Letting Go (69 page)

“My God—Paul!”

Doris had on a gay floral apron over her slacks. Inside, instead of old lady Horvitz’s oriental rugs, there was blue carpeting as far as the eye could see; instead of the meaty odor that used to waft out from the kitchen when Maury’s parents were fattening their son up in this same apartment, there now floated out the pungent, domestic smell of coffee. Things had changed—everything but Doris, who seemed as stunned at seeing him as he was upon seeing her. Everyone has someone upon whose flesh and bones his first discoveries were made. Paul had had Doris; Doris, Paul. Yes, all the inconsequentiality and fervor of their passion came back to him … Doris still slouched in the shoulders and he had the old impulse to tell her to straighten up and be beautiful. But she was Maury’s wife now, ten years older, and the mistress of all that carpeting. “Hello, Doris. I wondered—I was looking for my mother.”

“Oh
Paul.
She’s at the hospital. Maury just drove her over a few minutes ago. Paul, it’s you.”

“I called downstairs and she wasn’t home.”

“She’s been living here since it happened.”

Ah,
it.
Not the heart attack. Never the plane crash or the cancer or the bankruptcy. The
it.
The
tsura
one couldn’t even mention.

He was home.

He looked at Doris’s familiar face, and suddenly he remembered distinctly her father’s voice calling out from the bedroom into the darkened living room, where the two of them had sat panting: “Doris, is that you, dolly? Is somebody with you? Tell him thank you, dolly, and tell him it’s the next day already, your father has to get up and go to work soon, tell him thank you and good night, dolly—”

“How is he?” Paul asked, and waited to hear that
it
had killed his own father, that the old man’s last failure was history.

“I guess,” said Doris, shrugging, “I guess he’s coming along.
What can we expect? He’s in a terrific coma. You got Maurie’s telegram?”

He stood in the old hallway (waiting for Maury to finish his malted milk, waiting for Maury to finish his clarinet lesson) and was aware that somebody now knew he was in New York. All his circumstances, past and present, settled down over him. He saw Libby in the bathroom in Chicago squeezing toothpaste onto her brush. “I got the telegram,” he said, and followed Doris into the apartment. “I can only stay a minute,” he added.

“Just a cup of coffee. Just sit down. Paul,” she said, “it’s good to see you.”

They came into the living room, which was nothing like the old days when every object had its coverlet, the sofa its antimacassars, the piano its Spanish shawl, the satin lamp shades their little plastic dustproof wrappings. The room now was airy and modern, all pastel shades; with no heavy drapings falling across the windows, light blazed into every corner. Avocados and gardenias flourished as though they were outdoors. There was a playpen near the window, toys all around, and in conspicuous places photographs of Maury, Doris, and a baby.

“You have a child?” Paul asked.

“Two. Jeff is in nursery school. Michael’s in his crib having his bottle. Two boys—”

Before she could ask if he wanted to see Michael in his crib having his bottle, he said, “I better not stay too long, Doris.”

“You look so tired.”

“Traveling.” He remained standing. “How’s Maury?”

“He’s doing wonderful—and he talks about you, Paul. He really does. We have whole conversations about you.” The tinge that rose on her neck and cheeks revealed a little of the nature and spirit of those conversations. “Why don’t you put down your luggage?” she suggested.

“You’re looking fine, Doris, too—”

“Do I look the same?”

“Except for your hair. You wear that differently.”

“Sure, well, I cut it. Not just me, everybody’s wearing it short. Sit down, all right? Put down your suitcase, you make me tired standing there holding it. You like espresso? We even drink it for breakfast. You ought to see your mother drowning it with cream and sugar. You want that or you want instant?”

He decided—her silly talkativeness decided for him—to stay for a little coffee. “Either is all right.”

“Sit down.”

He released his suitcase with an unconscious sigh, and they smiled at one another.

“Oh Paul,” she called from the kitchen, “it’s so wonda-ful to see you.”

Could it be? He had taken off his coat and had sat down in a chair with beautiful wooden arms; he stretched out his legs. Oh, it felt good. He even closed his eyes, even had a pure moment of thoughtlessness—his mind ceased searching out the next five minutes. Was it possible that he was happy? Had his crisis passed? Without even knowing it, had he come to some decision? Or was it only Doris and the sweet familiarity of her vowels and diphthongs? Wonda-ful, mahvelous, you could caay faaaw me—she was humming in the kitchen. What a good-natured girl. What a pliable simple girl. Dolly, tell him thank you and tell him good night—Wonda-ful …

So was Elizabeth DeWitt Herz pliable. So was Libby simple—oh yes, simple! And there went his happiness and his thoughtless moment. He sat straight up, taking in the facts of Maury’s prosperity and success. Actually it didn’t seem to have been happiness he had been experiencing anyway—just relief at Doris’s not hating him. As if what Doris Horvitz did or did not feel made any significant difference in his life. He looked at his watch. Ten-fifteen. She is having breakfast alone. Isn’t she better off? He wanted to shout right through to where he saw her sitting bent over the table, in that blue flannel bathrobe with the white piping, buttering her toast. And—oh, no, no, not crying? Libby, baby, what are you crying over now? Oh dumbbell, look, get up, get dressed, put on that new yellow jumper and get out. Take a nice long walk, the Midway is green, the lake is blue, it’s spring, Libby, take a train to the Loop, have lunch, go to Stouffer’s with all the ladies, go to Field’s, shop,
live.
Libby, you’re alone, you see, without worries, without cares—see how wonda-ful it can be?
Free
, Libby! Free, young, still pretty, and in Field’s ten men will smile at that face of yours—maybe, who knows, Wallach himself—

No. In Marshall Field’s she will have eyes for baby clothes and bassinets. She will bring home with her (written in her little spiral pad purchased for just this purpose) a list of what they will have to buy (page one); what they might have to buy (page two); and (pages three and four) what it would be oh so nice to have, Paul, if
and when we can afford it. One short month, darling, and we’ll have our little Nahum. Our comfort.

Doris set a tray down on the coffee table in front of the couch; Paul noticed that she had applied lipstick and eye shadow in the kitchen. The tray settled, Doris reached behind her and lowered the pulley lamp that extended from the wall. She tugged at it without even looking, and the carelessness, the at-homeness, of her movement had its effect upon him. It led him to believe that she was very happy. She was wearing little black sequined house slippers and they too somehow encouraged him to believe that she was happy. “Do you like French crescents?” she asked. “You get them ready-made and you just warm them. In the oven, and that’s it.”

“They look very good.”

“Maury likes anything European.”

“Maury was always a
bon vivant
,” he mumbled.

“Are you being sarcastic?” she asked. “Cause you were always sarcastic, Paul. I mean you could always cut somebody if you made up your mind to. The intellectual,” she said. “You even look the same, really.”

“That’s very nice of you, Doris. Except I’ve lost half my hair.”

“Oh,” she said kindly, “not half.” Yes, the same cuddly Doris. All right, dolly, let the young man open the door for himself and let us hear his footsteps lightly down the hallway, what do you
say
, young man—

“I’ll bet Maury’s got every strand.”

“Maury”—she knocked on wood; that is, she looked for wood and found formica—“Maury always had a nice head of hair. With him it’s in the family.” She flushed again; even while she spoke, Mr. Herz lay in the hospital, a bald spot the size of a half dollar at the back of his skull. “You’d recognize him right off, Paul. You really would. Paul”—she turned serious all at once—“you know Heshy Lerner got killed in Korea. You know that?”

“I knew that,” he said.

“It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? He was such a good dancer, remember? And he was always, you know—you remember the type of fella Heshy was. He was very much the life of the party.”

“He was a very funny guy.”

“Look,”
she said, as though he had just disparaged himself, “so were you. You could really make very funny comments, Paul, when you wanted to. Paul, you were a very popular fella, and then you went away. For that matter,” she rushed to say, “everybody’s moving
away and it’s just not the same. If you don’t live in the suburbs today, you don’t live anywhere. Maury and I believe, however, in being individualists.”

“How’s my mother, Doris?”

She closed her eyes to answer. “She had to get a shot to calm her, that’s how your mother is.” A grave statement, intended to have a humbling effect upon the prodigal son. “Now it’s a little better, but not much.”

“When did it happen?” It! “His heart attack,” he added.

“What’s today, Saturday? Tuesday night. We were at the show and when we got back there was an ambulance and a whole crowd, and they were carrying him out on a stretcher. Maury went in the ambulance with him, and then he came back, I think it was three in the morning, maybe later, and we put your mother to sleep in Jeffrey’s room, and we talked whether we should send you the telegram, and we sent it. I guess you got it, when—yesterday?”

“I got it Wednesday morning. Three days ago.”

Apparently she had been expecting him to lie, or wanting him to. All she could finally do was pour coffee into his cup, from which he had as yet taken only a small sip.

“He’s going to die, is that right, Doris?”

“Look, I don’t
think
so …” It was as though she wanted, by minimizing the crisis, to excuse Paul’s not running to his father’s bedside.

“What do the doctors say?”

“They don’t know.”

“He’s in a coma?”

“Since Tuesday night.”

“Did he have any attacks before, recently?”

“Well, he always had heart trouble; he was never a well man, Paul, let’s not kid ourselves.”

“He never had heart trouble.”

“He certainly did have heart trouble, I beg your pardon.”

“He thought he had heart trouble, Doris.”

“What do you call what he had then, a belly-ache?”

“I don’t know.”

She jumped up from the couch and began picking up toys from around the room and throwing them into the playpen. “You don’t have to hate him, Paul,” she said, “when he’s in the
hospital!
”

“I don’t hate him.” And those few words seemed to render him helpless.

Doris apparently sensed his condition, for she rose on her toes now when she spoke. “If a man had a heart attack, and three of the biggest heart men say he had a heart attack, then I don’t see how you can get here about a week later and say he
didn’t
have one.”

“I was talking about six years ago, Doris, seven, eight years back.”

“You can have premonitions, can’t you? You can have terrible troubles, believe me, that can bring things on.”

“I suppose you can. I suppose you can sit around having premonitions all your life.”

“You always had to believe different from everybody else. The whole world is wrong and you’re right!”

It was the proper moment to get up and go. But the colorful airy apartment, Doris’s bad posture and pretty face, the playpen, the scattered toys, the pulley lamp, the French crescents that you warm and serve—all of them together took most of the starch out of their argument. Even Doris’s chastisements didn’t seem original. The simple truth was—and it was a simple truth both must have understood, for both calmed down at the same speed—that some nice affection still lived between these two old playmates. What did any of this have to do with all that heavy breathing back when they were seventeen? On this day particularly, he was not anxious to dismiss whatever little kindnesses came his way.

Doris must have had a soft spot for kindness, for remembered affection, herself. She asked, “Another crescent?”

They ate and drank, and then they heard the baby turn in his crib and the bottle clunk onto the floor. Doris put her finger to her mouth and they were both absolutely quiet; when the crisis was over, she smiled in a motherly way.

“You’re still teaching?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“English?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you used to read all the time, so I guess we should have guessed then … Oh it’s really funny, Paul, talking to you. It gives me the gooseflesh. Eleven o’clock in the morning, I’m dusting my house, and I’m married, and I’ve just given my little boy his bottle, and my husband’s just left, and I’m trying to think of shopping and a thousand things, and in walks Paul Herz. I’m sorry if I’m babbling, but that’s what happens to me. Maury and I were down in Miami in January and who should we run into on Lincoln Road, just window-shopping,
but Peanuts Ackerman, from Ocean Avenue, who I used to go out with for a couple months in high school. And I’m telling you, he’s married, and he has this wife with him, a really terrific blonde—and three kids, and I don’t know, it just gives me such a feeling whenever I see a guy I used to date, and now
I’m
married and
he’s
married, and we got
fur
niture and
cars
and
kids.
I just get this feeling—”

Paul said, “I get it too.”

“Are you being sarcastic again?”

He shook his head. He was no longer the sharp-tongued backseat Don Juan. Hardly. He slumped a little in his chair, for he felt there was something in this room that he had expected for himself. Never—not in Detroit, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Iowa City, not even in Brooklyn as a boy—had he felt very permanent about himself. And that was sad and ironic, for he had married early for reasons that were not really so out of the ordinary.