Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

“You forgot to take your ankle clip off,” he said.

Bob touched his pants leg, noting that the clip was there, but he didn’t take it off. He smoothed the emptied knapsack and folded it in two.

Louis looked around the kitchen as if it were a witness to what he had to put up with.

“Well so here I am,” he said. “You want to tell me why you sent the ticket?”

“So you couldn’t hang up on me,” Bob said.

“Expensive way to do that. Or is money no object now?”

“If you’re worried about that, you can paint the garage for me. And scrape it first. But no, if you want to be strictly logical, there’s no reason for you to be here. There’s no reason for me to care if I see you unhappy, no reason why you and your mother shouldn’t keep making each other miserable and poison the whole family.”

Louis rolled his eyes, again calling upon the kitchen as his witness. “I take it she’s already in Boston.”

“She left on Thursday.”

“It’s nice how she always lets me know when she’s there.”

“Yes, I know she doesn’t call you. But the fact is you wouldn’t want to see her now anyway.”

“Uh-huh.” Louis nodded. “That’s very considerate of her. She knows I’m not going to want to see her, so she spares me the awkwardness of saying no to an invitation. That’s so amazingly tactful.”

“Lou, this is why I wanted you here.”

“‘This’? ‘This’? This — what, attitude problem of mine? This failure of my niceness regarding Mom?” He swallowed some beer and made a face. “How can you drink this stuff? It’s carbonated gallbladder.”

“I thought you might want to come,” Bob said, determined not to be provoked. “You’re obviously very angry, and I thought if you understood better why your mother, for example, is behaving the way she is—”

“Then I’d understand and accept and forgive her. Right?” Louis dared his father to contradict him. “You’d tell me what a tough life Mom has, and what a tough life Eileen has, and what a comparatively easy life I have, and then because it turns out I’ve got things so good I’d go and say, Gee, Mom, I’m sorry, do whatever you want, I totally understand.”

“No, Louis.”

“But what I don’t understand is where everybody gets this idea that I’ve got things so easy. You live in this house with her, you see her every day, but you can’t say to her, Jeez, Melanie, aren’t you being kind of mean to Louis? Instead you’ve got to fly me home, so I can be the one who understands.”

“Lou, she understands, but she can’t help herself.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t help myself. And that’s why I’m not going to have anything more to do with her. She can’t help it, I can’t help it, that’s the end of it.”

“But you can help it.”

“What, oh, because why?” he asked the kitchen generally. “Because I was elected at age ten to be Mr. Understanding? Because men have things easy?”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

“I’m the one who has things easy? Not Mom who can do whatever the hell she wants and then say she can’t help it? Not Eileen who, you know, cries whenever she can’t have what she wants? Are you serious? That’s such total arrogance. I’m saying I’m no better than they are. What’s wrong with that?”

“What exactly is your problem with her?”

“My problem with her. I’m not even going to tell you what my problem is.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t feel like it.”

“Because you’re embarrassed. Because you know it isn’t worthy of you.”

“Oh, I see. Tell me more about this problem of mine.”

Bob always savored any lecture invitation. He picked up the black banana and, holding it before his eyes, slowly stripped it. “Maybe it’s the old romance of the left,” he said in his musing, classroom voice. “I tend to think of you and Eileen as sort of the two sides of the national equation. Eileen being the kind of person who thinks she needs wealth and luxury, and you being the kind of person who—”

“Who says hell no, beans and rice are fine with me.”

“Yes, you can laugh at me now, but that’s how it seemed.” Bob began to eat the banana; no one else in the family would have touched such a black one. “I thought you felt more or less the way I do. And I used to believe there was a sizable class of people in this country who wanted nothing more than a decent job, decent housing, decent health care, and first-class non-material satisfactions. Because it seemed as if people should be like this. And then in the eighties this turns out to be as wishful as all my other thinking. The decent working people in this country turn out to have the same consumer greed as the bourgeoisie, and every single person is dreaming of having the same luxuries that Donald Trump has, and would poison the world and kill his neighbors to get them if that would help.”

“Oh,” Louis said. “So I’m greedy. I’m a Donald Trump just like everybody else. That’s my problem with Mom: I want a snazzy town house just like Eileen’s, and I want my VCR and my BMW and I’m pissed at Mom because she won’t give it to me. That’s what you’ve determined?”

“You’re angry because she’s lent money to Eileen.”

“Yeah, even if that were the problem, which I don’t really grant, the thing is it’s a fairness thing, a frankness thing. I mean, your working class wouldn’t care about BMWs if they didn’t have to see all these worthless rich assholes driving them around and talking on their car phones. And before you say it — I’m not saying Eileen’s a worthless rich asshole. I’m not saying I necessarily even have a problem with her.”

“No,” Bob said, tranquilly finishing the banana. “You just see an opportunity to torment your mother and still have justice on your side.”

“Me? Are you kidding? I’m trying to stay away from her! I’m trying to shut her out of my mind! Which is literally what she asked me to do. She said, let’s pretend this didn’t happen, and what do you think I’ve been trying to do? You know — in my own stupid trusting way. I don’t know where you get this idea I’m tormenting her. I went and talked to her one time , when I found out that I was the only one being asked to pretend this didn’t happen, I mean, that Eileen wasn’t. I had one five-minute lapse, and that was it. And now you tell me you ‘hoped’ I might not be as ‘materialistic’ as Eileen. Well. maybe I wasn’t! Maybe I was this perfect, greedless guy you always wanted me to be. But I get no thanks from anyone, and then you give me this little talk about how ‘disappointed’ you are, and how innocent you were, and how I’m like the working class that never seems to do what the marxists want it to. I mean, it’s no wonder us workers all turn out wishing we could be Donald Trump. We’re sorry you’re disappointed . You think I want to disappoint you? When the only possible justification I have for living this stupid fucking way I live is that maybe at least my father thinks it’s not so stupid? But you obviously can’t see this, because you obviously don’t have the slightest idea what I’m really like, because for twenty-three years you’ve been too stoned to notice. You talk about innocent, you talk about dumb, look at me here.”

Bob’s eyes had widened suddenly, as if he’d felt a knife go in his back. Louis, taking deep breaths, dropped his eyes to the floor. “And you’re hurt, I know, I’m sorry. It was an exaggeration.”

“No, you’re right,” Bob said as he turned towards the door. “You hit the nail on the head.”

“Yeah, walk away now, would you. Make me feel like the invulnerable one, huh? Like the only person in this family who doesn’t get overcome with grief and guilt.”