Jonathan Franzen - Purity

My mother’s all-time favorite movie was Doctor Zhivago . During the last minutes of the screening, I could hear her muttering angrily. When the lights came up, she hurried to the door.

“I’ll just wait outside,” she said when I caught up with her.

“You need to say something nice to Anabel first.”

“What can I say? That is the most horrible, disgusting thing I’ve seen in my entire life.”

“A little nicer than that would be good.”

“If that’s art, then there is something wrong with art.”

A wave of anger came over me.

“You know what?” I said. “Just tell her that. Tell her you hated it.”

“I’m not the only person who would hate it.”

“Mom, it’s fine. She’s not going to be surprised.”

“Do you think it’s art?”

“Definitely. I think it’s amazing.”

Down at the front of the screening room, Anabel was standing with Nola, not looking at us, some terrible scene with me no doubt brewing inside her. The few students and professors in the audience had fled for their lives. My mother spoke to me in a low voice.

“I don’t even recognize you, Tom, you’ve changed so much in the last six months. I’m very disturbed by what’s happened to you. I’m disturbed by a person who would make a movie like that. I’m disturbed that she’s the reason you suddenly quit the fine job you worked so hard to get, and you’re not pursuing your graduate studies.”

I, for my part, was disturbed by my mother’s steroidal ugliness. My life was lovely Anabel, and I could only hate the bloat-faced, slit-eyed person who questioned it. My love and my hatred felt indistinguishable; each seemed to follow logically from the other. But I was still a dutiful son, and I would have taken my mother back to Penn if Anabel hadn’t come stalking up the aisle.

“That was great,” I said to her. “It’s amazing to see it on the big screen.”

She was glaring at my mother. “What did you think?”

“I don’t know what to say,” my mother said, frightened.

Anabel, her shyness now dispelled by moral outrage, laughed at her and turned to me. “Are you coming with us?”

“I should probably take my mom home.”

Anabel flared her long nostrils.

“I can meet you later,” I said. “I don’t want her taking the train by herself.”

“And she couldn’t possibly take a cab.”

“I’ve got like eight dollars on me.”

“She has no money?”

“She didn’t bring her purse. She has this idea about Philly.”

“Right. All those scary black people.”

It was wrong to be talking about my mother as if she weren’t there, but she’d wronged Anabel first. Anabel stalked back down the aisle, opened her knapsack, and returned with a pair of twenty-dollar bills. What do they say at NA meetings? The thing you promise yourself you’ll never go so low as to do for drugs is the very thing you end up doing? I would have said that it was bad in eight different ways to take money from Anabel and hand it to my mother, but that’s what I did. Then I called a cab and waited with her in silence in front of President’s Hall.

“I’ve had some rough days,” she said after a while. “But I think this has been the worst day of my life.”

The moon above us, in the Philly haze, was a dissolving beige lozenge. My response to its fullness was Pavlovian, a quickening of the pulse that was hard to distinguish, in the moment, from my fear of my mother’s pain and from the thrilling cruelty of what I was doing to her. My chest felt too tight for me to say anything, even that I was sorry.

* * *

I met Anabel’s father later that summer. For two months, she and I had played house with some of her remaining forty thousand dollars, sleeping until noon, breakfasting on toast, trolling thrift stores to improve my wardrobe, escaping the heat at double features at the Ritz, and perfecting our wok skills. On my birthday, we made a plan to become more serious about our work. I began to write a manifesto for The Complicater while she embarked on the year of reading she needed to do for her grand film project. She went to the Free Library every weekday afternoon, because we’d decided it was healthy to be apart for some hours and she didn’t want to wait for me at home like a housewife.

David Laird called on one of those afternoons. I had to explain to him that Anabel had a boyfriend and that I was that person.

“ Interesting ,” David said. “I’m going to tell you a little secret: I’m glad to hear a male voice. I was afraid the wind was blowing in the direction of that mentally-ill dyke friend of hers, just to spite me.”

“I don’t think that was ever in the cards,” I said.

“Are you black?” he said. “Handicapped? Criminal? Drug addict?”

“Ah, no.”

“ Interesting . I’ll tell you another secret: I like you already. I take it you’re in love with my daughter?”

I hesitated.

“Of course you are. She’s quite something, isn’t she? To call her a handful is the understatement of a lifetime. They really broke the mold with that one.”

I could already hear why Anabel hated him.

“But listen,” he went on, “if she likes you, I like you. Hell, I was even prepared to like the mentally-ill girl, although, praise the Lord, it didn’t come to that. Anabel’d do almost anything to spite me, but she won’t go so far as to cut off her nose, if you know what I mean. I know her, I know that pretty nose of hers. And I want to know the guy she’s living with. What do you say to dinner at Le Bec-Fin next Thursday? The three of us. The reason I called is I’ve got some business over in Wilmington.”

I said I’d have to ask Anabel.

“Aw, hell, Tom — it’s Tom, right? You’re going to need to grow some serious gonads if you’re going to live with my girl. She’ll eat you alive if you’re not careful. You just tell her you said you’d have dinner with me. Can you say those words to me? ‘Yes, David, I will have dinner with you’?”

“I mean, yeah, sure,” I said. “If it’s OK with her.”

“No, no, no. Those aren’t the words. You and I are having dinner, period, and she can come along if she wants to. Believe me, there’s no way in hell she’s letting the two of us go out alone. That’s why it’s important that you say the words to me. If you’re this afraid of her now, it’ll only get worse later.”

“I’m not afraid of her,” I said. “But if she doesn’t want to see you…”

“OK. All right. Here’s a different argument. Here’s another secret for you: she does want to see me. It’s been more than a year since she got to spray me in the face with cat piss. That’s what she does. And she doesn’t like to admit it, but she enjoys it. She’s got a lot of cat piss, and there’s only one face she wants to spray. So when she says she doesn’t want to see me, you tell her you’re going to see me anyway. It’ll be our little secret that we’re really doing it for her.”

“Wow,” I said. “I’m not sure that’s a good argument.”

David laughed loudly. “Oh, come on, I’m just fooling around. Let’s go and have a great meal at the best place in Philadelphia. I miss my Anabel.”

Of course she threw a scene when she learned I’d spoken to him. He was a seducer , she said, and when he couldn’t seduce he bullied , and when he couldn’t bully he bought , and although she was on to him and had built up her defenses, she didn’t trust me not to be seduced or bullied or bought. And so on. I’d been offended by much of what he’d said, but I also couldn’t get it out of my head; who else, after all, could I talk to about Anabel? I experimentally grew some gonads and said it was hurtful and insulting not to trust that I loved her, not him. I experimented further and told her I’d given my word to have dinner with him. And, exactly as he’d predicted, she agreed to come along.