Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

Finch was surprised. “He did that work as an amateur?”

Gary didn’t know which version of Alfred made him angrier: the spiteful old tyrant who’d made a brilliant discovery in the basement and cheated himself out of a fortune, or the clueless basement amateur who’d unwittingly replicated the work of real chemists, spent scarce family money to file and maintain a vaguely worded patent, and was now being tossed a scrap from the table of Earl Eberle. Both versions incensed him.

Perhaps it was best, after all, that the old man had ignored Gary’s advice and taken the money.

“My dad has Parkinson’s,” Denise said.

“Oh, I’m very sorry.”

“Well, and we were wondering if you might include him in the testing of your — product.”

“Conceivably,” Finch said. “We’d have to ask Curly. I do like the human-interest aspect. Does your dad live around here?”

“He’s in St. Jude.”

Finch frowned. “It won’t work if you can’t get him to Schwenksville twice a week for at least six months.”

“Not a problem,” Denise said, turning to Gary. “Right?”

Gary was hating everything about this conversation. Health health, female female, nice nice, easy easy. He didn’t answer.

“How is he mentally?” Finch said.

Denise opened her mouth, but at first no words came out.

“He’s fine,” she said, rallying. “Just — fine.”

“No dementia?”

Denise pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. He gets a little confused sometimes, but — no.”

“The confusion could be from his meds,” Finch said, “in which case it’s fixable. But Lewy-body dementia is beyond the purview of Phase Two testing. So is Alzheimer’s.”

“He’s pretty sharp,” Denise said.

“Well, if he’s able to follow basic instructions, and he’s willing to travel east in January, Curly might try to include him. It would make a good story.”

Finch produced a business card, warmly shook Denise’s hand, less warmly shook Gary’s, and moved into the mob surrounding Daffy Anderson.

Gary followed her and caught her by the elbow. She turned around, startled.

“Listen, Merilee,” he said in a low voice, as if to say, Let’s be realistic now, we adults can dispense with the nicey-nice crap . “I’m glad you think my dad’s a ‘good story.’ And it’s very generous of you to give him five thousand dollars. But I believe you need us more than we need you.”

Finch waved to somebody and held up one finger; she would be there in one second. “Actually,” she said to Gary, “we don’t need you at all. So I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

“My family wants to buy five thousand shares of your offering.”

Finch laughed like an executive with an eighty-hour work week. “So does everybody in this room,” she said. “That’s why we have investment bankers. If you’ll excuse me—”

She broke free and got away. Gary, in the crush of bodies, was having trouble breathing. He was furious with himself for having begged , furious for having let Denise attend this road show, furious for being a Lambert. He strode toward the nearest exit without waiting for Denise, who hurried after him.

Between the Four Seasons and the neighboring office tower was a corporate courtyard so lavishly planted and flawlessly maintained that it might have been pixels in a cybershopping paradise. The two Lamberts were crossing the courtyard when Gary’s anger found a fault through which to vent itself. He said, “I don’t know where the hell you think Dad’s going to stay if he comes out here.”

“Partly with you, partly with me,” Denise said.

“You’re never home,” he said. “And Dad’s on record as not wanting to be at my house for more than forty-eight hours.”

“This wouldn’t be like last Christmas,” Denise said. “Trust me. The impression I got on Saturday—”

“Plus how’s he going to get out to Schwenksville twice a week?”

“Gary, what are you saying? Do you not want this to happen?”

Two office workers, seeing angry parties bearing down, stood up and vacated a marble bench. Denise perched on the bench and folded her arms intransigently. Gary paced in a tight circle, his hands on his hips.

“For the last ten years,” he said, “Dad has done nothing to take care of himself. He’s sat in that fucking blue chair and wallowed in self-pity. I don’t know why you think he’s suddenly going to start—”

“Well, but if he thought there might actually be a cure—”

“What, so he can be depressed for an extra five years and die miserable at eighty-five instead of eighty? That’s going to make all the difference?”

“Maybe he’s depressed because he’s sick.”

“I’m sorry, but that is bullshit, Denise. That is a crock. The man has been depressed since before he even retired. He was depressed when he was still in perfect health.”

A low fountain was murmuring nearby, generating medium-strength privacy. A small unaffiliated cloud had wandered into the quadrant of private-sphere sky defined by the encompassing rooflines. The light was coastal and diffuse.

“What would you do,” Denise said, “if you had Mom nagging you seven days a week, telling you to get out of the house, watching every move you make, and acting like the kind of chair you sit in is a moral issue? The more she tells him to get up, the more he sits there. The more he sits there, the more she—”

“Denise, you’re living in fantasyland.”

She looked at Gary with hatred. “Don’t patronize me. It’s just as much a fantasy to act like Dad’s some worn-out old machine. He’s a person, Gary. He has an interior life. And he’s nice to me, at least—”

“Well, he ain’t so nice to me,” Gary said. “And he’s an abusive selfish bully to Mom. And I say if he wants to sit in that chair and sleep his life away, that’s just fine. I love that idea. I’m one-thousand-percent a fan of that idea. But first let’s yank that chair out of a three-floor house that’s falling apart and losing value. Let’s get Mom some kind of quality of life. Just do that, and he can sit in his chair and feel sorry for himself until the cows come home.”

“She loves that house. That house is her quality of life.”

“Well, she’s in a fantasyland, too! A lot of good it does her to love the house when she’s got to keep an eye on the old man twenty-four hours a day.”

Denise crossed her eyes and blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. “You’re the one in a fantasy,” she said. “You seem to think they’re going to be happy living in a two-room apartment in a city where the only people they know are you and me. And do you know who that’s convenient for? For you .”

He threw his hands in the air. “So it’s convenient for me! I’m sick of worrying about that house in St. Jude. I’m sick of making trips out there. I’m sick of hearing how miserable Mom is. A situation that’s convenient for you and me is better than a situation that’s convenient for nobody . Mom’s living with a guy who’s a physical wreck. He’s had it , he’s through , finito, end of story, take a charge against earnings. And still she’s got this idea that if he would only try harder, everything would be fine and life would be just like it used to be. Well, I got news for everybody: it ain’t ever gonna be the way it used to be .”

“You don’t even want him to get better.”

“Denise.” Gary clutched his eyes. “They had five years before he even got sick. And what did he do? He watched the local news and waited for Mom to cook his meals. This is the real world we’re living in. And I want them out of that house—”