Authors: Philip Roth
“Sounds that way.”
“Oh, I
told
her you would understand.”
“I believe I do.”
“How can she die? How can
a person with her will to live
and to struggle against the past, someone who battles for survival the way she does, and for a future—how can she die! The last time she came down from Elmira, oh, she was so torn up. That’s why we all thought Puerto Rico might lift her spirits. She’s such a wonderful dancer.”
“Oh?”
“But all that dancing, and all that sun, and just getting away —and then she got back and just took a nose dive. And did
this.
She’s so proud. Too proud sometimes, I think. That’s why she takes things so much to heart. Where you’re concerned, especially. Well, you were everything to her, you know that. You see, intellectually she knows by now how sorry you are. She knows that girl was just a tramp, and one of those things men do. It’s partly Mr. Egan—I shouldn’t say it, but it’s being in his clutches. Every time you go plead with her to come back to you, he turns around and says no, you’re not to be trusted. Maybe I’m telling tales out of school—but we are talking about Maureen’s
life.
But you see, he’s such a devout Catholic, Mr. Egan, and Mrs. Egan even more so—and, Peter, being Jewish you may not understand what it means to them when a husband did what you did. My parents would react the same way. I grew up in that kind of atmosphere, and I know how strong it is. They don’t know how the world has changed—they don’t know about girls like that Karen, and they don’t want to know. But I see those college girls today, the kinds of morals they have, and their disrespect for every
thing
. I know what they’re capable of. They get a beeline on an attractive man old enough to be their own father
—“
The doctor appeared.
Tell me she is dead. I’ll go to jail forever. Just let that filthy ·psychopathic liar he dead. The world will
b
e a better place.
But the news was “good.” Mr. Tarnopol could go in now to see his wife. She was out of danger—she had come around; the doctor had even gotten her to speak a few words, though she was so groggy she probably hadn’t understood what either of
the
m
had said. Fortunately, the doctor explained, the whiskey she had taken with the pills had made her sick and she’d thrown up most of “the toxic material” that otherwise would have killed her. The doctor warned me that her face was bruised
—“
Yes? It is?”—as she had apparently been lying for a good deal of the time with her mouth and nose pushed into the mattress and her own vomit. But that too was fortunate, for if she had not been on her stomach while throwing up, she probably would have strangulated. There were also bruises on the buttocks and thighs. “There are?” Yes, indicating that she had spent a part of the two days on her back as well. All that movement, the doctor said, was what had kept her alive.
I was in the clear.
But so was Maureen.
“How did they find her?” I asked the doctor.
T found her,” Flossie said.
‘We have Miss Koerner to thank for that,” the doctor said.
T was calling there for days,” said Flossie, “and getting no answer. And then last night she missed Group. I got suspicious, even though she sometimes doesn’t come, when she gets all wrapped up in her flute or something—but I just got very suspicious, because I knew she was in this depression since coming back from Puerto Rico. And this afternoon I couldn’t stand worrying any more, and I told Sister Mary Rose that I had to leave and in the middle of an arithmetic class I just got in a taxi and came over to Maureen’s and knocked on the door. I just kept knocking and
then
I heard Delilah and I was
sure
something was up.”
“Heard who?”
“The cat. She was meowing away, but there was still no answer. So I got down on my hands and knees in the corridor there, and there’s a little space under the door, because it doesn’t fit right, which I always told Maureen was dangerous, and I called to the pussy and then I saw Maureen’s hand hanging down over the side of the bed. I
could see her fingertips almost
touching the carpet. And so I ran to a neighbor and phoned the police and they broke in the door, and there she was, just in her underwear, her bra too I mean, and all this
…
mess, like the doctor said.”
I wanted to find out from Flossie if a suicide note had been found, but the doctor was still with us, and so all I said was, “May I go in to see her now?”
“I think so,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.”
In the darkened room, in one of the half dozen criblike beds, Maureen lay with her eyes closed, under a sheet, hooked up by tubes and wires to various jugs and bottles and machines. Her nose was swollen badly, as though she’d been in a street brawl. Which she had been.
I looked silently down at her, perhaps for as long as a minute, before I realized that I had neglected to call Spielvogel. I wanted all at once to talk over
with
him whether I really ought to be here or not. I would like to ask him his opinion. I would like to know my own. What
was
I d
oing here? Rampant narcissismo—
or, as Susan diagnosed it, just me being a boy again? Coming when called by my master Maureen! Oh, if so, tell me how I stop! How do I ever get to be what is described in the literature as
a man?
I had so wanted to be one, too—why then is it always beyond me? Or—could it be?—is this boy’s life a man’s life after all? Is this
it?
Oh, could be, I thought, could very well be that I have been expecting much too much from “maturity.” This quicksand is it—adult life!
Maureen opened her eyes. She had to work to bring me into focus. I gave her time. Then I leaned over the bed’s side bars, and with my face looming over hers, said, “This is Hell, Maureen. You are in Hell. You have been consigned to Hell for all eternity.”
I meant for her to believe every word.
But she began to smile. A sardonic smile for her husband, even in extremis. Faindy, she said, “Oh, delicious, if you’re here too.”
“This is Hell, and I am going to look down at you for all of Time and tell you what a lying bitch you are.”
“Just like back in Life Itself.”
I said, shaking a fist, “What if you had died!”
For a long time she didn’t answer. Then she wet her lips and said, “Oh, you would have been in such hot water.”
“But
you
would have been
dead.”
That
roused her anger,
that
brought her all the way around. Yep, she was alive now. “Please, don’t bullshit me. Don’t give me ‘Life is Sacred.’ It is not sacred when you are constantly in pain.” She was weeping. “My life is just pain.”
You’re lying, you hitch. You’re lying to me, like you lie to Flossie Koerner, like you lie to your Group, like you lie to everyone. Cry, hut I won’t cry with you!
So swore he who aspired to manhood; but the little boy who will not
the
began to go to pieces.
“The pain, Maureen,”—the tears from my face plopped onto the sheet that covered her
—“
the pain comes from all this
lying
that you do. Lying is the form your pain
takes.
If only you would make an effort, if only you would give it up
—“
“Oh, how can you? Oh get out of here, you, with your crocodile tears. Doctor,” she cried feebly, “help.”
Her head began to thrash around on the pillow
—“
Okay,” I said, “calm down, calm yourself.
Stop.”
I was holding her hand.
She squeezed my fingers, clutched them and wouldn’t let go. It had been a while now since we’d held hands.
“How,” she whimpered, “how…”
“Okay, just take it easy.”
“—How can you be so
heartless
when you see me like this?”
“I’
m sorry.
”
“I’m only alive two minutes
…
and you’re over me calling me a liar. Oh, boy,” she said, just like somebody’s little sister.
“I’m only trying to suggest to you how to alleviate
the
pain. I’m trying to tell you
…
” ah, go on with it, go on,
“the lying is the source of your self-loathing.”
“Bullshit,”
she sobbed, pulling her fingers from mine. “You’re trying to get out of paying the alimony. I see right through you, Peter. Oh thank God I didn’t die,” she moaned. “I forgot all about the alimony. That’s how mortified and miserable you left me!”
“Oh, Maureen, this
is
fucking hell.”
“Who said no?” said she, and exhausted now, closed her eyes, though not for oblivion, not quite yet. Only to sleep, and rise in a rage one last time.
When I came back into the waiting room there was a man with Flossie Koerner, a large blond fellow in gleaming square-toed boots and wearing a beautifully cut suit in the latest mode. He was so powerfully good-looking—charismatic is the word these days—that I did not
immediately
separate out the tan from the general overall glow. I thought momentarily that he might be a detective, but the only detectives who look like him are in the movies.
I got it: he too must just be back from vacationing in Puerto Rico!
He extended a hand, big and bronzed, for me to shake. Soft wide French cuffs; gold cuff links cast in the form of little microphones; strange animalish tufts of golden hair on the knuckles
…
Why, just from the wrists to the fingernails he was something to conjure with—now how in hell did she get
him?
Surely to catch this one would req
uire the piss of a pregnant con
tessa. “I’m Bill Walker,” he said. “I flew here as soon as I got the news. How is she? Is she able to talk?”
It was my predecessor, it was Walker, who had “promised” to give up boys after the marriage, and then had gone back on his word. My, what a dazzler he
was! In my lean and hungry Ash
kenazic way I am not a bad-looking fellow, but this was
beauty.
“She’s out of danger,” I told Walker. “Oh yes, she’s talking; don’t worry, she’s her old self.”
He flashed a smile warmer
and larger than the sarcasm war
ranted; he didn’t even see it as sarcasm, I realized. He was just plain overjoyed to hear she was alive.
Flossie, also in seventh heaven, pointed appreciatively to the two of us. “You can’t say she doesn’t know how to pick ‘em.”
It was a moment before I understood that I was only being placed alongside Walker in the category of Good-Looking Six-Footers. My face flushed—not just at the thought that she who had picked Walker had picked me, but that both Walker and I had picked her.
“Look, maybe we ought to have a drink afterwards, and a
little
chat,” Walker suggested.
“I have to run,” I replied, a line that Dr. Spielvogel would have found amusing.
Here Walker removed a billfold from the side-vented jacket that nipped his waist and swelled over his torso, and handed me a business card. “If you get up to Boston,” he said, “or if for any reason you want to get in touch about Maur.”
Was a pass being made? Or did he actually care about “Maur”? “Thanks,” I said. I saw from the card that he was with a television station up there.
“Mr. Walker,” said Flossie, as he started for the nurse’s desk. She was still beaming with joy at the way things had worked out. “Mr. Walker—would you?” She handed him a piece of scratch paper she had drawn hastily from her purse. “It’s not for me—it’s for my
little
nephew. He collects them.”
“What’s his name?”
“Oh, that’s so kind. His name is Bobby.”
Walker signed the paper and, smiling, handed it back to her.
“Peter, Peter.” She was plainly chagrined and embarrassed, and touched my hand with her fingertips. “Would
you?
I couldn’t ask earlier, not with Maureen still in danger
…
you understand
…
don’t you? But, now, well, I’m just so elated
…
so relieved.” With that she handed me a piece of paper. Perplexed, I signed my name to it. I thought: Now all she needs is Mezik’s X and Bobby wil
l have the set. What’s going on
with this signature business? A trap? Flossie and Walker in cahoots with—with whom? My signature to be used for
what?
Oh, please, relax. That’s paranoid madness. More narcissismo.