Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

Forty million dollars annually was more like it. Forty million dollars annually restored Gary’s hopes and pissed him off all over again. Earl Eberle earned forty million dollars annually while Alfred Lambert, also an inventor but (let’s face it) a loser by temperament — one of the meek of the earth — was offered five thousand for his trouble. And planned to split this pea with Orfic Midland!

“I’m loving this book,” Jonah reported. “This may be my favorite book yet.”

So why, Gary wondered, why the rush-rush to get Dad’s patent, eh, Curly? Why the big push-push? Financial intuition, a warm tingling in his loins, told him that perhaps, after all, a piece of inside information had fallen into his lap. A piece of inside information from an accidental (and therefore perfectly lawful) source. A juicy piece of private meat.

“It’s like they’re on a luxury cruise,” Jonah said, “except they’re trying to sail to the end of the world. See, that’s where Asian lives, at the end of the world.”

In the SEC’s Edgar Database Gary found an unapproved prospectus, a so-called red-herring prospectus, for an initial public offering of Axon stock. The offering was scheduled for December 15, three-plus months away. The lead underwriter was Hevy & Hodapp, one of the elite investment banks. Gary checked certain vital signs — cash flow, size of issue, size of float — and, loins tingling, hit the Download Laterbutton.

“Jonah, nine o’clock,” he said. “Run up and take your bath.”

“I would love to go on a luxury cruise, Dad,” Jonah said, climbing the stairs, “if that could ever be arranged.”

In a different Searchfield, his hands a little parkinsonian, Gary entered the words beautiful, nude, and blond.

“Shut the door, please, Jonah.”

On the screen an image of a beautiful nude blonde appeared. Gary pointed and clicked, and a nude tan man, photographed mainly from the rear but also in close-up from his knees to his navel, could be seen giving his fully tumid attention to the beautiful nude blonde. There was something of the assembly line in these images. The beautiful nude blonde was like fresh raw material that the nude tan man was extremely keen to process with his tool. First the material’s colorful fabric casing was removed, then the material was placed on its knees and the semiskilled worker fitted his tool into its mouth, then the material was placed on its back while the worker orally calibrated it, then the worker clamped the material into a series of horizontal and vertical positions, crimping and bending the material as necessary, and very vigorously processed it with his tool …

The pictures were softening rather than hardening Gary. He wondered if he’d reached the age where money excited him more than a beautiful nude blonde engaging in sex acts, or whether anhedonia, the solitary father’s depression in a basement, might be encroaching even here.

Upstairs the doorbell rang. Adolescent feet came pounding down from the second floor to answer it.

Gary hastily cleansed the computer screen and went upstairs in time to see Caleb returning to the second floor with a large pizza box. Gary followed him and stood for a moment outside the entertainment room, smelling pepperoni and listening to the wordless munching of his sons and wife. On TV something military, a tank or a truck, was roaring to the accompaniment of war-movie music.

“Ve increase ze pressure, Lieutenant. Now you vill talk? Now?”

In Hands-Off Parenting: Skills for the Next Millennium , Dr. Harriet L. Schachtman warned: All too often, today’s anxious parents “protect” their children from the so-called “ravages” of TV and computer games, only to expose them to the far more damaging ravages of social ostracization by their peers .

To Gary, who as a boy had been allowed half an hour of TV a day and had not felt ostracized, Schachtman’s theory seemed a recipe for letting a community’s most permissive parents set standards that other parents were forced to lower their own to meet. But Caroline subscribed to the theory wholeheartedly, and since she was the sole trustee of Gary’s ambition not to be like his father, and since she believed that kids learned more from peer interaction than from parental instruction, Gary deferred to her judgment and let the boys watch nearly unlimited TV.

What he hadn’t foreseen was that he himself would be the ostracized.

He retreated to his study and dialed St. Jude again. The kitchen cordless was still on his desk, a reminder of earlier unpleasantnesses and of fights still to come.

He was hoping to speak to Enid, but Alfred answered the telephone and said that she was over at the Roots’ house, socializing. “We had a street-association meeting tonight,” he said.

Gary considered calling back later, but he refused to be cowed by his father. “Dad,” he said, “I’ve done some research on Axon. We’re looking at a company with a lot of money.”

“Gary, I said I didn’t want you monkeying with this,” Alfred replied. “It is moot now anyway.”

“What do you mean,’ moot’?”

“I mean moot. It’s taken care of. The documents are notarized. I’m recouping my lawyer’s fees and that’s the end of it.”

Gary pressed two fingers into his forehead. “My God. Dad. You had it notarized? On a Sunday?”

“I will tell your mother that you called.”

“Do not put those documents in the mail. Do you hear me?”

“Gary, I’ve had about enough of this.”

“Well, too bad, because I’m just getting started!”

“I’ve asked you not to speak of it. If you will not behave like a decent, civilized person, then I have no choice—”

“Your decency is bullshit. Your civilization is bullshit. It’s weakness! It’s fear! It’s bullshit!”

“I have no wish to discuss this.”

“Then forget it.”

“I intend to. We’ll not speak of it again. Your mother and I will visit for two days next month, and we will hope to see you here in December. It’s my wish that we can all be civil.”

“Never mind what’s going on underneath. As long as we’re all ‘civil.’”

“That is the essence of my philosophy, yes.”

“Well, it ain’t mine,” Gary said.

“I’m aware of that. And that’s why we will spend forty-eight hours and no more.”

Gary hung up angrier than ever. He’d hoped his parents would stay for an entire week in October. He’d wanted them to eat pie in Lancaster County, see a production at the Annenberg Center, drive in the Poconos, pick apples in West Chester, hear Aaron play the trumpet, watch Caleb play soccer, take delight in Jonah’s company, and generally see how good Gary’s life was, how worthy of their admiration and respect; and forty-eight hours was not enough time.

He left his study and kissed Jonah good night. Then he took a shower and lay down on the big oaken bed and tried to interest himself in the latest Inc . But he couldn’t stop arguing with Alfred in his head.

During his visit home in March he’d been appalled by how much his father had deteriorated in the few weeks since Christmas. Alfred seemed forever on the verge of derailing as he lurched down hallways or half slid down stairs or wolfed at a sandwich from which lettuce and meat loaf rained; checking his watch incessantly, his eyes wandering whenever a conversation didn’t engage him directly, the old iron horse was careering toward a crash, and Gary could hardly stand to look. Because who else, if not Gary, was going to take responsibility? Enid was hysterical and moralizing, Denise lived in a fantasyland, and Chip hadn’t been to St. Jude in three years. Who else but Gary was going to say: This train should not be running on these tracks ?