Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“Thank you. Should I open these?”

They indicated that he should. He slid out a shirt box and popped the ribbon. A shirt. He thanked. Luisa went and fetched the pitcher of daiquiris, which Barbara said she’d made because she thought they would feel good on his throat.

“They do,” he said. He placed the books wrapped in newspaper on his lap. “It’s a pair of shoes. No, it’s a lunchbox.” He smiled and read the label. To Daddy from Luisa and Duane . Tactful indeed. He’d never even met Duane. He thought of Dr. Thompson; why wasn’t his name here, too? And Pat, for that matter. To Daddy from Pat. He smelled roasting beef.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Luisa said.

He’d returned it to the pile. “I’m saving it. Best for last.”

“Why don’t you open it, Martin?”

He put it back on his lap. It was pleasant taking orders from her. He often imagined how he could have arranged his life differently, been more of a dog when at home, and lived from her hand. “Well! Thank you.”

“What is it?” Barbara asked, suddenly smoking a cigarette.

Probst slid the books across the floor to her and slit an envelope from New York. The card fell out, a black-and-white Happy Birthday from Ginny and Hal, also Sara and Becky and Jonathan. They’d all signed, which was a nice touch. Ginny usually did things right.

“Have you read these?” Barbara asked Luisa.

“Yes,” Luisa said.

Probst waved his fingers for the books. “Can I see ’em again?”

Barbara slid them back to Probst and said, “For school?”

Paterson , by William Carlos Williams. The Winter’s Tale , by Shakespeare.

“Sort of. I’m writing my poetry paper on Paterson.” Luisa glanced at Probst. “Duane recommended them.”

A receipt fell out of the Shakespeare. Paul’s Books, $3.95, plus $5.95, plus tax. $10.50. The waste of money hurt his throat. He put the newspaper in the fire.

“I thought Daddy would like them.” She turned. “We thought you’d like them.”

“I’m sure I will.”

“The big box is from Audrey,” Barbara said.

“Whose husband is trying to ruin me.”

“What?” Luisa said, while Barbara shook her head and tried to be noticed.

“It’s true,” he said. “Your Uncle Rolf has been doing his best to put me out of business.”

“Why?”

“You’d have to ask your mother about that.” His heart was pounding. As he lifted the next package onto his lap he tried to list reasons for controlling himself. All he came up with, literally the only item, was Barbara’s offer. Her whorish offer.

“So are you home for a while?” he asked Luisa. “Or is this only a visit?”

A dark hole opened across the room. It was Barbara’s mouth.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Luisa said, apparently sincere.

“Of course not,” Barbara said.

“Of course not? Maybe you haven’t really thought about where you’ve been sleeping for the last three weeks either.”

“I have, Daddy. You know I have.”

“You know she has.”

“You keep the hell out of this,” he said. The command, with Luisa watching, was like a sock in Barbara’s mouth, and she recoiled. “Have you considered apologizing to us?” he said. “Explaining? Promising not to do it again?”

“This isn’t good and evil, Daddy. This is just what I’m doing right now, all right?”

“No. I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“You’re just worried about how things look. You want things to look a certain way. You never called me, or anything. We’ve been — I’ve been waiting. You should apologize, too. How can I think something’s wrong if you don’t tell me?”

“You should know. I shouldn’t have to tell you. I’m very, very, very disappointed in you.”

“Well, what do you think I came home for today?”

“I have no idea.”

“Because Mommy said you wanted me to. She said you loved me and you missed me. I love you and I miss you. So.”

Why wasn’t she crying?

“I can go if you want me to,” she said. “You want me to go?”

Barbara spoke. “Don’t go. It’s your father who should go.”

“I told you to shut up.”

No answer.

He did want to leave. He was standing up. But Luisa beat him to it. She was already out in the hall, and then she was back, and to Probst’s relief and satisfaction she was screaming at Barbara, her fists clenched and body bent, while Barbara simply sat there. “Why don’t you make him shut up? Why don’t you make him? You let him say these things. Mommy! You let him do these things, you let him treat you—” She kicked Barbara in the ankle, and shrank, covering her face. “Oh,” she said. She ran upstairs and her bedroom door slammed.

Doors could be identified by their resonance when slammed; the latches also had specific frequencies.

There was a shriek, Luisa, probably some words overamplified. Her door opened, and after a pause a pile of magazines hit the bottom of the stairs, sliding over one another, rolling and flipping, right up to the front door. (Probst had been storing a few things in her room in her absence.) The door slammed again.

Barbara shook her head.

“I’m sorry I told you to shut up,” Probst said. “But you were teaming up on me.”

She continued to shake her head.

He was calm and tired. He headed upstairs to apologize. Barbara spoke:

“My fault, huh?”

He went upstairs and knocked. He knocked again.

“Who is it?”

He cleared his throat.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Luisa said.

He tried the knob, but it was locked. His mouth was busy. I’m sorry. You’re my daughter. I love you. I’m sorry . To him, the words counted. But they wouldn’t come out, not without help, not when he was out alone in the hall, listening.

Singh had told Jammu that Probst intended to visit her. When the visit failed to materialize by Thursday night, however, it was clear that he was in less of a hurry to see her than she was to reach a decision on his fate, and that she would have to decide without having personally inspected him. She was annoyed, feeling peculiarly stood up.

The last doors and toilets in her building had fallen silent. Friday was already two hours old. In hers, the only sleepless cell, she was filing away Singh’s reports on the Probsts — wicked, gloating documents — and her own notes on the mayor. She locked a drawer and put on a red down jacket, a woolen stocking cap, and “wilderness” snowboots. She looked quite American in the mirror. This wasn’t her intent. Her intent was to stay warm and guard her health, although given the recent performance of her sinuses, her health was a lost cause. The few times she’d gone to bed this week, she’d gotten up again soon to pop Sinutabs.

Outside, in the bitter air, she breathed through her mouth, spitting frequently. In November they had told her that Decembers were mild in St. Louis. But this year was hers; this December was not mild. A diminished moon was setting beyond the trees in Forest Park, casting light the color of the skim milk she’d been drinking by the quart. Most of the windows in the Chase-Park Plaza shared the milkiness, but lamps still burned in a few of the rooms. The discernibility of habitation at night in the city in a compartmentalized world, where floor plans show in the faces of the buildings, here the bedroom, here the kitchen, here the bath, this correspondence of windows to dwellings and dwellings to dwellers, of structure and humanity: this formed, tonight, a burden to Jammu.

As she crossed Kingshighway she watched a tractor-trailer starting up from the Lindell intersection. It labored interminably in first gear, interminably in second, approaching at a crawl that seemed to defeat momentum more than build it. Jumping a black bank of crud, she began to jog through the park in her boots of lead. This December wasn’t mild. At 2:15 on this winter morning, when bare trees drew wind like fossil bronchi, the rock of the continent was very visible to Jammu. Resistance to her operation had developed after all, a natural and predictable counterreaction on the part of the community, and it was precisely now and here that she had lost a sense of herself. She was worn out, feeling far from her motivating hatreds, farther still from her animating desires. Martin Probst was in her thoughts. He’d reacted to Wesley’s proposal with mindless hostility. At the Municipal Growth meeting six hours ago he’d demanded facts and assigned each of the remaining members the task of investigating a facet of Jammu’s agenda. And he hadn’t come to visit her this week.