Letting Go (12 page)

On October 18, after a week-long search for someone to teach Edna’s sections, John asked if I knew of anybody he might be able to get hold of right away. His preference, he told me privately, was for another Harvard man.

Pat Spigliano.

They deserved one another. At those parties at which her Johnny let his hair down and danced for us, Mrs. Spigliano swished about in her taffeta dress, fiercely American Young Mother, and—soon enough—fiercely The Chairman’s Wife. At a Spigliano party every contingency appeared to have been taken care of in advance. Over the door to the room where coats were to be deposited, was a handprinted sign to greet the first guest:
COATS HERE
. Above the table where one picked up one’s watery cocktail was written, a little misleadingly:
AND DRINKS HERE
. And signed, P.&J. Even Pat’s little party hors d’oeuvres were apparently prepared in the morning and refrigerated on the spot, so that by evening the bread, as I recall it, was particularly without tension. Oftentimes one’s teeth had to make their first soggy journey down into a Liverwurst Delight, with Pat at one’s elbow, waiting. Oh, we would all comment in barely audible voices, how does Pat manage to look so fresh, wondering just the opposite about the lettuce. She stays so thin, we would add—for it has come to seem that she will not move on until something like this
is said—and so youthful. “Oh I’m thin,” I suppose, admits Pat, fingering her front buttons as though they were little awards for virtue, “because I’m just busy all the time.” Eleven different budgetary tins on her kitchen counter encouraged one to believe that what she kept herself busy with most of the time was portioning out pleasure to her family. A piece of adhesive tape across one of the tins read—

The night I ran into them having dinner at the Faculty Club, Pat had just found a new apartment on Woodlawn into which the family was to be moved the following week. After dinner I was invited to their table for a drink, to celebrate their good fortune. “We’re so glad to be moving from Maryland,” Pat told me, “especially after what happened—Edna’s accident. And the new apartment is marvelous. I have a wonderful kitchen, and John has a wonderful study, and really,” she said, “what with his promotion, we’re having too much good luck. I expect there’ll be an earthquake or some terrible catastrophe to even things up.” What riled me was that she didn’t even expect rain. Though I had breakable possessions of my own—a new car, in fact—I wouldn’t that moment have minded hearing a rumbling under the floor and seeing the trees go sailing down outside the window on Fifty-seventh. “But our Michelle—she’s one of the twins—Michelle was bringing”—she made a quick check of the waiters—“little colored boys home from school with her. Well, that’s when I thought I’d better start looking. She was bringing them into the house for cookies, which is perfectly sweet, except Michelle is an affectionate child—I suppose she’s always
had
a lot of affection—and she was kissing them. On the lips. Well, sweet as it was, it was a problem. It’s difficult to explain these things to children, yet I feel you’ve got to be realists with them. They
want
you to be a realist—especially Michelle and Stella, at their age. How old is your little girl, Mrs. Reganhart?” She asked this of a blond woman in a purple suit who had eaten dinner with them. Mrs. Reganhart’s long hair was braided high on her head, and her features were large and Nordic and symmetrical. On no one of them had I seen a sign of any emotion, save boredom. “Seven,” the woman said. “You know then,” said Pat, “what little realists they are. We have a boy, John Junior, the twins’ older brother—and so we explained to Michelle that she couldn’t kiss little colored children for the same reason that she couldn’t marry her brother.
And I believe she understood. There is a Negro problem in the neighborhood,” said Pat, “and I don’t know what’s to be gained by not recognizing it.” “There’s a Negro little-boy problem,” said Mrs. Reganhart, looking into her brandy glass, and Pat agreed. I don’t think you can insult this woman, by the way, because I don’t think she listens. “Edna, for instance,” she began, “well apparently it was a
giant
of a colored man. Harold came by tonight—that’s her husband, the doctor,” she explained to Mrs. Reganhart. “A chiropodist,” said John, who had till then been busy constructing a personality around his pipe. “But a very nice fellow,” Pat added. “He said Edna was badly shaken up—she’s had a very serious emotional breakdown. Perhaps I’m wrong, but speaking personally I really do think that certain women are rape
prone.
Carriage, for instance, has a great deal to do with it. Your psychological make-up—” she told Mrs. Reganhart while John turned to me and asked if I had picked up the essays Edna’s class had written. “I wonder if you could mark a pile of them,” he said. “I’ve read a few myself, and I’m afraid it’s not a pleasant job. Edna is an excellent grammarian, but I don’t know how much she’s able to get over to the students about structural principles—” Whenever he could, John used his pipe to enforce his meaning; it was clear he would be a maiden with it until he died. I couldn’t really look at him without feeling a little ashamed for all our puny masculine disguises. “You haven’t thought of anyone since this morning, have you?” he asked. “I’m just opposed to letting a graduate student onto the staff. Now, ideally a Harvard man was what I was think ing—”

Martha Reganhart

The first words I ever heard her speak were, “There’s a Negro little-boy problem”; the second: “What a dumb, silly, impossible bitch.” The dry whistling autumn air outside seemed to give to Martha Reganhart’s voice a special quality of exuberance; since she seemed to have no intention of being secretive in the first place, she ended up practically shouting. We had managed to escape from the club at the same time and had turned east toward Woodlawn together, under a perfectly beautiful evening sky. “What a thing—
rape
prone! Don’t you feel like stamping her out? Don’t you want to
grind
her into something? God, she makes me ferocious! She doesn’t read contemporary novels, do you know that? And she thinks water should be fluoridated. And her little girl can’t kiss her little brother
for the same reason he can’t marry Negroes. Oh, you were there for that. You should have stopped by a little earlier—you missed all the casserole recipes, my friend. Do you know John speaks sixty—oh, you
know
all this. You don’t happen to be a pal of theirs …? Did you think I was? I sat there thinking, This fellow is going to hang me by association. Not that I read many contemporary novels myself, but I’m not against it for others, you know? Which is probably my fluoridation opinion too. What
is
fluoridation exactly? What? Oh I don’t even know how I got invited to dinner—Oh I do know. I’m a gay divorcée and Spigliano is in on the folklore.”

“He made a pass? John?”

“It does sound pretty unstructured of him, doesn’t it? I took a course from him downtown this summer. I was leaning over my Ibsen in his office and he snuck up from behind. He put his hands on my waist. My hips, I suppose. But that’s really all. I guess he felt, given that, I ought to meet his wife. Look, I don’t know what he thought. He invited me and since it’s nice to get out of the house once in a while, I came.”

“How did it end?”

“I said, Cut it out.”

“And John?”

“He said something about my not understanding his passionate Latin soul and then pole-vaulted out of the room. Excuse me, really. That woman makes me want to talk bawdy just as a kind of declaration of humanity. He wasn’t as silly as that. I shouldn’t even have been in that class in the first place. As I said, I get interested from time to time in getting out of— Does this all seem a little too defensive? I know what night school sounds like for a grown woman. Hiking up your earning ability. Improving your word power. But for me it was different, truly. I wore all kinds of jazzy clothes, and heels—so I suppose poor John’s not so much to blame. But tonight I didn’t know whether to apologize to that fastidious Arid-soaked little ladies’ magazine of his, or whether he had brought us all together to confess. She said he’d been talking about me all summer. I was one of his best students and so on, and I just sat there looking stony as I could. Did I look stony?”

“Bored.”

“Really? I wasn’t. After a while I thought maybe it was a joke. Go explain men’s consciences … I’m sorry if I’m being loud. It was a trying experience. You just had brandy—I sat there for two and a half
hours.
I thought I acted pretty well, though, didn’t you?
Oh I said that thing about Negroes, but how could I help myself? And she doesn’t hear anyway. But you were wonderful, by the way-You were really excellent. I mean you know how to be stony, kid. After a while I began to wonder if you were one of them. I live down on Fifty-third, I have to turn off here.”

“Would you like to have a beer with me?”

“I have a baby-sitter waiting.”

“A short beer. I’ll explain fluoridation.”

“Explain the conscience of John Spigliano, if you want to do some explaining. Now that’s something, isn’t it?” She stood for a moment with her hands on her substantial hips, just a little off balance, contemplating the problem. In heels she was my equal, and when she stopped meditating and looked straight on at me, it was directly in the eye. Right off I liked Martha Reganhart a good deal. “To make a pass and then invite me to dinner with her,” she said. “Who in hell was he trying to prove what to? I mean it about men’s consciences. I don’t understand them. They can’t let go, you know? If they know they’re so guilty, then why do they keep acting like bastards? I’m sounding unladylike again, but a woman at least realizes there are certain rotten things she’s got to do in life and she does them. Men want to be heroes. They want to be noble and responsible, but they’re so soft about it. Do you agree with this or are you laughing at me?”

We had a beer and on the way home, crossing Kenwood, I took her hand to guide her onto the curb. And then, with only sidewalk ahead, I kept it. Her next remark left me feeling rather feeble. “It’s only a hand,” she said. I released it. “I was only holding it,” I said. At the corner of Kimbark and Fifty-third she stopped. “The fifth ugly porch down is mine. I think I can make it alone. Thanks for walking me. Thanks for making everything clear about water fluoridation. I’d like to be against it, what with Mrs. Spigliano being for it, but I’m as cavity-oriented as the next parent. Good night, Gabe,” she said. I am of a forgiving nature, and if somebody wants to charm me, I let them. For a moment Martha Reganhart looked up at the white moon, showing the underside of what looked to be—despite my hospitable feelings toward her—a very uncompromising chin. She made a slight but weary sound. She was not so big, really, as she seemed.

“Maybe we could have dinner some night,” I said. “Without the Spiglianos.”

She looked from the heavens back to me with what I thought
was genuine interest. Then she turned formal and altogether strange. “That’s very nice of you. Perhaps we can work that out some time.” Her smile didn’t help matters any. “I work, you know, at night. Tonight is—was—an exception. Thanks again for the beer.” As she was about to move off finally, she said, “Please excuse me, will you, if I sounded like a
grande dame
just now. It’s just the handholding. I don’t see the … I was going to say I don’t see the sense.” She turned here and hurried up the street. I saw that for the most part she took the width of her hips and the breadth of her thighs without very much complaint; in walking she made no attempt to be languorous or statuesque, nor did she hide her neck and slouch off inches in the shoulders, or even give in to buxomness and gyrate belly and can. She walked with an unquestionable solidity; not mannish, mind you, but not tinkley-tinkley or snap-snap either. I imagine that women over five eight have decisions to make that other women don’t; there’s no absolute relaxing, and probably they know best whether to be snugglers and handholders. On the stairway of her front stoop Martha Reganhart suddenly disappeared, and I wondered if she had fallen. But she had only bent over to pick up something from one of the steps. Throwing a child’s doll over her shoulder, she proceeded into the house.