Letting Go (98 page)

Up till now he had stopped before the end. Now with the basket
beside him on the front seat, he started the car. Someone was to get what he wanted! Someone was to be satisfied!
Something was to be completed!

Finish! Go all the way!

He began to tremble. But why? What had he to bring to Bigoness’s attention but the very simplest facts of life? Bigoness would have to see the child to believe it, to stop bargaining over it. A life! A life! What was there left to appeal to, but the man’s human feelings?

He tucked Rachel securely in the basket. Then with the motor rocking beneath him, he picked her up and held her to him. And it was not out of pity or love that he found himself clutching her; the mystery of her circumstances was not what was weighing him down. He clutched her to himself as though she
were
himself. It was as though the child embraced the man, not the man the child. He ground his teeth, locked his arms: if only he could be as convinced as he was determined; if only he could tell which he was being, prudent, imprudent, brave, sentimental … A bleeding heart, a cold heart, a soft heart, a hard, a cautious … which? Oh if he could only break down and give in and weep. But there was no comfort for him in tears, or in reason. He had passed beyond what he had taken for the normal round of life, beyond what had been kept normal by fortune and by strategy. Tears would only roll off the shell of him. And every reason had its mate. Whichever way he turned, there was a kind of horror.

The waiter boned her fish for her, then left them to themselves. Libby said, “I don’t feel very much like a mother tonight.”

“And what do you feel like instead?”

“A—the girl in
The Tempest.
What’s her name? I don’t mean to be too precious, but since you’re asking …” she said, preciously.

“Prospero’s daughter—” But he could not give undivided attention to the task of remembering the daughter’s name. His eyes, unable to come to rest on the face opposite his own, kept moving off to a table very near the wooden booth in which they sat. A woman in the party of four dining only a few feet away struck him as familiar; yet neither she nor her companions looked like anyone he might know. She had blond hair and a pointed chin, and a topaz pin clipped to her dark suit. Though she seemed to be engaged by every syllable spoken at her table, she had the air of someone who knows she is being looked at.

But he did not care to have the air of someone who is staring, and he tried to stop. Because of what this evening meant to Libby, because he had promised before they had left the house (promised himself, while Gabe was shown the bottles, the warming pan, the baby powder) that he would do nothing to spoil these few hours, he pretended to think of the name of Shakespeare’s heroine, all the while trying to give a name to the woman at the next table. Eventually she looked over and their eyes met. He swung rapidly back to Libby—catching
her
eye with equal embarrassment. It was not, however,
the same embarrassment that had been settling and resettling over their table since they had entered the restaurant; it was not shared.

“—easier than imagining yourself Hamlet, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe that’s because I’m a woman.”

“I don’t know,” he said, trying to get the drift of her words.

“I wonder if it’s not a theory at all, but a failure of my own mind. That’s always a possibility.”

“You’re too hard on that mind of yours.”

“Oh, darling Paul, I know what I am. Well—truly—
you
can probably understand what it’s like to be Desdemona, can’t you, as
well
as Othello?”

“That question has a slight drunken lilt to it.”

“Are these silly questions?”

“Well, no.”

But his response had apparently not been quick enough, gentle enough, loving enough, reassuring enough; apparently not, for her brow was instantly furrowed. “I think,” he said, gentle, loving, reassuring, “I missed what you started to say at the beginning …”

“Aren’t you listening?” she asked, directly.

“I am.”

“I said it’s easier to identify with Shakespeare’s—Are you really at all interested in this?”

“Yes.” He had no right to disappoint her tonight. “We used to talk about Shakespeare all the time.”

“I know.”

He realized that his remark had done nothing to reassure her about the present. Without exactly feeling shame, he felt disloyal to their earliest days. Then he did not even have to glance over: he knew who the woman with the topaz pin was. He remembered the name of the Shakespearean heroine too, but did not choose to interrupt again whatever it was that Libby wanted to get on to.

“Go ahead—I’m sorry,” he said.

“I didn’t think—I thought I was boring—”

“I was thinking about my mother’s coming. Excuse me. Go on … do.”

Out of respect for his troubles, she looked apologetic; he knew what would make her forgiving. Yes, he had learned how to move her about as he wanted. “It’s not important,” she was saying. “Now that I consider it—turn upon it,” she said, smiling, bubbling up instantly,
“the broad beam of my intelligence, I don’t even think it holds water. The fact is you can’t really believe in Ophelia either. I was being morbidly romantic. I was being high.”

“You said you could identify with Ophelia?”

“I said one could.
Then
”—she flushed—“I said I could. Easier than Hamlet, I meant though, whom I find incredible. Is this heresy?”

“No—”

“Miranda!”

“Oh—yes.”

“Prospero’s daughter.”

“Oh yes, that’s it.”

“Oh brave new world—isn’t that
The Tempest
too?”

“I think so.”

“Isn’t that funny …” She went back to eating. “Though Miranda is quite incredible too. If it’s fair to Shakespeare to talk about credibility in terms of that play—How are your frog’s legs?”

“Fine. How is the sole?”

“I love sole. I forget until I eat it how fond of it I am. I’m feeling absolutely exuberant.”

“On one martini,” he said, and wished he could stop himself from sounding paternal. It was an impulse that seemed to grow in proportion to Libby’s desire to converse with him.

“It’s true, you know. Something about my kidneys makes me drunk much faster than normal people.”

“So you don’t feel normal either?”

“The day I strike people as normal …”

His response was so immediate that he had not even time to ask himself whether it might not, in fact, be true. “You strike me as normal tonight.”

“Oh good. But I feel different.” Leadingly: “I don’t know if you do …”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Happy?” She spoke the word so girlishly as to diminish the risk; she might have been asking nothing more than if he liked his food.

“Yes,” again without hesitation.

“I’m so … happy isn’t the word.”

“I don’t think it is for me either,” he admitted.

She went right on. “I’m trembling inside. Way inside,
beneath
the martini.”

“You look very composed.”

“Never as composed as you. Do you mind if I speak under the influence of alcohol?”

He could not have felt more sober himself, which accounted in part for the trouble he was having keeping up with her decision to be gay. He had grown so used to her fidgety that he did not really remember her animated. But tonight she managed to be full of excitement, and still to look as though under her red dress all her limbs were securely attached to her slight frame. If he was not able to look directly at her, it was only partly because she struck him as unfamiliar. It was also that he could not be sure what she was going to say to him, or ask of him, next. Probably she was not too sure either—which doubtless explained why the embarrassment was shared. At first he had believed that their discomfort tonight had only to do with their not being used to extravagances. He had difficulty recalling the last time they had gone out for the purpose of “having fun.” He had to go far back—and in going far back, he concluded that he was mistaken about the identity of the woman at the other table. At precisely the same moment he felt more disposed than ever to protect Libby. He would concentrate only on her. He felt her continuing to concentrate only on him. She had been concentrating on him, barreling down on him, for days; and for just as many days he had been doing his best to look the other way, to slide out from under her gaze by treating her like his child. Her total attention had gotten to him—

No. It was his mother’s arrival that was causing the trouble. He had already figured out Libby’s place in his life; consequently, he did not believe she could rattle him. “When we came in,” Libby was saying, “and everyone was waiting in line for a table—when you went up and said, ‘My name is Herz, I have a reservation,’ it was one of those moments when I just felt terribly married.”

“And you liked that?” Again, fatherly, as though he knew all there was to know about her—and at the moment when he was not sure, suddenly, quite what he did know.

“It was a small thrill,” she said. “Tonight’s a larger thrill.” He did not respond, and she rushed to say, “Unless—are we going to spend too much?”

He had to reassure the two of them; if Libby could not rattle him any longer, money could. “But we have so many things to celebrate, Lib.”

“I did have a little qualm when we came in here.”

“When I said my name is Herz?”

“About three seconds after that.” She put her hand on the table
and he knew enough to cover it with his own. “I won’t have any dessert, darling,” she whispered.

Embarrassment settled over them. They returned to their food. He was finding this altogether different from any dinner they had ever eaten at home. Was it two or three times now that she had called him “darling”?

“Do you know what I discussed with Gabe last week?”

He looked up to see that her face had subsided to its everyday shade. Her lovely skin … “What?”

“I didn’t tell you. The night he brought the present for the baby—don’t you think he’s changed, Paul?”

“Who? I’m having trouble keeping up with you martini-ized.”

“He seems very crushed, Gabe does. He’s lost a lot of his, I don’t know … air.”

“He’s had some bad luck with his father.”

A moment passed. “Did he tell you that?” Libby asked.

“You told me that.”

“Oh yes …” she said. “You forget about other people’s troubles when you have your own.” For a moment he felt as though she were judging
him.
Until she added, “Suddenly I’m aware of him in a new way. I asked him to baby-sit out of sympathy, really.”

“Glenda didn’t go home to Milwaukee then?”

“Yes, she did go away. But I needn’t have thought of Gabe, you see.”

“I wondered …” He did not mean to sound like Othello, never having felt like him before. “I wondered how you decided on him.”

“Then—why didn’t you ask?”

“I thought you’d arranged it,” he began to explain, somewhat flustered, “arranged it all beforehand.”

“Well, you should have asked. I think he gets a lot of pleasure out of Rachel. He asked if you believed in God.”

He was not jealous; he was annoyed. “How did that come up?” He had never in his life been jealous, a fact of his character which he had long ago absorbed. It contributed to his picture of himself as a man who did not have all the human fires. He had come to think of himself as less special than he once had.

Nevertheless, it seemed that what he had just tried was to make Libby think that he
was
jealous! He wondered if he could be feeling under attack only because of the woman at the other table, who
brought to his mind old failures, misunderstandings of his youth. It was a youth that he himself saw as long past; having ceased to excuse himself for what he was, he no longer needed it as a crutch. It was a help to him too that others, seeing that he was half bald and wore old clothes, did not even mistake him for a young man.

“We were talking about religion,” his wife said. “His family, you know, was very German Jewish and removed. I would have liked to have met his mother—you know, I once—I think she had a great effect on him.”

“You once what?”

“We were talking about Chanukah. I didn’t know what to say, Paul. There are some things we haven’t discussed a lot lately. You and I.”

“I think we’ve probably become a little used to each other by now.” Smiling.

“We just don’t talk as much, though. That’s a fact. That’s all. We do hardly talk.”

“I think if we feed you a martini every night—”

“And you?” she said quickly.

“You see, it doesn’t take on me.”

“I know,” she said lugubriously.

Dinner might have been finished and the check paid without any further conversation, had not the blond woman and her party walked over to their booth. “Excuse me, aren’t you Paul Herz?”

“Yets—” Trying to rise, he got caught between the table and the seat. Half standing, taller than Libby but shorter than his visitor, he said, “Yes—you look very familiar—”

“My name”—he saw Libby looking back and forth as the woman spoke—“is Frankland. I’m Marge—Howells.”

“I thought that’s who you might be—” And then both rushed so to introduce their mates that no one heard anyone else’s name, and they all had to be introduced a second time. The other couple, friends of the Franklands’, stood back and watched. Slowly Marge Howells began to look like herself, or as much of her as he could remember. He had never really taken a long look at her, even back in Iowa; that had not been the nature of their meeting. Here, across the room, she had looked older, haughtier. Paul asked Marge, and Marge Paul, what each was doing in Chicago. It turned out that the Franklands lived in Evanston.

“I’m teaching,” Paul said, answering her next question.

Tim Frankland, a physician, had a habit of extending his lower lip beyond his upper lip; he combined this now with a brief nod. “No kidding,” he said.

“At the University,” Libby said.

Frankland paid his first bit of attention to her. “Down on the South Side,” he said, pointing at the floor.