Jonathan Franzen - Purity

“I don’t remember that.”

“I didn’t even know it was your nickname until we had a parent-teacher conference.”

“Well, anyway. Someday you’ll be gone, and the problem will be mine. But right now it’s your money.”

Her mother looked at her like a child seeking guidance. “Can’t I just give it all away?”

“No. The principal belongs to the trust, not you. You can only give away the dividends. We can find some good animal-welfare groups, responsible-farming groups, things you believe in.”

“Yes, that sounds good. Whatever you want.”

“Mom, it doesn’t matter what I want. This is your problem.”

“Oh, I don’t care, I don’t care,” her mother wailed. “I just want it to go away!”

Pip saw that bringing her mother back into firm contact with reality was going to be a long and possibly hopeless project. Nevertheless, she felt that progress had been made, if only in her mother’s willingness to take orders from her.

The rain went away, came back, and went away again. When Pip was alone in the cabin, she read books and texted Jason and talked to him on the phone. She liked to sit at the kitchen table so she could watch the pair of brown towhees in the side yard as they foraged in the wet tree litter or perched on fence posts for no apparent reason but to show off how splendid they were. To Pip, no bird could surpass the excellence of brown towhees; in their avian way, they were as excellent as Choco. They were a perfect medium size, more substantial than juncos, more modest than jays. They were neither too shy nor too forward. They liked to be around houses but retreated under shrubs if you disturbed them. They didn’t frighten anything except little bugs and her mother. They preferred hopping to flying. They took long and vigorous baths. Except under the tail, where the feathers were peach-colored, and around the face, where there were subtle gray streakings, their plumage was similar in color to Pip’s mother’s faded brown dress. They had the beauty of the second glance, the beauty that only revealed itself with intimacy. All Pip had ever heard a brown towhee say was Teek! But this they said often. The call was sharp and cheerful, like the squeak of a sneaker on a basketball court. It couldn’t have been simpler, and yet it seemed to express not only everything that a towhee would ever need to say but everything that really needed to be said by anyone. Teek! According to the Internet, brown towhees were rare outside California and unusual in being monogamous and mating for life. Supposedly (Pip had never witnessed this) the male and the female sang a more complicated song in breeding season, a duet that announced to other towhees that he and she were spoken for. Indeed, wherever you saw one towhee, you soon saw the other one. They stayed together in one spot year-round; were Californians. Pip could imagine a whole lot of worse ways of being to aspire to.

As the days went by and the reality of the money sank in, she began to catch glimmerings, in her mother, of the young woman she’d read about in Tom’s memoir, the rich girl whose vestigial hauteur was expressing itself again. One night she found her mother scowling at the tired dresses in the tiny closet on the sleeping porch. “I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to buy a few new clothes,” she said. “You say not all of the money is in McCaskill stock?”

And one morning at the kitchen window, glaring at her neighbor’s chicken coop: “Ha. Little does he know that I could not only buy his rooster, I could buy his whole house.”

And again one evening, returning from her shift at New Leaf: “They think I can’t afford to quit. But if I catch Serena rolling her eyes at me one more time, I might just do it. Who is she to roll her eyes at me? I don’t think she’s bathed in a week.”

But then, pensively, to Pip, at the dinner table: “How much of my father’s money did Tom take? Do you know? That has to be our absolute limit. Not even for you will I ever take more than he took.”

“I think it was twenty million dollars.”

“Hm. Now that I say that, I’m having new thoughts. I’m afraid I may not be able to take anything, pussycat. Even one dollar is too much. One dollar, twenty million dollars, it’s the same thing, morally.”

“Mom, we’ve been through this.”

“Maybe the lawyer can pay off your debt. He’s certainly done very well for himself.”

“You at least have to buy Dreyfuss’s house. That was a moral crime, too. A worse one, in my opinion.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. There is no afterlife. And yet, my father … The idea that he might somehow know … I need to think some more about this.”

“No, you don’t. You just need to do what I tell you.”

Her mother looked at her uncertainly. “You did always have good moral sense.”

“I got it from you,” Pip said. “So trust it.”

Jason was begging her to come home, but there was the pleasure of the mountain rain and the related pleasure of being on new, more honest terms with her mother. To the loving that had always been in Pip was coming a new and unexpected sense of liking . Anabel had been likable, at least to Tom, at least in the beginning, and now that her mother was allowed to be Anabel again, to acknowledge her old privilege and dip a toe in her new privilege, to have a bit of an edge , Pip could imagine how the two of them might actually be friends.

She also still had a task so daunting that she kept finding fault with every moment when she could have performed it. It took her two weeks to admit to herself that, in fact, no time on no day was a good time to call Tom. She finally chose a Monday at five o’clock in Denver.

“Pip!” Tom said. “I was afraid you’d never call.”

“Really. Why’s that.”

“Leila and I think about you all the time. We miss you.”

“Leila misses me. Really. It’s not a problem that I’m your daughter?”

“Sorry, hang on. I’m shutting the door.”

There was a fumbling, a bonk, a rustle, a clunk.

“Pip, sorry,” Tom said. “What are you telling me?”

“I’m telling you I know everything.”

“Yikey. OK.”

“It’s not what you think. I didn’t read your document.”

“Ah, good. Good. Excellent.” Tom’s relief was audible.

“I deleted it,” she said. “But Andreas told me who you were, before he died. That made the research easy, and then my mom told me everything.”

“Jesus. She told you. It’s amazing you’re even speaking to me.”

“You are my father.”

“I shudder to imagine her version.”

“It’s better than no story, which is what you gave me.”

“That’s a fair point. Although sometime I hope you’ll give me a chance to tell my side.”

“You had your chance.”

“True enough. I had my reasons, but it’s a fair point. And I’m assuming this is why you called me? To tell me I blew it with you?”

“No. I called because I want you to come out here and see my mother.”

Tom laughed. “I’d rather be dropped in the middle of the Congolese civil war.”

“You cared enough about her to keep her secret for her.”

“I suppose … in a sense…”

“She obviously still matters to you.”

“Pip, listen, I’m very sorry I didn’t tell you anything. Leila’s been after me to call you. I should have listened to her.”

“Well, now I’m telling you how you can make it up to me. You can get on a plane and come out here.”

“Why, though? Why would I do that?”

“Because I won’t have anything to do with you if you don’t.”

“I can tell you, from our side, that would be a loss.”

“Wouldn’t you like to see my mom again anyway? Just once, after all these years? All I’m asking is that you guys forgive each other. I want to be allowed to see both of you, but I can’t do it if I feel like I’m betraying one of you whenever I see the other.”