The Humbling by Philip Roth Page A

right thing, which was their way, doing the sensible thing that would make Pegeen happiest. They did not want to alienate her at forty as they had at twenty-three when she'd told them she was a lesbian.

    I N FACT, CAROL FLEW in from Michigan the following Saturday to meet Pegeen in New York for lunch. Pegeen drove down to the city that morning and got back about eight that night. He had made dinner for them, and only when dinner was over did he ask her how it had gone.
    "Well, what did she say?" Axler asked.
    "Do you want me to be entirely honest?" Pegeen replied.
    "Please," he said.
    "All right," she said, "I'll try to remember as exactly as I can. It was kind of the benign third degree. There was nothing vulgar or self-serving about her. Just Mother's flat-out Kansas candor."
    "Go ahead."
    "You want to know everything," Pegeen said.
    "Yes," he replied.
    "Well, first off, at the restaurant, she breezed right by my table—she failed to recognize me. I said, 'Mother,' and then she turned back and she said, 'Oh, my goodness, it's my daughter. Don't you look pretty.' And I said, 'Pretty? Didn't you think I was pretty before?' And she said, 'A new hairdo, clothes of a kind I never saw you wear before.' And I said, 'More feminine, you mean.' 'Decidedly,' she said, 'yes. It's very flattering, dear. How long has this been going on?' I told her, and she said, 'That's a very nice haircut. It couldn't have been inexpensive.' And I said to her, 'I'm just trying something new.' And she said, 'I guess you are trying something new, in many ways. I came out because I want to be sure that you have thought through all the implications of your affair.' I told her that I wasn't sure anyone ever thinks through being with someone romantically. I told her that it made me very happy right now. And so she said, 'News reached us that he was in a psychiatric hospital. Some people say he was there six months, some say a year—I don't really know the facts.' I told her that you were there for twenty-six days a full twelve months ago and that it had to do with performance problems on the stage. I said that you temporarily lost your power to act, and separated from your acting, you came apart. I said that whatever emotional or mental problems you had then, they didn't manifest themselves in our life together now. I said you were as sane or saner than anyone I've ever been with, and that when we're together you seem stable and quite happy. And she asked, 'Is he still in the same bind with his acting?' And I said yes and no—you were, but I thought that as a result of meeting me and being with me, it was no longer the same tragedy it had been. It was now more like an athlete who's been injured and sidelined and is waiting to heal. And she said, 'You don't feel you have to rescue him, do you?' I assured her that I did not, and she asked how you filled your time, and I said, 'He sees me. I think he plans to continue seeing me. He reads. He buys me clothes.' Well, she leaped on that—'So these are clothes he bought for you. Well, I would think there might be a certain rescue fantasy working there.' I told her that she was making too much of it and that it was just fun for both of us, and why couldn't we leave it at that? I said, 'He's not trying to influence me in any way I don't want to be influenced.' She asked, 'Do you go with him when he buys you clothes?' And I said, 'Usually. But again, I think it makes him happy. And I can see that in him. Since it happens to be an experiment I want to conduct as well,' I told her, 'I don't see why anyone should be concerned.' And that's when the tenor of the conversation changed. She said, 'Well, I have to tell you that I am concerned. You're new to the world of men, and it strikes me as strange—or maybe not so strange—that the man you should choose to initiate this new life with is a man twenty-five years older than you are who has been through a breakdown that led to his being