Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

In America, Peter was an expert and avid shopper, more certain than Eileen of how a 70/30 poly/cotton blend behaved and more patient than she in marching from store to store until the ideal shirt or shoes came to light. In Europe, however, he considered shopping merely the worst of many ways to blow one’s cover. When Eileen entered a store, he waited a full minute before drifting in after her, and then he knelt near the doorway and tied and retied his shoes as if he’d only come in because his laces were loose. He would page through the French-language editions of the travel books. (He thought this made him appear French.) Direct questions from Eileen elicited blank Ray-Ban stares of non-recognition. He gazed out the shop’s open doorway as if the thoughts of any Frenchman who had come in through such a door would immediately turn to leaving. (But the stores were often full of French people earnestly relating tacky souvenir items to historical battles or to the anthropology of Provence, and spending lavishly.) “It’s fine,” he’d murmur, referring to a gift idea, his eyes on the door.

“You haven’t even looked at it!”

“I trust your taste,” his lips unmoving, his eyes on the door.

The one gift that gave Eileen real trouble was Louis’s. Earlier in the month, when she’d had Louis and his girlfriend over for moussaka, she had neglected to mention that she and Peter were about to leave for France. The fact was that she habitually avoided informing Louis of the plans and acquisitions of property she was making; she always hoped that he wouldn’t ever find out about them; but of course she knew he always would. He would find out that while he was looking for a job and sweating in Somerville with a girlfriend who Eileen personally thought was awfully old for him, his sister had been having fantastic five-course dinners in the South of France. She therefore felt obligated to bring him something nice. At the same time, she could already imagine him making her feel stupid about whatever she decided to buy, because, after all, he had actually lived in France.

“Cognac,” Peter suggested.

“It has to be from Provence.”

“Wine,” Peter said.

“I have to think about this. I have to think .”

But the days passed with increasing rapidness, noon turning to nine, nine turning to noon, and she couldn’t ever seem to think. Finally, on the way to the airport in Nice, she dashed into a department store and bought Louis a large knife.

In Back Bay there was a message from him on her machine, instructing her to call him at his old number. An unfriendly person at his old apartment gave her a new number, which when she dialed it turned out to belong to Louis’s friend Beryl Slidowsky, on whose sofa, he said, he’d been sleeping for several nights.

“What happened to Renée?” Eileen asked, more innocently than meanly, though she really wasn’t sorry to hear he wasn’t living with her anymore.

“It’s a problem I’m working on,” Louis said.

“Oh. You’re trying to get back together.”

“I’m trying to get her back.”

“Oh, well — good luck.”

Louis said he was a fifth wheel at Beryl’s. He wondered if he could crash in Back Bay for a few days. One way or another, he said, it wouldn’t be for long.

“Um,” Eileen said. “I guess. But if you and Peter can’t get along, it’s not going to be very nice.”

“Trust me,” Louis said.

He came over in the evening after her first day at the bank. She had drunk half a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé while waiting for Peter, who still wasn’t home from work. When she let Louis in the door she immediately retreated, falling back on her legs as if the floor had developed a steep negative gradient. She couldn’t believe how much her brother had changed in three weeks. He was wearing his usual black jeans and white shirt, but he seemed taller and older and broader in the shoulders. He’d had his hair cut so short that what remained was dark and velvety, and for some reason he wasn’t wearing glasses. His cheeks were drawn, and dark with a week’s beard, his eyes hollow and shining in the absence of lenses, with gray satin semicircles of tiredness beneath them.

“I — got this tan in France,” Eileen said in a too-loud voice. It was the first thing that came into her head.

“Yeah, I heard you were over there,” Louis said without interest.

“What happened to your glasses?”

“Somebody stepped on them.”

“Have you had dinner?”

“If it’s OK with you,” he said, “I think I’ll be by myself for a while. I can come out later.”

At eleven o’clock he still hadn’t come out. Eileen left Peter in bed with the news and tapped on the door of the second bedroom. Louis, minus his shirt, was bending low over the desk they had in there and writing in a notebook. At the top of the notebook page she could read the words Dear Renée . He didn’t try to hide them.

“I brought you something from France,” Eileen said. Jet lag and drinking and the day’s terrors of job orientation had conspired to puff her eyes up and reduce her skin to red shininess. She handed Louis the box with the knife in it.

He frowned. “This is very nice. You got this for me?”

“It’s for your kitchen. You have to pay me a penny for it. It’s the superstition. You have to pay me for it or it’s bad luck.”

Obediently, unhurriedly, he took a penny from his pocket and held it out to her. But she had turned away towards the convertible futon sofa. She was looking at Louis’s small nylon duffel bag, which was now apparently the size of all the possessions that mattered to him. “You’re really broken up about her, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Louis said.

“Did you want to tell me what happened?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you want me to do something? I could try and talk to her, if you wanted.”

“It’s OK.”

She nodded; but it was more like her heavy head just falling forward. She stared at the floor and spoke in a low, trembling voice. “You know, you’re very, very cute, Louis. There are lots of girls who’d think you’re totally cute. And you’re smart, and independent, and strong, and you’re interesting, and you’re going to do anything you want. Lots and lots of girls are going to want to go out with you. You’re going to go to Europe again and you’ll be really confident. You’re going to have a good life. Did you know that?” She shot him an accusing look. “I used to feel sorry for you. But I don’t anymore. I know you’re all broken up about her, but I don’t feel sorry at all. So just try to feel OK. I mean I guess I hope you get her back, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t.”

Louis sat and looked at her with the submissive sadness of a pet who knew he had damaged property but had never meant to. Eileen put her hand on the doorknob, not turning it but holding it as though it were a mother’s hand. “I don’t know why you make me feel so rotten.”

“I’m not trying to,” Louis said.

“You make me feel so rotten,” she insisted. “You make me feel so bad about myself. You always have, all my whole life, my whole, whole life,” she’d begun to cry, “and I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want you to stay here. I want you to find someplace else to stay. I have to go to work every day now. I have to go to this horrible stupid bank every single day with no vacation for ten months, and if I want promotions I have to work at night and Saturdays. And I just don’t want you to make me feel so bad. You can stay here as long as you want, but I wanted you to know.”

“I’ll leave right now,” he said calmly.

“No. You have to stay. I’ll feel guilty if you go. But I don’t want you here. I don’t know what I want.” She stamped her foot. “Why am I suddenly so unhappy? Why do you do this to me?”