Letting Go by Philip Roth Read Free Book Online Page B

how easy life is in New York?
    I chose, however, to keep my eyes open and on him. Across the court, in WSAC sweatshirt and white ducks that broke so low on his sneakers they nearly covered his toes, his undernourished figure, spidery and nervous, bounced in place awaiting my return. He had a stringy little body, a large head, and thick hair the color of iron. I am taller and heavier, like my mother, but his face, without the sags and wrinkles, could have been my own: gray eyes, flat nose, wide nostrils,and a big jaw which my father maintains has resulted in no wisdom-teeth trouble for two centuries. In his family they rise right up through the gums with room to spare. The aesthetic results of functionalism, however, are not always very satisfying; these abundant jaws of ours tend to make both my father and myself look a little like farmers. Or soldiers. You know we come from strong stock, but that’s all you know; it was on my mother’s side that all the nuance lay.
    The steely Germanic strain in my father’s features may not at first seem at one with his manner—particularly with his wisecracking, which he was allowing me that day to sample after each of my returns. In part, I suppose, this wisecracking is a watered-down version of my mother’s wit; in part it arises from having lived his life in America, where he early came to admire the spirit of certain of our radio comedians. But mostly what one is witnessing when my father makes a joke, is the surface reaction of a gloomy northern disposition, the response of a man who would gush and weep if he did not kid around.
    “Oh-ho,” my father called, as I, out of boredom, gave the ball a little spin. “Oh-ho, a trickster. Is that what I’ve got on my hands? What are you doing, working out your Oedipus complex?”
    Subsequently I hit the ball listlessly back, a simple easy return. “So what now—giving up? Letting an old man beat your pants off? Oh-ho, a push-over, Charlie,” he called to the towel-and-soap attendant who was passing along the side of the court. “Strictly a pushover I’m up against today.”
    “How are you, Doctor?” Charlie asked. “He sure has grown up.”
    “Ah him, he’s still a school kid,” my father called. “Still wet behind the ears,” he added, so that Charlie laughed, and I felt provoked to give a little vent to my Oedipus complex and slammed a wicked one past his backhand. Charlie moved off, counting towels; my father quieted a moment; and I had the usual filial remorse.

    At home, what was there to do? It looked as though I might at last get a chance to go out on the streets alone. Millie, the woman who had cooked and cleaned for our family for years, came into the living room directly after our return and said that there had been a phone call for me from Iowa City. My father, who had been rubbing his hands together in an anticipatory way and looking out the window at the park, asked his question without turning.
    “A woman?”
    “I think so. Specifically, a girl.”
    “Well,” he said, “you better go ahead and phone her.” In a voice with a little edge to it, he added, “It doesn’t take you too long, huh?”
    “For what?”
    He looked at me, trying to grin. “To get a foot in the door. Hey, I sound dirty. To get established. You going to call?”
    “Not now. I thought I might take a walk.”
    “It’s freezing out. You’ll freeze to death.”
    “It’s not too bad.”
    “How about giving me a look at your teeth?”
    “I think you looked at them in August.”
    “August, September, October, November—it’s the end of December already. January is six months. (Come in the office. I’ve got new equipment you haven’t even seen yet.”
    “I think I saw it in August. I thought I’d walk down—”
    “Come on, it’s your vacation.”
    “It’s your vacation too,” I said. “You ought to stay out of the office today. Millie says you work too hard.”
    “Oh does Millie? Maybe Millie should take a couple