Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

Denise took the instruction sheet into the master bedroom and found Alfred in the doorway of his closet, naked from the waist down.

“Whoa, Dad, sorry,” she said, retreating.

“What is it?”

“We need to work on your exercises.”

“I’m already undressed.”

“Just put some pajamas on. Loose clothing is better anyway.”

It took her five minutes to calm him down and stretch him out on his back on the bed in his wool shirt and his pajama bottoms; and here at last the truth came pouring out.

The first exercise required that Alfred take his right knee in his hands and draw it toward his chest, and then do the same with his left knee. Denise guided his wayward hands to his right knee, and although she was dismayed by how rigid he was getting, he was able, with her help, to stretch his hip past ninety degrees.

“Now do your left knee,” she said.

Alfred put his hands on his right knee again and pulled it toward his chest.

“That’s great,” she said. “But now try it with your left.”

He lay breathing hard and did nothing. He wore the expression of a man suddenly remembering disastrous circumstances.

“Dad? Try it with your left knee.”

She touched his left knee, to no avail. In his eyes she saw a desperate wish for clarification and instruction. She moved his hands to his left knee, and the hands immediately fell off. Possibly his rigidity was worse on the left side? She put his hands back on his knee and helped him raise it.

If anything, he was more flexible on the left.

“Now you try it,” she said.

He grinned at her, breathing like someone very scared. “Try what.”

“Put your hands on your left knee and lift it.”

“Denise, I’ve had enough of this.”

“You’ll feel a lot better if you can do a little stretching,” she said. “Just do what you just did. Put your hands on your left knee and raise it.”

The smile she gave him came reflected back as confusion. His eyes met hers in silence.

“Which is my left?” he said.

She touched his left knee. “This one.”

“And what do I do?”

“Put your hands on it and pull it toward your chest.”

His eyes wandered anxiously, reading bad messages on the ceiling.

“Dad, just concentrate.”

“There’s not much point.”

“OK.” She took a deep breath. “OK, let’s leave that one and try the second exercise. All right?”

He looked at her as if she, his only hope, were sprouting fangs and antlers.

“So in this one,” she said, trying to ignore his expression, “you cross your right leg over your left leg, and then let both legs fall to the right as far as they can go. I like this exercise,” she said. “It stretches your hip flexor. It feels really good.”

She explained it to him two more times and then asked him to raise his right leg.

He lifted both legs a few inches off the mattress.

“Just your right leg,” she said gently. “And keep your knees bent.”

“Denise!” His voice was high with strain. “There’s no point!”

“Here,” she said. “Here.” She pushed on his feet to bend his knees. She lifted his right leg, supporting it by the calf and thigh, and crossed it over his left knee. At first there was no resistance, and then, all at once, he seemed to cramp up violently.

“ Denise .”

“Dad, just relax.”

She already knew that he was never coming to Philadelphia. But now a tropical humidity was rising off him, a tangy almost-smell of letting go. The pajama fabric on his thigh was hot and wet in her hand, and his entire body was trembling.

“Oh, shoot,” she said, releasing his leg.

Snow was swirling in the windows, lights appearing in the neighbors’ houses. Denise wiped her hand on her jeans and lowered her eyes to her lap and listened, her heart beating hard, to the labored breathing of her father and the rhythmic rustling of his limbs on the bedspread. There was an arc of soak on the bedspread near his crotch and a longer capillary-action reach of wetness down one leg of his pajamas. The initial almost-smell of fresh piss had resolved, as it cooled in the underheated room, into an aroma quite definite and pleasant.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said. “Let me get you a towel.”

Alfred smiled up at the ceiling and spoke in a less agitated voice. “I lie here and I can see it,” he said. “Do you see it?”

“See what?”

He pointed vaguely skyward with one finger. “Bottom on the bottom. Bottom on the bottom of the bench,” he said. “Written there. Do you see it?”

Now she was confused and he wasn’t. He cocked an eyebrow and gave her a canny look. “You know who wrote that, don’t you? The fuh. The fuh. Fellow with the you know.”

Holding her gaze, he nodded significantly.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Denise said.

“Your friend,” he said. “Fellow with the blue cheeks.”

The first one percent of comprehension was born at the back of her neck and began to grow to the north and to the south.

“Let me get a towel,” she said, going nowhere.

Her father’s eyes rolled up toward the ceiling again. “He wrote that on the bottom of the bench. Bommunnuthuh. Bottomofthebench. And I lie there and I can see it.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“Your friend in Signals. Fellow with the blue cheeks.”

“You’re confused, Dad. You’re having a dream. I’m going to get a towel.”

“See, there was never any point in saying anything.”

“I’m getting a towel,” she said.

She crossed the bedroom to the bathroom. Her head was still in the nap that she’d been taking, and the problem was getting worse. She was falling further out of sync with the waveforms of reality that constituted towel-softness, sky-darkness, floor-hardness, air-clearness. Why this talk of Don Armour? Why now?

Her father had swung his legs out of bed and peeled off his pajama bottoms. He extended his hand for the towel when she returned. “I’ll clean this mess up,” he said. “You go help your mother.”

“No, I’ll do it,” she said. “You take a bath.”

“Just give me the rag. It’s not your job.”

“Dad, take a bath.”

“It was not my intention to involve you in this.”

His hand, still extended, flopped in the air. Denise averted her eyes from his offending, wetting penis. “Stand up,” she said. “I’m going to take the bedspread off.”

Alfred covered his penis with the towel. “Leave that to your mother,” he said. “I told her Philadelphia’s a lot of nonsense. I never intended to involve you in any of this. You have your own life. Just have fun and be careful.”

He remained seated on the edge of the bed, his head bowed, his hands like large empty fleshy spoons on his lap.

“Do you want me to start the bathwater?” Denise said.

“I nuh-nunnunnunn-unh,” he said. “Told the fellow he was talking a lot of nonsense, but what can you do?” Alfred made a gesture of self-evidence or inevitability. “Thought he was going to Little Rock. You guh. I said! Gotta have seniority. Well, that’s a lot of nonsense. I told him to get the hell out.” He gave Denise an apologetic look and shrugged. “What else could I do?”

Denise had felt invisible before, but never like this. “I’m not sure what you’re saying,” she said.

“Well.” Alfred made a vague gesture of explanation. “He told me to look under the bench. Simple as that. Look under the bench if I didn’t believe him.”

“What bench?”

“It was a lot of nonsense,” he said. “Simpler for everybody if I just quit. You see, he never thought of that.”

“Are we talking about the railroad?”