Jonathan Franzen - Purity

On the shelves were the faded flannel sheets that she’d slept on as a girl. On the rack was the same tired bath towel that her mother had used for twenty years. The concrete floor of the tiny shower had long ago lost its paint to her mother’s scrubbing. When Pip saw that her mother had lit two candles by the sink for her, as for a romantic date or religious ceremony, she nearly fell apart again.

“I got the smoky lentils and the kale salad you like so much,” her mother said, hovering near the door. “I forgot to ask if you were still eating meat, so I didn’t get you a pork chop.”

“It’s hard to live in a communal house and not eat meat,” Pip said. “Although I’m no longer living in a communal house.”

While she opened the bottle of wine she’d bought for her exclusive use, and while her mother spread out the bounty of her New Leaf employee discount, Pip gave a mostly fictitious account of her reasons for leaving the Thirty-Third Street house. Her mother seemed to believe every word of it. Pip proceeded to attack the bottle while her mother reported on her eyelid (not spasming but still feeling as if it might spasm again at any moment), the latest workplace incursions on her privacy, the latest abrasions of her sensitivities by New Leaf shoppers, and the moral dilemma posed by the 3 a.m. crowing of her next-door neighbor’s rooster. Pip had imagined that she might hide out at the cabin for a week, to recover and to plan her next move, but despite her supposed centrality to her mother’s life she was feeling as if her mother’s miniature universe of obsession and grievance was sufficient unto itself. As if there was, actually, no place in her life for Pip now.

“So, I also quit my job,” she said when they’d eaten dinner and the wine was nearly gone.

“Good for you,” her mother said. “That job never sounded worthy of your talents.”

“Mom, I have no talents. I have useless intelligence. And no money. And now no place to live.”

“You can always live with me.”

“Let’s try to be realistic.”

“You can have the sleeping porch back. You love the sleeping porch.”

Pip poured the last of the wine into her glass. Moral hazard allowed her to simply ignore her mother when she felt like it. “So here’s what I’m thinking,” she said. “Two possibilities. One, you help me find my other parent, so I can try to get some money out of him. The other is I’m thinking of going to South America for a while. If you want me to stay around here, you have to help me find the missing parent.”

Her mother’s posture, fortified by her Endeavor, was as beautifully vertical as Pip’s was crappy and slouched. A faraway look was coming over her, almost a different kind of face altogether, a younger face. It could only be, Pip thought, the face of the person she’d once been, before she was a mother.

Looking into the now-dark window by the table, her mother said: “Not even for you will I do that.”

“OK, so I guess I’m going to South America.”

“South America…”

“Mom, I don’t want to go. I want to stay closer to you. But you have to help me out here.”

“You see!” her mother cried, still with her faraway look, as if she were seeing more than just her own reflection in the window. “He’s doing it to me even now! He’s trying to take you from me! And I will not let that happen!”

“This is fairly crazy talk, Mom. I’m twenty-three years old. If you saw where I’ve been living, you’d know I know how to take care of myself.”

Finally her mother turned to her. “What’s in South America?”

“This thing,” Pip said with some reluctance, as if confessing to an impure thought or action. “This kind of interesting thing. It’s called the Sunlight Project. They give paid internships and teach you all these skills.”

Her mother frowned. “The illegal leak thing?”

“What do you know about it.”

“I do read the newspaper, pussycat. This is the group that the sex criminal started.”

“No, you see?” Pip said. “You see? You’re thinking of WikiLeaks. You don’t know anything about the Project. You live in the mountains and you don’t know anything.”

For a moment her mother seemed to doubt herself. But then, emphatically: “Not Assange. Somebody else. Andreas.”

“OK, I’m sorry. You do know something.”

“But he’s the same as the other one, or worse.”

“No, Mom, actually not. They’re completely different.”

At this, her mother closed her eyes, sat up even straighter, and began to do her breathing. It always happened when she got too upset, and it put Pip in a bind, because she didn’t like to disturb her but also didn’t want to spend an hour waiting for her to resurface.

“I’m sure that’s very calming for you,” she said. “But I’m still sitting here, and you’re not dealing with me.”

Her mother just breathed.

“Do you want to at least tell me what really happened with my dad?”

“I told you,” her mother murmured, her eyes still shut.

“No, you lied. And you want to know something else? Andreas Wolf can help me find him.”

Her mother’s eyes sprang open.

“So you can either tell me,” Pip said, “or I can go to South America and find out for myself.”

“Purity, listen to me. I know I’m a difficult person, but you have to believe me: if you go to South America and do that, it will kill me.”

“Why? Lots of people my age travel. Why can’t you trust that I’ll come back? Can’t you see how much I love you?”

Her mother shook her head. “This is my worst nightmare. And now Andreas Wolf. This is a nightmare , a nightmare .”

“What do you know about Andreas?”

“I know that he is not a good person.”

“How? How do you know that? I just spent half a day researching him, and he’s the opposite of a bad person. I have emails from him! I can show you.”

“Oh my God,” her mother said, shaking her head.

“What? Oh my God what?”

“Has it occurred to you why a person like that is emailing you?”

“They have a paid internship program. You have to take a test, and I passed it. They do amazing work, and they actually want me. He’s been sending me all these personal emails even though he’s incredibly busy and famous.”

“It could be some assistant who’s writing to you. Isn’t that the thing about emails? You never know who’s writing them.”

“No, this is definitely him.”

“But think about it, Purity. Why do they want you?”

“You’re the one who’s been telling me I’m so special for twenty-three years.”

“Why does a man with bad morals pay a beautiful young woman to come to South America?”

“Mother, I’m not beautiful. I’m also not stupid. That’s why I researched him and wrote to him.”

“But pussycat, the Bay Area is full of people who could want you. Appropriate people. Kind people.”

“Well, it’s safe to say I haven’t been meeting them.”

Her mother took hold of Pip’s hands and searched her face. “Did something happen to you? Tell me what happened to you.”

The maternal hands suddenly seemed like grasping claws to Pip, and her mother like a stranger. She pulled her own hands away. “Nothing happened to me!”

“Dearheart, you can tell me.”

“I wouldn’t tell you if you were the last person on earth. You don’t tell me anything .”

“I tell you everything.”

“Nothing that matters.”

Her mother fell back in her seat and looked at the empty window again. “No, you’re right,” she said. “I don’t. I have my reasons, but I don’t.”

“Well, so then leave me alone. You don’t have any rights with me.”