Exit Ghost (21 page)
Authors: Philip Roth
HE
Maybe you haven't lost as much confidence as you think. You don't appear to be without confidence.
SHE
I'm not without confidence with men. I'm not without confidence with people in general. I have less and less confidence with my computer.
HE
And when you're in my house, across from the swamp, with only the tall reeds and the heron for company out the window...
SHE
That's part of the idea. Then I won't have men, I won't have people, I won't have parties, I won't be able to gather what I need from any of those sources, and I won't be so worked up, hopefully, and I won't be so frayed, hopefully, and I won't be in such a state, hopefully, and I figureâ
HE
You misuse "hopefully."
SHE
(She laughs. Shylyâto his surpriseâshe asks)
Am I? Do I?
HE
"I hope" would do. You could try "with any luck." In the old days, before well-brought-up adolescent girls had their faces fucked forcefully, you never heard "hopefully" misused like that. The vulgate "in hopes of" was sometimes substituted for "in the hope of," but that was as bad as things got when I was your age and wanted to be a writer.
SHE
Don't do that. You did it yesterday. Don't do it again.
HE
I was only correcting a little English usage.
SHE
I know. Don't do that. If you want to talk, we should talk. If I ever were to give you something that I wrote, that I would want you to read, then please correct my English. But if we're speakingâit's not an exam. If I start to think it's an exam, then I won't speak as freely. So please don't do that.
(Pause)
But yes, the thought is that if I can't draw my confidence from my social life, then I'll return the effort to my work, and hopefully the confidence will follow that. Stop laughing at me.
HE
I'm laughing because you, who were so superior to the stringy-haired girls from Wisconsin, haven't corrected yourself. Won't correct yourself.
SHE
Because I got interested in my thought and wasn't thinking about whether you'd approve of me or whether you'd approve of my wording or not.
HE
Why am I doing this to you, do you think?
SHE
To assert
your
superiority?
HE
With "hopefully"? How stupid of me.
SHE
Yes,
(laughs)
how stupid of you.
HE
I guess I'm afraid of you.
SHE
(Long pause)
I'm a little afraid of you.
HE
Did it ever occur to you that I might be afraid of you?
SHE
No, I didn't think you'd be afraid of me. It occurred to me that you might enjoy me, that you might like to be in my presence, but it didn't occur to me that you might be afraid of me.
HE
I am.
SHE
Why?
HE
Why do you think? You're the writer. Hopefully.
SHE
(Laughs)
So are you.
(Pause)
The only thing I can think is that I'm young and I'm female and I'm good-looking. But I won't be young forever, and then the female part won't
matter so much, and the good looksâwhat does that have to do with anything? But maybe there are other reasons that I don't know about. Why do you think?
HE
I haven't had a chance to figure it out.
SHE
If you think of any other reasons, I'd love to know them. If you come up with just those three, you don't need to tell me. But if you think of anything else, you might help me out a lot by telling me, so please do.
HE
You exude confidence. The way you sit with your arms crossed over your head like that and holding your hair up with your hands like that so that I can see that you're no less beautiful that way too. All of you is in that pose. You exude confidence when you smile. You exude confidence with your shape, with your body. That must give you confidence.
SHE
It does. But it won't give me confidence with the swamp and the heron. Then I'll have to find my confidence here.
(She tilts her head.)
HE
In your brain rather than in your breasts.
SHE
Yes.
HE
Do your breasts give you confidence?
SHE
Yes.
HE
Tell me about that.
SHE
About my breasts giving me confidence? I know I have something people will like, people will be jealous of, people will want. To have the confidence that you will be wantedâthat's what confidence is. Confidence that you will be approved of, thought well of, desired. If you know that, then you're confident. I know that anything that has to do with theseâ
HE
Your breasts.
SHE
My breasts. I can do well.
HE
You're an original, Jamie. There aren't a million copies of you.
SHE
You figure out what people want, you figure out what will impress people, and you give them what will impress them, and you get what you want.
HE
So, what will impress me? What will I want? Or do you not care to impress me?
SHE
Oh, I'd like very much to impress you. I look up to you. You're a great mystery, you know. You're a source of great fascination.
HE
Why of fascination?
SHE
Because except for that heron out your window, nobody knows anything about you. Anyone who's famous, everyone knows everything about themâso they think. But with you, you've written these things that make you famous among a certain group of people. You're no Tom Cruise.
(Laughs)
HE
Who's Tom Cruise?
SHE
He's somebody so famous that you don't even know who he is. That's who Tom Cruise is. If you read all the star magazine stuff about someone day in and day out, of course you don't know anything about them, but you can imagine that you do. But no one can imagine they know anything about you.
HE
They think they know everything each time I publish a book.
SHE
Those are the idiots. You're a mystery.
HE
You want to impress a mystery.
SHE
Yes. Yes, I want to impress you. So what will impress you?
HE
Your breasts impress me.
SHE
Tell me something I don't know.
HE
All of you impresses me.
SHE
What else?
HE
Your brain. I know I'm supposed to say that under the rules of 2004, but I don't live by those rules.
SHE
So is it or isn't it true that my brain impresses you?
HE
So far so good.
SHE
Anything else?
HE
Your beauty. Your charm. Your gracefulness. Your candor.
SHE
Well, there you have it.
HE
Billy has it.
SHE
He does.
HE
What do you mean when you say Billy adores you? What's the adoration like?
SHE
When we go to Texas he wants to see where I played as a child. He wants to sit on the swing where my nanny would swing me and the seesaw where she sat on one end and I on the other when I was four. He has me take him out to my school, Kinkaid, so he can see the third-grade classroom where we churned butter and the fourth-grade classroom where we did a science experiment with a petri dish. I took him to the library because I'd belonged to the Library Club, a special club for the best students, and at the window, he gazed out at the lush grounds of the school like the romantic poet beholding his rainbow. He had to see the big playing field where I was in the stilt race on
Field Day in the fourth grade, and it was so like a medieval pageant, with purple and gold flags fluttering everywhere, that I got so excited I fell, fell on my face ten feet from the starting line, though I was the speedy one slated to win. We had to drive from our house in River Oaks and follow exactly my route to school so he could see the lawns and the trees and the shrubs and the houses that the chauffeur had to drive by to get me the five miles out to Kinkaid. In Houston he'll only jog along the path I used when I was fifteen. It's unending with Billy. My me-ness is his magnetic pole. When I have dreams that I'm having sex, the sort of dreams that everyone has, male or female, he's jealous of my dreams. When I go to the bathroom, he's jealous of the bathroom. He's jealous of my toothbrush. He's jealous of my barrette. He's jealous of my underwear. Pieces of my underwear are in all of his pants pockets. I find them when I take his clothes to the cleaner. More, or will that suffice?
HE
So adoration means he's in love not merely with youâhe's in love with your life.
SHE
Yes, my biography's a wonder to him. Rhapsodic words of love are all I hear. When I dress or I undress it's like being just behind a window that his face is pressed against.
HE
The curves no less hypnotic than the seesaw.
SHE
His praise for my silhouette is unstinting when I'm back-lit in the bedroom. When I'm in my underpants in the kitchen making the morning coffee and he comes up behind me to hold my breasts and lick my ears, he recites Keats: "There's a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no, / And a sigh for I can't bear it! / O what can be done, shall we stay or run? / O cut the sweet apple and share it!"
HE
Well, quoting from memory a love poem by Keats makes Billy a rare member of his generation.
SHE
It does. He is. He quotes me reams of Keats.
HE
Does he quote the letters? Has he quoted from Keats's last letter? He wrote it when he was five years younger than you and gravely ill. Only months later he was dead. "I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past," he said, "and that I am leading a posthumous existence."
SHE
No, I don't know his letters. As for a posthumous existence, it's not come up.
HE
Tell me, how does the object of such uxorious worship find the strength to endure it?
SHE
Oh, (
tenderly laughing
) I know how to behave.
HE
You have all this sexual attention. Yet you're restless and desperate.
SHE
We have plenty of sex. But sex is not always the source of tremendous excitement for one partner that it is for the other. It often is at the beginning.
HE
I remember that.
SHE
When was the last time you had an affair with a woman?
HE
When you were a debutante.
SHE
Has it been hard not to have an affair with a woman for that long? Have you not had sex for that long?
HE
I haven't.
SHE
Has that been hard?
HE
Everything is hard at a certain point.
SHE
But particularly hard.
(Their voices are faint now, barely able to be heard when a car passes beneath the window.)
HE
It's among the things that are particularly hard.
SHE
Why? I know you live in the country, in the middle of nowhere, but there must be ... well, you say there's a college nearby. I know your age, but there must be girls there that read your books and would be quite impressed. Why? Why did you decide to give that up, too, along with the city?
HE
It decided to give me up.
SHE
What do you mean?
HE
Just that.
SHE
I don't understand.
HE
And you won't.
SHE
Not if you won't tell me, I won't. Would you ever change your mind about giving that up too?
HE
I'm changing it. That's why I'm still here.
SHE
Well ... I'm flattered. If it's true that it's been years and years, I'm extremely flattered.
HE
Jamie. Jamie Logan. Jamie Hallie Logan. Do you speak any languages, Jamie?
SHE
Not well.
HE
You speak English well. I like your Texas accent.
SHE
(Laughs)
I worked hard to get rid of my Texas accent when I got to college.
HE
Is that right?
SHE
I did, yes.
HE
I would have thought you'd have exploited it.
SHE
It was one and the same as not telling anyone about the debutante. As not telling anyone that I went to the same country club as both George Bushes.
HE
But it's still there.
SHE
Well, I try not to have one. Except for ironic purposes. I did go off to Harvard with my "y'all" intact but I dropped it quickly enough.
HE
Too bad.
SHE
Oh, I didn't know anyone, I was just eighteen, and I turned up at Wigglesworth and everyone looked at me and I said, "Hi, y'all." They thought I was the biggest hick. I never said it again. I was quite naive compared to a lot of the freshmen there. Compared to the kids who'd gone to prep schools in Manhattan, I
was
a hick. They were terrifying. If I have it today it's because I'm unhinged today. Perhaps it's there a bit more than usual. When I get unhinged, it comes out.
