Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

Big chemical concerns like Dow and Monsanto and Du Pont, on the other hand, seemed almost to relish the opportunity to decry a fellow corporation’s misdeeds. They immediately expanded their production of the textiles, pigments, and pesticides that had been Sweeting-Aldren’s mainstay — products for which demand was only increasing in America — and took the lead in demonizing Sweeting-Aldren’s management. Du Pont called the Peabody tragedy the work of “a bunch of devils.” (Du Pont’s own managers were family men, not devils; they welcomed the EPA’s intelligent regulation.) Monsanto solemnly swore that it had never employed injection wells and never would. Dow took pride in its foresight in locating its headquarters in one of the most geologically stable places in the world. By August, sales and stock prices were up at all three companies.

In the public imagination, “Sweeting-Aldren” joined the ranks of “Saddam Hussein” and “Manuel Noriega” and “the Medellin cartels.” These were the guys with hats as black as the tabloid headlines screaming of their villainy, the men who made the good world bad. The United States bore the responsibility for punishing them, and if they couldn’t be punished, the United States bore the responsibility for cleaning up after them; and if the cleanup proved painfully expensive, it could be argued that the United States bore the responsibility for having allowed them to become villains in the first place. But in no case did the American people themselves feel responsible.

As the weeks went by, visitors from out of town occasionally ventured north from Boston to see the fences around Zone I. They had seen these fences countless times on television, and still it amazed them that Peabody could be reached by car in half an hour — that this land belonged to the earth as surely as the land in their own hometowns, that the weather and light didn’t change as they approached the fences. They took photographs which, when they were developed back in Los Angeles or Kansas City, showed a scene that they again could not believe was real.

Bostonians, meanwhile, had more important things to think about. Low-interest federal loans had reignited the local economy. The window frames of downtown buildings had again been filled with greenish glass. Fenway Park had passed its safety inspections. And the Red Sox were still in first place.

In Harvard Square the season came when the sun lost the angle it needed to reach the narrower streets before noon, and the overnight chill and its smell of impending winter lingered in the pissed-on alleyways and the cast-concrete chess tables by Au Bon Pain. Along the river and in the Yard, the Great Litterer was at work again, discarding worn-out leaves on footpaths. Damaged buildings were reopening, the scaffolds coming down. Impeccably put-together students trailed scents of shampoo and deodorant in the Canadian air. They were young and wealthy sexual beings being educated. They were like the unblemished cars that bunched in their egress from the Square, windows shut now that summer was over, fully functional emission-control systems expelling exhaust that smelled good. It was literally incomprehensible that in Zone I, a mere fifteen miles away, squads of bulldozers were even now destroying bungalows in which lamps and chairs lay exactly where strong motion had thrown them on the twenty-fourth of June.

Louis had come to the Square on errands. Though he was no fan of the Square, he came here often now, did his business efficiently, and went home again feeling unimplicated and anonymous. On this particular morning, however, he was crossing the street outside Wordsworth when a silver Mercedes sedan braked sharply on the cobbled apron of a traffic island and a familiar-looking person leaned out the front passenger window and beckoned to him. It was Alec Bressler.

“Alec. How’s it going?”

Alec ducked in his affirmative way. “No complaints.”

Of the driver of the car, Louis could see only female legs in hose and pumps. Alec was sucking a nicotine lozenge with what appeared to be particular amusement. He had new glasses and wore a very smart-looking blazer. “Yourself?” he said. “You find a good job?”

“No. Not— No.”

Alec frowned. “No job at all?”

“Well, for the last couple of months I’ve been taking care of my girlfriend. You probably heard about her. Her name’s Renée Seitchek?”

Here the driver of the car leaned across Alec’s lap and showed her face to Louis. She was a handsome woman in her early fifties, with a strong nose and wiry gray hair and black eyebrows. “You know Renée Seitchek?”

Louis had heard these exact words a lot in recent weeks. “Yeah, I do.”

The woman took his hand. “I’m Joyce Edelstein. I’m very interested in Renée, from afar. Can you tell me how she is?”

“She’s. OK.”

“Listen, why don’t you come up to my office and have some coffee with us. If you have a minute. I’m right up the street here. You want to come?”

Louis looked uncertainly at Alec, who simply raised his eyebrows and sucked his entertaining lozenge.

“Come on,” Joyce said, popping the lock on the rear door. Louis obeyed her. His vagueness was no longer something he turned on to foil people; it was the way he really was. When he walked, nowadays, he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. He always felt tired and was frequently short of breath. He wore clothes that had belonged to Peter Stoorhuys, a red sweatshirt and some gray jeans that he put on morning after morning and, objectively speaking, looked bad in. When he saw his own old blacks and whites or even thought about them, he squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could.

The office he was taken to occupied the third floor of a clapboard building on Brattle Street that maybe a hundred years ago had been a private residence. The brass doorplate said The Joyce Edelstein Foundation. A receptionist and an assistant said “Good morning, Mrs. Edelstein.” Joyce left her visitors in a private office decorated in harmony with the large Monet pondscape that hung on one wall. Alec made himself at home on a white leather sofa. His skin was no longer the gray that Louis remembered; even his hair seemed thicker. He’d pretty clearly quit smoking. “Joyce is a phil-an-thropist,” he said, making her sound like some curiosity of nature.

“Uh huh.”

“Renée is kind of a hero of mine,” Joyce said, matter-of-factly, as she returned with a tray of coffee, cream, and sugar. “I’m involved in funding a variety of organizations, and if there’s any kind of unifying theme to my concerns it would probably be reproductive rights and the environment. For me both those things came together this summer with the earthquake and what happened to Renée. I actually wrote her a letter, I don’t know if she got it, I — didn’t particularly expect a reply.”

Louis did not say: A lot of people wrote her letters.

“So how’s she doing?” Joyce said.

“She’s all right. She’s got a bone infection in her leg, it started after she left the hospital. She’s still sort of sick.”

“It’s been how long?”

“Three months.”

“That’s really hard. And you— You’re—?”

“I live with her.”

“In—”

“In Somerville.”

“Forgive me, are you not feeling well? If this is hard for you to talk about. ”

“No. I just gave blood, that’s all.”

“Gave blood? Good grief, why didn’t you say so? Here, sit down. Please.”

Louis sat in the indicated chair and lowered his head over his coffee cup. Joyce looked at him with compassion and concern. She also looked at her watch. Alec was slurping and spectating from his distant sofa.

“Are you. Renée’s only caregiver?” Joyce said.