Letting Go (64 page)

“Well,” she said, “I just thought there was more
you
wanted to talk about.”

“I don’t think there is.”

“You been a regular gentleman, Mr. Wallace. You don’t see much of that in the North, you know.” Then her eyes filled up again. “You been so polite and nice …?”

“Goodnight, Theresa.”

“Mr. Wallace?”

“What?”

“I ain’t never been this way before. I don’t know if I can do it alone.”

“I’m sure it won’t be as difficult as you imagine.”

“What happens when it starts hurtin’? I’m all alone.”

“But you’re not alone, you see.” “I sure am.”

“I meant to say we’re all trying to help.”

“I’m still
alone
,” she said. “It ain’t easy for a girl. I’m always hearin’ people turnin’ my doorknob and all kinds of funny things. There’s always somebody behind me, you know? I don’t like it alone.”

“What is it you’re asking me, Theresa?”

“I don’t know …”

“Are you asking that I stay with you?”

She looked away from me. “I don’t understand.” But then she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, don’t provoke.”

“I don’t understand
you
,” she said in a mean, Southern drawl.

“I said don’t invite trouble!”

“I don’t understand what you’re shoutin’ for! Who said you got a right to shout at me!”

I took her blouse button out of my pocket and set it on the foot of the bed. “They’ll get in touch with you,” I said, and holding the door open only for myself, I left, unable to believe in my body’s pulsing, unable to believe in my own temptation.

The apartment I returned to was not Martha’s but my own—cold, musty, and unlived-in. I did not even bother to turn on the lights. The shades were drawn, making it black and to my purposes; I sat down in my bent-laminated-wood chair and tried to find sense in the lust that had so recently visited me, in the desire I had not willed, wanted, or satisfied. I contemplated the desire as though it were the act itself … For if in the eyes of the law there is a no man’s land of innocence between the itch and the scratching of it, in the eyes of the citizen himself, who has his own problems, the one may render him just about as culpable as the other. I looked for sense; I looked for cause. I did not remain alone there in my hat and coat trying to be especially hard on myself—hardness or softness had little to do with it. I was, I think, in a state of dread. At bottom I did not feel certain about what I would say or do to the next human being I made contact with. I cannot say for sure whether, in the bedroom of that unfortunate girl, something had been hooked up inside me or disconnected, but what I knew, what I felt rather, was that within that maze of wiring that unites a man’s mind, heart, and genitals, some passage of energies, some movement, vital to my being, had taken place. There are those synapses in us between sense and muscle, between blood and feeling, and at times, without understanding why, one is aware that a connection that has occurred in oneself—or that has failed to occur—has been
a pure expression of one’s character. And it is that which can bring on the dread.

Later, my phone rang. It was Martha and she asked me if I wanted to come home.

She said, opening the door, “I’m sorry I had to get you out.”

“I was taking a breather, Martha.”

“You were coming back?”

“I think so.”

“You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know for sure.”

“If I’d realized that, I wouldn’t have called.”

“You realized,” I told her, “and you called anyway.”

“You might as well come all the way in,” she said, and left me alone at the door; a moment followed in which I might have gone back down the stairs and away. I considered it, and then moved into the apartment. It was as though I had been drawn in by that faint Hawaiian House odor that clung to Martha’s uniform; it was not that I liked the odor particularly, only that I had grown used to it. In the living room she said, “You can even take your coat off.” She sat down beside an ash tray thick with butts. “What were you going to do about all those classy suits?”

“I was going to leave them for the next guy.”

“Who were you going to move in with now?”

“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I began to understand hermits.”

“You mean you were going to try moving in with the fellas?”

“You’re thinking of monks, Martha. I was realizing that I have some fouled-up connections, some mistaken ideas. That I’m not in tune with myself. I was understanding why ascetism was once a basic Western value.”

“The old light-hearted historian,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. You seem eminently in tune with yourself.”

“If I am what you’re trying to say I am, you ought to consider yourself lucky without me.”

“I can’t say I’m sure what you are.”

“Then why did you want me back?”

“I think you want somebody to beat you up tonight, Gabe. I think maybe you’d better go home after all.”

My coat was on my lap and my hat on my head, but I didn’t
move. I saw only one alternative to running away. “Why don’t we get married, Martha?”

“Oh this is too romantic to bear.”

“Why don’t you stop crapping around?”

“Why don’t you!”

“I asked you if we shouldn’t get married. You want to give an answer?”

“You’re the answer, you shmuck.”

“Am I? I remember getting a long set of instructions when I moved in here not to propose to you.”

“It’s curious,” she said, “what parts of the law you choose to obey and what parts you don’t.”

“The law isn’t so uncomplicated.”

“Don’t be a college teacher, I couldn’t stand it.”

“Why don’t you want to get married, Martha?”

“Is this obligation, or impulse, or what?”

“It’s both, if you want to know. All three.”

“You don’t want to bring up love or anything, is that it?”

“You’re too full of principles, Mrs. Reganhart. You’re too high-minded.”

“Wowee,” she said.

“Why don’t you face the facts?”

“Why don’t you! You don’t want to marry me. Isn’t that a pertinent fact?”

“Wanting isn’t the right word.”

“Oh hell then, what is? Loving isn’t the right word and wanting isn’t either. Look, buddy, don’t feel obligated. Oh you’ve got a nice fat trouble, my friend.”

“Why don’t you go sit in the window, Martha, and wait for Mr. Right to come along in his big shoulders and his red convertible?”

“You’re damn right I’m going to wait!”

“It’s great you’re five nine, Martha, it’s perfect you’re hefty. The bigger they are the better they can enjoy the fall.”

“Shut up.”

“Your untrammeled, unselfish nobility is about one of the most disgustingly selfish exhibitions I’ve ever seen.”

“Please don’t you be the one to bring up words like selfish around here, all right? God might send down thunder on this whole house. Have it understood, nobody’s marrying me out of a sense of loyalty. Someday somebody’s going to marry me because they want to. They’re going to
choose
little me.”

“I’m choosing you. I’m making the choice.”

“There must be some kind of noose around your neck. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.”

“You’ve got circumstances,” I said. “I’ve got them too. Don’t be an ass.”

“Your circumstance is plain and simple. That isn’t what I meant was invisible.”

“Go ahead, Martha, you might as well go all the way.”

“You don’t need anybody,” she said. “If you did, you wouldn’t feel so obliged all the time.”

“You don’t know what I need—you don’t begin to know!”

“Nor you, me,” she said flatly.

“Then maybe that’s why I was giving some thought to coming back or not. Maybe that deserves some thought.”

“For instance,” she said, as though I hadn’t spoken, “ten minutes you’re here and you haven’t even asked why I called.”

“I didn’t think there was a specific reason.”

“There is. I’m not you. I don’t make phone calls out of wistful nostalgia.” Her voice lost a bit of its edge. “Dick Reganhart’s back in town.”

For a moment the words meant nothing; all I could think was that it was the name of some third child of Martha’s.

“My first love,” she said. “He wants his kids. I thought you might have a suggestion,” she added; whereupon she left the room.

When I found her in the kitchen she had already poured herself a cup of coffee and was drinking it standing up, looking out the back window.

“What do you mean he wants his children?”

“He wants his children. Simple as that. They’re half his.” She turned; in the little time it had taken to get from the living room to the kitchen her face had become pouchy with fatigue. She leaned against the window sill. “He’s a great success. New York’s latest fad. You can get yourself a Reganhart by plunking down a thousand bucks. He’s chic, my former husband. He’s grown a mustache. He’s getting married to a millionairess. His new father-in-law was once Ambassador to China. How’s that? A wife who can use chopsticks. All good things come to him who waits for it.”

“The only trouble is he’s got no rights.”

“He’s got rights,” she said. “He’s got you. You’re evidence that I’m an immoral woman. He’s going to take me to court and hold up your underwear as evidence.”

“He knows about me?”

“There are still creeps around this neighborhood who consider it a pleasure to have smoked pot with my ex-husband. They turned me in. I’m ah immoral character.”

“Which isn’t so.”

“Which is. That’s one more fact, since we’re counting facts.”

“You saw him then.”

“I served him his dinner. He’s still got the old instinct for comedy,” she said. “Tomorrow he’s going to come over and see his kids.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” I tried to engage her eyes but she looked right past me; except for the rapidity and brittleness with which she spoke, she gave no sign of falling to pieces. I asked, for lack of anything else to say, “What do you think?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.” She came over and sat down at the table.

“Well, I think it’s ridiculous.” I sat down across from her. “As for my being evidence of your bad character, that’s one of those things that’s got to be proved. What the locals say, they say—it hasn’t the ring of proof. It’s assertion.”

She did not answer; I realized that the first thing I had tried to explain was how I was not implicated.

“Well,” I said, “what about
his
character? What about all those years of support payments unpaid? What about the divorce itself? You can’t not be a father for six years, five years, whatever it was, and then suddenly decide you’re ready. No judge is going to listen to him, Martha. You’ve got Jaffe still, haven’t you? You’ve got—hell, Martha, it’s an empty threat.” She continued to look unconvinced. “You’re not immoral,” I said. “The power you’ve got is the fact that you know it isn’t so.”

“But it is,” she told me when she saw that I was through. Only her jaw moved as outward evidence that she was not immune to feelings. “Because I want him to take the kids, Gabe. That’s the next fact.”

To which I had no ready answer. I got up and poured myself a cup of coffee. Under the sink the garbage pail was overflowing; I set down my cup and took the pail out and emptied it into the can on the back porch. When I came back in, Martha had left the kitchen and I found her in the empty children’s room on Markie’s bed.

“Surprised?” she said, looking up at me.

“No.”

“Shocked? Disgusted? Overcome? None of the above?”

“None.”

“That’s what she wants, isn’t it?” Martha said, throwing a hopeless hand toward Cynthia’s bed. “To live with her father awhile? Isn’t that it, or something like it? I can’t tell, I’m punch-drunk and fed up. I don’t want to worry about what she wants any more. Does that make me a witch?”

“I don’t think it does.”

“Well, you’re standing up there very big and judging,” she said.

“I’ll sit down,” and I did, at the end of Cynthia’s bed, across from Martha’s feet.

“You know,” she said, “I don’t care. Let him come. Let him open the closets and pull out the drawers and let him find all the God damn underwear he wants. Who can care any more? All I want is to go out in the afternoon and get a cup of coffee and not have to run back and make anybody’s supper. I used to wheel Markie around the campus all the time, I used to wait for the hour to be up and watch the kids changing classes. That’s how I used to spend the afternoons. Right out there in front of Cobb, rocking my baby carriage. Then I got ashamed and picked myself up and went off to the playground where I belonged. But I don’t have too much love for that playground, I’ve got to admit it. If I have to push one more swing one more time … This is punky of me.”

“No.”

“I should keep them. I should tell him to take his new life and his new wife and shove them both. Just pay up, I should say. Shouldn’t I?”

“What is it, Martha? What is it you want?”

“Oh, please come here,” she moaned, rolling toward me. “Please, just lie down next to me. Please, and turn off the light.”

Beside her, after five minutes of silence, I asked, “How will you feel without those kids?”