Letting Go (60 page)

When Gabe failed to go on, Paul said to her, “He knows of a baby. He thought we should be told about it.”

“What?” Libby said. “What baby?”

Gabe remained in the doorway. “A private adoption.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Paul said to him. “Would you, please?” He suggested the chair next to his wife. “I want you to hear this,” he said then to Libby. “I want you to understand it all.”

Gabe came as far as the chair, but chose not to sit down. His
coat had a velvet collar. The dandy! The fairy! He probably couldn’t even do it himself, the cold-hearted rich bastard!

“There’s nothing to hear,” Gabe said. “I told you everything there is to tell. It’s up to you. You can tell it to her easier than I.”

Paul said, “I’d like Libby to hear it from you. Please. I don’t want her to get confused.”

Why was he making her out to be such a handful? I protect him—why can’t he protect me! “I do not get confused,” she said.

“Please, Libby, only listen. I want you to listen and decide. I asked him to come here,” Paul said, “so all the terms of the thing would be straight in your mind.”

“What about you …?” she began, but her husband quieted her, this time with only a glance, with only the pain in his eyes.

“Somebody’s pregnant,” Gabe said, closing his eyes for a moment. “She doesn’t want the baby. You can adopt it—” He turned to Paul and threw up his arms. “Look, that’s what I told you. It’s still the same. You can do with this whatever you want.”

Slowly, his elbows moving through several of the ingredients on the table, Paul turned to face his wife. “You see,” he explained, “it wouldn’t be through an agency. I want you to understand this. It would be private. That’s a little more involved; however—”

“Are they married?” she asked.

“The girl doesn’t want the baby,” Paul said. “She’s not married.”

Libby looked up at Gabe. “Who is she?”

“A girl,” came the answer.

“Well, I mean, who
is
she? For you to say a girl—”

“Libby,” Paul said, “she’s a student, all right?”

“It’s just a question,” she said. “How am I supposed to know?”

“She’s a student,” Paul repeated.

“Where? Here?” Again she was asking Gabe.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

“Well, you’re the one who’s supposed to know her—”

“I didn’t say I knew her,” Gabe cut in.

“At the Art Institute,” Paul said, hitting the table. “Does that answer the question, Libby?”

She knew then that she was being lied to. Instead of making her even angrier, the discovery soothed and comforted; it seemed to give her an advantage.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Who’s the father? What is he? Who is he? Why doesn’t he marry her? Is it her boy friend?”

“I don’t know anything about the father,” Gabe answered flatly. He looked over to Paul. “I gave you the girl’s name. You can get in touch with her and work it out from there, if you want to. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Paul didn’t answer. “All right, Lib?” he asked. “What do you think? How does it seem to you?”

“We don’t know anything about the father, for one thing.” She had made it sound as though Gabe was responsible. “We don’t even begin to know anything—”

“And I said I don’t know anything about the father either,” Gabe told her.

Libby looked up at his steely face. “You don’t have to be rude!”

He focused on her a mean, bored expression, while Paul said, “Let’s just conduct this business—”

“Well,
I
am,” said Libby. “You can’t expect me to jump in. We don’t even know anything about the father.”

“He’s probably a student,” Paul said.

“Oh sure, he’s probably a faculty member,” Gabe said, as though to himself.

Oh the cruel bastard! He had no respect for what she had been through. “Well,” she said to him, “it’s just a matter of establishing something, if you don’t mind.”

“Through an agency,” Gabe said, “you wouldn’t know any more.”

“As a matter of fact we certainly would. They try to match you up, the parents and the infant—coloring, eyes, general—” But she drifted off, for he was not listening.

“Look,” he was saying to Paul, “you do with this whatever you want. May I go now?”

Paul didn’t even look at him; apparently he couldn’t. He shrugged, and it seemed as though he were straw, not flesh, under his coat. “You’ll have to do whatever you think best,” he said.

“Fine,” Gabe said; he started out of the kitchen.

“Well, we have a right to
know
,” Libby shouted after him. “It’s our lives. You don’t have to be so huffy about it.”

He turned and leaned in the doorway, one hand on either wall. “Can I go?”

“Well”—she was swallowed up by panic—“we don’t even know anything about
her—
”

“Paul knows.”

“Oh—yes?” And now she did not want to hear another word. The mother was a call girl, a dope addict—the mother was Martha Reganhart!

“May I leave now?” Gabe asked.

“Oh
go!
” Libby shot back. “If you’re so impatient, go, get out of here—we don’t want to keep you.” She found that her husband was openly staring at her. His eyes, his kind eyes … Oh yes, she had been found out.

“Libby,” Gabe said, “why don’t you use your head—”

“Don’t start insulting us,” she demanded, and now she quickly turned her head and met Paul’s eyes. Why didn’t he protect her? Oh cruel men—cruel heartless self-absorbed bastards!

“Libby,” Gabe said, softening, “I got this information and I thought you might be interested in it. And—and that’s it, that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, isn’t that nice. We’ve just been going through perfect hell trying to adopt a baby, so you needn’t think it
terribly
generous of you to imagine we might be interested.”

“Oh screw it,” he said, and started down the hall.

Libby rose out of her chair, crying after him, “But we don’t
know
anything!”

“We know, we know,” Paul reached across with his hand.

“But what do we do?” she cried. She looked at Paul. Would he know what to do? Poor Paul? Poor trampled-on Paul? “Gabe, what do we do?”

She heard him call, “You get in touch with her. You better see her …”

She ran to the hallway; at the end of the apartment she saw just the paleness of his face and his hand on the knob. “No—” she said, “I won’t—I can’t—”

The hand on the knob turned; his feet, thank God, stayed put. “Then Paul sees her,” he said. “When you get everything settled you can get a lawyer, and he’ll take it from there. Maybe it would be best to get a lawyer in right at the beginning. Look, Libby, he knows all this—”

She turned back to her husband. “A lawyer,” she moaned.

Paul was moving toward her with his arms extended; she could no longer read the expression on his face. “It’s all right—we’ll talk about it—”

“We don’t know any lawyers. Lawyers cost a fortune—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Paul said. He took hold of her arms.
“We’ll take care of it. We still have the agency. They’ll send somebody soon. Relax, honey, we can wait. If you prefer, if it will make you feel safer, then we’ll wait and work through the agency. I thought you didn’t want to wait, that’s all.”

“Oh no,” she said, “oh no no no,” but she could not tell him anything, not now, not today. “Oh it’s ugly and sordid, and everything’s always the same.”

“Don’t cry.”

“I’m
not
crying! Do you see me crying? I’m just making a statement. Everything’s ugly and sordid! Can’t I say that?”

“Sure.” His hands dropped from her arms.

“Oh Paul—”

“I’m going.” It was Gabe’s voice, faint, almost gone. “I’ll be going now.”

“Go! Just go!” she cried. “That’s it—close the door and go!” But she came charging down upon him. “You just go, damn it. And thank you. Oh yes, don’t think we don’t appreciate everything either. We appreciate every tiny single thing you’ve ever done, Gabe. Oh we kiss your high and mighty ass, Gabe, don’t you forget that. Thank you, thank you for this helpful hint, we thank you a million times. Kind Gabe—” she said, shaking her fist, “so kind he probably went out and impregnated a little eighteen-year-old student, especially for us—”

“Why don’t you watch what you’re saying, Libby.”

“Why? Can’t you stand a little horror in your life? I can. Paul can.” And she thought: I can’t. Paul can’t. Too much already. Now more. Paul will meet the mother, take her to doctors, pay her bills, listen to her sad story, watch her weep. He will remember her face and carry it with him through life. She will be the mother—I’ll be the stepmother. He’ll see her face, her eyes, her hair, her tears—
then who will I have!

“—don’t want your appreciation,” Gabe was saying, “so don’t kid yourself about that—”

“Oh but we appreciate so much,” she said. “Don’t you know everybody loves Gabe, all his charm and benevolence? How can any of us help ourselves? All the world loves Gabe, but who does Gabe love? We’re all waiting to hear—
who?
Oh you’re something, Gabriel, you really are—”

His hands were fists; that big chin of his was leaning out at her. “What is it you want, Libby? What is it you’re after now?”

“Oh, I don’t want anything from you!” She felt Paul’s hands come down on her shoulders.

“Cut it out, Libby, control yourself—” Paul was saying.

But she was flailing her arms, to be free. “Nothing. You do what you want. People don’t tell
you
what to do—”

“People tell me plenty,” Gabe said. “Too God damn much!”

“Oh do they?”

“Yes!”

“Then let me tell you—” and suddenly her voice had dropped, and it was harsh, deep, pleading. “Let me tell you—
don’t make Paul do it! Don’t make Paul see her! Gabe, please, the last thing—
”

“I should never have come here, Libby—”

“It’ll kill us. It’s our baby, not hers. Ours!
Please!
”

“Libby” … “Libby—” Both men were calling her name, and in the dim hallway they swooped down around her and lifted her off the floor, where, on her hands and knees, she was begging.

Although Theresa Haug’s pale blue uniform—the same washed-out color as her eyes—swam around her hunched shoulders and permitted a good two inches of air to circulate about her frail upper arm, it had nevertheless already begun to hug her belly. She had been seduced in November; perhaps October—this was yet to be established.

I watched her clear a table and then try to take an order from one booth while she dealt with a complaint about an underdone steak from another across the way. Her helpless confusion was not a pleasant sight, but given my mood and the turnings of my mind, it was almost preferable to having to watch Mark Reganhart inhale his French fried potatoes, the last of which lay on his plate, a squad of broken-backed, tortured soldiers oozing ketchup at every fork wound. All of Markie’s infantile habits, toward which I had felt kind or neutral at other times, had begun to exasperate me in the last few days. I was about to snap at him when I remembered,
I am not his father, he is not my son
, and turned away.

Again I looked at Theresa Haug, who stood a few booths from where we sat. To customers, she was mute and obliging, and efficient to the point of hysteria (or perhaps it was hysteria to the point of efficiency, it looked the same to me). In any encounter with the hostess, Mrs. Crowther—an egregious woman who was always sliding people into their seats with a melodic, “
There
you are”—Theresa’s deference stopped just this side of a salute. Not that Mrs. Crowther, or anybody else, paid Theresa very much attention; there wasn’t
very much to attend
to.
All of her, form and features, seemed to have been designed and constructed by a committee of Baptist ministers’ wives. Her stockings hung from her underdeveloped calves in a particularly heartbreaking way, her skin held no mysteries, and her mouth was just a faint-hearted dash across the blankness of her expression. Yet someone had taken the trouble to undress her and lay her down and climb on top. A seed had been dropped, and it was about its fruition that I had come to see her.

For Martha (not myself) I had spoken to Paul Herz; for Paul I had spoken to Libby; for Libby I would speak to Theresa Haug. What other way could it have been?

“Cut your potatoes,” Cynthia told her brother. “Stop stuffing yourself. Stop jamming them in whole, Markie. Uh-oh for you. Here comes Mother.”

Martha, who was waitress to us as well as mother and mistress, set down two glasses of chocolate milk and a cup of coffee. “How is everyone?” she asked.

“Markie’s not using any manners,” Cynthia said. “I don’t think he should be allowed to sleep at Stephanie’s.”

“I want to!” Mark howled.

“Cynthia,” Martha said, “don’t tease him. Markie, stop whining.”

“You were the one who said if he wasn’t going to use manners—” began Cynthia.

Weary, quite weary of this little family group and their aggravations and struggles (
my family? mine?
), I asked Martha, “When does she get off?”

“Seven—”

“Mother—”

“I’m talking to Gabe.”

I turned on Cynthia. “She’s talking to me, Cynthia—how about it?”

“When’s Stephanie’s grandma coming?” asked Markie.

“Soon, honey.”

To show that my rebuke meant nothing to her Cynthia raised her eyebrows and clicked her tongue at the violence her brother was practicing with his fork. And a feeling came over me, a rootless kind of feeling, that control over my affairs was no longer in my own hands. Something like resignation—most likely disgust, and perhaps fear too—must have shown on my face.

“You don’t have to wait for Stephanie’s grandmother,” Martha
said to me. “If it bothers you so … The kids can wait by themselves.”

“I’m not waiting for Stephanie’s grandmother. I’m waiting for your friend.”

“She’ll be through at seven.”

“It’s after seven.”

“Then she’ll be through soon. Look, Gabe—” A waitress came hurtling by our booth then, her tray tipping toward a disaster which might or might not overtake her before she reached the kitchen.

“There she is,” I said.