Letting Go (81 page)

However, what was was. Be philosophic. He would have to work with what he had … Gabe had driven straight through from Chicago in one day and had arrived at eleven-thirty the night before. They had all sat down to have a cup of coffee and a sandwich together, and no real strains had been apparent. Gabe had even said good night to her as he went off to bed, and when they were alone again, Fay had commented on what nice posture the young man had. Well, there was a certain willingness in that remark, wasn’t there?
And as for Gabe, he was an intelligent boy, a decent boy—so why then should there be strains? They were three grown people; if they all worked at it a little, they could have a week together that would be a foundation for their future happiness.

He reasoned and he reasoned, and still, when Gabe swam to shore, and Dr. Wallach handed a towel up to him, he found himself unable to relax. He was stiff and ill at ease, fearful of saying the wrong thing, all this in front of his own flesh and blood.

Gabe sat down beside him and they looked out at the sea. He asked if his father had gotten over his chill and Dr. Wallach assured him that he had. This enabled them to look out at the water again. The doctor checked his watch, but they were not due back for breakfast for another half hour. The beach was empty of people as far off as he could see.

“So how’s teaching this year?” Dr. Wallach asked. “Still crazy about it?”

“Oh, I like it all right.”

“Still like the Windy City?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Gabe, rubbing his towel across his shoulders, “I’m getting a little tired of it.”

He could hardly believe his ears. His heart took a long stride forward and met, head-on, the wall of his chest. Through some miracle of the will, he managed not to cry out, “Then come, come, my darling son—come back with me!”

He said instead, “Oh? No kidding.” He was so proud of his self-control that he could have shaken his own hand. He looked—casually—over at his son, and saw upon his face what seemed to be depression. “So,” he began again, “I suppose you won’t be hanging around Chicago very much from now on.”

“I don’t know. I’ve even been thinking of leaving teaching.”

“Something happen?”

“It’s just not quite as satisfying as it was. Maybe I’ll try something else for a while.”

“I see.” He attempted to let more than a second elapse, but couldn’t. “For instance, what? Just speaking off the cuff, you know.”

“Traveling. Maybe living in Europe for a while.”

“Oh. Uh-huh. Interesting …”

They had been speaking with their eyes toward the horizon, but now Gabe turned to the doctor and smiled. The boy had the height and carriage of his mother, but he had the doctor’s long head and
stern good looks. There was no doubt that he was the doctor’s son. “But I’m not sure, you see, about anything,” he said.

Dr. Wallach wondered if his own stern eyes looked stern enough; they were not teary, and he most assuredly did not want them to look as though they were. “When would this be?” he asked. “You know, a year, two years—”

“I don’t know … I’m even thinking of resigning. Of not going back, except to get my belongings.”

“Well, this is a surprise.”

“For me too. It only occurred to me about halfway through Pennsylvania yesterday. As I said, I’m not even sure.”

“Well,” the doctor said—casual still—letting some sand drift slowly off his hands, “it just shows—your heart is in the East after all.”

“I didn’t mean to indicate that I’d decided anything—”

“Who said you decided anything? I was just making an observation.” They were silent. Until Dr. Wallach said, “I mean your business is certainly your business. Europe is a beautiful and educational place, there’s no doubt about that. It’s too bad you didn’t feel this way last year”—he was desperate with the desire to sound simply chatty—“when I was going.”

“Yes—well—I thought I’d stay a little longer. I’m not so much thinking of touring as settling down there awhile.”

“Well, sure, you’re single. Live it up. You still like the bachelor life, huh?”

Gabe shrugged. “I’m not planning to marry anybody just yet.”

“Certainly, take your time, look around. Take a walk down Fifth Avenue for yourself. The most beautiful women in the world. Let me put it this way: the Italian girl is a beautiful girl, I’ll grant that, and the French girl is certainly a girl of fine qualities too. And even the English girl has got something about her, very soft skin and so forth, but for nice wholesome all-around good looks, give me an American girl, any day. If I were a young man looking for a wife, I’d look right around here. You don’t even have to go very far from Central Park to find the kind of girl I’m talking about.”

Gabe only nodded his head. The doctor felt his face go incandescent—how obvious he was! His son said, “Shall we go back for breakfast? I’m getting hungry.”

They both got up. “No,” the doctor said, “I didn’t think Chicago was going to be your city forever. New York gets in a man’s blood—speaking
for myself, I mean. You know that song, “Autumn in New York”—well, popular as it is, there’s some truth in it.”

“Of course my plans aren’t definite …” They started off.

“Look,” said Dr. Wallach, a finger on his son’s arm, “nobody’s plans are definite.”

“I suppose that’s so.”

He was afraid to say more. How could he tell him he was uncertain about Mrs. Silberman when he was actually uncertain whether or not he was uncertain? Suppose he confessed to doubt and married her later anyway? Could he possibly allow himself to appear even more weak, more needy, than he had already? To his own son?

Why not! Damn it, what was a family for, if not to be weak in front of?

“Would that be a breach of contract?” he heard himself asking. “Suddenly resigning like that?”

“No, no—I don’t even imagine I’ll do it. It was just something impractical, really, that I thought of in a groggy state.”

“After all, though, if you’re not happy out there, there’s no reason you should stay. You have a right to make your own decisions.”

“Dad, look …”

“What? What’s the matter now?”

“Nothing. You know, though, that when you and Mrs. Silberman marry—is this what you’re getting at?”

“What?”

“Well … let’s do get things out in the open. You know I couldn’t move in with you two. I mean if I were to leave Chicago. That would be very unrealistic for you to bank on. Surely you know that as well as I do.”

“Absolutely,” he shot back.

“Well, okay then. I’m sorry. I just began to feel that this conversation …”

“Absolutely not. I was thinking about your own welfare. Now you didn’t get anybody out there in trouble, did you?”

Gabe shook his head. “Just a change, that’s all.”

“Because if we’re going to be open with one another—”

“Yes?”

But he owed it to everybody not to whine, not to beg. He was a sixty-year-old man earning $35,000 a year; he could not act like a child. Instead of talking about his own ambivalence, he found himself talking about his son’s.

“I understand, of course, that this isn’t your mother. So, believe me, I understand your feelings.”

“Which feelings?”

“That you’re a little skeptical where Fay is concerned.”

“If I’ve been skeptical, it’s not been my business to be. Above all I want you to be happy. If this is going to bring you contentment—”

He heard the real emotion in his son’s voice, and now did indeed feel tears in his eyes. “It will,” he said, interrupting. “I’m absolutely sure of that.” He felt at once proud and ashamed of the strength he had displayed. Then his eyes were dry.

“Fine,” Gabe said. He was even smiling. “I’m not skeptical.”

“Of course. It’s a psychological thing, and I understand how that is, how that comes about.”

“Fine.”

“Though I don’t mean you’re not entitled to express your opinion. We’re both grown men, and you’re an intelligent person, obviously, and of course I’m always interested in your opinion on that ground alone. If you want to express an opinion to me about Fay, there’s no reason for me not to hear it.”

“I don’t have an opinion. I only wanted to know that you wanted this.”

“Well, why should you have any doubts?”

Gabe’s answer was some time in coming. “I don’t want to interfere. It’s not my business to tell anybody how to run his life.”

“No, no, go right ahead. I’m not a fragile icicle. I’d like to hear your objection. Why shouldn’t I be open-minded to all points of view?”

“It’s no objection.”

“What is it?”

“It’s only her drinking. It seemed to me—I might be wrong—a little excessive.”

“Well, it isn’t any more.” The doctor stopped and waited. Would there be some further objection—one he had no answer to?

“You don’t believe me?” the doctor asked.

“I believe you.”

“Because it’s a fact. She has given it up. It was only a temporary thing to begin with, a way for her to forget her husband. That’s the way I analyze it.”

“And now she’s forgotten him?”

“You see, you’re just acting psychological again. That’s not a fair remark. You hardly know the woman.”

“I’m sorry then. I didn’t mean to sound so hard.”

“Giving up something like drinking, even when it’s only been a temporary relief, shows a certain strength of character.”

“I agree. Maybe we ought to stop with this conversation. I only wanted to be sure, that’s all.”

“Sure of what?”

“That this was what you wanted.”

And what more could he say? After all, Fay
had
given up drinking, and that
was
proof of some real fiber in her. What other objection could Gabe have that would carry any weight—that she was not as smart as his own mother? Well, at age sixty you come to realize that intelligence isn’t everything. There are other qualities one looks for in a person. To go around expecting that he would meet in one lifetime another woman as fine and intelligent as his first wife was to go around expecting the impossible. Besides, he did not even know if that was what he wanted. Being more intelligent than Fay had turned out to be a pleasure for him—it made him feel like somebody. On the beach, for instance, he could hold his own now with a fellow like Abe Cole, rather than feeling it necessary to sit back and listen while Anna, say, conversed with the psychoanalyst.

Of course, there were moments when he was nettled slightly by the things Fay did not know or care about. Particularly since she had given up drinking, he had found her not so quick and lively a woman as he had been thinking she was. When they discussed the news events of the day, for instance, there was a certain vagueness on her part, and he had discovered that she was weak on geography. But surely that was to be preferred to a zeal and vivaciousness that had been inspired by drunkenness—which itself had been inspired by sorrow and loss. So what objection did he have? That she was not Anna? One, she couldn’t be expected to be somebody else; and two, in certain ways she was a much more natural woman than Anna had ever been. When she was unhappy at least she let you know it—she got drunk. The trouble with his wife had been that she had never needed anyone. Even in dying she had been a perfect lady. But how he had wished that she would break down, how he had wished that she would ask him to close his office and stick by her bed day and night. Surely it was what he would have done had it been he who was dying of leukemia. And still, how he
had revered her! How lucky to have been her husband. Her taste, her ideas, her gentility, the way she had of expressing herself … But then that grace and charm had been her power. He had gone through life thinking of himself as not having ideas and preferences of his own. And that was against nature; he knew now it had helped to make him, for all his wisecracking and fitfulness, a very melancholy man. With Fay he positively shone in conversation; he felt an honest-to-goodness surge within him as she sat there nodding her head and listening. If only Anna could hear him now … But it was Fay’s ears that listened, and Fay’s eyes which, though they may not have comprehended all the fine points, at any rate revered him for speaking in their direction.

It was all too confusing; how could a man of his years and station admit to his own child that he did not know what he wanted—especially when the child was a man with whom he could no longer express his love in ways that had been available to him twenty years earlier? You could not toss a man of one hundred and seventy-five pounds up in the air and catch him in your arms. Hardly. And that too served to confuse matters—for even if the son could be persuaded, it might not be as satisfying living with him as Dr. Wallach had once imagined. The young man was occupied with his own affairs; all that brooding about leaving Chicago must have to do with people and happenings of which his father was ignorant, in which his father had no place. There was really no choice about Fay then; she was all he could hope for.

When next he spoke he was in the grips of a vertigo worse than the one that had seized him earlier when he had dived into the ocean with his son. Dizzy, numb, trembling, he had complained of a chill, and come back to the shore, sending the boy off to swim by himself. He had managed then to walk back to his towel without giving a sign of his condition, but now he actually feared that he would stagger in the middle of what he was saying.

What
was
he saying? He heard his voice but the experience of utterance did not seem to be his. “Look, this reaction isn’t a reasoned one. I don’t want you to feel I hold you entirely responsible.” He found he was not even sure of his subject. Oh, yes—his son and Fay. “After all, it’s Hamlet. Oedipus.”

They were turning up through a ridge that the wind had cut in the dunes; they moved toward the street where the car was parked. “After all,” the doctor said, “this is an ancient thing, very deep and
imbedded in the human race, this business between children and men.” His hand was on his son’s shoulder, as if it were the boy he was steadying. “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about it.”