Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

“Hang up.”

“All right. I will.”

“I’m hanging up,” he said.

As he removed the receiver from his ear, he heard her say, “ I wanted you! ”

He sat on the bed and looked at the motionless chairs and the motionless walls until the light in the window became an afternoon light and he decided it was late enough to try to see Renée. He would rather have seen Lauren. He dressed, loosening the laces of his shoes until he could fit his feet in them. He stamped one foot and then the other to settle them into their pain. He made himself chew and swallow two bananas.

At Somerville Hospital a new woman manned the reception desk. She had a long neck and a tiny head. “We have no Seitchek listed,” she said.

“What do you mean no Seitchek listed?”

“This is that poor girl from Harvard? Let me see what I can find here.” She flipped again through her jumbo Rolodex. “No, I’m afraid she’s not.”

“Are you telling me she’s dead?”

“Well. ” The woman requested data on her telephone. She reported to Louis: “She’s at Brigham & Women’s. They just transferred her.”

Brigham & Women’s was back in Eileen’s neck of the woods, over behind Fenway Park in a whole small city of the sick and recovering, where brick and concrete hospital buildings had budded like yeast, putting out wings upon wings at odd angles, nourished by what was obviously an ever-growing stock of unwell people. There was no free parking. Louis went up an elevator, down an endless arterial corridor, through a lobby, down an elevator. He told a nurse at the octagonal ICU desk that he wanted to see Renée Seitchek. The nurse said Renée was in surgery. “Are you a family member, Louis?”

“I’m her boyfriend.”

The nurse dropped her eyes to a stack of folders with red tabs and shuffled them nervously. “I’m afraid it’s immediate family only.”

“What if I said I’m her husband?”

“But you’re not her husband, Louis. Mrs. Seitchek’s in the staff lounge around the corner if you’d like to talk to her.”

The staff lounge was empty except for a petite woman in pleated navy-blue slacks and a pink blouse who was pouring coffee into a styrofoam cup. Her hair was short, permed, and frosted. She wore heavy gold jewelry of simple design on her tanned hands and wrists. A soap was playing on the television next to her.

“Mrs. Seitchek?”

When the woman turned, he saw Renée’s very own expression of mild surprise. He was looking at a Renée who had aged twenty-five years; who had let the sun broil her skin to the color of crust on white bread; who had plucked her eyebrows and put on silvery pink lipstick; who had not slept last night; and who had been born very pretty. His first impulse was to fall in love with her.

“Louis Holland,” he said.

Mrs. Seitchek looked at him uncertainly. “Yes?”

“Renée’s boyfriend.”

“Oh,” she said. He watched her take in his baldness, his white shirt, his black pants. A trace of one of Renée’s own grim smiles bent her lips. “I see.” She turned back to the coffee cart and sweetened her coffee from a pink packet. “Are you from Harvard, Louis?”

“No. Chicago originally. But I wanted to know how she is, and when I can see her.”

“She’s in surgery again, her leg now. A bullet hit the bone.” Mrs. Seitchek’s shoulders drooped, and she rested her hands on the coffee cart. “She’ll be on a ventilator for a while, and very heavily sedated. You can get in touch with me in a week or ten days, when she’s on the floor and we have some idea who she’d like to have visit her. Maybe she’ll want to see you then.”

“Can’t I see her sooner?”

“It’s only immediate family, Louis. I’m sorry.”

“I’m her boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’d sort of like to see her as soon as possible.”

Mrs. Seitchek shook her head, her back still turned. “Louis, I don’t know if you know anything about our relationship with Renée. I certainly don’t know a thing about you, I didn’t even know your name. So let me explain that Renée does not confide in me. We love her very much, but for whatever reasons, she’s chosen to be distant. I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me?” She turned to him. “How many boyfriends Renée has?”

“Just me,” Louis said. “Except—”

“Except.”

“Well, we had a fight.”

Again he saw a trace of Renée’s bitter smile. “And the young Chinese man. Howard. He’s not her boyfriend?”

“Not really.”

“Not really. I see. And the young man who was here just before you? Terry.”

“Definitely not.”

“Definitely not. All right. That’s not quite the impression he gave, but if you say so. ”

Louis tried to think of someone who knew for sure that he and Renée had lived together, of some hard evidence of a relationship. He thought of saying: Your son Michael sells real estate and your son Danny is an intern in radiology . But he could already hear the obvious reply: If you’re her lover, where were you yesterday afternoon?

Mrs. Seitchek dropped a coffee stirrer in a wastebasket. “You see the problem, don’t you? My daughter was the victim of a crime, and we have no idea who’s responsible. We didn’t have the tiniest inkling of her private life until we came here. And I have to say, things aren’t much clearer now. So under the circumstances I think it’s best if we just wait.”

“But next time you talk to her. maybe you could at least tell her that Louis is — you know. Around?”

“We’ll see.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“I said we’ll see. I don’t want to upset her if—”

“I am her boyfriend, Mrs. Seitchek. I’m going to die of grief if she dies. I’m—”

“So am I, Louis. So is her father, so are her brothers. We all love her, and we all want her to live.”

“Well, so tell her.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Excuse my stupidity, but—”

“Please go now.” Mrs. Seitchek’s eyes had filled. “Please go.”

Louis wanted to put his arms around her. He wanted to kiss her and take her clothes off, to have her be Renée, to bury his face in her. Suddenly close to tears himself, he ran from the room.

Outside, as he passed the octagonal desk, he saw a man he thought he recognized from the family picture Renée had shown him once. The man had bright red skin and thin white hair, combed straight back, and he wore a pair of very scary glasses — thick trifocals with outsized lenses and heavy-duty plastic frames. He was reading the fine print on a bottle of liquid medicine.

“Excuse me, are you Dr. Seitchek?”

The man’s eyes flicked up to the middle band of the trifocals and looked at Louis piercingly. “Yes.”

“I’m a friend of your daughter. I wonder if you could give her a message sometime in the next — days. I wonder if you could tell her Louis loves her.”

Dr. Seitchek returned his eyes to the bottle. He was a former dean of Northwestern’s medical school, and although Renée was as reticent about him as about everyone else in her family, Louis had gotten the idea that he was something of a major figure in American cardiology. His voice was low, limited, professional. “You’ve spoken to my wife?”

“Yes.”

“She explained our uncertainties?”

“Sort of.”

The magnified eyes stabbed Louis with another look. “Renée terminated a pregnancy yesterday. Were you aware of that?”

“Yeah. In fact I was the, uh, other party.”

“Your name is Louis.”

“Louis Holland. Yes.”

“I’ll give her the message.”

“I really appreciate it.” He touched Dr. Seitchek’s shoulder, but his hand might have been a fly alighting there for all the response it got. “Can I ask something else? — Who she thinks might have done it? Did they ask her?”