Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

Hingham, Mass.

“That’s the one about adoption, right? Check this one out. This guy put part of the chain letter in too.”

Cambridge, Mass. 02138

Dear Dr. Scheik,

Next to convicted drug kinpins there is nothing more despicable in the world than abortionists. Half the people entering abortion clinics never come out alive. How can you sleep at night knowing all the lives you took at work? Or do you take drugs to sleep (ha ha). I hope they shut you down and you go to jail. The keep men and women apart in jails, good thing. May they do the worst to you.

Signed,

John Doe

This had been typed on the back of an nth-generation Xerox reading:

— 2 —

has IMPACT but sometimes you cannot get through. Sometimes the number will be changed temporarily to an unlisted number. Sometimes you will get a busy signal or a no-answer or a machine. If a work number has been changed, get the new one from directory assistance (555-1212). Remember that clinics and private doctors cannot afford to be unlisted . Persistence is important — for a week, two weeks, even three. However it is also important to match EACH CALL with a first class letter. If the chain is not broken, it has been estimated that each pro-abortionist on the list will receive UPWARDS OF 1600 LETTERS by the time all nine boxes on page 1 are full. There is power in numbers! Imagine the impact of 1600 impassioned personal pleas! And 1600 telephone calls! But if you break the chain this number will be cut in half, and if another friend breaks the chain, it will be cut in half again.

Jesus fed 5000 with five loaves and two fishes. You can have the SAME POWER if you send out six copies of this letter. If this copy is too blurry, retype before sending .

Note : Long distance dialing is cheaper between 5pm and 8am (local time), but keep in mind most clinics keep regular working hours in their time zone (i.e. 9 to 5).

HOW TO CHOOSE

DO NOT choose names from the list at random. Start with the DAY OF THE MONTH you were born on — you will see there are 31 names on the list — and work forwards through the list if you were born in an odd-numbered month (e.g. January =1, February = 2 etc.), and backwards if you were born

“I’m going to eat some more grapes,” Renée said. “Do you want some?” Her refrigerator had round shoulders and a handle that latched. The chrome trademark on the door said fiat.

Louis was shaking his head in wonder. “This is so much worse than what happened to me.”

“You sure you don’t want any? Grapes?”

“Who put you on the list?”

“Stites or somebody else in his organization, I’m 95 percent sure. It’s all Boston-area addresses. The thing about ‘Hoffmann Laboratories’ is a nice touch. These people aren’t stupid.”

“You ought to complain to somebody.”

“I talked on the phone to this guy at the Globe . He asked me to send him some copies of the letters, which I did. I guess they want to see who else is getting them before they run anything. He said he’d call me back through the department office, but he hasn’t yet.”

“What about the post office. The phone company.”

“That just seemed hopeless somehow. I don’t care about getting these people prosecuted, I only care about the world knowing what incredible jerks they are.”

The telephone on the table began to ring. Louis put his hand on it and looked at Renée, who shrugged.

“Is, ah, Dr. Seechek there?”

“Speaking.”

“Oh, you’re a man, I didn’t—”

“No, sir,” Louis said. “I have a deep voice.”

Renée threw him a very doubtful look.

“My name is Joe. Uh, Doe. John Doe. I understand you’re employed at the Hoffman Laboratories and”—Mr. Doe’s voice became high and strangled—“that abortions are performed there?”

“Yeah, I understand you understand that.”

“I’d kinda like to talk to you about your work for a second, if I can, Dr. Seechek. Do you have a second?”

Louis was enjoying himself, but Renée unplugged the phone, took the handset from him, and said to the dead line, “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.” The DeMoula’s bag tore as she began to stuff her hate mail back inside it, faint shadows of words playing on her lips. He was surprised to notice areas of redness and roughness encroaching on her pale complexion. He wondered whether this was a recent development or whether, clued in by the old photograph, he was seeing things about her that until now her manner had concealed. Her pores had become evident. There was a patch of subdued but not eradicated acne high on one cheek, also blemishes around her mouth that made it seem to run. She struck him as younger and a little dirtier, more like the kind of girl it was easy to do whatever you wanted with — the kind with more passion than self-esteem.

“I hate it when women swear,” she said.

“Why?”

She stood at the head of the table. “I guess because there’s this idea that it’s sexy, in the popular imagination. The approved male popular imagination. Even when a woman says fuck in anger, even a radical feminist saying fuck, that’s a turn-on. Every time I hear a woman do it I get carried—” She addressed Louis directly. “I get carried to the subway station at Central Square. There’s an angry woman there, with her bags and her papers. It’s like her face is the face of All Women Saying Fuck. This insane anger towards everybody, which to me is especially ugly in a woman, although this is not politically correct of me and therefore makes me wonder what exactly my problem is. And I can’t help mentioning,” she went on, entirely to herself, “something else I forgot the other night, when you asked me what my problem is with Boston, I forgot to mention the way people call the subway the T. The people, I mean the implicating people, don’t say ‘I’m going to take the subway,’ they say ‘I’ll take the T.’ What’s sick — to me; what I consider sick — is that it’s like this code word, which every time I hear I become angry because I can hear the whole history, all these kids learning to say ‘T’ instead of ‘subway.’ They write home to their parents about taking the T. They explain that it’s called the T, which is kind of cute. Oh, listen to me.” She walked away, hitting herself in the head. “You wonder why I didn’t call you.”

Louis karate-chopped the tabletop impatiently. “Is there any beer or something?”

“It’s because I can’t control myself.”

“Or any kind of liquor or drug that we could do together here.”

The hum of the fan in the window, its quiet, oiled grinding, was the sound of all night hours in a heat wave. The hour of conversation wearing thin. The hour when a reflected piece of streetlight hovers at a certain point the blades pass through. The hour when dawn forces itself through the weary curtains. The hum and the hours all the same, the monotone of humid heat, and the burn patients say Don’t turn it up. Don’t turn it down. Let it stay right like it is.

“Do you have friends?” Louis asked, opening bottles. “People you can call up?”

“Sure. I mean, I used to.” Renée, across the table from him, showed no intention of drinking the beer he handed her. “I had a roommate, who I really liked, although she’s married now. I guess I was an improvident gardener. I made friends with people a couple of years older than me at work, people from the tail end of the sixties who didn’t like the front end of the eighties, which I didn’t either. I guess what I have now is an interesting correspondence, and some places to stay in Colorado and California.” With her thumbnails, she bunched up her sweating bottle’s neck wrapper like a cuticle, trying belatedly to gauge the angle of his question. “I see people, if that’s what you mean.” Her eyes followed her right index finger as she ran it along the edge of the table. She called her hand back and placed it palm-down to one side of her full bottle, and placed her other hand palm-down to the other side of the bottle. She sat perfectly still for a moment, staring at the bottle. Then, with violent decision, as though sitting like this had been a physical torment all along, she stood up without even pushing the chair away from the table. She had to stagger for balance on one leg and slide the chair back to extricate herself, and the chair stuck on the humid floor and tipped over.