Letting Go (54 page)

“I’ve got plenty of washed-out numbers with rips in them, thank you.”

“Ah, don’t start in on me with the poverty business, Martha, because I’m not in a charitable mood.”

“Poverty hell. I’m only asking you to pay your way.”

“Well, what is it—do you want me to leave a ten-dollar bill on the dresser every morning? Is that what’s going on here?”

She turned and walked away at last, her head back, dragging on her cigarette. “Watch yourself, Gabe. Please watch yourself. I’m not a stone wall.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just not a stone wall myself.”

“Nobody is—let’s
assume
that!”

“And maybe you ought to stop raising your voice too. Mark gets up and peeks in the door enough as it is.”

“What can I do about that?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t either. The child’s interested. He has a natural curiosity. He never had so many doors closed in his face before. We ought to at least have given him a little breaking-in period.”

“Come on, Martha, will you—you choose to close the door as much as I do. Suddenly even sex looks one-sided to you. Please don’t start switching it around so that I’m responsible for any confusions your kids might have. I haven’t been here long enough. I’m not Dick Reganhart. I didn’t do it. Just as it’s my fault Libby’s kidneys went
bad on her, as though I have something to do with the fact that there are no Jewish babies. Did you see that that was addressed to me? Jewish girls don’t get knocked up as often—what are we all supposed to do about that!”

Martha blew out a mouthful of smoke before she’d even had a chance to inhale it. “And what’s that supposed to mean, Stonewall?”

“
What
supposed to mean?”

“You think it was easy quitting school, do you? You think it was easy marrying him? When that prissy little minister pronounced us abstract expressionist and wife I saw the whole black future, and kept my mouth shut. I got knocked up all right, but I acted like a woman about it. I’m
glad
I had Cynthia. She’s a fine child, a fine lovely bright child, even if it takes her a year to warm up to you. Ten years! What do you think she is, a chameleon? She’s loyal to her father—which happens to be admirable. She happens to be an admirable child, and don’t you forget it.”

“I didn’t mean anything about you and Dick, Martha, and I’m sorry if you misunderstood.”

“Well, you sure as hell go out of your way not to mean anything. I don’t have such a lousy record, you know. I
had
that child, I didn’t have it scraped down some drain somewhere, back in some dark alley. And then I woke up one morning and that son of a bitch was on top of me again, and I didn’t have an abortion then either. These are
lives
, for God’s sake. I love those kids. I’m glad I’ve got them, overwhelmingly glad. I work nights and I hate it—you don’t
know
how I hate it. But I’m glad I’ve got those kids. They’re
something
, damn it. At least they don’t go packing their bags all the time. Men are a great big pain in the ass. Somebody ought to take all their luggage away and burn it. Then where would they be! I’ll tell you something about feelings, my friend—nobody’s got any any more. All they’ve got is suitcases! And stay the hell away from me with your big tit-holding hands—I have a right to cry. Don’t soothe me, damn it!” She sat down in the chair by the window, and without covering her face, she wept.

“Martha, hang on. Try to hang on. Somehow Theresa Haug, the Herzes—”

“Oh Gabe,” she wept, “the hell with Theresa Haug. The hell with all that Armagnac. I want you to marry me or give me up. I’m too old to screw around like this.”

The first knowledge she had that day was that their room was swelling with a gleaming gray January light, but she kept her eyes closed to it and she waited. Eyes closed there was no crippled chest of drawers across the way, no half-painted dresser, no smelly rug rolled up in the corner, no curled paint petals flaking off the ceiling onto the pillow; there was only the knowledge that it was morning, a new day, and with it all the possibilities. Some mornings he touched her. Most mornings she touched him and then he touched her. This morning she was willing to wait. She would wait. She made a
hmmm
sound to let him know she was awake. But she sensed nothing new against her skin, nothing but sheets and blanket and the frail sun. She rolled over, making another sound, a slow moan of lust and comfort, a request for a simple pleasure. She continued to keep her eyes closed. Then she thought (after a decent interval): There are compromises to be made in life. One can’t expect everything. He is a faithful, hard-working, dear, terribly talented, intelligent, hard-luck man. It isn’t his fault … She moved her head an inch closer to his pillow, and then her whole body, but casually, as though she were only being tossed toward him by the oceanic process of awakening. The sun caught her full in the face. Good. She had to go all the way to the Near North Side and at least it wouldn’t be miserably cold. If, however, he touched her, if his mouth slid over her breasts, if his body pressed her down, then she would not have to go at all. She didn’t want to really, even if it was sunny. He need only reach out
 … But the compromises—she must compromise a little. One must begin to, certainly, at twenty-five. One couldn’t go through life whining and demanding, day in and day out. She knew certain things about herself that she did not like: she cried too much; she was envious, she was always sick—she was a hopeless hypochondriac, in fact. She knew she had the wrong values. She thought about money all the time. She thought about nice clothes. She thought about nice furniture. She had always imagined that when she was married she would have a dinner service for twelve of Spode china. Spode. The word, like sun on the skin, warmed her, had a dreamy happy glow about it—she would be married, and her husband would be tall (as he was), and he would be kind and soft-spoken and strong and full of integrity (as he was), and dark (as he was), and there would be a long dinner table with a white cloth and candles, and the Spode, and weekend guests to whom she would call out, “Extra bath towels are in the linen closet just outside your room,” and beyond the kitchen would be a garden of her own, with chrysanthemums and nasturtiums and petunias and fresh herbs, which she would cut with scissors for their salad. In the early evenings, when her husband had turned off the lamp in his study (and he did have a study, and in it he was writing a book), she would take him out through the kitchen door into the garden, and in the blending of the earth’s dusk and their contentment, they would hold hands and smell her flowers … But at the age of twenty-five one had to begin to understand about compromise. Though she was not proud of herself for very many things (she would have to admit that too when she went downtown: that she was not proud of herself, which made her feel terrible) still she might have reason to become proud were she able to learn to compromise, and to like it. Yes, the second half as well, for surely if one didn’t like it, if one couldn’t
stand
it … But one must stand it. And it was simple. She had only to take it upon herself to move an inch and another inch and then—her eyes still closed—another inch and one more, and now reach out with her fingers, and now lay her hand, softly, lovingly … He was not there. She opened her eyes. No Paul. Only his pajamas lying on the floor. She heard him making breakfast in the kitchen. Make
me!
Make love to
me! I’ll
make breakfast!

To the sun, filtering through the grimy windows, she said, “Why can’t he just kiss me on the lips?”

She got out of bed, thinking: I want everything.

Over her nightgown she put on a robe, the same blue flannel
one her parents had given her when she’d gone off to Cornell ages ago. In the kitchen he was standing over the stove, waiting for the coffee; he was already dressed in his suit and tie, and his briefcase was on a chair. The table was set neatly for two, knife on the right, fork on the left. This morning he had cut her orange in quarters and there were two pills beside her bread plate. Dutiful man, he had even folded the paper napkins in half. She did not know of any other husband who so served his wife. He had always worked so hard—at first, before their marriage, for himself, to make money for school, to get good grades; then after their marriage for the two of them. But from the back she saw that his shoulders were still unbent. She came up behind him on her toes and put her arms around his spindly body, her face in the faintly odorous material of his jacket. For some reason their closets smelled the way closets might in which very old maids kept their belongings. And there was nothing to be done about it; she had already tried air-wick and cologne and moth spray, but apparently it was something in the very plaster of the house.

Paul jumped. “Oh Jesus—you scared me.”

“I’m sorry. Good morning. It’s me—sunshine.” She intended her merry words to be at once winning and self-critical, a reference to the night before.

“Honey, please put on slippers,” Paul said. “The floors are cold.”

That simple remark of his almost drove her mad. “Good morning, though … first.”

“Good morning, Libby.”

She looked up into his eyes and found nothing there to make her doubt that he was a generous man. And she loved him! He was so much more adult and genuine, more in contact with life’s realities, than she could ever hope to be.

“Please,” he said, kissing her above the eye, when she lingered beside him, “go put on slippers. I’ve got a class in half an hour.”

“Yes,” she said; she fled toward the hall on her toes, and then she turned, and with her face lifted, with her heart beating, she said, “Paul, isn’t it a wonderful day? It’s sunny for a change. It seems like a very significant day—” That was as much as she could manage to tell him.

She went into their bedroom and from beneath the dresser kicked out her slippers. While she was there she thought she would quickly make the bed. It will please him to see me peppy and active; it will make this dreary room orderly, if not beautiful. But the whole
day was before her, no job to go to any longer, no night classes to prepare for, nothing she really had to read, so it might even be a good thing to save the bed for a little later in the morning. She could begin painting those chairs in the kitchen—then she remembered she hadn’t the whole day after all. She had to go downtown. She ran into the kitchen then to be near her husband. If anything significant was going to happen today, it was going to have to happen between them, and in less than thirty minutes. There was no time to waste making beds or worrying over painting chairs. Paint wouldn’t make them look any better anyway. There was no way of cheering this place up. Only Paul.

But back in the kitchen she could not think what he could really do or say that she should allow to dissuade her from what she had planned. Her decision had come much too hard—it had been a week of dialing the number one minute and hanging up the next. She would not permit herself to be tricked by a pleasant breakfast; she wouldn’t let him get away with that. It wasn’t as though all their troubles had begun yesterday.

She remembered yesterday—specifically, the dinner of the night before. Paul had said nothing all the way home, though she knew he had disapproved of her behavior. Wherever they went lately she wound up arguing with people. But it was not her fault! Everyone else had been awful—that son of a bitch Gabe, that woman … But what had they done? What had they said to her? Why did she hate people? She would have to admit that too when she went downtown—that she couldn’t control her responses, that out of the clear blue sky she began to hate people.

“I think I’m going to go out this afternoon,” Libby said, picking at her orange.

“Just dress warmly.”

“Don’t you want to know where I’m going?”

“Out. For a walk …” he said. “I thought you said you were going out.”

“If you’re not interested …”

“Libby, don’t be petulant first thing in the morning.”

“Well, don’t be angry at me for last night.”

“Who said anything about last night?”

“That’s the whole thing—you won’t even bring it up. Well, I didn’t behave so badly, and don’t think I did.”

“That’s over and done with. You were provoked. That’s all right. That’s finished.”

She did not then ask him who had provoked her; she just began cloudily to accept that she had been.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“When?” Now she
was
petulant, perhaps because she no longer considered it necessary for her to feel guilty about last night.

She saw Paul losing patience. “This afternoon. You said you were going out, and then I didn’t ask you where, you remember … so now where is it you’re going?”

“Just out. For a walk.”

Paul closed his eyes, and touched his palms together, as though he were praying. “Look”—his eyes opened—“you can’t allow yourself to get too upset. We’re doing all we can.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“That adoption business is what I’m talking about. It seems confused now and a little hopeless. But it won’t be. Things will get sorted out. We’ve only just begun—you can’t allow it to get to you so soon.”

“I wasn’t even talking about that,” she said, thinking:
I wasn’t even talking about that!

“No,” Paul said, “but anyway, try to relax. I’m going to call that Greek orphan place today.”

“Paul, I don’t mean to be hopeless, but that particular setup sounds
so—
”

“We’ll just look into it,” he said sharply.

Adopting a baby had been her idea in the first place, hadn’t it? She could no longer keep perfectly straight in her mind who had said and done what. “Okay,” she said.

“And the Jewish agency is going to send somebody next week.”

“What good will that do?”

“Libby, it’s an interview. It’s part of adopting a baby.”

“Other people just get pregnant—”

“Forget other people!”

“Don’t shout at me.”

“I don’t shout at you.”

“Not outside you don’t,” she said bitterly. “If I made you angry last night, why didn’t you shout at me there? Why do you only quarrel with me at home?”