Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

“But the spill in Peabody.”

“There were PCBs in it. I can hear you. And the company misled the public for a couple of days, not that Wall Street didn’t see right through it. Then again, it’s an extremely human response to deny something when you’re embarrassed. Hi, Stan.” Carver aimed her pistol at the doorway, where a man in a pea-green blazer was holding a manila folder. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Renée frowned. A few minutes?

“This hole of yours,” Carver said. “If it was drilled at all, it was supposedly drilled outside Hereford, Massachusetts. In order to make your ‘model’ fit, haven’t you more or less arbitrarily moved a five-mile-deep hole a hundred fifty miles east?”

“Eastern Massachusetts is what it says in Nature . Eastern Massachusetts.”

“Do you have any other references on that?”

“Not — yet.”

“And Nature is a. British publication. You know, I hate to say this, but I’m not particularly comfortable with a theory that depends on a British magazine editor’s grasp of American geography.”

Renée’s eyes narrowed.

“Other objections, off the top of my head. Why spend umpteen million dollars on a deep oil well in 1969? Do you know what a barrel of oil cost back then?”

“Yes. I do know. But I can’t believe there wasn’t anybody in America able to see 1973 coming. They had huge profits. They were probably glad to take the write-off.”

“You don’t make money on a write-off. And wouldn’t a company with so much foresight know about induced seismicity too? Anybody who opens an elementary seismology textbook must know about it. But according to you, the earthquakes in 1987 took them by surprise.”

“I assume they’d looked at the Denver study,” Renée said. “In Denver there was some history of earthquakes and the largest induced event was a magnitude 4.6. In Peabody there was no history of earthquakes and no reason to expect any. Plus they were pumping at a small fraction of the rate the Army pumped in Denver. And there’s something else, actually, that I forgot to mention, which is that the operations vice president of Sweeting-Aldren has his house insured against earthquake damage.”

Carver touched the muzzle of her pistol to her lips, as if blowing smoke off it. She smiled at Renée serenely. Was it possible she’d been corrupted by Sweeting-Aldren? Renée dismissed the idea. She could see that the problem here was that Carver simply didn’t like her.

“I take it you’re not a homeowner,” Carver said.

“That’s right. I’m not a homeowner.”

“Nothing wrong with that, of course. However, it may be that you don’t quite understand how much the people who do own homes are concerned about losing them. And that people who’ve been in Boston all their lives might remember the earthquakes in the forties and fifties. Who is that — Dave Stoorhuys?”

She made him sound like somebody she drank beer with. “Yes.”

Carver nodded. “Caution. Caution is the only word for him. Have you met him?”

“I know his son.”

“Yes, but you see I actually deal with these companies on a daily basis. And strange as it may sound, there happen to be some very decent and well-intentioned people in the industry. In fact I’ve seen as much or more self-interest and self-promotion on the academic side of the fence as I’ve seen on the commercial side. Is this what you wanted to hear? Obviously not. But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I think you’re barking up the wrong tree with Dave Stoorhuys and Sweeting-Aldren.”

“What if I found the pumping site myself and brought you pictures?”

“You want permission to spy and trespass? You want Mommy’s approval?” Carver’s eyes glittered. “I suppose if you showed me something more solid than an academic conjecture, I’d have somebody check it out. Although frankly there are a whole lot worse things a company can do with those chemicals than pump them four miles underneath the water table.”

“What if they’d come to you for a license to pump their waste underground. Would you have given it to them?”

“If you’re talking about legal liability for earthquake damage, you should be talking to somebody else.”

“Like who.”

“The press always loves a good story.” Carver looked at her watch. She stood up. “I’ve noticed they’re pretty keen on you too.”

“This is your responsibility,” Renée said. “If they are pumping, the only thing they’re violating is EPA regulations. I think somebody should at least go and see if they have a well on their property. And if they do, it should be seized before they have a chance to shut it down.”

“I’ll take a look at our records.” Carver was walking to the door now, forcing her visitor to stand up. Every government official knows that people who complain to agencies invariably consider themselves special, and that they become flustered when they finally realize they don’t seem special to the agency. A proud and self-conscious supplicant like Renée was particularly easy to fluster and get rid of. It was therefore a specific meanness on Carver’s part that she took the time to add: “I have to tell you, I’ve heard it all before. I’m afraid you’re tripping on a romance, a little bit.”

“What?”

“You know — a trip. How old are you?”

“I know what the word means.”

“We had an entomologist in here two months ago telling us there were dioxins in a spray the state fights gypsy moths with. He had a nice theory too. The only problem is there aren’t any dioxins in the spray. Last year another academic, from Harvard — Thetford? oceanographer? — talking about mercury on the continental shelf. Malfeasance and conspiracy. I guess I used to think that way myself, a long, long time ago. It’s very satisfying, very romantic. But 99.9 percent of the time it’s not the way the world really works. You might keep that in mind.”

In the street again, Renée held her fold-up umbrella right below its ribs and used her other hand to keep her shoulder bag from slipping off her shoulder as the wind blew and the rain fell. Naturally her bladder was overfull. People dodged irrationally in and out of doors. A young black man loitering at the bottom of the subway stairs pointed at the water on his pants and demanded: “What do you say?”

She skittered sideways.

He pursued her. “What do you say? You say excuse me . You say excuse me, please .”

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Excuse me, please. I’m sorry I splashed water on you. I’m sorry I got your pants wet .”

“I’m sorry I splashed water on you.”

“Thank you,” he shouted after her, over the turnstiles. “Thank you for your apology.”

This exchange echoed in her head until a train came.

A Globe had exploded in her car, covering the floor and collecting under seats. On the front page a headline stamped with a wet footprint read: second abortion clinic bombed in lowell.

At Central Square the local Angry Woman, driven underground by the weather, was cursing the motherfucking men who ruled the world. An old Chinese man carrying two goldfish in a Baggie full of water sat down next to Renée, who smiled at him kindly. “Rain rain rain,” he said.

“Rain rain rain, yeah.”

This exchange echoed in her head all the way to Harvard.

The ground floor of Hoffman Lab was quiet, the large white screens in the Sun room silently spitting up little statements in black as programs ran for students and post-docs eating a late lunch in the Square, the smaller brown screens in the system rooms awaiting log-ons or scrolling in bright green. Renée went straight from the women’s bathroom to a brown screen. While she worked, the phone on the radiator rang itself down several times. Even infrequent users of the computer had been informed by now that human life begins at conception. Nobody answered anymore, but the phone kept ringing.