Letting Go (89 page)

She waited to hear what he would tell her. “That sounds like the old neurosis coming out, all right,” was what he said, moving in his chair.

“I guess I still need someone around to reassure me every fifteen minutes or so—do you mind terribly?”

“Since I’m here, I might just as well reassure you as not.”

“I can pay you off in coffee. Want more?”

“I don’t think so. I’d better go.”

“Don’t. Do wait till Paul comes. We hardly ever see you—” Suddenly she was cheery and full of energy. “I think we should all do something together. I don’t know—go out to dinner. You know
those Greek places, where they dance and have the old Greek music—wouldn’t you like to go? I want to, Paul wants to, I think—and why don’t you come? We could go any place really, just have dinner, or go to the ballet when it comes, or the opera. I’ve been clipping things to do out of the Sunday paper all winter long. We have a good baby-sitter I really trust, and we can go if you want to. Any night. It would be fun.”

“It sounds as though it would.”

“You see, Gabe? Everything looks so much better. We’re halfway out of debt; we’ve even paid off most of the co-op loan, which I thought we wouldn’t pay till we were dead, and I’ve gained two whole pounds. I don’t know if it’s noticeable or not, but I have, and the doctor says I’m a veritable Tarzan. And then there’s Rachel—and she’s always there. Isn’t that something? I’m in the kitchen and she’s in the other room, and I’m in the living room, and she’s—well—there. Though sometimes I’m in the kitchen—this is my nuttiness again—and I think, Oh Christ she’s
not
there. And I zoom into her room, and she
is
there, tight asleep—or awake and gurgling to herself. I know I swore I’d never be a bore about my baby, but I can’t help it. Really, even Paul’s mother doesn’t unnerve me that much. What can she do? What can anybody do?” Tilting her head, she made herself look a little younger, a little more innocent, than she was. “If I could apologize, Gabe, for that terrible night when I said those awful things to you—I really want to apologize with all my heart.”

“You’ve apologized already.”

“It was just so awful—” She was close to tears. “I can’t apologize enough.”

“So long as everything’s worked out.”

“You’ve never been anything but kind to me, Gabe.” Unable to control her emotions, she left the room. In the few minutes while she was gone, he put on his coat.

“I didn’t mean to drive you out,” she said, coming down the hall.

“I have to go home and fill out an application anyway.” He did not take the hand which she was holding a little way out from her side. “I only dropped by for a minute.”

“What are you applying for?”

“For a job in Istanbul—exotic, don’t you think?”

“Paul said you might not be staying next year.”

“I’m thinking of going abroad for a year or two.”

“We’re going to miss you. If
we’re
still here. Paul has given up on his Ph.D.”

“I didn’t know.”

“He’s given up writing, I think. Now he says he might want to teach in a high school. That’s okay with me—I don’t care where he teaches, so long as he stays happy.”

“Of course.”

“By the end of next year,” said Libby, moving rapidly on, “we’ll all be scattered all over the place again.” She had taken a step backwards into the hall. “Would you like to get a last look at Rachel?”

“No, I’d better—”

“Wait one second—” She ran off, leaving him to stand in his coat. What was she up to?

She reappeared just as abruptly. “There are just those little catches on the side of the crib. I couldn’t remember closing them. I’d put new sheets on, and then I couldn’t remember—As I said, I’m still the old nut I always was.”

To smile seemed inappropriate, but that was what he did. “It’s natural to worry, Libby.”

“I want to tell you something, Gabe.”

This girl! This girl!

“I want to tell you because I think you would want to know.”

“And what is that?”

“Sid, tonight when he called, told me that he was going to get married.”

He’d had no idea what she might be going to say. Even after she had spoken, he did not immediately see what the news had to do with him. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure …”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“And I thought you would want to.”

Only now was he stunned. “Certainly, why not …”

“I saw her the other day, Gabe. Outside the co-op. I had Rachel in the carriage, and suddenly I turned and started pushing it the other way. I was actually running, and I knew it was noticeable, but I couldn’t help it. Remember that warm day we had? Well, that was it. I think she saw me, but I couldn’t stop myself. If she had looked into the carriage and seen Rachel, I knew it would break her heart. It would break mine. I go to bed and I lie awake, ever since that happened, and I think: Rachel’s going to smother under the blanket.
I think I haven’t snapped those damn snaps, the ones that lower the bars on the side. I even thought of asking Paul to send this crib back for another model. Truly, I get up four and five times a night. I get up and I check—and then I wind up in bed, thinking about her. Every time I go down to the basement to hang up my wash, I somehow think of her little boy. I was probably rude and impolite again, and awful, but I just had to turn the carriage around and get away. Then when Sid told me he thought he was going to be married pretty soon … Well, I didn’t know if you knew or not—I don’t want to seem a gossip, but I thought you would want to hear.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“I feel I’m talking about things that are none of my business—”

“It was a horrible thing, Libby. I suppose that makes it everybody’s business.”

She did not understand that he was trying to shut her up, but it was not entirely her obtuseness that was responsible—his tone had been vague. He realized that he wanted to hear even more. So did Libby.

“What—what does she … say about it? How does she feel now?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“I thought perhaps you run into her. At the University.”

“We even manage not to run into one another.”

“I’m sorry, Gabe. It’s a hard thing to forget. It’s a hard thing
not
to talk about. I keep wondering what it’s like for her. I nearly called her once—I feel now how rotten I was with her, when I was being rotten and crazy with everyone. I almost called her one evening to come over for coffee. But I don’t even know what to say. You become somehow afraid of a person when something like that happens to him.”

“The best thing for all of us is to let the past be. There’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

“I feel terrible that she saw me and I kept running.”

She waited; he nodded. “I was going to say something to Sid,” she said. “He’s been so kind to us, he hasn’t charged a penny, and he’s been so concerned, so decent. I was going to ask him to explain for me to her … That’s it, you see, it would all have taken so much explanation.”

Despite his inability to keep his mind precisely on what he was about, by ten o’clock he had managed to complete both applications. He typed the address on each envelope, then settled back in his chair. It was done. By March he would hear, and by June he would be gone. There was really nothing more for him to do in the way of planning.

Except call Jaffe.

At first he could not explain why the idea had occurred to him. Then he remembered Libby saying that Jaffe had called
her
, and the nervousness she had expressed over the lawyer not giving her his message directly—at the same time that she had expressed gratitude for his reticence. What a girl! She still had the power to present her anxieties in such a way that they came to seem your anxieties. It did not appear to be an unconscious talent either—it never had. Doubtless what she had been hoping was that Gabe would volunteer on the spot to call Jaffe for her and to work out whatever little problem had arisen. But, of course, no problem of which she didn’t know the details beforehand could be imagined by Libby to be “little.” If Sid had called, what else but catastrophe! Theresa wanting Rachel for her own—or worse.

Was that even a legal possibility? He did not know the final ins and outs of the adoption. He had not even realized that Theresa would have to do any signing.
Had
Jaffe called to say Theresa wouldn’t sign? Was the natural father to sign too? Did he have to be dug up now? Would he meet the Herzes?

No, it probably wasn’t even necessary for the father to appear in the court at all. Whatever the necessities, Jaffe would take care of them; he was a capable man, he would see to it that everything was tight and binding; the Herzes would be protected. It was not his business to brood over the last-minute details; he had his own applications to mail. The Herzes were Rachel’s parents and they would have to work out matters for themselves.

With Jaffe’s help.

Why not? Surely he was better equipped than a layman to deal with whatever problem might have arisen; that he did not charge them for his services was his own affair … Not that if some last-minute help were needed, he himself wouldn’t step forward. If there
was
some foul-up concerning Theresa Haug, he felt he could solve it as well as anybody. Better, in fact. What he would have liked
was for Jaffe to call him and
ask
that he be of assistance. He had no reason to believe, however, that Jaffe would ever again seek his help … which was precisely why
he
should call him. Call him. Yes, he would really like to do that. Jaffe should know that he was quite willing, and quite able, to play his part in this adoption right down to the end.

Martha should know that too. Surely she would if he were to sit down and call Jaffe right now. Where else had she been going with that Christmas tree?

 … Some things Gabe surmised about her now; some things he knew. He knew, for instance, that she had moved. One day on the co-op bulletin board he had seen an index card announcing a sale of furniture; he had recognized the handwriting even before recognizing the address. Then one day he had seen her, just her back, moving through the doorway of a little rooming house on Kenwood. That night, driving down Kenwood—it was not too far out of his way, one cross street was as good as another really—he had seen Jaffe’s car parked outside. That was how he had learned about the convertible too. He had seen it in front of the rooming house, and on another night, when he happened to be driving by Jaffe’s apartment on Dorchester, he had seen it again. The following week he saw it parked outside of Jaffe’s apartment on three different nights. The week after, only two. But probably it was parked there now; they would be up in Jaffe’s apartment decorating that tree.

Leaning forward again in his chair, he set about checking what he had written. Reviewing the facts of his birth, education, and professional experience, a conviction began to grow in him that bad news awaited the Herzes. He had only Libby’s insane anxieties to go on, but surprisingly, the application before him, with its listing of accomplishments, of degrees attained and works completed, led him further and further into pessimism. He was reminded (not that he had to be) of all that was unrecorded there—what he had not been prepared for, the unaccomplished. Having failed to imagine in the past what calamities there might be, he began imagining present calamities for which he had no real evidence.

Still, nothing was to be lost in giving Jaffe a ring. He would like to catch Martha in the lawyer’s apartment anyway. To be sure, she was under no further obligation to him; however, for him to find her with Jaffe now would perhaps make her aware of the suspicions he had about times past—that he had come to suspect that as soon as he had driven off to Long Island in August, she had
gone to bed with her old suitor. Of course, concrete evidence was slight—only that when he had called Chicago to tell her that Markie was in a coma in the Southampton Hospital, Sid Jaffe had picked up the phone.

At the funeral nothing had been said about the phone call, about anything, in fact. He had watched her suntanned, expressionless face looking down into the grave. Afterwards the only words spoken between them had been hers. “Please, let me start from scratch.” He had thought then that she had said little out of grief and fatigue—and out of her desire to end the affair. It was a desire he saw fit to obey. No, to honor. But in the months that followed he was more and more convinced that she had said so little out of shame as well as sorrow. Now when he needed it, he summoned up the image of Martha receiving the tragic news in bed.

And he happened now to need it. He did not feel he was deceiving himself by continuing to believe that he was not an irresponsible man. Even his decision to call Jaffe about the adoption was evidence in his own behalf. Chances were it was only Libby’s morbid imagination to which he was bending; nevertheless, he did not want it said by others—or by himself
to
himself—that he had gone less than all the way once again. If that
was
what he had done in earlier days, surely it had to be chalked up partly to inexperience; youth, he told himself. But now he was older. He would simply pick up the phone and have a talk with Jaffe. He would like Martha to be reminded, should it happen that she was once again in Jaffe’s bed, that in the end it was she who had been unfaithful to him, and not the other way around.