Letting Go (19 page)

“I practically just started.”

“That’s all right. That’s why you’re upset.”

“I’ve been upset before. I get a tight colon or a runny nose—but never this.”

“But
how?”

“I don’t
know
how.”

“You don’t use that thing right.”

“I do use it right.”

“On the little booklet that comes with the grease it shows how you should lie down when you put it in. I’ve told you a hundred times, lie down the way it shows in the booklet. No—you’ve got to stand up. You’ve got to do it like you’re putting on your shoes!”

“Either way—”

“Why can’t you do it the way it says to do it? Why do we have to take chances?”

“Paul, that’s not a chance. A doctor showed me how, standing up. It’s perfectly all right.”

“If it’s so all right why are you ten days late?”

“That hasn’t anything to do with it.”

“What does?”

“I don’t know what does. Please, let’s not fight about it.”

“What are we going to do if you’re pregnant, Libby? What are we going to do with a baby now?”

“I’ll menstruate. I’ve had pains—I had some this morning.”

“I thought you didn’t get pains.”

“Maybe I will this time. Maybe that’s why I’m irregular.”

“Why?”

“
I don’t know!
Leave me alone. I’ll menstruate for you. Just leave me be!”

“Don’t menstruate for
me
, Libby. Oh, don’t start any crap like that. You came running to me, didn’t you? ‘Paul, I think I’m pregnant—oh what’ll we do!’ ”

“I was upset. We quit school, we came here to make money, we got jobs, and now suddenly
this!”

“All right, Libby, all right.”

“All right what?”

“Arguing is stupid.”

“Honey, I’ll go to the bathroom. I’ll check.”

“You know how? That first day, right after your last period—”

“But it’s
safe
then.”

“No time is safe. I said use the damn thing. Take a minute out and use it.”

“It’s so unaesthetic—it’s such a pain in the neck. It’s so unspon
taneous.”

“And she romanticized them into a family of ten.”

“Maybe I’m not pregnant. People miss whole months sometimes. If we can’t figure out how, then I’m probably just missing a whole month. Maybe it’s from working at a new job—”

“We can figure out how. I can figure out how.”

“It’s safe then! Four days at the beginning, four at the end. We
always
did that.”

“We were lucky.”

“It’s biologically impossible—”

“They swim, Libby. They hide in nooks and crannies, waiting.”

“I just know I’m not. I can’t be. We
are
careful.”

“Libby, you’re careful when you use that thing the way it’s supposed to be used, when you don’t skimp on the goddam jelly.”

“The jelly’s expensive. The jelly costs two dollars a tube!”

“So what! Did I ever say anything? Did I ever say
don’t
buy more jelly? Buy it! Use it!
Squander
it! That’s what it’s for!”

“But the diaphragm does all the work.”

“Oh Libby.”

“Well, I can’t stand it!
I
have to put it in
me!
Right in the midst of everything and I have to stop and fill that plunger! I hate it!”

“And what do you prefer—this?”

“They don’t have anything to do with one another. I mean I do use the goo and I do use the thing and we
are
careful.”

“Go in the bathroom. Go take a look. Let’s not argue.”

“I just looked.”

“Anything?”

“Not really.”

“What’s not really mean?”

“Well—nothing. But I’m sure tomorrow. I have a pimple on my forehead and one starting under my chin. I break out—”

“Do you?”

“Well, I used to.”

“Libby, what are we going to do?”

“I’ll be all right. I know I will.”

“It was that first day, Libby.”

“But it’s so wonderful when I don’t have to worry about anything, when we just do it whenever we want, without all that crap.”

“How are we going to afford you pregnant? How are we going to afford a baby?”

“But people miss whole
months—
”

“I don’t see what
good
it’ll do.”

“The good is we’ll know, one way or another.”

“We’ll know anyway, if I miss another month. I don’t see what’s to be gained.”

“What’s to be gained is we’ll know. Am I making myself clear, Lib, or do I have to say it again? We’ll know.”

“The test costs ten dollars.”

“That’s all right.”

“It’s
not
all right. This room costs that much a week. I may menstruate tomorrow and then it would just be ten bucks out the window.”

“So let it be out the window.”

“But, Paul, suppose I
am
pregnant. For ten dollars you can probably buy diapers—we’ll
need
the ten dollars. Can’t we wait? Can’t we forget it for a while? We come home from work and that’s all we talk about. I don’t see you all day and that’s all we ever talk about.”

“We’ll have the test and well know and then we can talk about other things.”

“So we’ll know. Then what! When we know it’ll be worse!”

“It’ll be better.”

“It’ll be worse, Paul. It’ll be much worse.”

“Paul, that’s not so. You misunderstood.”

“Don’t please be a blockhead. We’ve got other things to think about.”

“Honey, look up at me. Honey, positive means the rabbits responded
positively.
That I’m not pregnant.”

“Libby, the guy on the phone said positive.”

“And that’s what I mean. Positive. Negative would mean I’m pregnant. Doesn’t that make sense?”

“Negative means no.”

“No I’m pregnant, or no I’m not pregnant?”

“No you’re pregnant.”

“That’s right. No would mean I
was
pregnant. The test is to see whether you’re not pregnant. No means you are. Yes you’re not. The result is positive, though. Positive is good.”

“Libby, you’re getting things hopelessly confused.”

“You are. Paul, I’m sure. It’s negative you
don’t
want. I knew I wasn’t pregnant, honey. I just knew I couldn’t be.”

“But you are. You’re negative—”

“No, no, Paul, positive. You see,
you’re
confused.”

“Well, stop
jabbering
a minute! You’re positive, right? They take your urine, they shoot it in the rabbit—”

“Rabbits.”

“Rabbits! All
right.
Then they wait for some kind of reaction.
If the reaction is positive, you’re pregnant. If it’s negative, you’re not. You were positive.”

“Paul, they give the shot to the rabbits. If I’m all right, normal, then they react positively. Doesn’t that make sense to you? If I want to see if you’re all right, and I give you a shot and get a negative reaction, well, that’s bad.”

“Libby, you can’t even add a column of figures. You’re being illogical.”

“You are. You’re not thinking. Positive is good.”

“Lib … Lib, I’ll call the guy again. If you want me to I’ll call him and ask.”

“I just know it’s so.”

“I’ll call him.”

His job on the assembly line was to unite the half of the hinge on the trunk with the half of the hinge on the body. He had dreaded it all beforehand; whenever he had had to contemplate the change coming up in his life, he had to breathe deeply to keep control. During the week before he had dropped out of graduate school—while he and Libby were preparing to leave Ann Arbor—he had had claustrophobic dreams about being locked in small rooms, about submarines and strangulation. Beside him, Libby had moaned in deep dreams of her own. But now during the eight endless hours on the line, he was visited with an unexpected solemnity and calm. The submarine quality was there all right, the underwater lifeless feeling, as though none of this was happening in time; nevertheless the actual experience worked on him like a tonic. In place of dread came a sense of righteousness. He had at last raised a hand to the cruel world. Hinging a trunk to a car was not much, but it was something; he was earning a living. It did not even upset him—as he had been sure it would—to have Libby waiting on tables over in the executive dining room of the Chevrolet plant. At first she had been dumbstruck at having had to leave school in the middle of her senior year; but now each night when she came home from work she soaked her feet with a very gallant smile on her face. Truly, she inspired him—which did not necessarily mean that he had developed a sentimental attachment to their circumstances. Out of his hatred for their clammy basement room on West Grand Street, he had developed a hatred for all Detroit.

In the room itself, the lights had to be turned on even during
the day. The yellow from the bulbs penetrated their furniture and curtains so as to bring out every inch of ugliness. Only old people moved about in the other rooms of the three-story house, and when they hawked up mucus into the sinks, the sounds carried through the thin walls. Ancient men urinated in the bathroom down the hall, leaving the door open, leaning on their canes; often they were sick in the night, and those noises carried too. Surely if Paul had had a rich uncle and that uncle had died leaving him a fortune, he would have quit on the spot and moved the two of them back to Ann Arbor, where he had left two term papers half-written. But since no such uncle was alive even to expire, since even his possessionless father had dispossessed him, he accepted his fate, and seemed to derive from it a feeling of resiliency. If such lousy circumstances as these couldn’t humble him, what could? For all the beans they prepared on the hot plate, and for all the movies they decided they couldn’t afford to see, he felt his love for Libby flowering again. They did not argue as often as they had in Ann Arbor when they had begun to feel the financial squeeze. Perhaps they were only too exhausted now at night to sink their teeth in one another—but even the exhaustion proved something.

But when Paul called him back, the pharmacist assured him that positive meant only one thing: Libby was positively pregnant. Immediately Paul’s trunk-hinging stopped soothing him because it stopped engaging him. Cars fled past him as he added and subtracted in his head. The doctor plus the hospital plus the circumcision plus diapers, powders, formulas …

In how many months would she have to stop work?

How much are maternity clothes? Are they necessary?

How much would an apartment cost? Could they possibly stay on in the room? Instead of two years servitude in Detroit as planned, would they now be stuck here forever? A baby carriage plus a bassinet—

In the midst of his calculations, a passing auto frame nearly chopped off his left hand. He was spurting blood from the wrist when they rushed him to the infirmary. The doctor there, a curly-haired dark Italian, gave him the name of the abortionist.