“I don’t see how you can do them then.”
“I force myself.”
“Oh Paul, I hate you for saying that.”
“I go and sit in the synagogue, Libby—”
“Yes — now tell me why, damn it?”
“Because I don’t feel complete about myself. Everything seems … incomplete.”
“Yes?”
“And I don’t go because I expect to be completed either.”
“I don’t understand your God,” she said, heartbroken.
“I’ve been mystified lately by things looking as though they’re getting better. It’s shaken my faith.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke? Are you going to toy with me, tonight? Lately I feel indulged — I don’t even mean indulged; I mean too underestimated even for me.”
“I’m not making jokes.”
“Well, I don’t believe in doom! You believe in doom — that’s what you’re saying. Don’t you love Rachel at least? Don’t you feel anything toward her?”
“I love Rachel.”
“So? And?”
“And what?”
“Well, can’t you believe in pleasure? Can’t we have a pleasant life together? Is that so hard? I don’t think you have any right to justify your — whatever it is, concerning me and our marriage—”
“I haven’t tried to justify—”
“Let me finish — it’s a very involved thought and I’m a lousy thinker. Please, Paul. What you’re saying — I don’t even know if I’ve got it — but you’re saying that you and I are supposed to be unhappy because that’s in the nature of things. Well, it may be in the nature of things, but it’s not in my nature! I’m just dying to be happy, I just can’t wait very much longer. I wish you’d stop dragging your heels about it, too. Please, Paul, if you’d just relax.”
“Oh, Libby …”
“Well what?”
“I can’t make myself be what I’m not.”
“Oh that’s an excuse! That’s — philosophy! I’ve made myself be what I’m not — don’t you know that? You can’t act this way, Paul, you’re stronger than I am. You’ll just have to be!”
Whatever his next thoughts were, he kept them to himself.
“What kind of God is that anyway!” she demanded.
“I can only believe as much as I can manage to believe for what must appear to somebody else — even my wife, Libby — to be very private reasons. I didn’t believe they were so eccentric, however.”
“I think you just go to the synagogue to get away from me.”
“Please … I go there to say the mourner’s prayer.”
“You said you don’t pray.”
“That’s right. I don’t pray.”
“Oh Paul—”
“I mourn, all right? You see, this is difficult to talk about.”
“Well — but don’t mourn: fix things up!”
“Certain things I have to accept.”
“But then I have to accept the things you have to! That’s what’s unfair, don’t you see? You’re being,” she said hopelessly, “terribly unfair … and pompous,” she added faintly.
“You see, are we getting anywhere with this conversation?”
“I’m getting confused. You’re going at things upside down. You’ve given up,” she said, incredulously.
“I’ve perhaps given in.”
“Well, that’s the same damn thing. That’s worse.”
“We’re not going to understand one another—” But when she stopped walking, when she closed her eyes, he took her hand and added, “Tonight.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t think you know what you believe.”
“I don’t know all I believe.”
“Well,” she said weakly, “I hope you see that’s not making me very happy.”
“You think too much about being happy.”
“But that’s all there is, Paul.”
When they emerged later from the movie, she took her husband’s arm. The push and hurry of the crowd behind them reminded her that it was Christmas Eve. How very far she had come …
“Did you think it was funny?” she asked.
“I thought the first half was. I thought the second half was lousy.”
“That’s exactly what I thought.”
To her surprise, his fingers were touching her face. Did she have a smudge on her cheek? For a moment she could not believe that he was only touching her. And when she could, she was afraid to speak. She hung on to his arm, treating her treat as though it were an everyday occurrence; praying.
“We’d better take a cab,” he said, leading her to the curb.
“Oh darling, this night is costing a fortune.”
“Gabe isn’t going to charge us, is he?”
“Well, no.”
“Then we’ve saved all that.”
The movie seemed to have cheered him up; she hesitated to believe that it was she who might have helped initiate some change — though, God knows, she had not spoken so openly to him in years. Could it possibly be so easy? Probably he had only made up his mind to please her. But what she was asking of him was not much more, really, than that, She had only to make it clear to him now what exactly she knew to be necessary for her pleasure …
To be kissed. In the back of the taxi, driving to the station, she wanted to be kissed. Recognizing the desire as sentimental did not decrease its poignancy a bit. Everything she wanted tonight she wanted poignantly. After some minutes had passed, she felt that she might have to settle for just being in the cab beside him, driving through the rush of the holiday streets to the station.
And so she settled for it. A taxi, after all, was a treat in itself. She had not ridden in one since the night five years before when they had left that doctor’s office in Detroit. And that was all so distant that she might never have stepped foot in a cab before tonight. She had difficulty, anyway, associating herself with any of those other Libbies, the young, stupid, helpless Libbies … though Libby Herz was always and forever sloughing off old Libby Herzes — bidding a fond farewell sometimes to what she had been as little as twenty-four hours earlier. Still she couldn’t help feeling that this night was truly different. This week had been truly different. New strength had flowed into her simply from a decision to have new strength flow into her. At least it seemed as simple as that, driving in the cab, her coat pushed up against her husband’s, her hand finding his. The news from Gabe’s own mouth that he was going abroad must have something to do with it too, if Paul had in the past been distracted from her, she could not deny that she had had certain distractions of her own. But she knew that no matter what was dealt out to them in the future — and she did happen to see only good things coming their way now — she would never write to him, as she had in Pennsylvania, or dream about him, as she had in Iowa, or see him as being any more than he was, which was what she had always done, of course. She was even pained with herself for that damn charming little note she had slipped into his hands as she and Paul had been about to go off for dinner. However, it was not easy for one as passionate as she was, she thought, to be cured overnight of an old and crucial attachment. Nor for someone as needy as she had been.
But she did not need Gabe any longer. She could not afford to, especially when he was not at all as powerful as he had led her, or she had led him to lead her, to imagine. She herself had a family that needed her. She was going to help Paul to love her. Now that they were already entering what she had begun to see as the first settled period of their life, she would dedicate herself to destroying her husband’s isolation. He did not have to be separate any longer. She would convince him of happiness.