Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

“Uh, yeah.”

“Louis, that can be so draining. It can tire you in ways you’re not even aware of. Forgive me for asking, but is Renée — fully covered with her insurance? I’m only thinking, if what she really needs is a nurse, maybe it would give you—”

“It’s no big thing,” Louis said. “It’s just shopping and a little cooking and driving.”

“Yes, but psychologically—”

He stood up and crossed the room. “It’s OK. I can handle it. I mean — I can handle it. I appreciate your concern. But it’s no big thing.”

“I’m sure you can handle it,” Joyce said gently. “I only want. ”

“Joyce needs to help people,” Alec commented. “It’s in her nature.”

With a little shudder, Joyce let this description of her pass. “I only want you to know that if you do need help, there are people out here in the world to help you. If I have any one purpose in life, it’s to let people know that they do not have to suffer in solitude. For every person who has a need, there’s a person, somewhere, who wants to take care of that need.”

Louis closed his eyes and thought: Please stop talking .

Joyce looked helplessly at Alec. Anyone could see she was a perceptive person. It obviously really did cause her pain to see Louis suffering, and to know that the streets of Cambridge and Boston were full of people like him — that all you had to do was dip a net in randomly and you’d come up with suffering. And to know that she herself was not suffering.

“Listen,” she said, “I hope you’ll tell Renée that there are a great many people in this city who care about her and are pulling for her and want to help her. If nothing else, I’m here, and if there’s anything she needs. ”

Louis closed his eyes and thought: It is necessary to suffer .

“And Louis, I know I don’t have any business saying this, but if you stop and think about it, you might want to not donate blood for a while, especially if it’s something you’re doing often. You need your strength for one thing at a time.”

It is necessary to suffer. It is necessary to suffer .

“Thanks for the coffee,” Louis said.

Joyce sighed and shook her head. “You’re welcome.”

Alec followed him out of the office, arresting him at the top of the stairs. “One sing. Stop a minute, one sing. I spoke with Libby last week. Libby Quinn. She wants your number.”

“Why does she want my number?”

“If you need a job, you call her.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“Stites is leaving. Some midwestern state he’s going to. You heard this?”

“And you told her to call me.”

“Yes, OK, I told her. But she doesn’t have your number. She needs an engineer. I told her, minimum wage, and he loves radio.”

“Minimum wage. Thanks.”

“You can make a deal. Sink about it, eh?”

“I can’t, now.”

“But you love radio. I knew this about you.”

“I used to.”

“So you call me when you want to work. You must call me. And you must give me your number.”

Louis took the pen Alec offered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t nicer to your friend.”

“She’s used to it. You go home now.”

“Tell her I’m sorry.”

“Yes, maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

Alec drew a European crossbar through the stem of the 7 in the number Louis had written down. Then he returned to Joyce’s office without another word.

The only time Louis felt safe from torment now, the only time he liked the person he was, was when he was alone with Renée on Pleasant Avenue. As long as he was in her apartment, he knew what he was doing because everything followed logically from the supposition that he loved her. He was her cook, her comedian, her comforter, her maid. Even three months ago, he wouldn’t have assumed that he could console a sick person weeping over the slowness of her recovery: that the necessary words could come to him as automatically as the motions of sex did. He would probably have sneered at a person who said that love could teach him the many specific skills that constitute patience and grace, and certainly at the person who said that love was a gold ring which if grasped carried you upward with a force comparable in strength to the forces of nature. But this was exactly what he felt now, and the only question was why, when he was by himself or outside of the apartment, his life with Renée still felt like such a sorrow.

In the days and weeks following the earthquake he had gone to the hospital every afternoon, adhering to a tacit agreement whereby he stayed away until three o’clock or so and Mrs. Seitchek stayed away after that. It wasn’t that there was any special hostility between mother and boyfriend — Louis continued to be resolutely polite to Mrs. Seitchek, and she in turn now recognized him as Renée’s official first choice and went so far as to share with him her views on the “incredibly immature” Howard Chun and the “incredibly dangerous” things her daughter had been doing. The problem was simply that on the one occasion when they had visited Renée at the same time, Renée had looked utterly wretched and refused to speak to either of them — at least until her father came into the room. Then she answered everyone’s questions and kindnesses with a humility that Louis had never seen in her before. He wondered if there was anyone in the world who wouldn’t be afraid of Dr. Seitchek and his trifocals.

All day long, no matter how many people visited her, Renée seemed never to forget that at night she was alone. She told Louis that whenever she woke up, at whatever time of day or night, she felt like she was still awakening in the windowless ICU where it was always night. She could open her eyes and see his face and still believe that, only a moment earlier, she had been in that other place.

She let him read her mail while she dozed. There were some twenty-six hundred envelopes in bundles on the table by the head of her bed. Inside them were checks and cash gifts totaling about $19,000, and letters short and long.

Dear Renée,

My husband and I are praying for your speedy recovery. Our hearts are with you. Please use the enclosed check for whatever you wish.

Sincerely,

Dear Renée,

Remember me? I heard you was in the Hospital and remembered our nice talk. Hope you are feeling better now. I lost two friends and everything I own from the earthquake. I’m staying with my daughter now and can’t go home. Looks like you are right about that company. I hope you come see me when you are better.

“Sincerely”

Renée—

You don’t know me, but you have made an indellible impression on my mind. I don’t think the people on TV understand what you said and my parents don’t either, but I think I do. Nobody understands me because I hate being a girl but I don’t want to be a boy. I am 17 years old and I have never met a boy whose mind I can respect. I had a fight with my parents about you. I think they admired you but then I told them I admired you and they changed their mind. I am leaving this house in two months to go to college. My mind is always in confusion and I don’t know anyone like me. But I think I might be like you if I could be brave. I have never written a letter like this before. You probably think it’s very stupid. But I lie awake in bed and imagine I’ve been shot because of what I am. We will probably never meet, but I want to tell you I love you and wish you the best in all things. GET WELL.

Sincerely yours,

Louis was jealous of all the people who had written to her, people who didn’t owe her anything and whose interest was therefore beyond suspicion. He was jealous of the men he had to leave the room for when they came to visit her — Howard Chun, various professors and colleagues, even Terry Snall (though Terry came only once and left Renée livid and seething when he tried to “joke” about all the public attention she was getting). He was especially jealous of Peter Stoorhuys. After the initial flood of visitors and outpouring of sympathy had ebbed, Peter was the only person besides Louis and Mrs. Seitchek who still came to the hospital almost every day. The worst thing about Peter’s visits was that Louis could see that there was no ulterior motive — that Peter simply liked and admired Renée and was sorry she was hurt and regretted that his father was responsible. He was blind to Louis’s jealousy, just couldn’t conceive of it. He brought Renée newspaper and magazine clippings, he brought tapes for her Walkman, he brought his mother. Sometimes he brought Eileen, too, although she continued to be preposterously shy around Renée. Louis paced the halls and rode the elevators and read Glamour and Good Housekeeping with clenched teeth, returned to Room 833 and found Renée and Peter still conversing in low voices. She seldom seemed more relaxed or self-confident than after Peter had visited her.