Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

He heard the toilet flush and the bathroom door open. Jammu appeared in the kitchen doorway, stopping before she entered. For half an hour she’d been hanging in doorways and sticking close to walls, like a small animal that shuns open spaces for fear of predators. She was shy today, and rather pretty, in new jeans, a lavender cashmere cardigan with mother-of-pearl buttons, and only a bra underneath, the straps of which raised faint boundaries fencing the meadows of her back from the slopes of her shoulders and sides. She flipped through the scraps and cards on the refrigerator door, neither idle nor overcurious. Probst, soaping his hands at the sink, didn’t worry about what she’d see. He’d removed the more visible evidence of Barbara from all the downstairs rooms. And from the bedroom.

“Do you need some help?” Jammu said.

He pushed the pan of lamb chops under the broiler element and noted the time: 2:38. Even on holidays he didn’t like to eat dinner this early, but Jammu had functions to attend in the evening. “No,” he said. “Thank you. You can sit down.”

She strolled into the breakfast room, changing it as she went, shedding a light whose wavelength only Probst was equipped to see, revealing force vectors in the furniture and a saturation in the blueness of the curtains’ piping. He joined her at the windows. In the driveway, losing its sheen to the mist, stood the unmarked car she’d driven. Mohnwirbel had gone to Illinois for the holiday. Probst suspected there was some woman he saw over there.

“We bought the house for the yard,” he said. “In another couple of weeks you’ll see why.”

Jammu gazed coolly at the flower bed where Norris and Pokorny had appeared a month earlier. A gap in the daffodils marked the spot. Staring out into the static yard, Probst remembered the one or two lucky Sunday afternoons a year when Ginny and his parents had all happened to be out and he, as a teenager, had had their small house completely to himself. The sky and world lapped against it. He stood looking out window after window in an expectancy larger than boredom, more mysterious, and needing an object. Was this how Barbara had felt every weekday of her married life? Was this where John Nissing came in?

Jammu’s arm brushed his. A clean coconutty shampoo smell rose from her hair. She looked up at him just as he leaned, without strain, and slipped his arms under hers. She shook her hair back and looked past him in the last second before he placed his lips on hers and realized he was finally kissing her.

She turned her head back and forth, presenting her nose, her forehead and her eyes to his lips, and her fingers combed through his hair, pulling him down to kiss her harder. The cashmere was warm and shifted on her skin, bunching at her straps. Her breasts flattened softly, through cashmere, against his chest while her mouth, a busy metaphor of hunger, opened and closed. He raised one of his hands and filled it with her hair, her personal hair. He drew her head away from his to see her face. She swallowed and released a breath, coming up for air, and something popped. It was the lamb under the broiler. Probst pulled away.

Jammu laughed voicelessly, bending over a little. “I’m very hungry.” She laughed again. It was an aspirated smile. “And I’ve brought you something.”

He made his way back to the oven. “What is it?”

“A surprise. You’ll see.”

He turned the chops and opened the refrigerator for the salad. He tried to hand the teakwood bowl to Jammu, but she stepped around it, pressing him into the refrigerator. Its light, which smelled like pickles, glared down into his eyes. Her tongue opened his lips and brought the sweet tastelessness of her mouth into his. Did she want to do it right here on the floor while the ketchup and mayonnaise watched? He was willing. But she backed away, with a glance at the oven. “You’re going to have a fire in here.”

They ate in the dining room. The food tasted good, but not as good as the feeling of power he had now: she wouldn’t escape the house without making love. She knew it, too. Their forks clattered in a chaste somberness. Separated by a corner of the table, their bodies couldn’t feel what their minds knew for certain, where their love would lead them as soon as they touched again.

She told him how she would bring economics to bear on the close-in suburbs of Maplewood, Affton, Richmond Heights and University City, Ferguson, Bellefontaine Neighbors, Jennings and others to force them to accept outright annexation by St. Louis, once the merger had paved the way. “Because the referendum per se does nothing to relieve the city’s lack of land,” she said. “The shortage is already critical.”

“So you’re going to make Webster Groves a semi-autonomous part of St. Louis.” Probst filled her wineglass. “The Family of St. Louis.” He grimaced. “I can already hear Pete Wesley with a slogan like that in his mouth.”

“You really don’t like him, do you?”

“I can’t stand him.”

Jammu nodded ambiguously.

“What kind of terms are the two of you on?” he asked.

She turned to the windows. “You mean, what kind of woman am I?”

“Not exactly…”

“Wesley didn’t consider me attractive.”

“More fool he.”

“But if he had, and if I needed to, I’d have slept with him.”

Probst was appalled.

She seemed to observe this with satisfaction. “I told you I wasn’t pure.”

His voice grew chalky. “So who’ve you done it with?”

“No one. But that was mere chance.”

Probst set his fork down and stared at the peppery pools of juice on his plate.

“Don’t be dramatic, Martin. I’m not the married one here.”

“You want me to drag my wife into this.”

“Of course.”

“You want me to divorce her.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“Yes.”

She tipped her chair onto two legs. “Oh, I know. This is horribly unbecoming of me.”

“No, it’s natural.”

“Well. Where is she?”

“In New York,” he recited. “With someone you’ve met. Remember John Nissing?”

She frowned. “Who?”

“John Nissing, the cosmopolitan. Of PD Magazine fame.”

“Yes, yes.” She was squinting at something unpleasant. “But you didn’t mention that.”

“Can you blame me? We’d only just — What is it?”

Her frown was deepening. Outside, a car passed on the wet street. “Nissing is a homosexual,” she said.

Probst couldn’t help chuckling. “I doubt it.”

“You haven’t been out to dinner with him and his gay lover.”

“What?”

“Are you in communication with her? Does she call? Have you seen her with him?”

“Yes,” he said. “We talk. She seems happy. Happy and busy.”

Jammu shrugged. “Well. You never know. But from everything I saw of the man I’d be very surprised if this turns out to be a long-term understanding.” She shook her head, puzzled. “It’s strange. I don’t often misjudge people this badly.”

“Maybe we’re talking about two different Nissings.”

“Maybe. Or two different sides of him.”

Probst didn’t believe Barbara was in trouble, but he begrudged her the very possibility. He didn’t want a disaster to complicate his life, and he didn’t want Barbara pathetic and remorseful and returning home to make him feel guilty about throwing her over, which was what he was going to do no matter what. He was through with guilt. He’d forgiven her. He’d removed her from his life.

Jammu was twirling her glass sadly by its stem. Probst wished there were some way to assure her he wouldn’t renege on his commitment to her. But there was no way. He couldn’t prove it until the time came. He reached and raised her chin with his thumb, something he’d seen done in movies. “You can sound so tough,” he said.