Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

At the very back of the closet, in the cobwebs behind the bottom shelf, she found a thick envelope, not old-looking, with no postage on it. The envelope was addressed to the Axon Corporation, 24 East Industrial Serpentine, Schwenksville, PA. The return addressee was Alfred Lambert. The words SEND CERTIFIED were also on the face.

Water was running in the little half-bathroom by her father’s laboratory, the toilet tank refilling, faint sulfurous odors in the air. The door to the lab was ajar and Denise knocked on it.

“Yes,” Alfred said.

He was standing by the shelves of exotic metals, the gallium and bismuth, and buckling his belt. She showed him the envelope and told him where she’d found it.

Alfred turned it over in his shaking hands, as if an explanation might magically occur to him. “It’s a mystery,” he said.

“Can I open it?”

“You may do as you wish.”

The envelope contained three copies of a licensing agreement dated September 13, signed by Alfred, and notarized by David Schumpert.

“What is this doing on the floor of the laundry-room closet?” Denise said.

Alfred shook his head. “You’d have to ask your mother.”

She went out to the bottom of the stairs and raised her voice. “Mom? Can you come down here for a second?”

Enid appeared at the top of the stairs, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “What is it? Can’t you find the pot?”

“I found the pot, but can you come down here?”

Alfred, in the lab, was holding the Axon documents loosely, not reading them. Enid appeared in the doorway with guilt on her face. “What?”

“Dad wants to know why this envelope was in the laundry-room closet.”

“Give me that,” Enid said. She snatched the documents from Alfred and crumpled them in her fist. “This has all been taken care of. Dad signed another set of agreements and they sent us a check right away. This is nothing to worry about.”

Denise narrowed her eyes. “I thought you said you’d sent these in. When we were in New York, at the beginning of October. You said you’d sent these in.”

“I thought I had. But they were lost in the mail.”

“In the mail ?”

Enid waved her hands vaguely. “Well, that’s where I thought they were. But I guess they were in the closet. I must have set a stack of mail down there, when I was going to the post office, and then this fell down behind. You know, I can’t keep track of every last thing. Sometimes things get lost, Denise. I have a big house to take care of, and sometimes things get lost.”

Denise took the envelope from Alfred’s workbench. “It says ‘Send Certified.’ If you were at the post office, how did you not notice that something you needed to send Certified was missing? How did you not notice that you weren’t filling out a Certified Mail slip?”

“Denise.” Alfred’s voice had an angry edge. “That’s enough now.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Enid said. “It was a busy time for me. It’s a complete mystery to me, and let’s just leave it that way. Because it doesn’t matter . Dad got his five thousand dollars just fine. It doesn’t matter .”

She further crumpled the licensing agreements and left the laboratory.

I’m developing Garyitis , Denise thought.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on your mother,” Alfred said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

But Enid was exclaiming in the laundry room, exclaiming in the Ping-Pong — table room, returning to the workshop. “Denise,” she cried, “you’ve got the whole closet completely torn up! What on earth are you doing in there?”

“I’m throwing food away. Food and other rotten junk.”

“All right, but why now? We have the whole weekend if you want to help me clean some closets out. It’s wonderful if you want to help me. But not today . Let’s not get into it today .”

“It’s bad food, Mom. If you leave it long enough, it turns to poison. Anaerobic bacteria will kill you.”

“Well, get it cleaned up now, and let’s do the rest on the weekend. We don’t have time for that today. I want you to work on dinner so it’s all ready and you don’t have to think about it, and then I really want you to help Dad with his exercises, like you said you would!”

“I will do that.”

“Al,” Enid shouted, leaning past her, “Denise wants to help you with your exercises after lunch!”

He shook his head as if with disgust. “As you wish.”

Stacked up on one of the old family bedspreads that had long served as a dropcloth were wicker chairs and tables in early stages of scraping and painting. Lidded coffee cans were clustered on an open section of newspaper; a gun in a canvas case was by the workbench.

“What are you doing with the gun, Dad?” Denise said.

“Oh, he’s been meaning to sell that for years,” Enid said. “AL, ARE YOU EVER GOING TO SELL THAT GUN?”

Alfred seemed to run this sentence through his brain several times in order to extract its meaning. Very slowly, he nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “I will sell the gun.”

“I hate having it in the house,” Enid said as she turned to leave. “You know, he never used it. Not once. I don’t think it’s ever been fired.”

Alfred came smiling at Denise, making her retreat toward the door. “I will finish up in here,” he said.

Upstairs it was Christmas Eve. Packages were accumulating beneath the tree. In the front yard the nearly bare branches of the swamp white oak swung in a breeze that had shifted to more snow-threatening directions; the dead grass snagged dead leaves.

Enid was peering out through the sheer curtains again. “Should I be worried about Chip?”

“I would worry that he’s not coming,” Denise said, “but not that he’s in trouble.”

“The paper says rival factions are fighting for control of central Vilnius.”

“Chip can take care of himself.”

“Oh, here,” Enid said, leading Denise to the front door, “I want you to hang the last ornament on the Advent calendar.”

“Mother, why don’t you do that.”

“No, I want to see you do it.”

The last ornament was the Christ baby in a walnut shell. Pinning it to the tree was a task for a child, for someone credulous and hopeful, and Denise could now see very clearly that she’d made a program of steeling herself against the emotions of this house, against the saturation of childhood memory and significance. She could not be the child to perform this task.

“It’s your calendar,” she said. “You should do it.”

The disappointment on Enid’s face was disproportionately large. It was an ancient disappointment with the refusal of the world in general and her children in particular to participate in her preferred enchantments. “I guess I’ll ask Gary if he’ll do it,” she said with a scowl.

“I’m sorry,” Denise said.

“I remember you used to love pinning on the ornaments, when you were a little girl. You used to love it. But if you don’t want to do it, you don’t want to do it.”

“Mom.” Denise’s voice was unsteady. “Please don’t make me.”

“If I’d known it would seem like such a chore,” Enid said, “I never would have asked you.”

“Let me watch you do it!” Denise pleaded.

Enid shook her head and walked away. “I’ll ask Gary when he gets back from shopping.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She went outside and sat on the front steps smoking. The air had a disturbed southern snowy flavor. Down the street Kirby Root was winding pine rope around the post of his gas lamp. He waved and she waved back.

“When did you start smoking?” Enid asked her when she came inside.