Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

Meanwhile she was too selfconscious to fail to see the ironies: That even as she was being vigilant about not turning into a superficial person like her mother, she was spending huge amounts of time worrying about decor, clothes, and cooking. That she’d developed a bourgeois obsession with merchandise and appearances far more profound than her mother’s. And that the intelligent and confident female types towards whom she felt a virulent, defensive animosity were precisely the types towards whom her mother also felt an animosity, though not as virulent and defensive as her daughter’s, since she had her sons and grandchildren to distract and comfort her.

Renée knew that if she would only call off her quest for a perfect life, and settle down and accept having children as her mother had at her age, then she too could achieve a measure of contentment and forgetfulness. But there was nobody who wanted to marry her, and anyway, she hated people who were obsessed with their parents. A family was birdlime to the people in it, boredom to the people not. She hated the word “obsessed.” She hated people who hated as many things as she did. She hated the life that made her hate so many things. But she didn’t entirely hate herself yet.

She had only one dress, a ten-year-old beltless cotton print, that she considered fit to wear to lunch with Melanie Holland. The flat dancing slippers that she put on with it were soaked by the time the bus to Lechmere station picked her up on Highland Avenue. A fine, heavy rain choked the airspace above the Charles. The river was so swollen it looked higher than the streets around it.

On Boylston Street, in front of the hotel, a cab door opened and a pair of legs in skin-tight jeans and cowboy boots swung out, followed by an umbrella, a Filene’s shopping bag, and finally, in a large-cut sealskin jacket, the rest of Melanie. She slammed the door and almost bumped into Renée, who was standing looking at her.

In the restaurant, hearty appetites were in evidence. Tourists were grinning and white-haired women were whispering about investments, each pair with an air of being the most important in the room. Melanie looked tired. She’d gotten some sun of late, but her skin was wrinkled and glossy, like old enamel work; the tan seemed not to want to stick to it. The silk lining of her jacket, which she’d slipped off her shoulders onto the cushion of the banquette, held her as tenderly as the tissue paper in which fine gifts come. She scrutinized Renée. “My goodness,” she said. “You’re wet!”

“Yeah, I’m a little wet.”

“You came by train.”

“Train and bus, yes.”

“You live — let’s see if I can guess.” She made a booklet of her hands and raised it to her lips. “You’re in. one of those old houses right on the Radcliffe side of the Square.”

Renée shook her head.

“More towards Inman Square?”

“I live in Somerville.”

“Oh.” Melanie smiled vaguely and looked away. “Somerville.” A waiter came. “Will you have a cocktail with me?”

“Campari with soda?” Renée said to the waiter.

“That sounds perfect,” Melanie said. “So red, so chic.”

The waiter nodded. So red. So chic.

“I’m glad you could come on short notice,” Melanie said. “I’m afraid it’s reached the point where I ought to be booking Boston from Chicago and vice versa. Wherever I am one week, I’ll be in the other place the next. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. That’s the way it goes. Do you do much traveling in your job?”

Renée opened her mouth to answer, but she lost heart. She slid her teaspoon sideways on the tablecloth. “No,” she said, “and maybe you should just tell me what you want.”

“What I want? I want us to relax and enjoy ourselves and get to know each other a little. I want to be your friend.”

“You want information.”

“Partly, yes, but—”

“Then why don’t you just ask me what you want to ask me? Because I’m not going to be able to help you, and so you might as well get it over with.”

Melanie turned her head to one side and narrowed her eyes, exactly the way her son sometimes did. “Is something wrong? Is this not a good day? Oh dear!” She leaned across the table. “You’re looking so unhappy. Was this not a good day?”

Renée returned her spoon to its original position. “I’m not unhappy.”

“You think I have no personal interest in you. You think I took you to lunch to cajole you into answering my questions. Is that what you think? Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“You’re honest with me. I admire that. But you’re wrong, and I want to know how I can show you how wrong you are. Won’t you tell me?”

“I guess—” Renée was at a loss. “I guess if you didn’t ask me any questions, ever — then I’d have to think there was something else you wanted.”

“But you’d never believe I wanted to be your friend. Hm. Well, I suppose I can’t entirely blame you.” Melanie dug in her purse as the waiter deposited their drinks. She took out a flat velvet box and pushed it across the table. “This is for you.”

Renée looked at the box as if it happened to be where her eyes fell while she worried about something else.

“Do open it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, really, Renée, I’m about to become quite impatient with you. You don’t need to refuse a gift just to show me you’re an honest person. We reach a point where it becomes insulting to me. Let’s not pretend our circumstances are the same. An older woman who enjoys shopping gives a younger woman a token of her respect and affection, I really don’t see any reason to be so morbidly scrupulous. There. That’s right.” Her eyes shone as Renée suddenly grabbed the box and, after a hesitation, removed a string of pearls.

“These are beautiful.”

“With your colors, your hair, your skin. Pearls, platinum, silver, diamonds, I know from similar experience. Put, put them on. That’s right. Of course we have to allow for this being something less than the ideal dress. ” She handed her compact across the table, mirror upright. “Would you have time for a little shopping after lunch? I’d hate you not wearing these because nothing went.” Renée returned the pearls to the box. “Actually, I’m not sure these are my style.”

“Oh, is that so? What is your style?”

“I don’t know. Somerville.”

“You! You are not a Somerville kind of person, anyone can see that. Not unless Somerville has changed greatly since I was growing up, which I can’t imagine it has.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“Your manners.”

“My manners are awful. I’m offending you right and left.”

“You’re offending me in the manner of a very well bred, well educated, and self-aware young woman. And you know it.”

Weak though it was, the Campari had gone straight to Renée’s cheeks. She was immune to many things, but not to alcohol and not to a word like “self-aware,” which, when used in reference to her, reliably touched off a small shudder in her body, a spasm of self-love. And after the spasm, a hotness of face, a weightlessness of limbs. She laughed, looking at the pearls. “How much did these cost you?”

“Yes, keep trying. But you’re going to find me very difficult to offend today.”

Renée put the pearls around her neck again and held up the compact. The mirror showed her a room broken into darkened, depthless fragments — chandeliers caught in the act of being, tables on a tilting floor, subliminal flashes of herself, a white throat. She spoke deliberately. “Maybe I’ll keep them after all. If it’s all the same to you.”