Jim was questioning his future in the Princeton Physics Department, and after months of doubt and inner struggle he had more or less decided to stop after his masters and become a high school science teacher. I’m not the hotshot I thought I was, he said, and I don’t want to spend my life as a second-rate assistant working in someone else’s lab. Besides, he and his girlfriend Nancy wanted to get married, and that meant he would have to find a real job with a real salary and become a full-fledged member of the real world. Ferguson and Jim postponed their plans to walk to Cape Cod, but when Easter vacation rolled around in April, they made the trek from Princeton to Woodhall Crescent on foot, about thirty-five miles in a straight line on the map but over forty on Jim’s pedometer. Just to see if they could do it. Of course it rained that day, and of course they were soaked by the time they walked up the front steps of the house and rang the bell.
Amy joined SDS and found herself a new boyfriend, a fellow freshman from Brandeis who happened to come from Newark and also happened to be black. Luther Bond. What a good name, Ferguson thought, as Amy told it to him over the phone, but what about your father, he asked, does he know anything about it yet? No, of course not, Amy said, are you kidding? Don’t worry, Ferguson said, Dan isn’t like that, he won’t care. Amy grunted. Don’t bet on it, she said. And when do I get to meet him? Ferguson asked. Anytime you like, Amy said, anywhere you like, just as long as the place isn’t Woodhall Crescent.
His grandfather returned from Florida with a deep tan, a dozen more pounds around his middle, and a crazy look in his eyes, which led Ferguson to wonder what naughty things the old man had been up to with the lotus-eaters in the Sunshine State. Nothing he wanted to hear about, that much was certain, and because his grandfather was on the list of relatives who had to be kept in the dark about his affair with Evie, the moment Benjy Adler returned to his New York apartment, their New York idyll came to an end. West Fifty-eighth Street was off-limits now, and with no substitute apartment available to them anywhere in the city, the only solution was to forget New York and spend those days and nights at Evie’s half-house in East Orange. It was a hard adjustment. No more plays or movies or dinners with friends, just the two of them together now for fifty uninterrupted hours every weekend, but what other choice did they have? They talked about renting a small studio apartment somewhere downtown, a cheap place that would give the city back to them without having to depend on wayward grandfathers or anyone else, but even cheap was more than they could afford.
THE DELAYED PERIOD in December, followed by clockwork blood flow in January, February, March, and April. Evie had told Ferguson not to think about it very often, but he suspected she was thinking about it a good deal more than very often, as many as fifty or sixty times a day, and after four months of no conception, of no sperm cell attaching itself to an ovum, of no zygote or blastula or embryo taking root in Evie’s body, she was beginning to exhibit signs of frustration. Ferguson told her not to worry, that these things often took time, and to underscore his point he mentioned the two long years it had taken his mother to become pregnant with him. He was only trying to help, but the thought of those two years was more than Evie could handle, and she shouted back at him: Are you out of your mind, Archie? What makes you think we have two years? We probably don’t have two months!
Four days later, she went to see her gynecologist for a thorough examination of her reproductive organs and to have blood drawn for detailed tests pertaining to her other organs as well. When the results came back on Thursday, she called Ferguson at Princeton and announced: I’m as healthy as an eighteen-year-old girl.
That begged the question: Was the nineteen-year-old Ferguson as healthy as an eighteen-year-old boy?
It can’t be me, he said. It’s not possible.
Nevertheless, Evie prevailed upon him to see a doctor—just in case.
Ferguson was scared. The idea of trying to plant a baby inside Evie was probably a foolish one, he admitted to himself, an act of unthinking love and misunderstood male pride that could lead to all sorts of wretched consequences in the long run, but whether he and Evie managed or didn’t manage to have a baby together was not what concerned him now. It was his own life, his own life and his own future that were at stake. Ever since he was a small boy, ever since the moment when his young boy self had understood the mysterious fact that he was a transitional creature who was destined to grow up and become a man, he had assumed he would become a father one day, that he would eventually produce little Fergusons who would grow up to become men and women themselves, a daydream he had always taken for granted as a future reality because that was how the world worked, little people developed into big people who in turn brought more little people into the world, and once you were old enough to do that, that was what you did. Even now, as a world-weary nineteen-year-old philosopher and defender of obscure books, it was something he continued to look forward to with great relish.
NEVER HAD JERKING off been less enjoyable than on the day he went to Dr. Breuler’s office on the outskirts of Princeton. Spilling his seed into a sanitized cup and then crossing his fingers that millions of potential babies were waltzing around in the slime. How many drunken sailors could dance on the head of a pin? How many pins did you need to hold yourself together?
The nurse scheduled a return visit for the following week.
When he showed up on the appointed day, Dr. Breuler said: Let’s do it one more time, just to make sure we know what we’re looking at.
The following week, when Ferguson returned for his third visit to the office, Dr. Breuler told him it was a condition that affected only seven percent of the male population, but a lower than normal sperm count seriously compromised a man’s ability to father a child, that is, fewer than fifteen million sperm per milliliter of semen or a total count of fewer than thirty-nine million per ejaculate, and Ferguson’s numbers were considerably below that.
Is there anything to be done? Ferguson asked.
No, I’m afraid not, Dr. Breuler said.
In other words, I’m sterile.
In the sense of not being able to produce children, yes.
It was time for Ferguson to go, but his body had begun to feel so heavy to him that he knew it would be impossible to lift himself out of the chair. He looked up and smiled wanly at Dr. Breuler, as if to apologize for not being able to move.
Don’t worry, the doctor said. In all other respects, you’re in perfect shape.
His life was only just getting started, Ferguson said to himself, his life hadn’t even begun, and the most essential part of him was already dead.
The Fall of the House of Ferguson.
No one, not one other ever to follow him, no one now or ever until the end of time.
A fall to the rank of footnote in The Book of Terrestrial Life, a man forever after to be known as The Last of the Fergusons.
6.1
Later on, which is to say one and two and three years later, whenever Ferguson looked back and thought about the things that happened between the fall of 1966 and Amy’s graduation at the beginning of June 1968, several events dominated his recollections, standing out vividly in spite of the time that had passed, whereas many others, if not most others, had been reduced to shadows: a mental painting composed of several areas bathed in an intense, clarifying light and other areas occluded by dimness, shapeless figures standing in murky brown corners of the canvas, and here and there splotches of all-black nothingness, the blackout dark of the black dormitory elevator.