Letting Go (50 page)

From down the hall I heard Sam say, “Well, isn’t that something, isn’t that nice.” A moment later he was slapping me on the back. “How are you, boy? I called you last week and you didn’t answer. I thought, poor fella, must be sick as a dog. You need anything now? You feeling all right?”

“I’m much better, Sam.”

“We old bachelors have to stick together, huh? Okay, Patricia, where’s the cider—” and he and Pat went off to the living room. The Spigliano girls took their seats again, one on either side of the door. I was about to ask them to bring my coat and hat out of hiding when Libby came in from the living room.

I went up to her, and though I did not take her in my arms, my heart was beating as though I had. She looked up at me with her flushed face; I knew that she had watched me leave the room and had followed in order that we could be alone. My heart was beating so because I thought there was something very crucial she was going to say to me, or I was going to say to her.

But I told her simply that she was looking very well.

She answered, “Thank you. I hope you’re better. No one ever really thinks of Gabe as being sick.”

I let the remark remain unanswered. “I want to be straight with you, Libby,” I said, “I’ve never meant to tease—”

“That? Oh, it was nothing.” She wouldn’t look at me.

“You should know I went to see Paul’s parents in Brooklyn.”

She was startled for no more than half a second; flatly she said, “Thank you very much. That was kind of you.” She smiled then, as though I were Sam McDougall, or one of the Spigliano children. “Excuse me, will you?”

She went off to wherever she had been intending to go in the first place.

I behaved badly—with even less wisdom—from then on. I drank too much, and my voice carried, and finally I was putting my arm around Peggy Moberly, which one hasn’t the right to do unless one intends afterwards to lift her up and carry her over a threshold.

“Why don’t you ever call me?” Peggy asked. “Why do I give the impression that I’m only interested in books?”

“You don’t give that impression at all, Peg.”

“You’re a cruel man,” she said, but she took off her glasses anyway. “Don’t you ever want to take me to the movies?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to take me to dinner tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Where will we go?”

Bill Lake was performing a Cossack dance in the center of the room. Squatting, arms crossed, head up, he snapped his long legs in and out while the circle that had gathered around him clapped in time. “Hey! Ha! Hey! Ha!” The little Spigliano girls giggled in the doorway. In the corner, Charleen Carlisle and her fiancé were arguing … I should have married Charleen. I should have married Peggy.

“I should marry you, Peg.”

“Oh don’t be cruel with me, will you, Gabe?”

“I’m not being cruel. I’m being nice. Can’t anybody tell the difference?”

“You know, if you haven’t been feeling well, you shouldn’t drink too much.”

To that I shook my head. “Not so.”

“Maybe we should go to have dinner now.”

“Maybe we should get married.”

“Gabe, you’re being awful! What’s the
matter
with you!” She shook a fist at me—spectacles poked out at either end—and left.

Of course, there was no excuse. We all put in a few good reprehensible days in life—exclusive, that is, of the long-range cruelties—and this I suppose was one of mine. Later on, the party had thinned out—John had performed
his
folk dance, and we were out of liverwurst and down to plain rye rounds—and I was dancing with Peggy. I kissed her neck, a sheer piece of son-of-a-bitchery.

“Gabe,” she said, “don’t you be mean to me. Be good to me, Gabe.”

I held her tight, crushing what little she had against me, and we spun past Pat Spigliano, who was saying to her partner, Larry Morgan—

“Women are much more sexually excitable
over
thirty-five, of course—”

We danced on, two close bodies, two distant spirits. I shall catalogue no further my various indecencies, except to add that after a while I began to sing the particularly weighty lines of certain popular songs into Peggy’s lonely ear.

We settled finally in a chair near the Christmas tree. Peggy was saying, “I’ve always been interested in Judaism, even in the seventh grade—”

As Peggy spoke, I saw my few adult years as a series of miscalculations, insincerities, and postures; either that, or I was unforgivably innocent.

“Oh where,” I sang, “are all the nice Gentile boys.”

“Gabe, shhhh—what are you talking about? Stop narrowing your eyes like that.”

“You’re after our men.”

“Oh Gabe, please cut it out.
Please
 …” For Peggy’s purposes, I had to be either romantic or intelligent.

“I should have married Doris Horvitz,” I said.

“Now I’m not kidding—”

I slid into a grumpy silence—Peggy, damn sweet fool, took my
hand and stroked it—and listened to snatches of conversation from back of the Christmas tree. Could you believe it? He was talking about structure.

“But,” answered Paul Herz, “the point is, John, that the student goes around thinking writing is like tapestry-weaving; a kind of construction work. As far as he can make out, it doesn’t have anything to do with life, with being human—”

“I don’t”—John was chuckling—“know if it’s our duty to be teaching them, as you like to put it, to be human. I know it’s nice to be
engagé
—” he said facetiously, and I lost the rest in the crash of a glass on the far side of the room.

Paul was saying, “—talk about form is an
evasion—
”

“—as a critical method has a long history, I suppose, but for myself—”

“—not talking about impressionism at
all
, for God’s sake!”

“What else then?” John asked. “One has to do more than come into class and tell the student, Oh isn’t this wonderful, oh isn’t your heart all aquiver. I suppose to be a creative writer—”

“Could you do me a favor and stop calling him that?” It was Libby speaking now.

“I’m sorry. I thought he identified himself—”

“Do you call Melville ‘a creative writer’?” she demanded. “Is that what you call Dostoevsky?”

“I meant only to differentiate between those of us who are engaged in criticism—”

“Well, the difference is obvious!” Libby said. “You don’t have to bother.”

“Let’s go, Gabe,” Peggy was saying. “You need some food in your stomach. I’m going to get our coats.”

“You take care of me, old Peg, my coat’s a—”

“I know which is yours,” she said, smiling.

I remained in my chair a moment, then rose and stretched and tried to clear my head. Back of the Christmas tree, through the branches and the tinsel and the lights, I saw Paul and Libby in profile.

She was saying, “Paul,
don’t
fight with him.”

“Let’s go home. Let’s get out of this fucking place.”

“But I was having such a good
time—
”

His hand went up and smoothed her cheek; then it passed down, still touching her. I saw his fingers move inside the neckline of her red dress. “Let’s go home, Libby.”

I turned away. Scanning the room for a friend, I waved at Mona Meyerling, who saluted. Behind me, I heard Libby speak. “Yes yes—oh Paul—” Then she was racing right by me, one hand up to her fiery cheek, a very excited girl.

And I was in the clutches of Pat Spigliano.

“—yes, I have to,” I was saying.

“And we didn’t even get a chance to talk.”

“We’ll all get together soon,” I said.

“We must. I keep telling John we have to get together with Gabe—we must have him over for a meal one night. Ahh, did you ever get together with that sweet Mrs.… you know, John’s older student. The waitress.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all get together again. She seemed like a very nice person. A very
fine
person. How is she doing?”

“She’s fine,” I said. “Thanks for the party, Pat. It was a regular Spigliano party.”

“We love giving them, Gabe,” she said, as John came over to us and Peggy appeared with our coats. Behind her was Libby, already in her familiar polo coat and kerchief. She was carrying Paul’s coat on her arm.

“Goodbye,” Libby said from the doorway, where Paul now joined her. “Thank you, Mrs. Spigliano.”

“Goodbye,” we all said, and the Herzes went out the door.

Peggy couldn’t be discouraged from helping me into my coat. I had the feeling that all the people around me were winking at one another. John said, “Feeling sharp enough to drive?”

“I’m going to leave that to the taxi driver,” I said. Everyone laughed heartily.

“We love having you, Gabe,” Pat said. “We have to see more of Gabe,” she said to her husband, “and more of Peggy too.”

“Absolutely,” I said. There was no need to go on, but I did. “I have to see more of Peggy myself.”

Everyone smiled, and for the first time, because I was being allowed all the prerogatives of a drunk, I felt like one.

“And we loved your friends,” Pat said. “The creative writer and his wife. They seem like a very nice bohemian couple. I think it’s beneficial for all of us to have a young couple like that around. Though she’s a very bohemian-looking girl, isn’t she? I said to John when he hired them, I’ll bet they’re beatniks, and well,” she said,
raising a finger, “I wasn’t far from wrong. I wish they hadn’t felt so out of place.”

“I guess they didn’t know everybody,” said Peggy, confused.

“He’s a very off-beat fellow,” John said.

“I suppose so,” I said, when everyone turned to me.

“However,” Pat put in, “they seemed very nice.” We all agreed to that, and said our thank yous again. At the door the Spigliano little girls sped us on our way with a choral good night.

Between the two high holly bushes that flanked the downstairs door, I slipped on the snow. My hat fell over my eyes and Peggy began to laugh. While she helped me to my feet, I saw Paul and Libby again. They were standing in front of the house next door; Paul was stopped in his tracks, and Libby was in front of him, but turned around and facing him. His hands were down in his pockets and his head inclined toward the walk.

The night was cold and empty, and their voices carried. “What is it?” Libby was saying. “What is it? I thought—”

“I do,” he said. “I do.”

“What
is
it then?”

“I’m all right.” He started walking.

“Oh, your moods,” Libby said. Then, each with hands in pockets, they moved down the street and out of sight.

Peggy and I had dinner at a little restaurant on the Near North Side, where there were shaded lamps on every table and the young man at the piano drank Shweppes water and played very softly songs like “Imagination” and “Long Ago and Far Away.” I continued drinking and Peggy’s eyes glistened just from intimacy alone. When the wine came, I caused a disproportionate amount of trouble over its temperature, which launched Peggy into apologizing for me to the waiter, the cigarette girl, and the people at the next table. Later we took a taxi back to the South Side. She held her glasses in her gloves all the way down the Outer Drive, and on the front porch of her rooming house I pushed into her lips with painless, moribund abandon.

“Oh Gabe,” she moaned into my cold ear, “let’s not go too fast. Don’t make me fall for you too fast.”

“Okay,” I said, and stumbled home.

I waited as long as I could bear to, and then sometime after one o’clock I called.

“Martha, it’s me. Martha, I’ve missed the hell out of you. I made a damn weak, silly error. I let everyone down, myself included.
I’m not flying in the face of my instincts any more, Martha. I’m not turning off my fires any more. I’ll follow what I have to follow—I’m stopping being anxious, Martha—we make the laws, we do. I can’t keep being what I’ve been. I want to be happy, Martha. I want to be with you.”

I stopped, and heard what I thought for a moment was something as noncommittal as a cough. But it was the beginning of tears. She said, “Oh, you’re drunk, baby—but come, come anyway.”

“What about Daddy?” Cynthia asked.

“Daddy has decided to live in Arizona. He decided that a long time ago. I don’t think that Daddy is a consideration here. He doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m saying, Cynthia.”

“Is Gabe our new Daddy?” Markie asked.

“He’s mother’s dearest dearest friend. He’s your dearest friend.”

“Yes,” Markie said.

“Okay?”

“Will he sleep in bed with you?” Cynthia asked.

In the kitchen I sat at the uncleared table, drinking my coffee; in the children’s room I heard Martha say that I would.

“Where’s Arizona again?” Mark asked.

“In the southwest of the United States. I showed you on the map.”

Cynthia spoke next, her words a surprise. I did not expect that she would choose so quickly to be distracted. “What’s the capital?” she asked.

“Tucson. Phoenix,” Martha said. “I’m not sure.”

“What’s the capital of Illinois?” Cynthia asked.

“Springfield.”

“Why don’t they make it Chicago?” asked Cynthia.

“I don’t know, sweetheart.”