Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

“Because he loves money just as much! He weighs the problem and decides to marry her. If he marries her, she’s silenced and it doesn’t cost him anything. He keeps the money, and he can still chase all the women he wants. Plus marrying her guarantees her silence over the long term. So it’s the right decision. They get married, and immediately he starts converting his entire portfolio to Sweeting-Aldren stock, to make sure that Rita’s stuck with it. When he dies, his will puts Rita’s allowance from the trust fund at the mercy of company dividends: if she attacks the company, it cuts into her allowance. He probably makes sure that at least Aldren knows this. And so then she’s really stuck. In a sense she’s inherited his entire fortune — obviously she insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement to that effect — but he doesn’t let her get control of it. That’s why there’s the otherwise insane stipulation that the trustees must leave the assets invested in Sweeting-Aldren . It’s not because he’s such a gung-ho company man, he’s too smart for that. It’s because he’s getting his revenge on Rita.”

“And Mom’s the one who pays for it.”

“It’s usually the women who pay for it, one way or another.”

Kernaghan had a heart attack in his sleep in 1982. He’d lived eighty years in good health, smoked cigarettes for sixty, and died without pain or terror. Once he was dead and Rita had discovered the mean trick he’d played her with his will, she made a slave of his spirit. He had to knock on tables for her, spell out optimistic messages about the other world with a gliding upturned tumbler, and, most demeaning of all, inhabit the bodies of animals. One week she would look into the eyes of a neighbor’s retriever and patronize her silly husband; the next week Jack would be a blue jay hanging around outside the kitchen windows. “Up to his same old tricks,” she’d say complacently. Her Haitian maid, for one, believed that Rita had been shoved from that barstool because Jack’s spirit couldn’t take the abuse anymore.

A less imaginative woman than Rita, a woman who didn’t require a giant pyramid on the roof and an authentic Egyptian mummy in the basement, could have lived very comfortably on the dividends from her Sweeting-Aldren stock. The chemical industry suffered some declines in the seventies and early eighties, but Sweeting-Aldren suffered less than the rest. Not only did it not have to spend tens of millions on pollution control and waste recovery, but it was able to pass some of those savings on to its customers, and so consistently undersell its east coast competition. The pump at F2 ran so smoothly that the old generation of executives forgot about it and the new generation never learned. It was like the national economy, which began to roar again in the mid-eighties. The country borrowed three trillion dollars to buy some weapons and fund a giant leap forward in lifestyle for the wealthy. When the economy grew, so the argument went, tax revenues would increase and the debt would be paid off. But year after year the national debt continued to increase.

Nature issued her first warning in 1987. Beneath Peabody, in Sweeting-Aldren’s own back yard, the earth begins to shake. It’s no accident. It has always only been a matter of time. Dimly Mr. X, the one executive officially responsible for waste disposal, the one executive who wasn’t granted deniability when the thing was set up in ’72, recalls the concept of induced seismicity. The tremors continue. A worried Mr. X goes to his boss, Aldren Jr., and says the pumping must stop.

Aldren Jr., steely cold, says: “What pumping?”

“Sandy, the pumping at F2. Our primary waste stream?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Aldren Jr. “Common knowledge this company incinerates and recycles all its waste.”

“Joking aside, Sandy, we’re causing a fucking swarm of earthquakes two miles from here.”

With exquisite timing, their office trembles and they hear a distant boom, as from an artillery range.

“I’ve trusted you, X,” says Aldren Jr. “You’ve been world-class, straight tens across the board. And now you’re indicating to me that our disposal costs are going to triple? I don’t think I’m going to remain president if that happens. And I have a personal stake in remaining president. It’s a very meaningful position to me, self-esteem-wise.”

“I’m indicating we’re looking at a little backup in the waste stream. A little temporary quasi hitch. So that we might be well advised to short-term invest in better incineration and recycling. Either that or consider some major holding-tank-type construction.”

Aldren Jr. shakes his head very slowly. “I’m hearing figures,” he says, “in the tens of millions. I’m hearing crippling long-term capital investments here. Here when I can already feel the Spaniards breathing down my neck. Can smell the goddamn garlic, X! You know what they’re doing with their waste? They’re pissing it straight into the ocean at Cadiz. Their tankers fill their guts with it, sail to the mid-Atlantic, and blow it out their asses. The worst of it they put in plastic drums and ship to Gabon, and fucking Cameroon. That’s what I’m competing with. Barely competing with. Fighting tooth and nail to compete with. You hear what I’m saying? I’m saying the old ejectorama for me, the dole and heavy fines and potential time in Allenwood for you.”

Mr. X hears him. He puts a stop to the pumping. With the minuscule waste-processing budget at his disposal, he builds a cluster of huge, flimsy holding tanks on some company land near Lynnfield and stockpiles the most dangerous of his effluents there. The rest of the waste he lets trickle into the sea and air, relying on the company’s good relationship with the EPA to keep him from getting caught. For several years, like a nation trying to be kind of halfway responsible, he holds the line on pumping; and for several years, like the national debt, the stockpile of effluents grows and grows. But finally there’s a natural outbreak of seismicity in nearby Ipswich, and Mr. X’s prudence loses to his fear: he gives the order to resume pumping. Just another half a decade without a seismic disaster, and he’ll be able to retire on a full pension, summer on Nantucket, winter in Boca Raton, play eighteen holes in the morning and have his first Manhattan on the dot of five. Only five more little years! There will be no turning back now. He’s going to cross his fingers, shut his eyes, and pray: Lord, let it fall on someone else’s shoulders .

In the white light of morning, or rather early afternoon, Bob put the empty whiskey bottle in the recycling carton for Clear Glass, between Soft Plastic and Aluminum, and poured orange juice on a bowl of Cheerios. Bees were pollinating purple thistle outside the window. The cats were cooling in the basement. Upstairs a door opened, and soon Louis appeared, scowling at the light. He had red pillow marks on his face — sleep’s tantalizing glyphs, which every morning signified nothing in a different way. “Did you call her?”

Bob didn’t answer. He kept his head down, spooning up Cheerios, while Louis searched the refrigerator, drank some fizzless cherry-flavored seltzer, and then stood with his arms crossed like a parent whose patience had run out. “You want me to call her?”

“Can I finish my breakfast?”

Louis stood a while longer, arms still crossed. He left the room in unrelenting silence.

Bob pushed his cereal bowl away. He began to call all the Krasners in Albany, relying on the kindness of directory assistance. His fourth try connected him to a deep female voice with a Russian accent which he knew was Anna’s mother’s before he even asked.

“No. No,” she said. “She’s not here. She’s overseas.”