The Humbling by Philip Roth Page A

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