The Humbling (10 page)

Alone in the room, Axler felt ecstatic with the return of his force and his naturalness and the abandonment of his humiliation and the end of his disappearance from the world. This wasn't reverie any longer; the revitalization of Simon Axler was truly
under way. And under way in this room full of children's furniture, of all places. The scale of the furniture reminded him of the art therapy session at Hammerton, when he and Sybil Van Buren had been given crayons and paper in order to draw pictures for their therapist. He remembered how he had obediently set to coloring with the crayons like the child he'd once been in kindergarten class. He remembered the mortifying consequences of having ended up in Hammerton, how every trace of assuredness had vanished; he remembered how all he found to deliver him from a pervasive sense of defeat and dread was the conversation that he listened to in the rec room after dinner, the stories of those among the hospitalized infatuated still with how they had tried to kill themselves. Now, however, a huge man sitting awkwardly amid these little tables and chairs, he was at one with the actor, conscious of the achievement behind him and convinced that life could begin again.

D
R. WAN
was a small, slender young woman who said that she would, of course, need Pegeen's history too, but that she could begin at least to address his fears about birth defects in the offspring of aging fathers. She told him that although the ideal age for men to father children is their twenties, and although the risk of passing on genetic vulnerability or developmental disorders like autism is significantly increased after forty, and although older men had more sperm with damaged DNA than younger men, the odds of fathering normal offspring without birth defects were not necessarily dire for a man of his age and health, especially as some, though not all, birth defects could be detected during pregnancy. "The testicular cells that give rise to sperm divide every sixteen days," Dr. Wan explained to him while they sat across from each other at the little table. "This means that the cells have split about eight hundred times by age fifty. And with each cell division, the chance increases for errors in the sperm's DNA." Once Pegeen had provided her with the other half of the story, she could more fully evaluate their situation and work with them together should they wish to proceed further. She gave him her card along with a pamphlet that spelled out in detail the nature and risk of birth defects. She also explained that there might be decreased fertility at his age, and so, at his request, she provided him with a referral to a laboratory to have a sperm
analysis. That way they could determine if there was likely to be any difficulty with conception. "There can be a problem," she told him, "of sperm count, of motility, or morphology." "I understand," he said and, to express an uncontrollable sense of gratitude, reached out to clutch her hand. The doctor smiled at him as if she were the older of the two and said, "Call me if you have questions."

Back at home, he had an enormous urge to phone Pegeen and tell her of the great idea that had taken hold of him and what he had done about it. But that conversation would have to wait until they were together the following weekend and had hours and hours to talk. Alone in bed that night, he read the pamphlet Dr. Wan had given him. "It takes healthy sperm to make a healthy baby ... About 2 to 3 percent of all babies are born with a major birth defect ... More than 20 rare but devastating genetic disorders have been linked to aging fathers ... The older a man is when he conceives a child, the more likely his partner is to miscarry ... Older fathers are more likely to have children with autism, schizophrenia, and Down syndrome..." He went through the pamphlet once and then again, and sobering as he found the information, mindful as he
now was of the risks, he would not be dissuaded from his plans by what he read. Instead, too excited to sleep, thinking something wonderful was happening, he found himself down in the living room, further enlivened by listening to music, and, along with feelings of fearlessness such as he had not known for years, experiencing the deep biological longing for a child that is more commonly associated with a woman than with a man. Nothing about their being together seemed improbable any longer. She had to go with him to see Dr. Wan. Once everyone had the whole story, the two of them would soberly assess what should come next.

He had planned to begin the conversation after dinner on Friday evening. But when Pegeen arrived for the weekend late Friday afternoon, she went off to her study with a slew of student exams to mark and left it to him to make dinner. And after dinner she withdrew again to the study to grade more exams. He thought, Let her get everything done now. Then we'll have the weekend to talk.

In bed in the dark—two weeks to the day after the tryst with Tracy—when he began to kiss and to fondle Pegeen, she pulled away and said, "My heart's not in it tonight." "All right," he said and,
unable to arouse her, rolled over to his side but without relinquishing her hand, which he held on to with his own hand—the hand that still wanted to touch everything—until she'd fallen asleep. When he awakened in the middle of the night, he wondered, What did it mean that her heart wasn't in it, why had she been so unwilling to be near him from the moment she'd arrived?

He found out first thing the next morning, before he even had a chance to begin to tell her about his meeting with Dr. Wan and all that lay behind that meeting and all that potentially lay ahead of them; he found out that in going to see Dr. Wan he hadn't so much educated himself in order to avoid doing something rash as to dig himself deeper into an unreal world.

"This is the end," she said to Axler at the breakfast table. Each was seated across from the other in the very chairs as when she had told him in months gone by that they had already taken the risk.

"End of what?" he asked.

"Of this."

"But
why?
"

"It's not what I want. I made a mistake."

So began the end, as abruptly as that, and it concluded some thirty minutes later with Pegeen at the front door clutching her full duffle bag and Axler in tears. This was the very antithesis of his expectations that night in the kitchen two weeks back. The very antithesis of his expectations when he'd gone to see Dr. Wan. Everything he wanted, she was preventing him from having!

And she was crying now as well; it was not as easy to pull off as it had seemed in the first moment at the kitchen table. But still she would not be budged, and however much he wept, she remained silent. The picture she made at the front door, back in her boy's zippered red jacket and holding her duffle bag, expressed it all: this form of hardship she could endure. She was not about to sit down over a cup of coffee and have a heart-to-heart talk that would lead to a rapprochement. She wanted only to be free of him and to satisfy the common enough human wish to move on and try something else.

"You cannot nullify everything!" he shouted angrily, and with that Pegeen, the mightier of the two, opened the door.

At last she spoke, sobbing. "I tried to be perfect for you."

"What the hell does that mean? Was it ever a matter of being perfect? 'Don't pull away from me. I love this, and I don't want it to stop.' I was idiot enough to believe what you said. I was idiot enough to think you were doing what you wanted to do."

"It was what I wanted to do. I wanted so much to see if I could do it."

"So it was an experiment, right down to the end. Another adventure for Pegeen Mike—like picking up a pitcher on a softball team."

"I can't be a substitute for your acting anymore."

"Oh, don't pull that! That's disgusting!"

"But it's true! I'm what you have instead of that! I'm supposed to make up for that!"

"That's the most ludicrous bullshit I've ever heard. And you know it. Go, Pegeen! If that's your vindication, go! 'We took the risk.'
I
took the risk! You just said whatever you thought I wanted to hear so that you could get what you wanted as long as you wanted it."

"I did no such thing!" she cried.

"It's Tracy, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"You're dumping me for Tracy!"

"I'm not, Simon! No!"

"You're not leaving me because I don't have a job! You're leaving me for that girl! You're going to that girl!"

"Where I go is my business. Oh, just
let
me go!"

"Who's holding you back? Not me! Never!" He pointed at the duffle bag into which she had crammed all the new clothes of hers that had been hanging in his closets and folded in his bureau drawers. "Pack your sex toys?" he asked. "Remember your harness?"

She did not answer, but the emotion flashing through her was hatred, or so he understood the look in her eyes.

"Yes," he said, "take the tools of your trade and go. Now your parents can sleep at night—you're no longer with an old man. Now there's no interloper between you and your father. You're unburdened of your impediment. No more admonitions from home. Safely returned to your original position. Good. Go on to the next one. I never had the strength for you anyway."

A man's way is laid with a multitude of traps, and Pegeen had been the last. He'd stepped hungrily into it and taken the bait like the most craven captive on earth. There was no other way for it to wind
up, and yet he was the last to find out. Improbable? No, predictable. Abandoned after so long? Clearly not so long for her as for him. Everything enchanting about her was gone, and in the time it had taken her to say "This is the end," he was condemned to his hole with the six sticks, alone and emptied of the desire to live.

She left in her car, and the process of collapse took less than five minutes, a collapse from a fall brought on himself and from which there was now no recovery.

H
E WENT UP
to the attic and sat there for a whole day and well into the night, preparing to pull the trigger of his shotgun and intermittently ready to rush down the stairs and wake Jerry Oppenheim at home, ready to call Hammerton and speak to his doctor, ready to dial 911.

And at a dozen different moments throughout the day, ready to call Lansing and tell Asa what a treacherous son of a bitch he was to have turned Pegeen against him. That was how it had happened, he was sure. Pegeen had been right all along to want to keep the news of their affair from her
family. "Because they've known you so long," she'd explained to him when he'd asked why she preferred to keep him a secret. "Because you're all the same age." Had he made the trip to Michigan when he first suggested to Pegeen his going out there to talk to Asa, he might perhaps have had a chance to win. But to phone Asa now would accomplish nothing. Pegeen was gone. Gone to Tracy. Gone to Lara. Gone to the pitcher with the ponytail. Wherever she was, he no longer had to worry about the genetic hazards of being an aging father with testicular cells that had already divided well over eight hundred times.

By dinnertime he could restrain himself no longer and, carrying the gun with him, he came down from the attic to the phone.

Carol answered.

"It's Simon Axler."

"Why, yes. Hello, Simon."

"Let me speak to Asa." His voice was trembling and his heartbeat had quickened. He had to sit in a kitchen chair to continue. It was very like the way he'd felt in Washington the last time he had tried to go out on a stage to perform. And yet none of this
might be happening if only Louise Renner hadn't made that vengeful midnight phone call telling the Staplefords about their daughter and him.

"Are you all right?" Carol asked.

"Not really. Pegeen has walked out on me. Let me speak to Asa."

"Asa is still at the theater. You could try his office there."

"Put him on, Carol!"

"I just told you, he's not home yet."

"Isn't it wonderful news? Isn't it a great relief? You no longer have to worry about your daughter tending to the needs of a feeble old man. You no longer have to worry that she'll have to be keeper to a madman and nursemaid to an invalid. But then I'm not telling you anything you don't know—I'm not telling you anything you didn't help to cook up."

"You're telling me that Pegeen has left you?"

"Let me speak to Asa."

There was a pause, and then, unlike him, with perfect composure, she said, "You can try to reach Asa at his office. I'll give you the number and you can call him there."

He did not know now, any more than when he decided to call, whether he was doing the right thing,
the wrong thing, the weak thing, or the strong thing. He set the gun on the kitchen table and took down the number Carol gave him and hung up without saying anything further. If he were given this role to act in a play, how would he do it? How would he do the phone call? In a voice that was trembling or a voice that was firm? With wit or with savagery, renunciation or rage? He could no more figure out how to play the elderly lover abandoned by the mistress twenty-five years his junior than he'd been able to figure out how to play Macbeth. Shouldn't he just have blown his brains out while Carol was at the other end listening? Wouldn't
that
have been the best way to play it?

He could stop, of course. He could stop the madness right here. He wasn't going to win Pegeen back by going on to dial Asa's number, yet he dialed it. He wasn't trying to win her back. There was no winning her back. No, he simply would not be outmaneuvered and outwitted by a second-rate actor who held sway, with the second-rate actress who was his wife, over a regional theater in the middle of nowhere. The Staplefords couldn't make it on the stage in New York, they couldn't make it in film in California, so they're making great dramatic art,
he thought, out beyond the corruptions of the commercial world. No, he would not be defeated by these two mediocrities. He would not be a boy overcome by her parents!

The phone rang only once before Asa answered and said hello.

"Just how did it benefit you," Axler began, seething, shouting resentfully, "to turn her against me? You couldn't stand that she was a lesbian in the first place. That's what she said—neither you nor Carol could bear it. You were appalled when she told you. Well, with me she had relinquished all that, with me she had opened herself to a new way of life—and was happy! You never saw the two of us together. Pegeen and I were
happy!
But instead of being grateful to me, you persuade her to pick up and leave! Even her going back to being a lesbian was preferable to her being with me! Why? Why? Explain this to me, please."