Authors: Philip Roth
It wasn’t much cooler inside the church, though the stillness and the flicker of the candles made me think it was. I took a seat at the rear and while I couldn’t bring myself to kneel, I did lean forward onto the back of the bench before me, and held my hands together and closed my eyes. I wondered if I looked like a Catholic, and in my wonderment I began to make a little speech to myself. Can I call the self-conscious words I spoke prayer? At any rate, I called my audience God. God, I said, I am twenty-three years old I want to make the best of things. Now the doctor is about to wed Brenda to me, and I am not entirely certain this is all for the best. What is it I love, Lord? Why have I chosen? Who is Brenda? The race is to the swift. Should I have stopped to think?
I was getting no answers, but I went on. If we meet You at all, God, it’s that we’re carnal, and acquisitive, and thereby partake of You. I am carnal, and I know You approve, I just know it. But how carnal can I get? I am acquisitive. Where do I turn now in my acquisitiveness? Where do we meet? Which prize is You?
It was an ingenious meditation, and suddenly I felt ashamed. I got up and walked outside, and the noise of Fifth Avenue met me with an answer:
Which prize do you think,
schmuck?
Gold dinnerware, sporting-goods trees, nectarines, garbage disposals, bumpless noses, Patimkin Sink, Bonwit Teller—
But damn it, God, that is You!
And God only laughed, that clown.
On the steps around the fountain I sat in a small arc of a rainbow that the sun had shot through the spray of the water. And then I saw Brenda coming out of the Squibb Building. She carried nothing with her, like a woman who’s only been window shopping, and for a moment I was glad that in the end she had disobeyed my desire.
As she crossed the street, though, that little levity passed, and then I was myself again.
She walked up before me and looked down at where 1 sat; when she inhaled she filled her entire body, and then let her breath out with a “Whew!”
“Where is it?” I said.
My answer, at first, was merely that victorious look of hers, the one she’d given Simp the night she’d beaten her, the one I’d gotten the morning I finished the third lap alone. At last she said, “I’m wearing it.”
“Oh, Bren.”
“He said shall I wrap it or will you take it with you?”
“Oh Brenda, I love you.”
We slept together that night, and so nervous were we about our new toy that we performed like kindergartners, or (in the language of that country) like a lousy double-play combination. And then the next day we hardly saw one another at all, for with the last-minute wedding preparations came scurrying, telegramming, shouting, crying, rushing—in short, lunacy. Even the meals lost their Patimkin fullness, and were tortured out of Kraft cheese, stale onion rolls, dry salami, a little chopped liver, and fruit cocktail. It was hectic all weekend, and I tried as best I could to keep clear of the storm, at whose eye, Ron, clumsy and smiling, and Harriet, flittering and courteous, were being pulled closer and closer together. By Sunday night fatigue had arrested hysteria and all of the Patimkins, Brenda included, had gone off to an early sleep. When Ron went into the bathroom to brush his teeth I decided to go in and brush mine. While I stood over the sink he checked his supports for dampness; then he hung them on the shower knobs and asked me if I would like to listen to his records for a while. It was not out of boredom and loneliness that I accepted; rather a brief spark of lockerroom comradery had been struck there among the soap and the water and the tile, and I thought that perhaps Ron’s invitation was prompted by a desire to spend his last moments as a Single Man with another Single Man. If I was right, then it was the first real attestation he’d given to my masculinity. How could I refuse?
I sat on the unused twin bed.
“You want to hear Mantovani?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Who do you like better, him or Kostelanetz?”
“It’s a toss-up.”
Ron went to his cabinet. “Hey, how about the Columbus record? Brenda ever play it for you?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
He extracted a record from its case, and like a giant with a sea shell, placed it gingerly on the phonograph. Then he smiled at me and leaned back onto his bed. His arms were behind his head and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “They give this to all the seniors. With the yearbook—” but he hushed as soon as the sound began. I watched Ron and listened to the record.
At first there was just a roll of drums, then silence, then another drum roll—and then softly, a marching song, the melody of which was very familiar. When the song ended, I heard the bells, soft, loud, then soft again. And finally there came a Voice, bowel-deep and historic, the kind one associates with documentaries about the rise of Fascism.
“The year, 1956. The season, fall. The place, Ohio State University…”
Blitzkrieg! Judgment Day! The Lord had lowered his baton, and the Ohio State Glee Club were lining out the Alma Mater as if their souls depended on it. After one desperate chorus, they fell, still screaming, into bottomless oblivion, and the Voice resumed:
“The leaves had begun to turn and redden on the trees. Smoky fires line Fraternity Row, as pledges rake the leaves and turn them to a misty haze. Old faces greet new ones, new faces meet old, and another year has begun…”
Music. Glee Club in great comeback. Then the Voice: “The place, the banks of the Olentangy. The event, Homecoming Game, 1956. The opponent, the ever dangerous Illini…”
Roar of crowd. New voice—Bill Stern: “Illini over the ball. The snap. Linday fading to pass, he finds a receiver, he passes long
long
down field—and it’s intercepted by number 43, Herb Clark of Ohio State! Clark evades one tackier, he evades another as he comes up to midfield. Now he’s picking up blockers, he’s down to the 45, the 40, the 35—”
And as Bill Stern egged on Clark, and Clark, Bill Stern, Ron, on his bed, with just a little body-english, eased Herb Clark over the goal.
“And it’s the Buckeyes ahead now, 21 to 19.
What a game!
”
The Voice of History baritoned in again: “But the season was up and down, and by the time the first snow had covered the turf, it was the sound of dribbling and the cry
Up and In!
that echoed through the fieldhouse…”
Ron closed his eyes.
“The Minnesota game,” a new, high voice announced, “and for some of our seniors, their last game for the red and white … The players are ready to come out on the floor and into the spotlight. There’ll be a big hand of appreciation from this capacity crowd for some of the boys who won’t be back next year. Here comes Larry Gardner, bia Number 7, out onto the floor, Bis Larry from Akron. Ohio…”
“Larry—” announced the P.A. system; “Larry,” the crowd roared back.
“And here comes Ron Patimkin dribbling out. Ron, Number 11, from Short Hills, New Jersey. Big Ron’s last game, and it’ll be some time before Buckeye fans forget him…”
Big Ron tightened on his bed as the loudspeaker called his name; his ovation must have set the nets to trembling. Then the rest of the players were announced, and then basketball season was over, and it was Religious Emphasis Week, the Senior Prom (Billy May blaring at the gymnasium roof), Fraternity Skit Night, E. E. Cummings reading to students (verse, silence, applause); and then, finally, commencement:
“The campus is hushed this day of days. For several thousand young men and women it is a joyous yet a solemn occasion. And for their parents a day of laughter and a day of tears. It is a bright green day, it is June the seventh of the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven and for these young Americans the most stirring day of their lives. For many this will be their last glimpse of the campus, of Columbus, for many many years. Life calls us, and anxiously if not nervously we walk out into the world and away from the pleasures of these ivied walls. But not from its memories. They will be the concomitant, if not the fundament, of our lives. We shall choose husbands and wives, we shall choose jobs and homes, we shall sire children and grandchildren, but we will not forget you, Ohio State. In the years ahead we will carry with us always memories of thee, Ohio State…”
Slowly, softly, the OSU band begins the Alma Mater, and then the bells chime that last hour. Soft, very soft, for it is spring.
There was goose flesh on Ron’s veiny arms as the Voice continued. “We offer ourselves to you then, world, and come at you in search of Life. And to you, Ohio State, to you Columbus, we say thank you, thank you and goodbye. We will miss you, in the fall, in the winter, in the spring, but some day we shall return. Till then, goodbye, Ohio State, goodbye, red and white, goodbye, Columbus … goodbye, Columbus … goodbye…”
Ron’s eyes were closed. The band was upending its last truckload of nostalgia, and I tiptoed from the room, in step with the 2163 members of the Class of ‘57.
I closed my door, but then opened it and looked back at Ron: he was still humming on his bed. Thee! I thought, my brother-in-law!
The wedding.
Let me begin with the relatives.
There was Mrs. Patimkin’s side of the family: her sister Molly, a tiny buxom hen whose ankles swelled and ringed her shoes, and who would remember Ron’s wedding if for no other reason than she’d martyred her feet in three-inch heels, and Molly’s husband, the butter and egg man, Harry Grossbart, who had earned his fortune with barley and com in the days of Prohibition. Now he was active in the Temple and whenever he saw Brenda he swatted her on the can; it was a kind of physical bootlegging that passed, I guess, for familial affection. Then there was Mrs. Patimkin’s brother, Marty Kreiger, the Kosher Hot-Dog King, an immense man, as many stomachs as he had chins, and already, at fifty-five, with as many heart attacks as chins and stomachs combined. He had just come back from a health cure in the Catskills, where he said he’d eaten nothing but All-Bran and had won $1500 at gin rummy. When the photographer came by to take pictures, Marty put his hand on his wife’s pancake breasts and said, “Hey, how about a picture of this!” His wife, Sylvia, was a frail, spindly woman with bones like a bird’s. She had cried throughout the ceremony, and sobbed openly, in fact, when the rabbi had pronounced Ron and Harriet “man and wife in the eyes of God and the State of New Jersey.” Later, at dinner, she had hardened enough to slap her husband’s hand as it reached out for a cigar. However, when he reached across to hold her breast she just looked aghast and said nothing.
Also there were Mrs. Patimkin’s twin sisters, Rose and Pearl, who both had white hair, the color of Lincoln convertibles, and nasal voices, and husbands who followed after them but talked only to each other, as though, in fact, sister had married sister, and husband had married husband. The husbands, named Earl Klein and Manny Kartzman, sat next to each other during the ceremony, then at dinner, and once, in fact, while the band was playing between courses, they rose, Klein and Kartzman, as though to dance, but instead walked to the far end of the hall where together they paced off the width of the floor. Earl, I learned later, was in the carpet business, and apparently he was trying to figure how much money he would make if the Hotel Pierre favored him with a sale.
On Mr. Patimkin’s side there was only Leo, his half-brother. Leo was married to a woman named Bea whom nobody seemed to talk to. Bea kept hopping up and down during the meal and running over to the kiddie table to see if her little girl, Sharon, was being taken care of. “I told her not to take the kid. Get a baby-sitter, I said.” Leo told me this while Brenda danced with Ron’s best man, Ferrari. “She says what are we, millionaires? No, for Christ sake, but my brother’s kids gets married, I can have a little celebration. No, we gotta
shlep
the kid with us. Aah, it gives her something to do!…” He looked around the hall. Up on the stage Harry Winters (né Weinberg) was leading his band in a medley from
My Fair Lady;
on the floor, all ages, all sizes, all shapes were dancing. Mr. Patimkin was dancing with Julie, whose dress had slipped down from her shoulders to reveal her soft small back, and long neck, like Brenda’s. He danced in little squares and was making considerable effort not to step on Julie’s toes. Harriet, who was, as everyone said, a beautiful bride, was dancing with her father. Ron danced with Harriet’s mother, Brenda with Ferrari, and I had sat down for a while in the empty chair beside Leo so as not to get maneuvered into dancing with Mrs. Patimkin, which seemed to be the direction towards which things were moving.
“You’re Brenda’s boy friend? Huh?” Leo said.
I nodded—earlier in the evening I’d stopped giving blushing explanations. “You gotta deal there, boy,” Leo said, “you don’t louse it up.”
“She’s very beautiful,” I said.
Leo poured himself a glass of champagne, and then waited as though he expected a head to form on it; when one didn’t, he filled the glass to the brim.
“Beautiful, not beautiful, what’s the difference. I’m a practical man. I’m on the bottom, so I gotta be. You’re Aly Khan you worry about marrying movie stars. I wasn’t born yesterday … You know how old I was when I got married? Thirty-five years old. I don’t know what the hell kind of hurry I was in.” He drained his glass and refilled it. “I’ll tell you something, one good thing happened to me in my whole life. Two maybe. Before I came back from overseas I got a letter from my wife—she wasn’t my wife then. My mother-in-law found an apartment for us in Queens. Sixty-two fifty a month it cost That’s the last good thing that happened.”