Letting Go (61 page)

Martha reached out to touch Theresa’s arm. “It’s seven,” she said.

“Oh, look—this here—maybe some other—too
rare
he says,” and with a droopy-eyed look she showed Martha a steak on her tray.

“I’ll take your station,” Martha said.

“But Mrs. Crowther—”

“Theresa, get dressed. I’ll take your station. He’s waiting.”

“Yes—” She ran off down the aisle, leaving me exhausted. Martha kissed each child on the top of the head and went off toward the kitchen with Theresa’s steak. “Miss …” someone called after her, but she was her own woman, guardian of her rights and dignity, and she just kept going.

With a newsiness altogether uncharacteristic of her, Cynthia said, “We’re not sleeping at home tonight.”

“That should be fun,” I said. “Do you like to sleep at other people’s houses?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you?” Markie asked me.

I took a napkin from the dispenser on the table and reached across and wiped the ketchup off his mouth. “You try to concentrate on eating,” I said.

Cynthia pointed to where I had wiped her brother’s mouth. “I think my mother wants him to learn to do that himself.”

“I suppose she does.”

“He should be able to teach himself to grow up a little,” she said.

“He should,” I agreed, “but he doesn’t, and the rest of us have to look at it.”

“I think my mother would prefer if you let him do that himself,” she said beautifully.

“I didn’t steal his mouth from him, Cynthia—I only wiped it.”

Markie’s dark eyes now turned up to me, his chin grazing the remains on the plate. “Are you going to marry our Mommy?”

Now I smiled. “He certainly is full of questions.”

“He’s only a child,” Cynthia said, which in a variety of ways was a favorite line of hers.

“For a child those are pretty adult questions.”

Cynthia was nonplused; finally she admitted, “Well … he talks to me.”

My daughter. My stepdaughter. My stepson. Sitting there I continued to be visited with what ifs, and supposes.

Theresa Haug appeared in a big black-and-white checkerboard coat with saucer-sized buttons that shone. She stood beside the booth, speechless. Cynthia shrugged her shoulders, as though to indicate to me—and to the lady herself—that our visitor might be coo-coo.

“It’s okay,” I said, getting up from my seat, “she’s a friend of your mother’s.”

“I don’t care,” answered Cynthia in a tinkly voice.

Markie had picked up the ketchup bottle, turned it on its side, and was allowing its contents to run out onto his plate. He asked, “Is that his wife?” but I don’t think Theresa Haug heard.

“Ready, Miss Haug?” I asked, but got no reply. I took her arm and started to steer her toward the door.

“Bye, Gabe,” I heard Markie call.

I didn’t turn back; I was trying to focus all my attention on my charge and on her hardship. Nevertheless I could not really displace my own problem with hers. Martha’s teary ultimatum of two short nights before still burned in my mind. As for Martha herself, it was clear that she too had not forgotten those words she had addressed to me from her bed. Surely saving Theresa Haug was not, in anything other than a metaphoric way, saving herself.

Outside the Hawaiian House, Theresa stopped. Like a poor dumb beast. I said, “I’m parked a little way off. By Dorchester …” I tugged at her arm, then guided her along like one blind. She kept her gaze on her coat buttons.

“It’s a beautiful night for a change,” I said. There was indeed a sky overhead that was purple and practically glowing. “It’s getting a little warmer,” I added. “That should be a help …”

At last we made it to the car; I unlocked the door and helped her in. The overhead light spread like some watery dime-store paint over her plain, dull face. I closed the door for her and then walked
around to the other side, in a kind of stupor too, for I was wondering if it made life more sensible, or less, to think that it was toward the alleviation of this girl’s suffering that all the rest of us had been struggling—Paul, Libby, Martha, myself—these many months and years.

I took Theresa Haug to a restaurant on the lake shore where, to offset the sugary Muzak piped into the dining room, the walls were hung with lurid paintings of the Chicago fire. The combination of music and art impressed me as ghoulish and antisocial, but the place was quiet and close by, and it had soft lighting and a view of the lake. Theresa could have dinner and we two could accomplish our business, all by candlelight.

I had been hoping that the shadowy atmosphere might loosen her up without unhinging her, but once there she still refused to look my way. At the check room I lived through a desperate moment trying to help her out of her coat. Evidently she thought I had lost my mind and was trying to wrestle her down onto the carpet, for she uttered a forlorn hopeless little cry (her first sound) and nearly fell backwards onto me, waving her arms. “Please, please … your coat,” I pleaded, and then she either caught on or gave herself up to still another assault, and I got what I was after, plus her limp body.

Through this confusion, the hat-check girl stood at my side tapping her lacquered nails on the metal checking tokens. She was a crooked-mouthed bitch in a black crepe dress, sporting the packed-in, boxcar variety of voluptuousness; I gave her a dirty look, and then the gaudy coat, and taking Theresa by the arm once again, led her into the dining room. Within the gentle throbbing light, underexercised, overfed merchants were enjoying dinner with their families. The specialty of the house was spareribs, and around the dim room I could see men, women, and children eating daintily with their hands, manipulating their food like Muzak’s violinists their instruments. While Theresa occupied herself with a minute scrutiny of her shoes and mine, I began to believe I had made a small error of tact and taste, and out of a small and petty fearfulness. We should have gone to a drive-in hamburger joint, I thought, and sat in the car, and said what had to be said, and thereby recognized the real and unpretty dimensions of our meeting. There was an unrelentingly sedate good-natured carniverousness in the air here and it somehow led me to reflect upon the cautionary nature of all
prosperous people everywhere, myself included. I had convinced myself I would be doing the girl a service by bringing her to a muted middle-class rendezvous, carpeted and melodic, when actually the only person I had set out to spare was the same old person one usually sets out to spare, no matter how complex the strategy.

Theresa carried a long plastic purse with her, about the size and shape of a loaf of bread; its insides were visible to the naked eye. Walking into the dining room, I felt it rhythmically whacking my side, and though I decided to show nothing, at one point the girl herself nearly looked up at me to apologize. But she wasn’t quite able to pull it off; she merely hugged the purse to her and sank back into her pool of shame. Finally—nothing in life being endless—our crossing was over and we sat at a small corner table.

“Miss Haug …” I said. She was searching through her purse and, oblivious to the fact that my mouth was open, continued to search until she came up with an orange Lifesaver which she slipped secretively between her lips. I decided I had to allow her still more time to calm down, to look up. And I realized that Libby—for all I resented and suspected her manner (at the same time I responded to it), for all I had begun to hate both Herzes for the crazed and wild sparing of one another that they engaged in at the expense of others—had perhaps been prophetic in pleading that Paul be spared the job of interviewing the pregnant young woman. Not that I was myself in possession of a calm reasonableness, or even a plan of action; simply, my disappointment in seeing what Theresa was, was not the disappointment of a prospective father. Surely it is possible that Paul Herz might have wept or become angry or gotten up and walked out. I did not see any of these choices open to me. I would let her finish her Lifesaver, order a little dinner, and then begin to extract from her the information and promises necessary, and give her whatever advice she would be needing.

In twenty-four hours I had become a kind of authority on adoption. Leaving the Herzes’ apartment I had not driven back to Martha’s directly, but to the campus, where I had made my way to the law library and settled down angrily with the appropriate texts. That morning I had learned more through a telephone call Martha had made to her lawyer friend, Sid Jaffe. Jaffe had been exceedingly thorough and informative, and after she hung up, Martha told me he had even said that he would try to help her two young friends
with the papers and legal work when the time came. “Free,” she added. It had been generous of Jaffe, but facile I thought, and though I could not actually resent the offer, given what it would mean to Paul and Libby, I would have liked to make it clear to Martha what I believed to be her old boy friend’s motive. Instead I found myself displaying a sizable amount of approval (isn’t that wonderful, isn’t that swell) while Martha made several statements almost punishable in the grossness of their nostalgia—statements about Sid’s sweetness and reliability. Though the matter was shortly dropped, my conviction grew that I had been unfairly tested and unfairly judged. That Jaffe was sweet and reliable was perfectly all right with me, but after all, he had not been through with the Herzes what I had been. Anyway, if Jaffe was so sweet and reliable, why hadn’t she taken her two kids and married him?

Of course I said nothing of the sort—though the night before, it happened that I had said something of the sort.

It should be made clear that it had been Martha and not I who had suggested that the same Libby Herz who had given us all such a monstrous evening, should become the mother of Theresa Haug’s bastard child. Some time around four in the morning—this was in bed, after the Herzes’ departure—Martha had no scruple about awakening me to tell me her idea. I sat up a moment, and then in a groggy fury got out of bed and came down upon the floor. I stormed around that room, round and round it; with no consideration for anyone or anything, I raised my voice, feeling in me all the ferocity of someone in a dream getting his sweet revenge. The hell with them! Fuck them—the two of them! I’ve had enough! Too damn much!
Let them take care of themselves!
Then I got back into bed. Through it all Martha watched me in what must have seemed a moment of pure insanity. Or maybe not; maybe it looked very sane indeed, and practical. For it occurred to me—and why not to her?—that it was not only my involvement with the Herzes that had caused me to erupt as I had. Afterwards there was silence in the bedroom, darkness and winter, and the knowledge that beside me Martha was thinking her thoughts. And I was thinking mine: My life, what is it? My life, where has it gone? One moment I knew myself to be justified and the next vindictive; one moment sensible and the next ignorant and cruel. The battle raged all night, and through it my bruised sense of righteousness, flying a big red flag reading
I AM
, kept rushing forward—my patriot! my defender! my own self! It cried out that I had every right to be cruel, every right
to be through with the Herzes. With everybody. It raised a question that is by no means new to the species: How much, from me?

At long last morning came. Light. In the day the self does not dare fly the banners it gets away with at night. In the day there are Martha’s eyes; there is Mark, visible; there is Cynthia, a brown-haired child three feet nine inches tall. There was a glimpse of Paul Herz’s head as he closed the door to his Humanities class. When he has just had a haircut, the back of a man’s head is where he looks most vulnerable. I am. He is. We are. What will be?

It was not willingly that I went sliding back into what I wanted to slide out of. But back I slid.