just come with me, all right?”

“You sound like a tart, baby.”

“See? Already you’re stimulating your imagination. Come.”

So I followed her up the stairs; before she placed the key in the lock, she turned and put her hand on me.

“Oh,” she said, “that’s so nice and sweet.”

“Martha, I’ve got to tell you that it’s got no more wind in it than a choir boy’s. It’s spiritless, it’s humbled and limp—”

“It’s sweet humbled and limp.”

I went into her bedroom and she continued down the hall to the children’s room, where she turned off the night lamp. I heard her close the door leading to Sissy’s room. Sitting on the blanket in the dark, the feel of the quilt and the sheets and the mattress under my
hands filled me with awe. I waited, and then I was sinking, and then, I suppose, I was out.

When my eyes opened, it took me several minutes to see who was moving in the dark. Beneath me and above me I felt the clean white sheets I had so desired; someone had even been kind enough to remove my clothes. I raised my head a little and saw Martha by the window; she had one foot on a stool, and was bending forward, pulling down her stockings; the way in which her breasts hung from her body sent through my mind thoughts of flowers, mermaids, cows, things female. But I did not want to possess Martha or a nasturtium or a Guernsey; I wanted only sleep.

Martha’s hands were on the flesh of her hips; they ran down over her stomach and were touching her thighs. She was looking toward me in the bed, and it was as though I were waiting for some decision of hers. Even the furniture in the bedroom seemed altered, because between
us
something seemed to be being altered. Since Thanksgiving I had done the wooing, I had done the undressing, the caressing, and on the hard and serious work we had both pitched in. We had been dogged and conventional, we had proceeded step by step, until we had both clutched, and hung on, and then fallen away into sleep. To please one another we had had to do nothing at the expense of our own separate pleasures; we had been uncompromising and we had been lucky.

But now Martha stood by the window looking toward me for what seemed a very long time, pronouncing words I could not make out, and I was overcome with exhaustion; though I reached up to her, saying I would have to go, I don’t think my head ever left the bed. I dropped away, beyond hallucination or dream, and when I did rise up, it was never to regain power or lucidity; I was simply there, and Martha’s hair was down across my legs. I raised my head—such a feather, such a weight—and I saw her hands, saw her face, possessing me miles and miles away.

“Oh Gabe,” she said, “my Gabe—”

I left her there alone, just lips, just hands, and was consumed not in sensation, but in a limpness so total and blinding, that I was no more than a wire of consciousness stretched across a void. Martha’s hair came raking up over me; she moved over my chest, my face, and I saw her now, her jaw set, her eyes demanding, and beneath my numb exterior, I was tickled by something slatternly, some slovenliness in the heavy form that pinned me down. I reached out for it, to
touch
the slovenliness—

“Just lie still,” I heard her say, “don’t touch, just still—”

She showed neither mercy then, nor tenderness, nor softness, nothing she had ever shown before; and yet, dull as I was, cut off in my tent of fever and fatigue, I felt a strange and separate pleasure. I felt cared for, labored over; I felt used. Above, she was me now, and below I was her, and however I fell away from consciousness, or floated up toward light, always, beating on me, was Martha. Beating, beating, and then rising up and away, and wordlessly calling back of her delight.

Everything is right.

What I remember of that night are those three words. Out of proportion sometimes, sometimes not in sequence, but those three words bubbling through me; what I remember is my sense that a rhythm in my life was being realized, and a rhythm in Martha’s too. I remember—as night went on and morning came—a greed of hers that went beyond pleasure, and on my part what I remember is the abdication of all will. For a while perhaps she was me and I her, but at some point that morning all distinctions belonged to another world. We were sexless as any tree or rock, liquid and unencumbered as a stream or a spring—and yet so connected one to the other that when I pumped within her, plunging into a final dizzying exhaustion, I might have been some inner organ of her own. Man woman mother child—all distinction melted away.

Later a bell rang. When I opened my eyes, Martha was at the side of the bed, wrapping herself in a robe. Outside the darkness was just beginning to lift. I knew I had to leave, that it was time again; but it was Martha who left the room, and I let myself float backwards.

Martha was pushing at me. “Gabe, Gabe—”

But I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t pull myself up. Martha moved into bed beside me. “Gabe,” she said softly.

And then there was a knock at the bedroom door. Martha jumped up in bed, and the door opened. Limp as I was, I went even limper.

But the face in the doorway was not a child’s. It was the battered face of an old Negro woman, and she was moving into the room with a cup and a saucer. “Here’s your coffee, darlin’—” she began.

Then she saw me. “Oh,” she said. I had been edging the sheet up around my chin, and now I lowered it an inch and, infirmly,
smiled. The woman took three big strides forward and placed the cup down on the night table. When she turned and left, I tried to push out of bed, but it was as though I’d been worked on by a carpenter during the night; hammers, chisels, planes, and screwdrivers all seemed to have had a go at my body.

“I’m sick as a dog,” I said.

She was sitting beside me; I couldn’t see her face, for it was resting in her hands. “Are you?” she asked drily.

I leaned up on one elbow. “I’ll go,” I volunteered, and then my body just gave out, and I was flat on my back. “I can’t seem to do it, Martha. I feel rotten. I can’t move.”

I listened to the snow hitting the window, and then someone knocked again on our door. “Cynthia—” Martha hissed; following a traditional impulse, I dove for the covers.

But it wasn’t Cynthia at all. Annie LaSmith was in the doorway again. She came directly into the room and set a second cup of coffee down on the table beside Martha’s. “Here,” she said. “For him.”

Martha chose not to reply; I was feigning sleep, and Annie slipped out, closing the door behind her.

“I think—” Martha began, as I crawled up from the sheet “—I really think—” but she couldn’t speak for laughing.

Nor could I; tears were running down my face as I said, “I—better—go—”

“No,” she said; she held my head between her hands and we looked one another right in the eye. “You’re burning up—”

“I better—”

“We have to please
shhhh!
We have to stop making—please, make me stop—
laughing—
”

“I—didn’t even thank her—” I said, and Martha pushed her face into my chest and kept it there until, at last, she seemed able to control herself.

“You can’t go,” she whispered. “You’re practically on fire.”

“Martha—”

“Please”—she began to giggle again—“go to sleep.”

“What time is it?”

“Seven—quarter to seven. Do you think Annie
put
something in your coffee? Oh, God, I can’t
stop
—just go to sleep—”

I wanted to ask some questions about Annie LaSmith—What the hell was she doing here in the middle of the night?—but I never had the chance. Martha was holding me and sporadically giggling, and then she was holding me and I was asleep.

Martha was gone when I awoke again, and so was her pillow. The clock said eight thirty-five—I had a class to teach in less than an hour. I made a move, but the bedroom door slowly opened, and I closed my eyes.

“He’s sleeping,” Markie said.

“Shhhh.”

“Is he going to stay all the time?” Mark asked.

“Just till he’s better.”

The next voice was that of Cynthia, the skeptic. “What’s the matter with him?”

“He’s sick. He was visiting, and he got very sick, so I let him stay here and sleep.”

“What’s he sick
with?
” the little girl asked.

“He’s sick,” Markie explained.

“I don’t know,” Martha said. “We’ll have to call the doctor.”

“He doesn’t look sick,” Cynthia said.

“But he is, sweetheart.”

“He doesn’t look it.”

“Does he have a temperature?” Mark asked.

“I don’t know, love-dove. We’ll have to call the doctor and find out.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t,” Cynthia said.

“I’ll bet he does,” said Martha. “You have to go to school, Cyn. Let’s go.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t have a temperature though.”

“Cynthia, what’s eating you? Go put your galoshes on.”

“It’s a waste of money to have the doctor if you don’t even have a temperature,” Cynthia said.

“He’ll pay for his own doctor. You don’t have to worry about money.”

“Well,” said Cynthia, “he doesn’t look like he has a temperature.”

“Don’t you believe he’s sick, Cynthia? Do you think I’m telling you a lie?”

No answer.

“Is he, Mommie?” Mark asked.

A moment followed in which I could not tell what was happening. To open my eyes, I felt, would have made Martha look like a
liar. “Shhhh,” I heard Martha whisper; then I heard feet moving across the floor.

A small hand was on my forehead.

Then another, even smaller.

The footsteps retreated, and once again I slept.

The rest of that day is bits and pieces.

Dr. Slimmer hovers over me. Temperature of 103. He leers. He gives me a shot. Martha pays. “Here’s for your wife’s mink, here’s for your kids’ summer camp, here’s for gas for your Thunderbird—” “If you had a bad experience with doctors as a child, Martha, don’t take it out on me.” “—living off widows and children, you’re a living argument for socialized medicine, Dr. Slimmer.” “I have to run, I’m double-parked—”

Beyond my door, sometime during the afternoon: “You’re a woman of the world, Annie—you understand. Okay?” “What you and Mr. Reganhart do is your business, darlin’.” “That a girl, Annie.”