Letting Go

1

The waiter boned her fish for her, then left them to themselves. Libby said, “I don’t feel very much like a mother tonight.”

“And what do you feel like instead?”

“A — the girl in The Tempest. What’s her name? I don’t mean to be too precious, but since you’re asking …” she said, preciously.

“Prospero’s daughter—” But he could not give undivided attention to the task of remembering the daughter’s name. His eyes, unable to come to rest on the face opposite his own, kept moving off to a table very near the wooden booth in which they sat. A woman in the party of four dining only a few feet away struck him as familiar; yet neither she nor her companions looked like anyone he might know. She had blond hair and a pointed chin, and a topaz pin clipped to her dark suit. Though she seemed to be engaged by every syllable spoken at her table, she had the air of someone who knows she is being looked at.

But he did not care to have the air of someone who is staring, and he tried to stop. Because of what this evening meant to Libby, because he had promised before they had left the house (promised himself, while Gabe was shown the bottles, the warming pan, the baby powder) that he would do nothing to spoil these few hours, he pretended to think of the name of Shakespeare’s heroine, all the while trying to give a name to the woman at the next table. Eventually she looked over and their eyes met. He swung rapidly back to Libby — catching her eye with equal embarrassment. It was not, however, the same embarrassment that had been settling and resettling over their table since they had entered the restaurant; it was not shared.

“—easier than imagining yourself Hamlet, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe that’s because I’m a woman.”

“I don’t know,” he said, trying to get the drift of her words.

“I wonder if it’s not a theory at all, but a failure of my own mind. That’s always a possibility.”

“You’re too hard on that mind of yours.”

“Oh, darling Paul, I know what I am. Well — truly—you can probably understand what it’s like to be Desdemona, can’t you, as well as Othello?”

“That question has a slight drunken lilt to it.”

“Are these silly questions?”

“Well, no.”

But his response had apparently not been quick enough, gentle enough, loving enough, reassuring enough; apparently not, for her brow was instantly furrowed. “I think,” he said, gentle, loving, reassuring, “I missed what you started to say at the beginning …”

“Aren’t you listening?” she asked, directly.

“I am.”

“I said it’s easier to identify with Shakespeare’s — Are you really at all interested in this?”

“Yes.” He had no right to disappoint her tonight. “We used to talk about Shakespeare all the time.”

“I know.”

He realized that his remark had done nothing to reassure her about the present. Without exactly feeling shame, he felt disloyal to their earliest days. Then he did not even have to glance over: he knew who the woman with the topaz pin was. He remembered the name of the Shakespearean heroine too, but did not choose to interrupt again whatever it was that Libby wanted to get on to.

“Go ahead — I’m sorry,” he said.

“I didn’t think — I thought I was boring—”

“I was thinking about my mother’s coming. Excuse me. Go on … do.”

Out of respect for his troubles, she looked apologetic; he knew what would make her forgiving. Yes, he had learned how to move her about as he wanted. “It’s not important,” she was saying. “Now that I consider it — turn upon it,” she said, smiling, bubbling up instantly, “the broad beam of my intelligence, I don’t even think it holds water. The fact is you can’t really believe in Ophelia either. I was being morbidly romantic. I was being high.”

“You said you could identify with Ophelia?”

“I said one could. Then”—she flushed—“I said I could. Easier than Hamlet, I meant though, whom I find incredible. Is this heresy?”

“No—”

“Miranda!”

“Oh — yes.”

“Prospero’s daughter.”

“Oh yes, that’s it.”

“Oh brave new world — isn’t that The Tempest too?”

“I think so.”

“Isn’t that funny …” She went back to eating. “Though Miranda is quite incredible too. If it’s fair to Shakespeare to talk about credibility in terms of that play — How are your frog’s legs?”

“Fine. How is the sole?”

“I love sole. I forget until I eat it how fond of it I am. I’m feeling absolutely exuberant.”

“On one martini,” he said, and wished he could stop himself from sounding paternal. It was an impulse that seemed to grow in proportion to Libby’s desire to converse with him.

“It’s true, you know. Something about my kidneys makes me drunk much faster than normal people.”

“So you don’t feel normal either?”

“The day I strike people as normal …”

His response was so immediate that he had not even time to ask himself whether it might not, in fact, be true. “You strike me as normal tonight.”

“Oh good. But I feel different.” Leadingly: “I don’t know if you do …”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Happy?” She spoke the word so girlishly as to diminish the risk; she might have been asking nothing more than if he liked his food.

“Yes,” again without hesitation.

“I’m so … happy isn’t the word.”

“I don’t think it is for me either,” he admitted.

She went right on. “I’m trembling inside. Way inside, beneath the martini.”

“You look very composed.”

“Never as composed as you. Do you mind if I speak under the influence of alcohol?”

He could not have felt more sober himself, which accounted in part for the trouble he was having keeping up with her decision to be gay. He had grown so used to her fidgety that he did not really remember her animated. But tonight she managed to be full of excitement, and still to look as though under her red dress all her limbs were securely attached to her slight frame. If he was not able to look directly at her, it was only partly because she struck him as unfamiliar. It was also that he could not be sure what she was going to say to him, or ask of him, next. Probably she was not too sure either — which doubtless explained why the embarrassment was shared. At first he had believed that their discomfort tonight had only to do with their not being used to extravagances. He had difficulty recalling the last time they had gone out for the purpose of “having fun.” He had to go far back — and in going far back, he concluded that he was mistaken about the identity of the woman at the other table. At precisely the same moment he felt more disposed than ever to protect Libby. He would concentrate only on her. He felt her continuing to concentrate only on him. She had been concentrating on him, barreling down on him, for days; and for just as many days he had been doing his best to look the other way, to slide out from under her gaze by treating her like his child. Her total attention had gotten to him—

No. It was his mother’s arrival that was causing the trouble. He had already figured out Libby’s place in his life; consequently, he did not believe she could rattle him. “When we came in,” Libby was saying, “and everyone was waiting in line for a table — when you went up and said, ‘My name is Herz, I have a reservation,’ it was one of those moments when I just felt terribly married.”

“And you liked that?” Again, fatherly, as though he knew all there was to know about her — and at the moment when he was not sure, suddenly, quite what he did know.

“It was a small thrill,” she said. “Tonight’s a larger thrill.” He did not respond, and she rushed to say, “Unless — are we going to spend too much?”

He had to reassure the two of them; if Libby could not rattle him any longer, money could. “But we have so many things to celebrate, Lib.”

“I did have a little qualm when we came in here.”

“When I said my name is Herz?”

“About three seconds after that.” She put her hand on the table and he knew enough to cover it with his own. “I won’t have any dessert, darling,” she whispered.

Embarrassment settled over them. They returned to their food. He was finding this altogether different from any dinner they had ever eaten at home. Was it two or three times now that she had called him “darling”?

“Do you know what I discussed with Gabe last week?”

He looked up to see that her face had subsided to its everyday shade. Her lovely skin … “What?”

“I didn’t tell you. The night he brought the present for the baby — don’t you think he’s changed, Paul?”

“Who? I’m having trouble keeping up with you martini-ized.”

“He seems very crushed, Gabe does. He’s lost a lot of his, I don’t know … air.”

“He’s had some bad luck with his father.”

A moment passed. “Did he tell you that?” Libby asked.

“You told me that.”

“Oh yes …” she said. “You forget about other people’s troubles when you have your own.” For a moment he felt as though she were judging him. Until she added, “Suddenly I’m aware of him in a new way. I asked him to baby-sit out of sympathy, really.”

“Glenda didn’t go home to Milwaukee then?”

“Yes, she did go away. But I needn’t have thought of Gabe, you see.”

“I wondered …” He did not mean to sound like Othello, never having felt like him before. “I wondered how you decided on him.”

“Then — why didn’t you ask?”

“I thought you’d arranged it,” he began to explain, somewhat flustered, “arranged it all beforehand.”

“Well, you should have asked. I think he gets a lot of pleasure out of Rachel. He asked if you believed in God.”

He was not jealous; he was annoyed. “How did that come up?” He had never in his life been jealous, a fact of his character which he had long ago absorbed. It contributed to his picture of himself as a man who did not have all the human fires. He had come to think of himself as less special than he once had.

Nevertheless, it seemed that what he had just tried was to make Libby think that he was jealous! He wondered if he could be feeling under attack only because of the woman at the other table, who brought to his mind old failures, misunderstandings of his youth. It was a youth that he himself saw as long past; having ceased to excuse himself for what he was, he no longer needed it as a crutch. It was a help to him too that others, seeing that he was half bald and wore old clothes, did not even mistake him for a young man.

“We were talking about religion,” his wife said. “His family, you know, was very German Jewish and removed. I would have liked to have met his mother — you know, I once — I think she had a great effect on him.”

“You once what?”

“We were talking about Chanukah. I didn’t know what to say, Paul. There are some things we haven’t discussed a lot lately. You and I.”

“I think we’ve probably become a little used to each other by now.” Smiling.

“We just don’t talk as much, though. That’s a fact. That’s all. We do hardly talk.”

“I think if we feed you a martini every night—”

“And you?” she said quickly.

“You see, it doesn’t take on me.”

“I know,” she said lugubriously.

Dinner might have been finished and the check paid without any further conversation, had not the blond woman and her party walked over to their booth. “Excuse me, aren’t you Paul Herz?”

“Yets—” Trying to rise, he got caught between the table and the seat. Half standing, taller than Libby but shorter than his visitor, he said, “Yes — you look very familiar—”

“My name”—he saw Libby looking back and forth as the woman spoke—“is Frankland. I’m Marge — Howells.”

“I thought that’s who you might be—” And then both rushed so to introduce their mates that no one heard anyone else’s name, and they all had to be introduced a second time. The other couple, friends of the Franklands’, stood back and watched. Slowly Marge Howells began to look like herself, or as much of her as he could remember. He had never really taken a long look at her, even back in Iowa; that had not been the nature of their meeting. Here, across the room, she had looked older, haughtier. Paul asked Marge, and Marge Paul, what each was doing in Chicago. It turned out that the Franklands lived in Evanston.

“I’m teaching,” Paul said, answering her next question.

Tim Frankland, a physician, had a habit of extending his lower lip beyond his upper lip; he combined this now with a brief nod. “No kidding,” he said.

“At the University,” Libby said.

Frankland paid his first bit of attention to her. “Down on the South Side,” he said, pointing at the floor.

“That’s right,” Paul said.

“Tim is doing research this year,” Marge told them. “We’ve been in Evanston for three or four years.” She turned, but only half looked at her husband. “Isn’t that right, darling?”

At the very same moment that he heard Marge say “darling”—and disbelieved it — Paul felt himself powerfully married to his wife. “We’ve been in Chicago for a year, a little more than a year.”

The other couple with the Franklands now moved out of the dining room, saying they would meet Tim and Marge in the lobby. Silence followed their departure.

“Well, it’s been three or four years,” Marge said, “since we’ve met, I think.”

Dr. Frankland gave a very stiff, very polite grin to everyone.

“Where is it we met before?” Libby asked.

“Iowa City,” Marge said.

“Do you have children?” Paul asked.

“One. A girl.”

“We have a girl too,” Libby said. “Six months.”

“Jocelyn is three,” Marge said to Paul.

“Time flies,” Dr. Frankland said to Libby, as though she might not have known. “Yours will be three before you realize it.”

“Do you ever see your friend?” Marge asked. “You remember—”

“Gabe Wallach.”

“Yes. How’s he doing? Do you ever hear from him?”

“He’s teaching at Chicago too,” Paul said.

“No kidding,” Tim Frankland said.

“Oh,” said Marge, “Tim has heard all these names.” She did not smile with much confidence.

“That was when Marge was revolting against her family. Your bohemian period, dear.” But the remark was meant for the edification of the crowd; there were obviously certain areas of the past with which Dr. Frankland didn’t have too much sympathy.

“Gabe’s baby-sitting for us tonight, as a matter of fact,” said Libby.

“I thought he’d be married—”

Libby made the announcement as though it gave her pleasure. “No, he isn’t.”

“Still knocking the girls over.” The words were spoken by Dr. Frankland.

“I suppose so,” Paul said.

Apropos of nothing, or so it seemed, Libby said, “He’s a very generous person.”

“It’s a coincidence,” Marge said, “all of us being in Chicago, isn’t it?”

“We were in Pennsylvania for a while,” Paul said.

“We should all get together,” Marge answered.

“Yes,” Paul said, when no one else did, “that would be fine.”

“Yes … It was nice running into you,” Dr. Frankland said. “We’re in the book, of course.”

“So are we,” Libby said, as though that tied the score.

“What do you call your daughter, Paul?”

“Rachel,” Libby said.

At this the two women were called upon to take a sudden interest in one another. Marge was the one who smiled.

Frankland felt called upon to be magnanimous. “That’s a nice old-fashioned European name.”

“Whom does she resemble?” Marge asked.

“Paul,” said Libby.

“I’m afraid Jocelyn looks just like me.”

“Well, we have to be going,” Tim Frankland said. “I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting—”

“Oh yes—”

“Goodbye. Say hello to Gabe Wallach—”

“Oh yes—”

Libby waited until they were barely out of earshot. “I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting,” she said, in a fair imitation.

“I had a feeling you didn’t like them.”

“I didn’t mean to be too obvious, but that man’s a horror. And she — I don’t know. At the end I suddenly thought she wasn’t so bad. Who is she? I don’t remember her at all. I thought we’d met her at Cornell.”

“She was a friend of Gabe’s.”

“That’s what I thought, after I found out it was Iowa. Gabe certainly has catholic tastes.”

“Of course, it was a long time ago.”

“She couldn’t have been any — Well, she didn’t strike me as very genuine. Did she you?”

“She’s all right, I suppose.”

“Well, she chose old Tim — I wouldn’t be so sure. ‘I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting.’ Hey, that’s not too bad, is it?” She did it again. “Did we know her well?” she asked suddenly.

“I met her once with Gabe. I don’t think you did.”

“Oh,” she said, “this isn’t the girl friend of his you once helped move, is it, when I was sick? The girl he dropped, ker-plunk.”

“I think,” Paul said, “that was somebody else.”

“The more I learn about Gabe,” Libby said, “the stranger he seems. I don’t know if he has any substance or what.”

“There are girls like her in everybody’s past, I suppose.”

“Well, sweetheart, who was there in yours?”

After a moment, he said, “Doris. I’ve told you about Doris …”

“But you were in high school. Gabe was a man.”

“Well …”

“Gabe knows a lot about some things,” said Libby, “but then he seems to have so little imagination about others. He didn’t even begin to know what I was saying when I spoke about religion, for instance.”

“You said …” He was looking directly at his wife now; he had forced himself to while she spoke of Gabe’s past, and he for some reason made references — veiled, to be sure — to his own. “You said you didn’t know what to tell him.”

She was surprised. “I didn’t say that.”

“You said that you didn’t know what I thought.”

“Well, I don’t know what you think …”

“Well …” He had led himself into this. “What do you want to know?”

“What?”

Marge Howells had come and gone, and nothing had happened to him. It was not shame that was filling him with the incredible desire to answer questions. “I’m not hiding anything,” he said, and indeed he did feel perfectly innocent.

“Paul … no?”

The moment passed, though it left its mark. “Well, no.” He was not sure he could believe himself — though he was not completely unsure. Marge had come and gone and nothing had happened to him. “So what do you want to know?” he asked jokingly.

“… I don’t know. What do you do when you go to the synagogue?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

“I sit there.” She might as well be told that. He was afraid, however, of other questions she might ask, though he could not really inform himself as to what they might be. He continued to close back upon himself. “I sit there,” he said again.

“You say the prayer.”

“No.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You did that Friday I went—”

“I did that Friday. I knew you expected certain things. I don’t when I’m alone.”

“You see — now there’s something I didn’t know that …”

“Well, we’re married, Libby, but we’re separate too.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t think that’s too unusual.”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking defeated. “I don’t know what’s usual and unusual. I’m still trying to figure marriage out. Excuse me — I don’t want to keep embarrassing you by being naïve. I didn’t mean to embarass you by saying Rachel resembled you either—”

“I don’t think that’s what’s embarrassing us.”

“I keep blushing tonight, Paul. And you’re my husband.”

“We’re just both excited about this whole week.”

“Yes … I’m not saying I’m not happy.”

“We’re just not used to things working out.” He wondered if that could be it. “It’s something we’ll have to become adjusted to.”

“I’m a little drunken, darling, but you’re sober, and you mean that, don’t you? I keep having the strange feeling that our troubles are over. That I’ve been being born and born for years and years, and now I’m out. That’s a weak statement from a woman who’s supposed to be somebody else’s mother, I know it probably makes me sound ill-equipped … What I mean is that if things will calm down for a while, I will be equipped. I’m embarrassed about the past. I keep saying ‘embarrassed’ only because it’s the only damn word I can think of. I really want to talk to you, Paul. The last few days I’ve thought and thought, because they seem so significant … Can’t we begin to talk a little?”

“Sure.”

“I want you to tell me sometimes what you’re thinking. That’ll make all the difference—”

“Yes, but, Libby, you understand—” He knew he had opened this floodgate himself; he had allowed himself the pleasure of optimism, and now he was paying. It would all wind up, tonight or tomorrow or next week, with Libby crying.

“I don’t expect to know everything. If I can know … If I don’t have to stay home all day imagining it. Everything else is all right now — now it’s simply you and me that needs working out.” She was trying to grin; he was trying to collect himself. But he couldn’t; some inroad had been made. “I tell people about what you think,” Libby said, “and I don’t even know what you do think. Are we religious or aren’t we?” With that question she looked quite beaten again. “There — that’s one simple little thing—”

“You see, we’re not one person. We’re two.”

“—because we have to communicate somehow.”

“Of course—”

“I don’t think every marriage has to be lustful. I understand that differently now. I’ve made myself understand it differently. But if it’s not that, then it’s going to have to be something else.”

“Libby — you’ve had a lot of patience …”

Near tears, she answered, “Thank you.”

“I can only ask for a little more.” Another woman would, at this moment, have struck him, or left him; knowing this made him feel no more noble about his plea.

“Everything seems to be changing,” said Libby, “but you.”

“Then I must be changing too, Lib. I have changed.”

“How?”

He did not ever think of such easy solutions as Marge Howells; he did not think of solutions. “I don’t know,” was all he said.

“You still don’t love me, do you?”

“That’s an unfair … an inexact way to put it, for both of us.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

His responses were not satisfying either of them; he might just as well be silent. Libby asked, “Am I ruining our evening? Oh hell—”

They finished up what food remained on their plates.

“If you did believe in God,” she said, sliding her fork on the empty plate, “I wouldn’t feel it was an important question at all. You know that?”

“Because you do?”

“I don’t. I can’t. I don’t even want to. But you’re different. I don’t even know what you are — but I love you, Paul. And I don’t care that you don’t love me. I know you’re a good man.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t love you,” he began.

“I don’t care. Let’s pay the bill — let’s take a walk. I feel chaotic inside. I’m sorry if I’ve ruined our ten-dollar dinner.”

“Please,” she said, as they walked west toward the theater, “I can’t keep one foot in each camp any longer.”

She waited, but did not hear him ask that she explain. It was difficult to tell whether he was not listening, or was thinking, or had chosen simply to ignore her.

“I can’t keep provoking other men, Paul. I’m just spilling out everything — and I’m sorry. How much was dinner, eleven dollars? I know I’m responsible for wasting it. When I was a child I always wound up crying on my birthday — there would always be an argument, somehow or other. I had a way, I have a way, of ruining significant days. I suppose I shouldn’t have had that drink what with these kidneys inside me. I was just edgy enough, and now I’m just drunk enough — and I want you to talk to me. Please, we’ll walk all the way to the movie, and please, you just talk. Up at Cornell you could persuade me of anything. Persuade me now.”

“About what?”

“About you. I keep thinking that either you believe in God or you love me. It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to, but it comes into my head, and I might as well say it. Weak as I am, Paul, I’ve always said things. Blurted them out. It’s our sixth anniversary,” she said after a moment. “Persuade me, will you? You just can’t cut me out of your life!”

The air was cold; they were walking directly into a light wind. Neither looked at the other. “I can’t give you positive answers,” he said. “I’m not sure either way, about either.”

“Stop sparing me too, all right?”

“Libby, since my father’s death, since that trip, it’s been me who’s felt as though he’s been being born. Perhaps you have, but so have I. And I’ve not come out yet.”

“When—?”

“I don’t know.” He raised his hands impatiently. “I’m trying to speak indirectly …”

“Why do you go to the synagogue then? Why do we stay married? I keep thinking, Well he believes—”

“Faith is private; why do you have to feel so impassioned about mine?”

“When you came back from New York I thought everything was going to change. I thought religion—”

“I’m not so sure any more about the religion I came back with from New York. Things have gotten better. That’s precisely it.”

“Don’t think,” she said gloomily, “they’ve gotten that much better.”

“And that’s why I still go to synagogue. They haven’t gotten that much better.”

“I don’t think I’m understanding everything you’re saying. Are you saying that if we were both perfectly happy, then you wouldn’t go at all?”

“I suppose, in a way, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Well, what do you do there — do you pray? Why do you even go there? Are you praying for things to get better, so you can just forget all about it?”

“Things won’t get ‘better,’ Libby.”

“That’s not so! They have gotten better. If you would just give yourself up to us!”

“First you told me not to spare you—”

“But you’re being unreasonable. You don’t try to make things better. You’re distracted from me!”

“I’m never not thinking of you, Libby; that’s not so.”

“I’m not talking about thinking about me.”

“Look, I don’t understand my actions any more than anybody else. I’m not going to try to defend myself for not having the feelings you want me to.”

“I don’t want you to have any feelings but the normal ones.”

“If I can’t feel what I have to, I do what I have to.”

“I don’t see how you can do them then.”

“I force myself.”

“Oh Paul, I hate you for saying that.”

“I go and sit in the synagogue, Libby—”

“Yes — now tell me why, damn it?”

“Because I don’t feel complete about myself. Everything seems … incomplete.”

“Yes?”

“And I don’t go because I expect to be completed either.”

“I don’t understand your God,” she said, heartbroken.

“I’ve been mystified lately by things looking as though they’re getting better. It’s shaken my faith.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke? Are you going to toy with me, tonight? Lately I feel indulged — I don’t even mean indulged; I mean too underestimated even for me.”

“I’m not making jokes.”

“Well, I don’t believe in doom! You believe in doom — that’s what you’re saying. Don’t you love Rachel at least? Don’t you feel anything toward her?”

“I love Rachel.”

“So? And?”

“And what?”

“Well, can’t you believe in pleasure? Can’t we have a pleasant life together? Is that so hard? I don’t think you have any right to justify your — whatever it is, concerning me and our marriage—”

“I haven’t tried to justify—”

“Let me finish — it’s a very involved thought and I’m a lousy thinker. Please, Paul. What you’re saying — I don’t even know if I’ve got it — but you’re saying that you and I are supposed to be unhappy because that’s in the nature of things. Well, it may be in the nature of things, but it’s not in my nature! I’m just dying to be happy, I just can’t wait very much longer. I wish you’d stop dragging your heels about it, too. Please, Paul, if you’d just relax.”

“Oh, Libby …”

“Well what?”

“I can’t make myself be what I’m not.”

“Oh that’s an excuse! That’s — philosophy! I’ve made myself be what I’m not — don’t you know that? You can’t act this way, Paul, you’re stronger than I am. You’ll just have to be!”

Whatever his next thoughts were, he kept them to himself.

“What kind of God is that anyway!” she demanded.

“I can only believe as much as I can manage to believe for what must appear to somebody else — even my wife, Libby — to be very private reasons. I didn’t believe they were so eccentric, however.”

“I think you just go to the synagogue to get away from me.”

“Please … I go there to say the mourner’s prayer.”

“You said you don’t pray.”

“That’s right. I don’t pray.”

“Oh Paul—”

“I mourn, all right? You see, this is difficult to talk about.”

“Well — but don’t mourn: fix things up!”

“Certain things I have to accept.”

“But then I have to accept the things you have to! That’s what’s unfair, don’t you see? You’re being,” she said hopelessly, “terribly unfair … and pompous,” she added faintly.

“You see, are we getting anywhere with this conversation?”

“I’m getting confused. You’re going at things upside down. You’ve given up,” she said, incredulously.

“I’ve perhaps given in.”

“Well, that’s the same damn thing. That’s worse.”

“We’re not going to understand one another—” But when she stopped walking, when she closed her eyes, he took her hand and added, “Tonight.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t think you know what you believe.”

“I don’t know all I believe.”

“Well,” she said weakly, “I hope you see that’s not making me very happy.”

“You think too much about being happy.”

“But that’s all there is, Paul.”

When they emerged later from the movie, she took her husband’s arm. The push and hurry of the crowd behind them reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. How very far she had come …

“Did you think it was funny?” she asked.

“I thought the first half was. I thought the second half was lousy.”

“That’s exactly what I thought.”

To her surprise, his fingers were touching her face. Did she have a smudge on her cheek? For a moment she could not believe that he was only touching her. And when she could, she was afraid to speak. She hung on to his arm, treating her treat as though it were an everyday occurrence; praying.

“We’d better take a cab,” he said, leading her to the curb.

“Oh darling, this night is costing a fortune.”

“Gabe isn’t going to charge us, is he?”

“Well, no.”

“Then we’ve saved all that.”

The movie seemed to have cheered him up; she hesitated to believe that it was she who might have helped initiate some change — though, God knows, she had not spoken so openly to him in years. Could it possibly be so easy? Probably he had only made up his mind to please her. But what she was asking of him was not much more, really, than that, She had only to make it clear to him now what exactly she knew to be necessary for her pleasure …

To be kissed. In the back of the taxi, driving to the station, she wanted to be kissed. Recognizing the desire as sentimental did not decrease its poignancy a bit. Everything she wanted tonight she wanted poignantly. After some minutes had passed, she felt that she might have to settle for just being in the cab beside him, driving through the rush of the holiday streets to the station.

And so she settled for it. A taxi, after all, was a treat in itself. She had not ridden in one since the night five years before when they had left that doctor’s office in Detroit. And that was all so distant that she might never have stepped foot in a cab before tonight. She had difficulty, anyway, associating herself with any of those other Libbies, the young, stupid, helpless Libbies … though Libby Herz was always and forever sloughing off old Libby Herzes — bidding a fond farewell sometimes to what she had been as little as twenty-four hours earlier. Still she couldn’t help feeling that this night was truly different. This week had been truly different. New strength had flowed into her simply from a decision to have new strength flow into her. At least it seemed as simple as that, driving in the cab, her coat pushed up against her husband’s, her hand finding his. The news from Gabe’s own mouth that he was going abroad must have something to do with it too, if Paul had in the past been distracted from her, she could not deny that she had had certain distractions of her own. But she knew that no matter what was dealt out to them in the future — and she did happen to see only good things coming their way now — she would never write to him, as she had in Pennsylvania, or dream about him, as she had in Iowa, or see him as being any more than he was, which was what she had always done, of course. She was even pained with herself for that damn charming little note she had slipped into his hands as she and Paul had been about to go off for dinner. However, it was not easy for one as passionate as she was, she thought, to be cured overnight of an old and crucial attachment. Nor for someone as needy as she had been.

But she did not need Gabe any longer. She could not afford to, especially when he was not at all as powerful as he had led her, or she had led him to lead her, to imagine. She herself had a family that needed her. She was going to help Paul to love her. Now that they were already entering what she had begun to see as the first settled period of their life, she would dedicate herself to destroying her husband’s isolation. He did not have to be separate any longer. She would convince him of happiness.

But when they left the cab her mood altered. She supposed she was a little disappointed at having traveled three miles in the back of a dark cab unkissed. But aside from that, Paul had actually said or done nothing to weaken her hope in him. When he paid for the cab, in fact, she felt as she had when he had addressed the headwaiter — very wifely. The sight of her husband taking his change from the driver convinced her that they would never be divorced. No, it was not Paul … It only seemed that she had ridden as far as she could on the crest of that single martini. Buoyancy left her, she knew she was that girl who had driven in the other cab five years back, and that she would be the same girl five years hence. And she knew that Paul knew it.

When they settled on a bench in the busy waiting room of the train station, it was ten thirty-five.

“I’d better call Gabe,” she said.

Paul had picked up a newspaper off the bench; he sat there rattling it, not reading it. “About what?” he asked.

“To see if everything is all right.” Uncontrollably she had begun to worry.

“I’ll call.”

She must, suddenly, be looking so frightened that he felt duty bound to be nice to her; she imagined that he himself was so upset now that he couldn’t sit still … until he leaned over and kissed her.

“Paul …” It was no longer necessary to call. She was absolutely bouncing from mood to mood.

But he was already moving away, toward an arrow which pointed to the phone booths. Having soared upward a moment earlier, she now plunged down, as she had two moments before. She understood his touching her face outside the movie theater, and his kissing her just now, as being linked up with some defense he was building against the appearance of his mother. The big clock overhead showed that Mrs. Herz was only seven or eight minutes away … But if he felt stronger by way of kissing her, wasn’t that something? No? The trouble with his moments of affection was that that’s all they were, moments. One hug didn’t have any connection with the next kiss. She closed her eyes. She did not understand everything that was happening. Was anything even happening? On the street she had asked a few questions, and he had agreed to give a few answers. Though in the restaurant he had practically knocked her over by asking, “What do you want to know, Libby?” Then a moment later, as she struggled to think of what it was she wanted to be told, she had seen him becoming Paul again. To think that she had pried him open for good — or even for more than ten seconds — was to overestimate her own meager powers.

Only one of her powers was not so meager. It was no small ability to be able to forget the past. I will forget the past. I will make Paul forget the past. I will convince him of happiness.

When he returned he sat down and checked his watch against the clock on the wall.

“Well, how is he doing?” She smiled.

“Oh — he’s doing all right.”

“You sound as though he’s not doing all right at all. Don’t you think he can really change a diaper?”

“Well, he’s doing all right,” he said.

“Is the baby sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“Has she gotten up for a bottle?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Well, darling, didn’t you ask? Maybe Gabe forgot where—”

“He didn’t forget.”

“Paul, don’t be nervous about your mother.”

“I suppose I am.”

“Don’t be. That’s all past.”

“I know …”

“We’ll indulge her every whim. We won’t allow her to wash a dish. I’m nervous, but I don’t feel uncertain.”

He was standing. “I’m going to the men’s room, Lib.”

“Honey, don’t you feel well?” Her love for him was so intense, she could have wept for his discomfort.

“I just want to go to the men’s room before the train arrives.” He went off in the direction he had gone before.

She loved him; they would begin again — he could be made to want to. She was feeling more influential than she ever had in her life. It must come of being a mother. It must come of moving out from under pressure, from their crises having passed. Oh she would help him now! Her Paul!

Then he was running toward her, just as the loudspeaker filled the waiting room with news of the arrival of the New York train. She raced to meet him—my Paul! — and together they raced to the track. He was saying something to her which she could not hear in the rush of people — and then Mrs. Herz was upon them. The old woman was clinging to her son. An arm flew out, Libby slipped within it, and both women were sobbing into Paul’s coat. She felt Paul’s hand on her back; his thin straight body was a support for her head. No other hand touched her, but she was old enough now — yes! — not to expect everything. She did not expect everything; only what was coming to her. She had been patient.

They took another taxi all the way home. Mrs. Herz talked about the train ride, and Libby asked her questions that had only to do with the trip. Paul was virtually silent.

They climbed the stairs and came into the apartment to find what Paul already knew, but for which he had found no way whatsoever to prepare his companions. Though he was not a man to believe in miracles, though he trusted his senses, he had not been able to believe that it would be the way it was when they walked through the door. If he could not understand it, it would not be. But though he could not understand it, it was.

Libby began to run from room to room. His mother stood where she was. When Libby came back into the living room there were a few moments in which no one spoke a complete sentence, though everyone spoke. Then Mrs. Herz had picked up her suitcase and stood holding it. The two women began to scream. Paul said, “Please sit. Both of you, sit. Sit down!”

2

Theresa had been told to stay in the bedroom. Harry had said it was none of her business.

And that was true. She had just forgotten everything that had happened. She was too busy to think about anything. All she ever did was iron clothes, and wash dishes, and sew on patches, and darn socks, and change diapers, and listen to what Harry told her to do — like to keep her ass out of Fluke’s place. But he needn’t have — when did she ever have a minute for herself?

Everything was for them. What about me? she thought, and tears came to her eyes. She was only twenty. She’d never had any fun. Only with Dewey, and then right off she’d gotten caught. And Dewey hadn’t even cared about her. Did Harry? He said he loved her. That was why he had married her. That was why he had asked her to come back to him. Oh yeah?

She wondered if it was too late for her to become a nun. Would they allow you to be a sister if first you’d been a Baptist? At least if you were a sister you weren’t the slave of any damn man! Or any kids! What that little Walter deserved was a good crack. Otherwise he’d never learn to do it in the bowl. She’d told Harry that, but he just told her to go to the bedroom. He and Vic were going to go into the trucking business. Oh yeah. On what? He couldn’t even afford a Christmas tree. Some Christmas Eve! Locked in a room. She was not to leave her room if Wallace came.

She thought about Mr. Wallace. She hated his guts. Talking to him on the phone, she had been unable to stop her heart from pounding away. She tried to remember what he looked like. Every time she heard “Earth Angel” she thought of him. It was almost like their song. In the past when she heard it, she had thought of Dewey.

She went to the closet and looked at her clothes. When was she ever going to get to wear anything but an apron? She never had a chance to dress up. Harry never took her any place; all she’d done since Thanksgiving was change diapers. That Wanda was smart to get out when the getting was good. But she had gotten out too. The trouble was she should have stayed out. She tried to remember why she had come back. Because she missed a nice family Thanksgiving! Everybody in America had been eating candied sweets and turkey and dressing and cranberries — except her. She loved candied sweets more than anything, and when she had called Harry, he had said that that was just what he was having. So she’d come back, and there hadn’t even been any damn candied sweets at all! Just the same, she thought then that he really loved her. He said he loved her when she asked him. Then why did he make her stay in her room? She had a right to see Mr. Wallace if he came. Gabe.

She thought about sex all the time.

Harry didn’t. At least not with her, she thought, moving from the closet and flopping down across the bed. She had heard people say that men only want women for one thing. Well, the only thing Harry wanted her for was to be a maid to him and those kids. And they weren’t even her kids! She began to whimper. She had only become twenty on November nineteenth!

It was just too bad Dewey had been married — otherwise he would have had to marry her. But of course she was already married. The only one who wasn’t married was Mr. Wallace. Boy, she had really told him off on the phone. Harry had been good and mad when she had finally repeated to him what he had said to her. Who the hell did he think he was! Who was he, breaking up families! He was nothing but a goddam Jew, making a dollar on somebody else’s troubles! Vic said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Jews had made the recession.

She wondered what it was like to do it with a Jew. She remembered the story of the little nigger boy they had taken to the hospital back home. She began to giggle and then she was crying, really crying this time. Harry just got on top, most times when she wasn’t even ready. The only warning she had was that he would get up and pull down the shades all the way, then draw the curtains across and close the door tight. They couldn’t even see each other’s face. She knew he made believe he was doing it to Wanda. Well, she could make believe she was doing it to somebody else, too! She had, many times — even with Dewey she had made believe she was doing it with somebody else. But that was because she knew that Dewey was making believe he was doing it with somebody else. Nobody who did it to her ever made believe he was doing it to her.

Well, she might not be a beauty queen, but at least she was clean and she had nice clothes.

But when could she ever wear them?

She put her ear to the door. She could hear hardly any of what was being said. Apparently he had been there for some time now, even while she had been on the bed, thinking things over. Little by little the voices were getting louder, and more frightening, and she was afraid to open the door. Harry had told her it was none of her business.

Why did she have to listen to him? She wasn’t his slave!

But she wasn’t going to run away again. Harry took care of her.

She thought of how she could get out of the room. Quietly she opened the door, and then tiptoed down the hallway to the room where the children slept. Once inside the children’s room, she quickly closed the door, but then she couldn’t hear anything again. Though in the corridor she had heard Mr. Wallace’s voice, and then some terrible thing that Harry was saying. When he got mad, he could really get mad.

Melinda was sleeping; the little baby, George, was sleeping too. And Walter was pretending to sleep. He was trying to trick her again. Her excuse for coming in was to make sure none of them had kicked off a blanket, but she wasn’t going to do anything for Walter if he was going to try to trick her. She stood over his bed.

“All right, Walter, why are you actin’ like you’re sleepin’?”

He did not answer.

“That’s just like you act like you can’t do it in the bowl. I’m goin’ to take your diaper away from you, then what you goin’ to do, huh?”

She shook him. “Don’t you pretend you’re sleepin’, Walter.” She shook him again.

The child’s eyes opened.

She gave him a good crack across the face.

He began to howl. “Well, that’s what you deserve,” she said, but he only howled louder. She knew he hated her. She would have cracked him again, just for good measure, but he was howling like an animal.

The door swung open. “What’s going on in here!” Harry shouted.

She could hear Vic and Gabe arguing in the other room. “He spit at me — so I hit him, to teach him—”

“He don’t spit at nobody!” Harry said. His face was red; he was shaking a finger at her.

“Well, he spits at me! So I gave him a good crack.”

“You don’t give nobody a good crack! I’ll give you a crack!”

“I got a right to come out in the living room. It’s my house too.”

“I’ll tell you whether to come out in the living room or not!”

“I’m not your slave—”

“You get back in your bedroom!”

“I got a right to see Mr. Wallace, if I want—”

But Mr. Wallace was in the doorway, with Vic. Melinda was sitting up in bed, and now George was crying too. And she was only twenty years old! What were any of these strangers to her? Christmas Eve without even a tree!

From the doorway Mr. Wallace was shouting — at her. “—you agreed, Theresa—” His face was red too. Vic had his hand on Mr. Wallace’s shoulder.

“Yes—”

“—extortion—”

“—back in your own room and stay—”

“—money already! months ago—”

“—baby—”

“It’s my living room too!” she screamed, and raced into it.

On the sofa was a laundry basket, and there was a small baby in it. She heard the men shouting — heading back to where she stood.

Nobody would hit a woman with a child. Her child! She picked it up and held it in her arms. It was her child! She looked at its face.

“It’s my baby — I’m holdin’ my baby—” she screamed, as they came at her.

“Put that baby down!”

“Theresa—” Wallace said.

“It’s mine! I ain’t goin’ to sign nothin’!”

“It’s not yours!” Mr. Wallace was moving his arms. “It’s not yours!”

“—it’s not yours—” Harry was saying, but not to her.

Mr. Wallace was screaming, “I’ll kill you!”

“Hey—”

Vic had grabbed Mr. Wallace’s shoulder. Mr. Wallace’s mouth was open, and his face was huge and red, almost as though it would pop. God, he wasn’t really handsome at all. “That baby—” he roared, but Harry was lunging toward her. She broke for the bedroom.

But she couldn’t lock the door in time; he barged through. What was she doing?

“You nuts—crazy?”

“Walter spit at me!”

“Put that baby down, God damn you. Put it down!”

“You ain’t goin’ to order—”

“I got five hundred bucks! I’m going to get two hundred more, you miserable little bitch! You give me that baby!”

“You can’t sell my baby!”

“Oh it’s not your damn—”

“I’m only twenty—”

He was coming at her. “You want to go out in the cold? You don’t want me to go in a business? You want to starve?”

She thrust the baby at him. “I just want you to know, Harry,” she said, “that I just ain’t no—”

But he wasn’t listening. He was heading back to the living room with the baby in his arms. “You got to know, Harry,” she said, following after, mumbling, “I want to get dressed up and go out every once in a while, I want, every once in a while—”

A few minutes earlier there had been all that screaming in the living room; now no one was speaking. Vic was standing, and Mr. Wallace was on the floor. On his knees. His forehead was touching the rug, his arms were over his ears. He was not moving.

Harry said, “Hey, did you hit …?” She knew right off how scared he was.

“Uh-uh,” Vic said. “He just crumpled up. You all run out — and he fell down. Like that.”

No one spoke. Vic was scared; she was scared too.

“You didn’t hit him?”

“He just crumpled up.”

Harry walked around Mr. Wallace. His face was no longer red. “Hey, Mr. Wallace?”

A very thin sound rose from the figure on the floor.

“He said telephone,” Vic said. “He said something.”

“He wants to use the telephone,” she said.

“It ain’t connected.”

“Downstairs,” she said. She was shivering. She wished Mr. Wallace would get up off the floor.

Harry was still holding that baby. It was a good baby — it didn’t even cry. But she didn’t want an extra baby anyway.

“Better take him to the phone,” Harry said finally.

She said, “Me?”

“Who’s he going to call?” asked Vic.

“He’s gotta call somebody. Somebody gotta get him …”

Mr. Wallace was rising off the floor. He did not take his arms from his ears. He did not look up. He did not smile — she thought he might; that it might be a joke he had pulled to make them all quiet down.

Vic and Harry were whispering. She led Mr. Wallace down the stairs. When Mr. Phelps opened the door, she said, “Something’s happened to this man …” She couldn’t look at him, and neither could Mr. Phelps, who stepped aside.

At the phone she watched his fingers dialing. But he was not able to speak very well. He handed her the phone — but she didn’t want it either. Mr. and Mrs. Phelps were standing back, watching; when she turned to pass the phone on to them, neither of them stepped forward.

She had to speak into it. “Hello?” she said. “… That was Mr. Wallace. Somebody better come help him … He had some kind of attack.”

The man on the other end asked where she was calling from; in terror, she gave him the address. Had he dialed the police?

She whispered, “Are you the man who’s got a little baby?”

He said that he was.

“Come get it then!” she pleaded. “We don’t want it!” and hung up. She turned to the Phelpses. “Don’t tell Harry—”

But all of a sudden she felt gypped. While she had been holding that baby she should have made Harry promise her something. She should have made him promise to take her out some place nice to eat on Sundays. She should at least have made him promise that! But she had missed her chance. And she was only twenty. Tears came to her eyes again. She could not believe that her good times were all gone.

3

London, November 3

Dear Libby,

Only just a moment ago I opened the envelope from you. I should tell you that I thought I had thrown it away, unopened, months ago. But today it is rainy, and I am about to leave for Italy, and my bags are packed — I am sitting in the hotel lobby, in fact, in the midst of my luggage, waiting before I take a taxi to the airport. Fishing around in my raincoat pocket for my tickets I discovered your letter. I suppose I would have come upon it earlier if it had not been such a fine, dry fall here. Coming upon it another day, I might have thrown it away a second time, despite the numerous forwarding addresses on its face, which give to it an air of earnestness something like your own. It may be that I choose to sit down and answer you now because I am all packed and ready to go. It may be that I have not changed too much, or at all. Nevertheless, I have tried to find enjoyment in traveling, and I think mostly about what I see.

I cannot, of course, come to Rachel’s first birthday celebration, what with four months having elapsed since it was held. However, had I been in America in July, near you and your family, I don’t believe I would have come then either. I am not even sure what to make of your having asked me. Nor am I entirely certain why, once having decided to send me an invitation, you sent only the invitation, and no other word, no further remark.

Sitting here, my first thought as to your motive was not pleasant. I saw you standing above me, saying: We have survived, not you. But I can’t hold that image in my mind — nor the image of you fastening the envelope and slipping it into the box for no other reason than to be arrogant. I may be deceiving myself, but I believe what you hoped was that your invitation would catch up with me and inform me, wherever I was, that Rachel was now one year old, and yours — still and for good. That would have been kindness enough, surely, considering how close I brought all of you to an awful end. But your kindness is even larger, is it not? Knowing you, I think: why wouldn’t it be?

However, if this little card you sent is an invitation to be forgiven — for me to feel free to accept your forgiveness — I must say that I am unable to accept. Because I don’t know that I’m properly penitent. And I feel, perhaps wrongly, that this attitude might qualify your forgiveness.

I can’t bring myself yet to ask forgiveness for that night. If you’ve lived for a long while as an indecisive man, you can’t simply forget, obliterate, bury, your one decisive moment. I can’t — in the name of the future, perhaps — accept forgiveness for my time of strength, even if that time was so very brief, and was followed so quickly and humiliatingly by the dissolution of character, of everything. Others — you — may see my decisiveness — my doing something — anything — that! — as born only of desperation, and therefore without value. I, nevertheless, have to wonder about it a little more. You see, I thought at the time that I was sacrificing myself. Whatever broken explanations I offered to others in the days that followed, whatever — I find I cannot finish this sentence.

The rain has slackened and I must go. I don’t believe that for you and me to correspond, on this matter or others, would be beneficial to either of us. But, of course, you are the one who knows that. I take it now that that was why you thought to have your card say nothing, just the time and the place of the event, and its nature. Thank you. It is only kind of you, Libby, to feel that I would want to know that I am off the hook. But I’m not, I can’t be, I don’t even want to be — not until I make some sense of the larger hook I’m on.

Yours,

Gabe