Jonathan Franzen - Purity

They had more sex as soon as they got back to Jason’s apartment. Starting to fall in love with a person made it bigger, almost metaphysical; a John Donne poem she’d studied in college and failed to appreciate, a poem about the Extasie and how it doth unperplex, was making sense to her now. But in the wake of the Extasie she became anxious again.

“I think I’d better call my mom,” she said. “I can’t postpone it any longer.”

“Do it.”

“Can you just keep lying there like that while I do? With your arm there? I need you to hold me in case I feel like I’m getting sucked in.”

“I’m picturing somebody getting sucked out of a blown-open airplane,” Jason said. “They say it’s surprisingly hard to hold on to a person when that happens. Or maybe not so surprising when you consider the air-pressure differentials that keep a hundred-ton plane aloft.”

“Do your best,” she said, reaching for her phone.

She loved having a body now that Jason loved her having it. She was clutching his arm when her mother answered.

“Hi, Mom.” She braced herself for a Pussycat!

“Yes,” her mother said.

“So, I’m sorry I haven’t called in so long, but I’m thinking I might come down and see you.”

“All right.”

“Mom?”

“You come and go as you please. If you want to come, come. Obviously I can’t stop you. Obviously I’ll be here.”

“Mom, I’m really sorry.”

There was a click, a cessation.

“Holy shit,” Pip said. “She hung up on me.”

“Uh oh.”

It hadn’t occurred to her that her mother might be angry at her; that even their extreme case of moral hazard might have limits. But now that she thought about it, her mother’s entire story, in Tom’s memoir, was one of serial abandonment and betrayal, followed by scorching moral judgment. Pip had always been safe from this judgment, but she could tell, from the fact that Tom still seemed afraid of it, even after twenty-five years, that it was awful to experience. She felt afraid of it herself now, and closer to Tom.

The next day, she gave notice at Peet’s and called Mr. Navarre to tell him she was going to have the conversation with her mother, and to ask him for five thousand dollars. Mr. Navarre could have been judgmental or teasing about the money, but apparently he was impressed that she’d waited four and a half months to ask for any. She enjoyed the feeling that she’d passed some test, exceeded some norm.

Microclimates of the San Lorenzo: the pavement at the Santa Cruz bus station was nearly dry, but just two miles away, at the top of Graham Hill Road, the driver had to put his wipers on. Winter night had fallen. Pip’s mother’s lane was spongy with redwood needles dislodged and sodden with the rain, the sound of which surrounded her polyrhythmically, a steady background patter, heavier drippings, hiccuping gurgles. The musty wood-soak smell of Valley wetness overwhelmed her with sense-memory.

The cabin was dark. Inside it was the sound of her childhood, the patter of rain on a roof that consisted only of shingle and bare boards, no insulation or ceiling. She associated the sound with her mother’s love, which had been as reliable as the rain in its season. Waking up in the night and hearing the rain still pattering the same way it had when she’d fallen asleep, hearing it night after night, had felt so much like being loved that the rain might have been love itself. Rain pattering at dinner. Rain pattering while she did her homework. Rain pattering while her mother knitted. Rain pattering on Christmas with the sad little tree that you could get for free on Christmas Eve. Rain pattering while she opened presents that her mother had put aside money for all fall.

She sat in the cold and dark for a while, at the kitchen table, listening to the rain and feeling sentimental. Then she turned on a light and opened a bottle and made a fire in the woodstove. The rain fell and fell.

The person who was both her mother and Anabel Laird came home at nine fifteen with a canvas bag of groceries. She stood in the front doorway and looked at Pip without speaking. Underneath her rain parka she was wearing an old dress that Pip loved and, indeed, coveted. It was a snug and faded brown cotton dress with long sleeves and many buttons, a kind of Soviet worker-woman’s dress. Back in the day, her mother would probably have given her the dress if she’d asked for it, but her mother had so few covetable possessions that depriving her of even one of them was unthinkable.

“So I came home,” Pip said.

“I see that.”

“I know you don’t like to drink, but this might be a good night for an exception.”

“No, thank you.”

The person who was both her mother and Anabel left the parka and groceries by the door and went to the back of the cabin. Pip heard the bathroom door close. It was ten minutes before she realized that her mother was hiding in the bathroom, not intending to come out.

She went and knocked on the door, which was just boards held together with crossboards. “Mom?”

There was no answer, but her mother hadn’t used the hook that served as a lock. Pip went in and found her mother sitting on the concrete floor of the tiny shower, staring straight ahead, her knees drawn up to her chin.

“Don’t be sitting there,” Pip said.

She crouched down and touched her mother’s arm. Her mother jerked her arm away.

“You know what?” Pip said. “I’m mad at you, too. So don’t be thinking being mad at me is going to get you out of this.”

Her mother was mouth-breathing, staring. “I’m not angry with you,” she said. “I am…” She shook her head. “I knew this would happen. No matter how careful I was, I knew that someday this would happen.”

“That what would happen? That I’d come home and want to talk to you, and be honest, and be part of the two of us again? Because that’s what I’m doing.”

“I knew it the way I know my own name.”

“What is your name? Maybe let’s start with that. Will you come sit in the kitchen with me?”

Her mother shook her head again. “I’m getting used to being alone. I’d forgotten how hard it is. It’s very hard, even harder this time, much harder — you brought me so much joy. But it’s not impossible to relinquish desire. I’m learning it again. I’m making progress.”

“So, what, I’m supposed to leave now? That’s what you want?”

“You already left.”

“Yeah, well, hey, but I came back, too, didn’t I?”

“Out of duty,” her mother said. “Or out of pity. Or because you’re angry. I’m not blaming you, Purity. I’m telling you that I will be all right without you. Everything we have is temporary, the joy, the suffering, everything. I had the joy of experiencing your goodness for a very long time. It was enough. I have no right to ask for more.”

“ Mom . Stop talking like that. I need you in my life. You’re the most important person in the world to me. I need you to stop being Buddhist and try to have an adult conversation with me.”

“Or else what?” Her mother smiled faintly. “You’ll leave again?”

“Or else, I don’t know, I’m going to pull your hair and scratch you.”

Her mother’s failure to be amused was nothing new. “I’m no longer so afraid of you leaving,” she said. “For a long time, the prospect was like death to me. But it’s not death. At a certain point, trying to hold on to you became the real death.”

Pip sighed. “OK, frankly — you calling me pussycat, me not being able to end a phone call with you, I’d be happy to retire all that. I’m a lot older than I used to be. You wouldn’t believe how much older. But don’t you want to know what I’m like now? Don’t you want to know the person I’ve turned into? It’s the same old me but also not. I mean, aren’t I interesting to you? You’re still interesting to me.”