Letting Go (94 page)

“And that excites her?”

“Well, she’s terribly fat.” He did not know what to make of her girlishness or what to do with it. He did not know if she was up to what he began to believe she was up to. “No, look—I was saying, when your eyes fogged over, that you do get the feeling that old James, for all he does know, doesn’t really know what goes on when the bedroom door snaps shut. It seems to me that people live more openly with their passions.”

“More openly than what?”

“Aren’t you following me? Than in James—”

“All people?”

“Well, no, of course not … I suppose I live more openly with mine …”

“Yes?”

“Than you, I suppose—for one.”

“I see.”

“You see still again?”

“I’m never quite sure, Martha.” It was not meant to be a summation of his way of life; she took advantage nevertheless.

“That’s what I mean,” she said. “I’ve done what I’ve felt strongly about.”

“I thought you were going to talk about James this time without being a bitch. I thought, in fact, you were going to talk about James.”

“I’m talking about passions. I’ve gone out on a limb once or twice, is all I said—”

“And now?”

“Right now, or now?”

“Both.”

“I don’t know, Gabe—”

He kissed her; she said, “Let’s not, no,” but he had managed to twist her about and force her backwards. His passion for her was so intense, had so much to do with the alteration he had believed his life to have begun to undergo in the last twenty-four hours, that it overrode his other powers. He could not talk; he could not reason. His weight upon her, he forced his hands onto her body, and she thrust him away. It was all very clumsy … “Please,” she said, “the door is open—”

He went to close the door; when he turned, Martha was standing.
He tried to kiss her again. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said.

Compromised by his having been
pushed
from the bed, compromised further by the adolescent ring to her words, his pride beat once, beat twice, but could not really sustain itself. “Are you going to put me on the spot, Martha? Are you going to make me explain myself?”

“I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“With whom else then?”

“Please, don’t put on that you’ve been cuckolded—”

“Is that what you’d call putting too fine a point on it?”

“I suppose that’s what he means.”

They kissed again. Martha’s feet slowly gave way; they were backed onto the bed, face to face. He held back none of his weight, none of his passion. Then she pulled away; she reached up and caught him with a stiff open palm squarely on the side of the head.

He sat up at the foot of the bed, his elbows on his knees, his face hidden.

“I can’t afford this,” she said, and stood.

“I thought the first thing you might say,” he told her, not quite looking up, “would be apologetic.”

“I take my life more seriously than that.” He heard the faucet begin to run at the other end of the room. He tried not to speak again until he had himself mostly under control, but he could not wait that long.

He asked, “Did you plan on that?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s the only thing you’re ever overcome with then, my friend—desire. Aside from that you’re a perfectly prudent man.”

His jaw tingled, and his eye too, where a fingernail had nicked it. He pulled himself up. The dampness at the edge of his lash was not a tear, so it must be a drop of blood. On the floor before him was a shoe of his, on its side. He tried to put it on standing up, but finally he had to sit down to manage, and he was humiliated. He went to the closet for his coat, while Martha said nothing.

“You might have sat in your chair, Martha,” he said, “and saved us this. You might not have talked so fetchingly about your passions. You have a long finger, Martha, and you beckon with it. Prudent is not the word to describe you—”

“Why don’t you please go?”

He felt totally dislocated; with his coat on and buttoned he still could not believe in the last three minutes.

Martha was lighting the two candles on the table just to be doing something. “I can’t afford to sleep with you. I hope you at least understand that.”

“You can with him?”

“That’s right.” She spoke stiffly. “I think I can.”

“Even when you were supposedly committed to me?”

She walked to the Christmas tree. “Who are you to talk about commitment?”

“I know, Martha—”

“You don’t know a God damn thing.” Then, caught, she lost control, or gained it. “I’ve had a penchant for jelly-filled men, but I’ve gotten over it. I’ve spent my life associating with the wrong kind of men, one way or the other.”

“You only get in bed with whomever you want—”

“That’s exactly the case—”

“—when you want.”

“Shut up. Please go. You can’t make me feel rotten over something I couldn’t even help. I’ve given up being self-destructive. That’s right, I’m going to bring some order into my life. There’s order in this world, and I’m due for my share of it.”

“I hope you get it.”

“Why shouldn’t someone else aside from you? Why should it be only you who get away unscathed?”

“That’s another virginal opinion, Martha. Nice and narrow.”

“Are you going to tell me about your fine conscience? Those little pains don’t even
begin
to count. Don’t kid yourself—your conscience and James’s conscience both give me a pain in the ass, if you want the truth.”

“And your own?” he asked viciously.

“Mine’s fine! Sid Jaffe happens to be a fine man. He’s not jelly cither. He’s going to get me my baby back, do you know that? If he has to fly to Paris and get that son of a bitch guillotined, he’s going to get her back here. And then I’m going to have an orderly life—do you hear? Don’t ever try to get me in bed again, you! And don’t worry about my conscience. Worry about your own. I’m not playing it safe. I’m using some sense for once. I’ve let go and let go and let go—I’ve let go plenty. I’ve had a wilder history than you, by a long shot. I’ve got a right to hang on now. Don’t ever get in bed with me again. Ever!”

All he could think to say, as an answer, a defense, was to tell her what had happened that afternoon in Gary. But of course that was no answer. He could say nothing. His hour with Bigoness—after all, what was he going to build it into? That puny little exchange—the humbling of a stupid man—was not enough to elevate his life. He lived a little life, an insignificant life. Puny … Nothing at this point seemed able to give him proportion or dignity. It was not even out of anything so weighty as jealousy that this woman’s intended had not mentioned to her his phone call. What he had done, what he had forced Jaffe to let him do, counted for nothing. He turned to leave, and then—because he was so unwilling, so incredulous—he turned back for a final instant. And what his eyes saw in her eyes—could it be? Uncertainty? She knows she is fooling herself. She is in pain!
Now
he must take her in his arms! But he could no longer deceive himself with what he wanted to believe were her feelings.

Puny?

Fury! Fury was what he was feeling! He had made plans of his own for the afternoon. The sun was high, the streets clear and brilliant. He had told himself to make plans and he had made them. He had seen a handsome quilt advertised in the Sunday papers—which took care of his present. He would buy it. He had a date for drinks in the Loop at five with the girl he had met at the Harnaps’. She had sounded pleasant and genuine on the phone, and not so assertive this time, he preferred to believe, as eager. He would have dinner with her too. She was assistant to the curator at the Art Institute. Fine. His humiliation was two nights past; it no longer was going to get him down. Nothing was going to get him down … Except that he was so damned angry. He was going to have to miss his penicillin shot too. He drove with no regard for the law—though he had justice on his mind—changing lanes, leaning on his horn, braking sharply, speeding, speeding down to Gary. There were still those applications to mail. He had rushed so, that he’d forgotten again to put them in his pocket. He couldn’t keep everything on his mind, with the result that he sometimes couldn’t keep anything on it.

Thirty minutes later he was threading his way in and out of monotonous, endless streets; the glare of the sun made them no less dreary. He saw only lusterless houses, insulated from light, life, the seasons. In the muddy little squares of front yard—snow-filled on his last visit—children sat and shivered, or hopelessly slid their
tricycles through the soft earth. Some men were in the streets washing their cars, arms moving mechanically up and down, water ringing on hub caps, steam twirling off roofs. He peered at every street sign, while slowly the blue sky and white sun drew away, restoring a proper and wintery distance between heaven and earth. Even the stinking weather was against him. His anger and disgust burned steadily away. That he had not stopped to think of his other affairs—he had rushed down the stairs, into the car, and off—did not decrease his passion any; his fury had many causes. For one thing (this dawned slowly) he was lost.

A half-dozen men in faded field jackets and heavy shoes were congregated around the pumps of a gas station; he pulled off the road and up beside them. When he leaned toward them to speak, a whizzing sensation fanned out from his eye through the left half of his skull. Under the gaze of these idle men he grew conscious of his small bandage. The wound throbbed; leaving Martha’s, he should have driven directly home and washed the cut. He could not even remember the name of the movie he had gone to see instead; he had not really seen it.

He wasn’t thinking.
He had to start to think.
Yet he did not want to calm down, if that’s what thinking would accomplish. If he wasn’t being prudent, that was all right with him.

He asked directions—his foot all the while tapping the gas—and received a curt reply from a short man with a not very high opinion of him. But he had asked curtly in the first place. He listened, then drove off—some words having to do with his bandage following after him. While he was swinging away, a foot kicked the rear fender. Sons of bitches. As though nobody else had troubles.

But he had only gone off the curb. He felt himself not permitting himself to calm down.

Today? The nineteenth. Six days before he was to go East; four shopping days, sang the radio, till Christmas. Carefully he had planned this day. Lovingly. Resurrectingly! Looking himself over in the mirror as he was about to depart—for his shot first, then the Loop—he had only decided to phone on the chance that Theresa herself might be home, just to make certain, to check up. And the nerve of that dumb bastard! Who the hell did he think he was!

He pulled up behind a two-toned Plymouth, tan and white. Woolly tassels framed the rear window, and two tailpipes stuck out from the car’s underside. The machine had a high polish. He looked the automobile over, tried a door and found it locked. The urge he
had was undefined, but destructive. Before starting up the stairs he thought of getting back in his car and driving around Gary, from one diner to another, until he found Theresa. He could deal with her, then
she
would deal with her husband.

Breezing out of the alley on a tricycle came the blue-eyed Bigoness girl. She looked flatly up at him, where he stood at the top of the stairs. He went into the house, working out in his mind the blood relationship between this child and Rachel. There was none. He rang the bell once, then leaned all his weight against it until he heard shoes galloping down the stairs.

“Vic? Yo, Vic?” Bigoness beat down one flight, then another, until he was confronted with the enemy. He came to a powerful halt, practically rearing backwards.

“You—”

“That’s right—”

Outrage: “Where were you! Around the corner?”

“I telephoned from Chicago. I think we’d better have a talk. Right now.”

“Right now I got other things.”

“Well, you’re going to have to have this thing too.”

“You don’t tell me what I got to have or don’t—”

He took an official tone. “It’s now three o’clock. I have to be back in Chicago—”

“Nobody told you to come down here in the first place.”

“I told myself. You told me.”

“The hell I—”

“We had better move our conversation upstairs. I take it your wife isn’t home?”

“Look, I told you—I spent it. Little Walter got sick as a dog. What do you expect, I’d let him die? Let a little kid run a hundred and
four—
”

“I think we should be talking in private.” A door had opened on the next landing. His eye released a small crack of pain. He should have gone first for his shot.

“—let the kid die?” Bigoness was shouting, dramatically. “You got a sick kid, man, you call a doctor, you buy medicines—”

“Nevertheless, I gave you the money for a purpose.”

“I didn’t sign anything, did I?”

“Just your word.”

His what? Bigoness gaped.

“A promise, Bigoness. An agreement.”

“I said I’d think about it. Don’t tell me I signed something!”

“You said you’d do it.”

“You’re thinking of some other customer, Jack. Something came up … Look, I’m waiting on a phone call, will you—” Bigoness reached for the door.

His eye gave him another ten seconds of pain. He would get blood poisoning. A movie? Why a movie? He was doing things backwards, today too. He should have gone first for the shot,
then
come here. “Let’s,” he said calmly, wedging his foot in the door, “talk a minute upstairs. Maybe we can still reach some sort of agreement.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’d better try.” He would be out of here by four, meet the girl at five … His date now seemed even more crucial to his life than his shot. Dropping his head, he stepped through the door. He had an immediate and overwhelming sense of the vulnerability of his back. Why had he dropped his head—so Bigoness wouldn’t strike him on the chin, on the eye?

Upstairs he paused momentarily at Bigoness’s door; his heart struck, like a clock hitting the hour; he moved through.