Jonathan Franzen - Purity

“I brought his porta-bowl and lemons.”

Pip had intended to give her parents two hours alone, but in the event it was closer to four. First she and Jason had to go to the state park and make love in the back seat. Then, when they’d managed to get their pants back on, they had to take them off and do it again. After that they had dinner at Don Quixote’s, where a local cover band, Shady Characters, was playing. Just when it was time to be leaving, the band launched into a must-dance song, the soul-sister song.

“Hate the lyrics,” Jason said, dancing. “Hate the cooptation for a car commercial. And yet—”

“Great song,” Pip said, dancing.

They danced for half an hour while the rain came down and the San Lorenzo rose. Jason was a silly dancer, a thinking dancer, and Pip loved that he could do what he did and she could do what she did, which was not think, just move, just be happy in her body. When they finally went outside, the rain had paused and the roads were end-of-the-world empty. Driving up her mother’s lane, they saw Choco standing on the cabin’s side porch, a lemon in his mouth, his tail swishing in its complex way. Jason let the car roll to a stop in the driveway.

“So,” Pip said. “Here goes.”

“Are you sure I can’t just stay in the car?”

“You’re getting to know the parents. These are the parents.”

But as soon as she opened her door, she heard the voices. The shouting. The sound of raw hatred. It was coming right through the cabin’s thin walls.

I did not say that! If you’re going to fucking quote me, quote me accurately! What I said was—

I’m telling you the DISGUSTING SUBTEXT of what you said. You hide behind what everyone agrees is normal, you get the whole world on your side that way, but you know in your heart that there’s a deeper truth—

The deep truth that I’m wrong and you’re right? That’s the only deep truth you ever knew!

You know it yourself!

You just ADMITTED that you have no case! That there isn’t another person on earth who thinks you have a case—

But I do and you know it! You know it!

Pip shut the door again, to block out the words, but even with the door closed she could hear the fighting. The people who’d bequeathed a broken world to her were shouting at each other viciously. Jason sighed and took her hand. She held it tightly. It had to be possible to do better than her parents, but she wasn’t sure she would. Only when the skies opened again, the rain from the immense dark western ocean pounding on the car roof, the sound of love drowning out the other sound, did she believe that she might.

Jonathan Franzen is the author of four other novels, most recently Freedom and The Corrections , and five works of nonfiction and translation, including Farther Away and The Kraus Project , all published by FSG. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the German Akademie der Künste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. You can sign up for email updates here.