Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

I made it as clear to you as I could , she told her idiot brother in her head as she crossed the snowy field. I can’t make it any clearer .

The house to which she returned was full of light. Gary or Enid had swept the snow from the front walk. Denise was scuffing her feet on the hemp mat when the door flew open.

“Oh, it’s you,” Enid said. “I thought it might be Chip.”

“No. Just me.”

She went in and pried her boots off. Gary had built a fire and was sitting in the armchair closest to it, a stack of old photo albums at his feet.

“Take my advice,” he told Enid, “and forget about Chip.”

“He must be in some sort of trouble,” Enid said. “Otherwise he would have called.”

“Mother, he’s a sociopath. Get it through your head.”

“You don’t know a thing about Chip,” Denise said to Gary.

“I know when somebody refuses to pull his weight.”

“I just want us all to be together!” Enid said.

Gary let out a groan of tender sentiment. “Oh, Denise,” he said. “Oh, oh. Come and see this baby girl.”

“Maybe another time.”

But Gary crossed the living room with the photo album and foisted it on her, pointing at the photo image on a family Christmas card. The chubby, mop-headed, vaguely Semitic little girl in the picture was Denise at about eighteen months. There was not a particle of trouble in her smile or in the smiles of Chip and Gary. She sat between them on the living-room sofa in its pre-reupholstered instantiation; each had an arm around her; their clear-skinned boy faces nearly touched above her own.

“Is that a cute little girl?” Gary said.

“Oh, how darling,” Enid said, crowding in.

From the center pages of the album fell an envelope with a Registered Mail sticker. Enid snatched it up and took it to the fireplace and fed it directly to the flames.

“What was that?” Gary said.

“Just that Axon business, which is taken care of now.”

“Did Dad ever send half the money to Orfic Midland?”

“He asked me to do it but I haven’t yet. I’m so swamped with insurance forms.”

Gary laughed as he went upstairs. “Don’t let that twenty-five hundred burn any holes in your pocket.”

Denise blew her nose and went to peel potatoes in the kitchen.

“Just in case,” Enid said, joining her, “be sure there’s enough for Chip. He said this afternoon at the latest.”

“I think it’s officially evening now,” Denise said.

“Well, I want a lot of potatoes.”

All of her mother’s kitchen knives were butter-knife dull. Denise resorted to a carrot scraper. “Did Dad ever tell you why he didn’t go to Little Rock with Orfic Midland?”

“No,” Enid said emphatically. “Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“He told them yes, he was going. And, Denise, it would have made all the difference for us financially. It would have nearly doubled his pension, just those two years. We would have been in so much better shape now. He told me he was going to do it, he agreed it was the right thing, and then he came home three nights later and said he’d changed his mind and quit.”

Denise looked into the eyes semireflected in the window above the sink. “And he never told you why.”

“Well, he couldn’t stand those Wroths. I assumed it was a personality clash. But he never talked about it with me. You know — he never tells me anything. He just decides. Even if it’s a financial disaster, it’s his decision and it’s final.”

Here came the waterworks. Denise let potato and scraper fall into the sink. She thought of the drugs she’d hidden in the Advent calendar, she thought they might stop her tears long enough to let her get out of town, but she was too far from where they were stashed. She’d been caught defenseless in the kitchen.

“Sweetie, what is it?” Enid said.

For a while there was no Denise in the kitchen, just mush and wetness and remorse. She found herself kneeling on the rag rug by the sink. Little balls of soaked Kleenex surrounded her. She was reluctant to raise her eyes to her mother, who was sitting beside her on a chair and feeding her dry tissues.

“So many things you think are going to matter,” Enid said with a new sobriety, “turn out not to matter.”

“Some things still matter,” Denise said.

Enid gazed bleakly at the unpeeled potatoes by the sink. “He’s not going to get better, is he.”

Denise was happy to let her mother think that she’d been crying about Alfred’s health. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“It’s probably not the medication, is it.”

“It probably isn’t.”

“And there’s probably no point in going to Philadelphia,” Enid said, “if he can’t follow instructions.”

“You’re right. There probably isn’t.”

“Denise, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I knew something was wrong this morning,” Enid said. “If you’d found that envelope three months ago, he would have exploded at me. But you saw today. He didn’t do a thing.”

“I’m sorry I put you on the spot there.”

“It didn’t even matter. He didn’t even know.”

“I’m sorry anyway.”

The lid on a pot of white beans boiling on the stove began to rattle. Enid stood up to reduce the heat. Denise, still kneeling, said, “I think there’s something in the Advent calendar for you.”

“No, Gary pinned the last ornament.”

“In the ‘twenty-four’ pocket. There might be something for you.”

“Well, what?”

“I don’t know. You might go check, though.”

She heard her mother make her way to the front door and then return. Although the pattern of the rag rug was complex, she thought she would soon have it memorized from staring.

“Where did these come from?” Enid said.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you put them there?”

“It’s a mystery.”

“You must have put them there.”

“No.”

Enid set the pills on the counter, took two steps away from them, and frowned at them severely. “I’m sure whoever put these there meant well,” she said. “But I don’t want them in my house.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

“I want the real thing or I don’t want anything.”

With her right hand Enid herded the pills into her left hand. She dumped them into the garbage grinder, turned on water, and ground them up.

“What’s the real thing?” Denise said when the noise subsided.

“I want us all together for one last Christmas.”

Gary, showered and shaved and dressed in his aristocratic style, entered the kitchen in time to catch this declaration.

“You’d better be willing to settle for four out of five,” he said, opening the liquor cabinet. “What’s wrong with Denise?”

“She’s upset about Dad.”

“Well, it’s about time,” Gary said. “There’s plenty to be upset about.”

Denise gathered up the Kleenex balls. “Pour me a lot of whatever you’re having,” she said.

“I thought we could have Bea’s champagne tonight!” Enid said.

“No,” Denise said.

“No,” Gary said.

“We’ll save it and see if Chip comes,” Enid said. “Now, what’s taking Dad so long upstairs?”

“He’s not upstairs,” Gary said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Al?” Enid shouted. “ AL? ”

Gases snapped in the neglected fire in the living room. White beans simmered on moderate heat; the registers breathed warm air. Out in the street somebody’s tires were spinning on snow.

“Denise,” Enid said. “Go see if he’s in the basement.”

Denise didn’t ask “Why me?” although she wanted to. She went to the top of the basement stairs and called her father. The basement lights were on, and she could hear a cryptic faint rustling from the workshop.