Letting Go (42 page)

He kneeled beside her and tried to quiet her the way a conductor quiets a symphony orchestra; raising and lowering his palms,
he said, “Okay now, okay. You can type, you can type just as well as anybody. Come on now—try to hang on. You can hang on now.”

“I am hanging on.”

“I know. Just keep it up—”

“Paul, I’ve made about—honestly, about thirty-five stencils. I just can’t do it! What’s the trouble with me? Haven’t I got any coordination either? Can’t I do
anything?
”

“Did the Dean make you stay? Doesn’t he know you’ve been sick?”

“I want to stay.” Her voice now was without passion. “I wanted to stay and finish. But I can’t even do a paragraph. I can’t type one lousy sentence through to the end.”

“You can type,” he said. “You can type perfectly well.” Slowly he began to gather all the discarded papers and deposit them in the waste basket. “The machine sticks. It’s not your fault.”

“It just sticks a little.”

“All right, calm down now.” He rose and offered her his hands to help her from the chair. But Libby crossed her arms over the typewriter, lowered her head onto it, and wept.

Till then I had remained because I knew it would only doubly embarrass Herz if I were to disappear; I was sure that he was as determined as I that we should go ahead with our plans—he too, I thought, had felt that something was being settled. Now I stepped out of the doorway and around into the corridor. I did not even consider how late I was going to be for my engagement. I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes, and I remember saying to myself:
I don’t understand.

“You don’t have to work in any office,” Paul was saying. “You just stay at home and rest.”

“I don’t want to rest. I’m only twenty-five. I don’t want to rest all the time.”

“Maybe you could take some classes during the day—”

“It’s one horrible mess after another, isn’t it?” Her hysteria was almost completely run down now; she had simply asked a question. “I think”—I heard her taking deep breaths—“I think I need a glass of water, Paul, and a pill.”

Without moving, I called into the room, “You stay, Paul. I’ll get it.” For when Libby had spoken, I had had the vision of Paul leaving the room, and Libby stepping to the window, and then Libby sailing, sweeping down through the air. I filled a cup at the water fountain and brought it back to the Dean’s office.

Libby was by the window, it turned out, but she was using it as a mirror in which to comb her hair. Paul was twirling her earmuffs slowly around his fingers; he signaled for me to put the cup down on the desk.

“Libby says she’d like to have that drink at the club,” he said.

“Fine,” I answered.

Libby turned from the window, her face no longer tinged scarlet, but a chalky white. She sighed and blinked ruefully. I was surprised to see that she had a reserve of strength in her, and grateful that the incident was over.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I’ve been so damn silly. I’d like to go to the club, if you still want me. I’ve never been there before.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Anybody who’s after the p and keeps getting the half …” I smiled.

She pointed at the machine. “It’s a ridiculous business, but I felt like one of those old movies—tied to the railroad tracks with the train coming.”

“I understand.”

“It sticks,” Paul explained, picking up his briefcase. “It could frustrate anybody.”

“Sure,” I put in. “You ought to have them fix it.”

“I will,” Libby said. She blew her nose again into the kerchief and took a last look around the office.

“Now,” Paul asked, “what are you going to put on your head?”

She pointed to the earmuffs.

“Your head,” he said. “Not your ears. Didn’t you have a handkerchief—did you have to use your kerchief?”

“I’ll be all right.”

“It’s snowing out, Libby. It’s freezing out.”

“Wait a minute,” Libby said, ignoring him, and turned back to the typewriter to put the plastic cover over it.

“Libby,” Herz said, practically begging, “don’t you have anything to put on your head?”

Standing over the typewriter she began to cry. “You’d think,” she sobbed, “a snowflake would
kill
me.”

Paul moved toward her, offering the handkerchief from his own pocket. “Here,” he whispered, “just till we get there. Just put this on your head, please. Look, Libby, if you don’t like office work, if it’s agony, do me a favor. Quit. We don’t need this job—”

“Oh, I like office work. I love office work,” she said, weeping.
“The Dean is a very sweet man.” She raised Paul’s handkerchief to her nose.

“Please”
he said, “blow it in the kerchief, will you, honey? Libby, don’t we have enough doctor bills? Please leave
some
thing to cover your head—”

“Well, don’t be
exasperated
with me!”

“Libby, maybe if you stayed home this winter you could shake—”

“I don’t want to stay home.” She pulled the kerchief from her coat and ran it under her nose.

“Maybe if you take that paper-marking job,” Paul said. “If you want to work, you can mark papers at home.”

She bent over to buckle her galoshes. “I don’t want to stay at home. I’m too damn dumb to mark papers. I don’t even have a degree.”

“Then just read. Cook. Keep house.”

“I don’t want to stay at home! What’s at home? What’s at home but a lot of crappy furniture!”

There was no answer to that. And after a second, Libby was clearly humiliated with herself. She tilted her head, and put her hands on her hips, and tears slid from her eyes. She was saying, “Oh but I don’t want to stay home though. I really don’t. Oh sweetheart, there’s nothing
at
home—”

“Then,” said Paul in a flat voice, “do whatever you want, Libby. Whatever will make you happy.”

“Whatever will make me happy.”

She repeated his words with such utter hopelessness that Paul and I both moved toward her, as though she were on the very edge of collapse. He said, “Libby, what is it?
What?
”

“Oh I want a baby or something,” she moaned. “I want a dog or a TV. Paulie, I can’t do anything.”

“Yes you can. You can do anything.” His back was to me, and he was rocking her. “Yes you can, Libby.” Her chin hung on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed and she shook and shook her head—saying to herself no no no, even as Paul crooned to her yes yes yes. Then her dark eyes were open and I almost believed she was going to smile. She said, looking my way, “Oh Gabe …”

“Yes,” I said, raising a hand as though to wave to her. “You’re all right, Lib.”

“Oh yes, yes I am I know—” For a moment she seemed between
laughter and tears. “I think I want a baby or something. I don’t want to be at home, just me. I think maybe I should have a baby—” She began to weep again.

“Libby, Libby,” Paul was whispering into her ear.

She rocked in her husband’s arms. “A baby or a dog or a TV,” she said. “Oh Paulie, what a mess, what a weary mess—”

But he went on repeating her name, over and over, as though the sound of it would remove some of her woe. She babbled and he chanted and I watched—and then I was shaking. My hands were shaking. I could not control them, or myself.

“Then give her a child!
Have a child!
”

It was only when both their heads jerked up to look at me that I knew for sure that I had spoken. The savage voice, the fierce demand, had been mine. And my hands were motionless.

Paul Herz turned and went to the window.

When I spoke again it was in hardly more than a whisper. “Perhaps if there was a baby …” I stopped. I had the illusion that the two figures only a few feet away were actually way off in the distance. In miniature I saw Libby’s dark face and Paul’s hair and their two bodies. I said no more.

But Libby did. “What are you talking about?” she demanded of me. “What are you even saying? Why don’t you just not say anything for a change? What are you even saying?” she shouted hysterically. “Do you even know?”

I leaned forward to apologize. “I forgot myself,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“Well, why don’t you
not
say anything! Why don’t you just
shut up!
”

“Libby—” Paul said, but he was facing me, so that I could not even tell which one of us he was going to address.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Libby interrupted him, looking right into my eyes.

I did not reply.

“Why don’t you leave him alone for a change?” she cried in a broken voice. “He can make babies! He can make any amount of babies he wants!”

“I said I was sorry I had said anything.”

“My lousy kidneys!” she cried. “I hate those kidneys. It’s my kidneys, you stupid dope!”

I looked away; after a moment’s confusion I turned to her husband. “I didn’t know. I didn’t guess.”

Libby was hammering her fists on her thighs. “Then why don’t you go away! Shut up, why don’t you!
Mind your own business!
”

“I will,” I said. “Okay,” and I turned and went out the door.

But weeping, she followed me into the corridor; I heard her voice moving after me as I headed down the stairs. “How much do you expect to be told,
you dope!
You dope, Gabe,
you tease!
Oh you terrible terrible tease—”

At daybreak it was always snowing, and very late in the night too. Inside, snow blows against her bedroom window; outside, snow falls on my bleary lids; as I make a stab at navigating my car through a black antarctica to Fifty-fifth Street, snow nearly sends me up trees and down sewers. At home it pings off my own window—time ticking,
here comes dawn again
—as in my underwear and socks I dive into the disheveled bed, gather about me my rumpled sheets, and go sailing off after sleep. How my body remembers that winter. It was always tired, poor soul, and outside—beyond what body can and cannot change, where body promises nothing, annihilates no one—it was always snowing.

The motor thumped under me, the heater whirred; I shot nose drops up to my sinuses (I saw the cavities of my head thick with a kind of London fog), but they only burned their way down to my raw throat. The body has no loyalty—bank it with pleasure and draw out disease. Parked across from the Hawaiian House, waiting for Martha to finish work, I was getting the common cold.

My watch showed one minute after one; then two after. I had a fevered fantasy of the hands on my watch advancing toward morning, and the temperature plummeting down and down, until by daybreak Chicago would simply have cracked in two, one half to tumble in the lake, the other to be blown westward, across endless prairies and
mountains, until it dropped over into the Pacific and melted away to nothing. I was dying for spring, for warmth; the weather and my pleasures were out of joint.

Three after one. Still no Martha. Mr. Spicer, the manager of the Hawaiian House, appeared in his overcoat and hat, carrying his moneybags. The police, who waited each night to take him to the deposit box, opened the door to the squad car and Spicer stepped in. A chill ran over me; I sneezed once, and then again. My head rolled down and I half slept. Mrs. Silberman was knitting a gigantic sweater for me. A workman in overalls and tennis shoes was building a box with black windows; he was my father; the box was for me to sit in.

“Hey, open up.”

On the sidewalk was Martha, and someone else—a girl bundled in a coat and hat, whose face I couldn’t see. “Let us in,” Martha called. The air that rushed in with them penetrated my coat and moved right down to the bone.

Martha inclined her face toward me and we brushed cheeks. “Can you give Theresa a ride? Theresa, come on, this is Gabe. Can we drive her to the El, she’s not feeling too fit. Theresa, close the door.”

“Thank yuh.”

“Don’t worry about those books,” I said, turning to get a look at her, “just push everything aside.”

“I hardly need …” She blew her nose. Halfway to the El, she began to sob. Martha touched my leg, but she needn’t have, for I was in no mood anyway to ask questions.

When we got to the train, Martha turned on her knees and faced the back seat. “Everything will be all right. Just try to get some sleep.”

“I knew it,” the girl wept. “I just knew it.”

We waited until Theresa had walked up the stairway to the train and disappeared, and then I drove off.

“Poor dumb cluck,” Martha said.

“Martha, I’m going to take you home. I’m going home myself—” She wasn’t listening, however, and I didn’t feel I had the strength to repeat myself.

“The poor jerk got herself pregnant.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m going to collapse of exhaustion myself. I’m taking you home, then I’m going back to my place.”

“Oh yes?”

“I’m a dying man, sweetheart. Honestly, I’m dead.” She didn’t answer. “You come tomorrow,” I said, “to my place. Doesn’t Annie LaSmith come tomorrow?”

“I promised Markie I’d take him to buy a Christmas tree tomorrow.”

“Let Annie stay with him—you can come—”

“I promised him.”

“Okay. I’m just too dead tonight.”