The Anatomy Lesson (Vintage International)

by Philip Roth

The sharp smells, the decisive noises, the American ideals, the Zionist zeal, the Jewish indignation, all that to a boy was vivid and inspiring, almost superhuman, had belonged to his father; the mother who’d been so enormous to him for the first ten years of his life was as diaphanous in recollection as the chiffon hood. A breast, then a lap, then a fading voice calling after him, “Be careful.” Then a long gap when there is nothing of her to remember, just the invisible somebody, anxious to please, reporting to him on the phone the weather in New Jersey. Then the Florida retirement and the blond hair. Neatly dressed for the tropics in pink cotton slacks and a monogrammed white blouse (wearing the pearl pin he’d bought years before in Orly Airport and brought home for her from his first summer in France), a little brown-skinned blond-haired woman waiting down at the end of the corridor when he gets off the elevator with his bag: the unconstrained grin, the encompassing dark eyes, the sad clinging embrace, instantly followed by the gratitude. Such gratitude! It was as though the President of the United States had arrived at the condominium to call upon some lucky citizen whose name and address had been drawn from a hat.