Bess Roth's reassurance and arrangements for Seldon's care

Bess Roth’s relationship with Seldon Wishnow is defined by a night when a frightened child, more than seven hundred miles away, needs an adult to take responsibility for him. After Seldon calls from Kentucky convinced that his mother is dead, Bess comforts him, arranges for the Mawhinneys to collect him, and remains on the telephone as he follows her instructions. Her care is both intimate and practical: she tries to steady his fear, makes sure he has food, and turns a distant emergency into a sequence of actions he can manage.

A Child Alone in Kentucky

Seldon is living in Danville with his mother, Selma Wishnow, who has been relocated there under Homestead 42 and is working for the Metropolitan. That morning she has driven more than a hundred miles to Louisville to report to her district supervisor. The roads are poor, and the journey is expected to take most of the day. Neither Seldon nor Bess knows what has happened to her when the call begins.

Seldon can initially manage only fragments of speech between sobs. He fears his mother is dead, as his father is, and insists that she would have called if she were alive. Bess counters with ordinary explanations: she may be caught in traffic, or the car may have broken down, as it did once before when Seldon stayed with the Roths during a rainy night. She urges him to calm down and tells him his mother is fine. The reassurance is sincere, but the narrator’s account makes its painful limit clear: Seldon’s conclusion is correct, though the truth will not be confirmed until the next day.

Bess also tries to bring him back to the immediate business of caring for himself. When she asks what he can eat, Seldon reports that he has finished the Fig Newtons. She clarifies that she means a meal, not more cookies, and directs him to look in the refrigerator and tell her what is there. Her insistence on food does not solve the crisis, but it gives a distressed child a concrete task and reminds him that someone is attending to his needs.

Mobilizing Help

Recognizing that reassurance over the telephone is not enough, Bess asks Sandy Roth how far the Mawhinneys are from Danville. He estimates that the drive in their truck will take about twenty minutes. She sends him to retrieve their number from the top of her dresser, in a piece of paper kept in her little brown change purse, and calls the family. Bess introduces herself as Sandy’s mother, explains that a little boy is alone in Danville, and asks for help.

Sandy objects when he realizes whom she has called. Bess does not pretend to know the Mawhinneys or to share their way of life. She acknowledges that they are farmers, that they go to bed early, and that they work hard; she also admits her reluctance. But she insists that the child cannot be left alone any longer. Seldon has already lost his father, and now his mother is missing. When Mr. Mawhinney takes the phone, Bess explains the situation, and he agrees to do what she asks. Her relief is not that the danger has passed, but that someone nearby is willing to act.

The call places Bess’s judgment against Sandy’s hesitation. She does not wait for certainty about Mrs. Wishnow’s whereabouts before finding Seldon immediate company and a safe place for the night. Instead, she weighs the risk of involving people she does not know against the evident danger of leaving a frightened child isolated. Mr. Mawhinney’s willingness to help gives her plan a local foothold, while her own continued attention keeps Seldon connected to the people arranging his rescue.

Instructions for Getting Through the Night

At a quarter to eleven, Bess calls Seldon back to explain the plan. He is to put his toothbrush, pajamas, underwear, and a pair of clean socks into a paper bag, then put on a heavy sweater, a warm coat, and a flannel cap. He should wait inside for Mr. Mawhinney’s truck. Bess describes Mr. Mawhinney as kind and generous, and recalls that Sandy knows the family from the summer he spent at their farm. These details are meant to make the approaching strangers less frightening to Seldon.

When Seldon again cries that his mother must be dead, Bess continues to tell him that she will collect him from the Mawhinneys the following morning and drive him to school. She gives him a note to write in his best handwriting, telling his mother where he has gone and providing the Mawhinneys’ telephone number. He must also ask his mother to call Bess collect as soon as she gets home. Then he is to wait in the living room for the truck’s horn, turn off the house lights, take his bag, lock the door, and leave calmly.

Bess does not hang up once she has given the instructions. She stays on the line while Seldon completes them and comes back to tell her he is ready. Even after he hears Mr. Mawhinney outside, she continues to guide him: take the bag, turn out the lights, lock the door, and do not run. The call has become a kind of remote supervision, with Bess accompanying each step until Seldon can leave the house. The narrator notes that the expense of keeping the long-distance call going was beyond his calculation; what matters in the scene is that Bess keeps the connection open until help has arrived.

Care Amid Political Violence

Bess’s response takes place against a wider atmosphere of danger. The family has recently endured Alvin’s assault on Herman Roth, Herman’s injuries, the wreckage of their living room, and a shootout on Chancellor Avenue that they believed might be a pogrom. In the week before Seldon’s call, there were sirens and shouting through the night, and the Roths had hidden in the Cucuzzas’ foyer beside loaded pistols. Philip Roth, recalling Bess’s actions, recognizes that these accumulated shocks had not broken her capacity to care for someone else.

That retrospective recognition gives the relationship its larger significance. Bess does not merely calm Seldon with comforting words; she accepts responsibility for his immediate safety and promises that Herman Roth will drive to Kentucky to bring him home if his mother cannot. She makes that commitment while the family itself faces uncertainty about how far the Wheeler and Ford forces will let the violence go. Her promise extends beyond what she can personally guarantee, but it gives Seldon a place to go and assures the Mawhinneys they will not be left to care for him indefinitely.

Seldon leaves in such haste that he forgets to hang up the telephone. The next day, Mrs. Wishnow’s burned-out car is found in a drainage ditch beside a potato field south of Louisville; she had been beaten and robbed, and the car set ablaze during the anti-Jewish violence. On Sunday, October 19, Herman and Sandy drive to Kentucky to bring Seldon back to Summit Avenue, while Mrs. Wishnow’s remains follow by train. Bess’s reassurance that his mother will return cannot undo the loss, but her arrangements ensure that Seldon is not left alone to face it. For the duration of the night, her steady attention gives him a route out of the house and into the care of a family willing to help.