Authors: Philip Roth
Intermitten
tly
I examined the No. 5 Junior can opener, Maureen’s corncob. At one point I examined my own corncob. Endure? Prevail? We are lucky, sir, that we can get our shoes on in the morning. That’s what I would have said to those Swedes! (If they’d asked.)
Oh, there was bitterness in me that night! And much hatred. But what was I to do with it? Or with the can opener? Or with the diary confessing to a “confession”? What was I supposed to do to prevail? Not “man,” but Tarnopol!
The answer was nothing. “Tolerate it,” said Spielvogel. “Lambchop,” said Susan, “forget it.” “Face facts,” my lawyer said, “you’re the man and she’s the woman.” “Are you still sure of that?” I said. “Piss standing up and you’re the man.” “I’ll sit down.” “It’s too late,” he told me.
Six months later, on a Sunday morning, only minutes after I had returned from breakfast and
the
Times
at Susan’s and was settling down at my desk to work—the liquor carton had just been dragged from the closet, and I was stirring around in that dispiriting accumulation of disconnected beginnings, middles, and endings—Flossie Koerner telephoned my apartment to tell me that Maureen was dead.
I didn’t believe her. I thought it was a ruse cooked up by Maureen to get me to say something into the telephone that could be tape-recorded and used to incriminate me in court. I thought, “She’s going back in
again for more alimony—this is
another trick.” All I had to say was, “Maureen dead? Great!” or anything even
remotely
resembling that for Judge Rosenzweig or one of his lieutenants to reason that I was an incorrigible enemy of the social order still, my unbridled and barbaric male libido in need of yet stronger disciplinary action.
“Dead?”
“Yes. She was killed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At five in the morning.”
“Who killed her?”
“The car hit a tree. Bill Walker was driving. Oh, Peter,” said Flossie, with a rasping sob, “she loved life so.”
“And she’s dead
…
?” I had begun to tremble.
“Instantly. At least she didn’t suffer
…
Oh, why didn’t she have
the
seat belt on?”
‘What happened to Walker?”
“Nothing bad. A cut. But his whole Porsche was destroyed. Her head
…
her head
…
”
“Yes, what?”
“Hit the windshield. Oh, I knew she shouldn’t go up there. The Group tried to stop her, but she was just so terribly hurt.”
“By what? Over what?”
“What he did with the shirt.”
‘What shirt?”
“Oh
…
I hate to say it
…
given who he is
…
and I’m not accusing him
…
”
“What is it, Hossie?”
“Peter, Bill Walker is a bisexual person. Maureen herself didn’t even know. She
—“
She broke down sobbing here. I meanwhile had to clamp my mouth shut to stop my teeth from chattering. “She
—“
said Hossie, starting in again, “she gave him this beautiful, expensive lisle shirt, you know for a present? And it didn’t fit—or so he said afterward—and instead of returning it for a bigger size, he gave it to a man he knows. And she went up to tell him what she thoug
ht of that kind of behavior, to
have a frank confrontation
…
And they must have been drinking late, or something. They had been to a party
…
”
“Yes?”
“I’m not blaming anyone,” said Flossie. “I’m sure it was nobody’s deliberate fault.”
Was it true then? Dead? Really dead? Dead in the sense of nonexistent? Dead as the dead are dead? Dead as in death? Dead as in dead men tell no tales? Maureen is
dead? Dead
dead? Deceased? Extinct? Called to her eternal rest, the miserable bitch? Crossed the bar?
“Where’s the body?” I asked.
“In Boston. In a morgue. I guess
…
I think
…
you’ll have to go get her, Peter. And take her home to Elmira. Someone will have to call her mother
…
Oh, Peter, you’ll have to deal with Mrs. Johnson—I couldn’t.”
Peter get her? Peter take her to Elmira? Peter deal with her mother? Why, if it’s true, Flossie, if this isn’t the most brilliant bit of dissimulation yet sta
ged and directed by Maureen Tar
nopol, if you are not the best supporting soap-opera actress of the Psychopathic Broadcasting Network,
then
Peter
leave
her. Why Peter even bother with her? Peter let her lie there and rot!
As I still didn’t know for sure whether our conversation was being recorded for Judge Rosenzweig’s edification, I said, “Of course I’ll get her, Flossie. Do you want to come with me?”
“I’ll do anything at all. I loved her so. And she loved you, more than you could ever know
—“
But here a noise came out of Flossie that struck me as indistinguishable from the wail of an animal over the carcass of its mate.
I knew then that I wasn’t being had. Or probably wasn’t.
I was on the phone with Flossie for five minutes more; as soon as I could get her to hang up—with the promise that I would be over at her apartment to make further plans within the hour—I telephoned my lawyer at his weekend place in t
he country.
“
I
take it that I am no longer married. Is
that
correct? Now tell me, is that right?”
“You are a widower, friend.”
“And there’s no two ways about it, is there? This is
it.”
“This is it. Dead is dead.”
“In New York State?”
“In New York State.”
Next I telephoned Susan, whom I had left only half an hour earlier.
“Do you want me to come down?” she asked, when she could ask anything.
“No. No. Stay where you are. I have to make some more phone calls, then I’ll call you back. I have to go to Flossie Koerner’s. I’ll have to go up to Boston with her.”
“Why?”
“To get Maureen.”
“Why?”
“Look, I’ll call you later.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come?”
“No, no, please. I’m fine. I’m shaking a little but aside from that everything’s under control. I’m all right.” But my teeth were chattering still, and there seemed nothing I could do to stop them.
Next, Spielvogel. Susan arrived in the middle of the call: had she flown from Seventy-ninth Street? Or had I just gone blank there at my desk for ten minutes? “I had to come,” she whispered, touching my cheek with her hand. “I’ll just sit here.”
“—Dr. Spielvogel, I’m sorry to bother you at home. But something has happened. At least I am assuming that it happened because somebody told me that it happened. This is not the product of imagination, at least not mine. Flossie Koerner called, Maureen’s friend from group therapy. Maureen is dead. She was killed in Boston at five in the morning. In a car crash. She’s dead.”
Spielvogel’s voice came back
loud
and clear. “My good
ness.
“Driving with Walker. She went through the windshield. Killed instandy. Remember what I told you, how she used to carry on in
the
car in Italy? How she loved grabbing that wheel? You thought I was exaggerating when I said she used to actually try to kill us
both
, that she would
say
as much.
But
I wasn’t! Christ! Oh, Christ! She could go wild, like a tiger—in that
little
VW! I
told you how she almost killed us on that mountain when we were driving from Sorrento—do you remember? Well, she finally did it.
Only this time
I
wasn’t there.”
“Of course,” Spielvogel reminded me, “you don’t know all the details quite yet.”
“No, no. Just that she’s dead. Unless
the
y’re lying.”
“Who would be lying?”
“I don’t know any more. But
thing
s like this don’t happen. This is as unlikely as the way I got into it. Now the whole
thing
doesn’t make any sense.”
“A violent woman, she died violently.”
“Oh, look, a lot of people who aren’t violent
the
violently and a lot of violent people live long, happy lives. Don’t you see—it could be a ruse, some new little fiction of hers
—“
“Designed to do what?”
“For the alimony. To catch me—off guard—
again!”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. Caught you are not. Released is the word you are looking for. You have been released.”
“Free,” I said.
“That I don’t know about,” said Spielvogel, “but certainly released.”
Next I dialed my brother’s number. Susan hadn’t yet taken off her coat. She was sitting in a straight chair by the wall with her hands folded nea
tly
in her lap like a kindergartener. At the sight of her in that posture an alarm went off in me, but too much else was happening to pay
more than peripheral attention to
its
meaning.
Only why hasn’t she taken off her coat?
“Morris?”
“Yes.”
“Maureen’s dead.”
“Good,” my brother said.
Oh, they will get us for that—but who, who will get us?
I have been released.
Next I got her mother’s number from Elmira information.
“Mrs. Charles Johnson?”
“That’s right.”
“This is Peter Tarnopol calling. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Maureen is dead. She was killed in a car crash.”
“Well, that’s what usually comes of runnin’ around. I could have predicted it. When did
this
happen?”
“Early this morning.”
“And how many’d she take with her?”
“None. Nobody. She was the only one killed.”
“And what’d you say your name was?”
“Peter Tarnopol. I was her husband.”
“Oh, is that so? Which are you? Number one, two, three, four, or five?”
“Three. There were only three.”
‘Well, generally in this family there is only one. Good of you to call, Mr. Tarnopol.”
“—What about the funeral?”
But she’d hung up.
Finally I telephoned Yonkers. The man whose son I am began to choke with emotion when he heard the news—you would have thought it was somebody he had cared for. “What an ending,” he said. “Oh, what an ending for that little person.”
My
mother
listened in silence on
the
extension. Her first words were, “You’re all right?”
“I’m doing all right, yes. I think so.”
“When’s the funeral?” asked my father, recovered now, and into his domain, the practical arrangements. “Do you want us to come?”
“The funeral—I tell you, I haven’t had time to think through the funeral. I think she always wanted to be cremated. I don’t know yet where
…
”
“Maybe he’s not even going,” my mother said to my father.
“You’re not going?” my father asked. “You think that’s a good idea, not going?” I could envision him reaching up to squeeze his temples with his free hand, a headache having all at once boiled up in his skull.
“Dad, I haven’t thought it through yet. Okay? One thing at a time.
“Be smart,” my father said. “Listen to me. You go. Wear a dark suit, put in an appearance, and that’ll be that.”
“Let him decide,” my mother told him.
“He decided to marry her without my advice—it wouldn’t hurt now if he listened when I told him how to stick her in the ground!”
“He says she wanted to be cremated anyway. They put the ashes in
the
ground, Peter?”
“They scatter them, they scatter them—I don’t know what they do to them. I’m new to this, you know.”
“That’s why I’m telling you,” my father said, “to
listen.
You’re new to
everything.
I’m seventy-two and I’m
not.
You go to the funeral, Peter. That way nobody can ever call you pisher.”