Letting Go (76 page)

“You want me to go somewhere?”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“Then what’s depressing you?”

“Your father’s setting the date, I suppose. I suppose I’m only sharing your feelings.”

“Yes,” I said, “and what more?”

“Nothing.” She smiled again, then shrugged. “1 just felt like calling the kids. I don’t any more.”

“Don’t be silly. We’ll go home, you can call them.” The idea gave me my first real lift in hours.

“It’s not Sunday.”

“What’s the difference? It’s getting chilly here anyway.”

“I think I’d rather stay.”

“All right. We’ll stay.” I put the letter back into my pocket; tonight or tomorrow I would have to write some sort of answer—send my congratulations, my approval, my
blessings.
The hell with it.

A few seconds passed before I realized that I had spoken those last few words out loud. Martha leaned her head back on the rocks so that her loose hair was spread around her. I saw her mouth move and barely restrained myself from reaching out and placing my hand across it. I did not care to be told again that I had her permission to go East if I so desired.

She said, “Is East Hampton on Long Island?”

“Yes.”

“Near Springs?”

“Springs is out there too, I think.” Springs was the name of the town to which she placed her phone calls twice a month. “I don’t know exactly where. Do you have any idea how far out it is?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I think I have a New York map in the car.”

“It’s not important,” she said.

“Martha, if you want to call tonight, why don’t you?”

She answered sharply. “Because I don’t want to!”

“It was simply a suggestion,” I said.

She rose then, picked up the comb that was on the blanket, and
started off down along the rocks. She was pulling the comb absent-mindedly through her hair as she disappeared around the edge of the cove. A little time passed, and then she was back.

She dropped the comb onto my toes. “I’m not going to give in to myself. Okay?”

“At the risk of your getting angry again, I don’t think you should think of it as giving in to yourself.”

“Don’t you?” she asked dubiously.

“Forget it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, kneeling beside me, “I’m just suddenly having a bad day.” She took my hand.

“I shouldn’t have brought out that letter half a dozen times either. I depressed everybody.”

“You have a right to your troubles.”

“They’re not even new troubles—they’re old ones. Whatever could have been done had to have been done a long time ago. And I don’t even know what that was. The hell with it.”

“You said that already.”

“What is it, Martha? I thought you were happy today. You told all those jokes, you were even nice and loud, sweetheart—”

“I was. Happy, I mean. I am happy. I just thought before that today was Sunday, and then I realized it’s only Saturday.”

“There’s no law that says you can only dial New York on Sundays.”

“There is,” she said. “I made it.”

If that was the way she wanted it, that’s the way it would have to be. But I could not escape feeling that if she did call her children, we might have a more pleasant evening in store for us. Though that was to reason directly in the face of past experience—whenever Martha put the phone back down on the hook, it took us some time before we could look each other in the eye. “Well,” I said, feeling nagged at and naggy, “Sunday’s tomorrow anyway.”

“Right. I’ll call then.”

But she became bluer and bluer. “Should I get the map?” I asked. “Do you want just to see how far Springs is from East Hampton—?”

“Let’s sit here and enjoy the view.”

“Because you could come East
with
me. How does that sound? We’ll stay with my father and Mrs. Silberman. I’m sure they’d like it. I’d like it.”

“I just started work.”

“Delsey wouldn’t mind. Tell him you’re going to visit your children.”

“You don’t even know whether or not Springs is close.”

“The whole stretch of island is only a hundred miles.”

“I’ll be all right. I’ll call tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you call tonight if you want to.”

“Why don’t you let me decide for myself!” She got up and jumped down two levels of rocks until she was standing at the water’s edge, her back to me.

“Whatever you decided,” I called down after her, “you decided for yourself!”

She turned only her head. “Oh did I?”

That was the exchange, brief but to the point.

She made her way back to the blanket later and said, “I’m just having a few bad hours.” She put her hand on mine again. “It’s simply a matter of keeping control.”

“Would you like to have a drink?” I touched her arm, and when she moved toward me willingly, I touched her face. “Would you like to go home and take a shower and get dressed? We’ll go out to dinner someplace where it’s cool—”

“It’s too beautiful now. I want to stay.”

“Whatever you want,” I said.

“Gabe, really, though,” she said in a moment, “if you want to take a little trip … Nobody who doesn’t have to stay in Chicago for a whole summer should be allowed to feel that he must.”

“I don’t
want
to take a trip!”

“Okay then, it’s just an academic discussion. They’re nice to have too,” she said, but I wasn’t charmed.

Or softened, or forgiving. “Though sometimes you’re able to convince me that a trip wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Then—”

“Then what?” I demanded.

“Nothing … I didn’t say it, see? The better part of wisdom is to be short on suggestions,” she said, with a cold look on her face.

“Is that directed against me by any chance, that remark? I don’t know that I’ve made any suggestions to you.”

“You’re a suggestion,” she said, flatly.

“I’m terribly sorry about that.”

“You’re not.”

“No, I’m not. I never made any promises.”

“I said you were a suggestion, not a promise.”

“Oh Christ, let’s stop this. Why don’t you come East with me? We’ll go together—that’s right, this is an outright suggestion—and you can see the kids—”

“Right now,” she said, standing and patently ignoring my remarks, “you know what I’d like to do? First, I too would like us to stop being accusative—imperative, whatever it is we are. Two, I’d like to get home and take that shower; and three, I’d like to go out to dinner, some place where we can eat outside.”

“We could drive East in a day.”

“Delsey needs me now.”

“Delsey has a big heart. Tell him why you’re going.”

“I don’t think it would really be a good idea.”

I got up too and put on my shirt. “If that’s what you want.”

As we started toward the car, she said, “But don’t think you can’t go—”

“I don’t.”

At home Martha said she wanted to pin up her hair, and she asked would I take the first shower. When I was finished I stepped onto the bath mat and opened the door an inch to let the steam out. Martha was on the phone, saying to the operator that she had been cut off again. She hung up and the phone rang; she picked it immediately off the receiver. I pushed open the door another few inches.

“Hello—hello, Dick? It’s Martha again. We were cut off. I said we were cut off—we still have a lousy connection.… How are the kids doing? … And Markie? … Are they in, can I talk to them? … I know it’s Saturday … What! … Well, can’t you wake them up? … For Christ’s sake, Dick, I’m their mother—what? … I said I’m their
mother
, I’m calling long distance.… I
know
it’s an hour later—will you please wake them up! … Then let them sleep late in the morning—
please
, this is costing money.… Okay, okay, yes.…” Silence. Then, “Hello—hello, Cynthia? Honey, it’s Mother … 
Mother
—what’s wrong with this connection! Cynthia, baby, can you hear me? Come on, try to wake up. Rub your eyes or something—Mark, is that you? … Speak louder, darling. Speak into the phone … Cynthia, Cynthia, are you still there? Speak into the phone, darlings. Look, how are you? … Did you go swimming today? … I said,
Did you go swimming today?
Cynthia, let him talk—what? … Cynthia, sweetie, why don’t you write? … Well,
ask
him for paper.… Of course he’ll give you paper.… Where are all your envelopes I gave you with the address on them? … What? … Who left them where? I can’t hear you if you both talk.… Oh children, stop arguing, please, this is long—what? … Of course, darling, you send it, I’d love to see it.… Stephanie is fine, uh-huh.… Cynthia,
please
, it doesn’t matter if he hasn’t finished it. You send it anyway. Okay, operator, fine … Cynthia, you write, do you hear me? And watch your brother in the water.… Are you both all right? Do you need anything? … That’s fine.… He’s here, honey. No, dear, no, no.… Goodbye, honey—look, let me talk to your daddy—Mark?
Markie?
Let me—hello? Is anybody there …?”

She put the phone back on the hook, I turned the knob on the bathroom door and closed it.

While Martha was taking her shower the phone rang again. Later, when she came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, I said nothing to her about my phone call, just as she had said nothing to me about hers. At first I was secretive out of a feeling that enough had happened for one day. But then sitting in the living room, waiting for her to dress, I wondered if I was not trying to spare Martha the possibility of feeling an ugly, an inappropriate emotion. Given our conversation at the lake and the phone call to Long Island, her response to my news might not be tonight what it would doubtless be in the morning.

It had become warmer all at once, and I sat without my jacket, my feet up on the window sill, watching the storm clouds begin to fill the sky over Fifty-fifth Street. Soon it started to rain and thunder, and grow darker. I sat in the dark with no light until a small lamp was flipped on behind me. I turned; Martha had come into the room, ready for dinner. The light was soft and fell in a flattering way upon the dress she was wearing; I could not remember having seen it before.

“You’re looking beautiful,” I said to her.

She remained standing where she was. “Thank you.”

“A blond girl,” I said, “with a suntan and her hair up—”

“And in a new white sharkskin dress.”

“It’s very lovely.”

“See my shoes?”

“They’re nice. It’s all very lovely.”

“I’ve never worn them before.”

“Maybe we should wait until it stops raining.”

“All right.” She sat down across from me and put her gloves on the little end table.

After a moment I asked, “Would you like a drink?”

But she didn’t seem to have heard. “This is what I wanted,” she said softly.

“Yes,” I said.

“And I like it—do you know that?”

“I thought you did.”

“All that sun and the water and the peace, and then a man in a fresh batiste shirt and a silk tie waiting for me in the living room so we can go to dinner. Even the rain, even the thunder.”

“We’ll go as soon as it lets up.”

After a while there was a jagged lightning streak across the sky, and a crash, and our one little lamp went out; in the kitchen the refrigerator stopped humming.

“It’ll go on in a minute,” I said.

“I called the kids,” Martha told me.

“Did you?”

I could see only her white dress in the dark and her white shoes. “When you were in the shower,” she said.

“How are they?”

“Markie left all his envelopes in the rest room of a Texaco station. But they sounded fine … Gabe?”

“Yes.”

“I think if you go East you better go alone.”

“You want me to go though?”

“A little time apart,” she said, after a moment, “might not hurt.”

“Will it help?”

“What’s to be helped?”

“You’re the one, I thought, who’d been indicating that we’re at some sort of crisis.”

“I don’t think we are,” she said.

“I didn’t think so either.”

“I told you I liked it. It was an agreeable day. I did laugh.”

The light went on, and Martha stopped speaking; and I was moved, even made lustful in a curious self-contained way, by the cold beauty she radiated.

“You look very voluptuous and healthy in that dress,” I said, “and in control.”

“When we come home we’ll make love. Not now.”

“You’re being very gallant, Martha, and very self-possessed tonight.”

“Oh I know.”

Suddenly she wearied me. “I think the storm’s rather laid a pall on me.”

“Let’s go then,” she said. “I’ll cheer you up. Plus my suntan and my blond hair and my self-possession, I am also a lot of laughs.”

“Theresa Haug had her baby,” I said.

“What?”

“Libby called. Sid called her. She had a baby girl.”

“When did she call?”

“While you were in the shower.”

“And you weren’t going to tell?”

“I thought I’d save it.”

“It sounds as though the news depresses you.”

“It leaves me feeling peculiarly washed-out, Martha.” Which was true; I found myself having something like the reaction I had feared for Martha. I couldn’t understand it.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked.