Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

Except for the shirt, which he’d worn, and the check, which he’d cashed, and the bottle of port, which he’d killed in bed on Christmas night, the gifts from his family were still on the floor of his bedroom. Stuffing from Denise’s mailer had drifted into the kitchen and mixed with splashed dishwater to form a mud that he’d tracked all over. Flocks of sheep-white Styrofoam pebbles had collected in sheltered places.

It was nearly ten-thirty in the Midwest.

Hello, Dad. Happy seventy-fifth. Things are going well here. How are things in St. Jude?

Chip felt he couldn’t make the call without some kind of pick-me-up or treat. Some kind of energizer. But TV caused him such critical and political anguish that he could no longer watch even cartoons without smoking cigarettes, and he now had a lung-sized region of pain in his chest, and there was no intoxicant of any sort in his house, not even cooking sherry, not even cough syrup, and after the labor of taking his pleasure with the chaise his endorphins had gone home to the four corners of his brain like war-weary troops, so spent by the demands he’d made of them in the last five weeks that nothing, except possibly Melissa in the flesh, could marshal them again. He needed a little morale-booster, a little pick-me-up, but he had nothing better than the month-old Times , and he felt that he’d circled quite enough uppercase M ’s for one day, he could circle no more.

He went to his dining table and confirmed the absence of dregs in the wine bottles on it. He’d used the last $220 of credit on his Visa card to buy eight bottles of a rather tasty Fronsac, and on Saturday night he’d thrown one last dinner party to rally his supporters on the faculty. A few years ago, after D—’s drama department had fired a popular young professor, Cali Lopez, for having claimed to have a degree she didn’t have, outraged students and junior faculty had organized boycotts and candlelight vigils that had forced the college not only to rehire Lopez but to promote her to full professor. Granted, Chip was neither a lesbian nor a Filipina, as Lopez was, but he’d taught Theory of Feminism, and he had a hundred-percent voting record with the Queer Bloc, and he routinely packed his syllabi with non-Western writers, and all he’d really done in Room 23 of the Comfort Valley Lodge was put into practice certain theories (the myth of authorship; the resistant consumerism of transgressive sexual (trans)act(ion)s) that the college had hired him to teach. Unfortunately, the theories sounded somewhat lame when he wasn’t lecturing to impressionable adolescents. Of the eight colleagues who’d accepted his invitation for dinner on Saturday, only four had shown up. And despite his efforts to steer the conversation around to his predicament, the only collective action his friends had taken on his behalf had been to serenade him, as they killed the eighth bottle of wine, with an a capella rendition of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.”

He hadn’t had the strength to clear the table in the intervening days. He considered the blackened red leaf lettuce, the skin of congealed grease on an uneaten lamb chop, the mess of corks and ashes. The shame and disorder in his house were like the shame and disorder in his head. Cali Lopez was now the college’s acting provost, Jim Leviton’s replacement.

Tell me about your relationship with your student Melissa Paquette .

My former student?

Your former student .

I’m friendly with her. We’ve had dinner. I spent some time with her at the beginning of Thanksgiving break. She’s a brilliant student .

Did you give Melissa any help with a paper she wrote last week for Vendla O’Fallon?

We talked about the paper in a general way. She had some areas of confusion that I was able to help her clear up .

Is your relationship with her sexual?

No .

Chip, what I think we’ll do is suspend you with pay until we can have a full hearing. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll have a hearing early next week, and in the meantime you should probably get a lawyer and talk to your union rep. I also have to insist that you not speak to Melissa Paquette .

What does she say? That I wrote that paper?

Melissa violated the honor code by handing in work that was not her own. She’s facing a one-semester suspension, but we understand that there are mitigating factors. For example, your grossly inappropriate sexual relationship with her .

That’s what she says?

My personal advice, Chip, is resign now .

That’s what she says?

You have no chance .

The snowmelt was raining down harder on his patio. He lit a cigarette on the front burner of his stove, took two painful drags, and pressed the coal into the palm of his hand. He groaned through clenched teeth and opened his freezer and put his palm to its floor and stood for a minute smelling flesh smoke. Then, holding an ice cube, he went to the phone and dialed the ancient area code, the ancient number.

While the phone rang in St. Jude, he planted a foot on the section of Times in his trash and mashed it down deeper, got it out of sight.

“Oh, Chip,” Enid cried, “he’s already gone to bed!”

“Don’t wake him,” Chip said. “Just tell him—”

But Enid set the phone down and shouted Al! Al! at volumes that diminished as she moved farther from the phone and up the stairs toward the bedrooms. Chip heard her shout, It’s Chip! He heard their upstairs extension click into action. He heard Enid instructing Alfred, “Don’t just say hello and hang up. Visit with him a little.”

There was a rustling transfer of the receiver.

“Yes,” Alfred said.

“Hey, Dad, happy birthday,” Chip said.

“Yes,” Alfred said again in exactly the same flat voice.

“I’m sorry to call so late.”

“I was not asleep,” Alfred said.

“I was afraid I woke you up.”

“Yes.”

“Well, so happy seventy-fifth.”

“Yes.”

Chip hoped that Enid was motoring back down to the kitchen as fast as she could, ailing hip and all, to bail him out. “I guess you’re tired and it’s late,” he said. “We don’t have to talk.”

“Thank you for the call,” Alfred said.

Enid was back on the line. “I’m going to finish these dishes,” she said. “We had a party here tonight! Al, tell Chip about the party we had! I’m getting off the phone now.”

She hung up. Chip said, “You had a party.”

“Yes. The Roots were here for dinner and bridge.”

“Did you have a cake?”

“Your mother made a cake.”

The cigarette had made a hole in Chip’s body through which, he felt, painful harms could enter and vital factors painfully escape. Melting ice was leaking through his fingers. “How was the bridge?”

“My typical terrible cards.”

“That doesn’t seem fair on your birthday.”

“I imagine,” Alfred said, “that you are gearing up for another semester.”

“Right. Right. Although actually not. Actually I’m deciding not to teach at all this semester.”

“I didn’t hear.”

Chip raised his voice. “I said I’ve decided not to teach this semester. I’m going to take the semester off and work on my writing.”

“My recollection is that you are due for tenure soon.”

“Right. In April.”

“It seems to me that a person hoping to be offered tenure would be advised to stay and teach.”

“Right.”

“If they see you working hard, they will have no reason not to offer you tenure.”

“Right. Right.” Chip nodded. “At the same time, I have to prepare for the possibility that I won’t get it. And I’ve got a, uh. A very attractive offer from a Hollywood producer. A college friend of Denise’s who produces movies. Potentially very lucrative.”