Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

The body in the hallway motionless. The body under the desk motionless. Everything motionless.

For fifteen days after the night of two earthquakes the files on Sweeting-Aldren and the Peabody microseisms lay untouched in the space by the refrigerator. It was something like superstition that prevented the otherwise orderly Renée from putting them away when she cleaned the apartment — superstition and maybe also a loathing like the one Louis felt when his eyes happened to fall on them, and the one he’d felt towards his radio equipment during those weeks before he sold it, and the one induced by the very thought of alcohol for several days after they got so drunk.

Renée set great store by the “fact” that although he recovered quickly and spent the next morning straightening the apartment, he’d thrown up before she had. He had doubts about this chronology and was surprised by the vehemence with which, still pale and unable to stay on her feet for long, she stuck to her version. It seemed like she was being rather mean about this.

On Saturday, awakened by the smell of toasted English muffins, he found an apartment key on the kitchen table. He twirled it and twirled it on its ring. He drove to his apartment and collected some supplies and appliances. In the afternoon he walked to the East Cambridge apartment of his friend Beryl Slidowsky and hung out with her. When the conversation turned to Thursday’s earthquakes, which he knew from the Globe had occurred in the neighborhood of Peabody, he not only managed to keep silent about Renée’s theory but also denied, absurdly, that he’d felt anything. Beryl was volunteering at WGBH now. She had no help to offer him employment-wise but was suitably outraged by Stites’s acquisition of WSNE. She blamed it on Libby Quinn. Libby — or someone — really had given Beryl an ulcer; she showed Louis her bottle of Tagamet.

He had a Sugar Cubes recording playing loudly when Renée came home from work with a bag of groceries. “Is that dinner?” he said.

She tossed him a fishy-looking package from DeMoula’s.

“Fish! Do I ever eat fish?” He watched her stock a cabinet. “I had some coquilles Saint-Jacques in mashed potatoes when my parents were here. I ordered them to impress my mother with my French skills. The place used insto-spuds, sort of summer-camp quality. It’s very famous.”

She broke her silence. “Do you want me to talk about well-known fish restaurants in Boston? I can do it if you’d like. I have a lot to say.”

“What kind of fish is this?”

“This is cod.”

“You bought this yourself?” He put his finger on one of the coarse-grained filets. “No one made you buy it? You decided, I’m going to eat cod tonight?”

“That’s right.”

“You felt like cod. You saw cod and were inclined to buy.”

She sniffed.

“Did you get us some liver for tomorrow?”

“Actually, I thought you might buy the food tomorrow.”

“Shit,” he apologized. “Of course. I will. I would have bought it today, but there was no way to reach you.”

“I said. You can buy it tomorrow. Did I complain?”

“No, you didn’t complain.”

She crouched to file vegetables in the yellowed plastic drawers of the Fiat refrigerator. “I’m not at all positive it’s a good idea for you to move in like this. At least not before we discuss a few things.”

“The age aspect. Our, uh, Memorial Day — Flag Day relationship.”

She laughed.

“You find me twerpy,” he said. “I don’t apply.”

“No, as a matter of fact, I find you very attractive and fun to be with. This is not what I’m talking about at all.” She frowned. “Is that how you see yourself? Why do you see yourself that way?”

Louis didn’t answer; he’d retreated up the hallway, swatting the air with his fist. No one as reliable as Dr. Seitchek had ever told him he was very attractive. He returned to the kitchen with a swagger in his step.

“So what’s to discuss?”

“Nothing. Everything. I feel like things are — out of control.” She looked him in the eye as though she wanted him to help her speak. Then she got scared and seemed to realize there was no one in the room but him and her. She vented her helplessness on the tape player, turning it off, unplugging it, and removing the cassette.

“If you want me to leave,” he said, “say leave.”

“I don’t want you to leave. That’s what I’m saying.”

He assumed the abstracted expression of a Frenchman listening to an American fail to express herself in French.

“I just want to have things clear,” she said.

“You don’t want me to leave; I don’t want me to leave; what could be clearer?”

“You’re right.” A smiley smile. She began to peel an onion. “It’s all very clear.”

Louis looked sadly at the silenced tape player. “What are you doing to that cod?”

“I’m cooking garlic and onion in olive oil and wine and saffron and tomatoes and olives and then putting the fish in and simmering it briefly.”

“Is there something I can do?”

“Do you know how to make rice?”

“No.”

“Maybe you could make a salad.”

“You could show me how to make rice.”

“Why don’t you just make a salad.”

“You mean, so I don’t fuck up the rice?”

“That’s right.” With slashing strokes she began to slice flesh from the pits of brown olives. He was sure she was going to cut herself, and when she suddenly dropped the knife he thought she’d done it, but she was only angry.

“Do I want you watching me make dinner? Older woman mothers younger man? Adorably inept younger man? Feeds him first good meal he’s had in months? Shows him how to make rice for himself? If you want to know how to make rice, look on the package, same as I did ten years ago.”

She attacked the olives again. He watched muscles and tendons come and go beneath the skin of her pale, thin arms.

“So where’s this package?”

“Where do most people keep their food?”

He sighed. In the third of her three cabinets he found a bag of Star Market rice. “No instructions here,” he said.

“Boil a cup and a half of water and half a teaspoon salt stir in one level cup rice cover and reduce to low flame check in seventeen minutes.”

She watched him spend nearly a minute trying to measure exactly half a cup of water, taking too much, pouring out too much, taking too much, pouring out too much. “Oh, come on.”

“I’m trying to follow your instructions.”

“You’re not making a bomb, you’re making rice.”

“I’m trying to do it right.”

“You’re trying to goad me. You’re trying to be cute.’”

“I am not!”

Later they lay on her bed and watched the Red Sox play the Rangers on Channel 38 and looked at the Globe . For a long time Louis studied a full-page ad that showed a businessman using IBM equipment in his office at home. “The books on the shelves in the background of these things. Like this one here. Is that Mein Kampf?” He turned his head. “It’s Mein Kampf! The guy’s got Mein Kampf on his shelf! With his ten-thousand-dollar computer. And these, I bet these are Hustler magazines.”

“Let me see that.” Renée scrutinized the photograph. “It’s Main Street.”

“It’s Mein Kampf!”

“This is an S. It’s Sinclair Lewis. It’s Main Street.”

“I bet he keeps his Hitler stuff in the file cabinet.”

“I noticed you reading about Sweeting-Aldren.”

“Hence my attitude? Yeah. It’s a probing news analysis. They’re comparing the company to an ant.” Louis paged back. “‘Wall Street looks on as the injured insect crawls slowly in a circle, trying to get its legs to work again. It is obviously injured, and yet it may be able to absorb the damage and begin moving again. Long minutes go by; it might be dead; it might be about to continue on its mission. No one knows what kind of pain it might be feeling. If too much time passes and Sweeting-Aldren still doesn’t move, it will be presumed dead. But Wall Street has seen a lot of injured ants over the years, and it knows not to give up on this one quite yet.’ Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. Analyst David Blah of Blah-Blah Emerson attributes much of 17 percent drop in stock price since March blah to recognition that it was overvalued! Price-earnings blah blah. However, investors not encouraged by Dr. Axelrod’s statements on Friday that in light of continuing significant earthquake activity in neighborhood of Peabody ‘we just don’t know what to expect in the way of future earthquakes’— Who’s this Dr. Axelrod?”