The Humbling by Philip Roth

Author:Philip Roth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Psychological, Psychological Fiction, General, Literary, Actors, Fiction
ISBN: 9780547239699
Publisher: Center Point Large Print
Published: 2009-10-21T10:00:00+00:00

IN 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.

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