Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

“Denise,” Alfred said.

“That’s not right,” Enid said, her voice trembling. “That’s not something I want to hear you saying.”

“OK, I’m sorry I said that. But I’m not free on Saturday. Not for Kenny Kraikmeyer. Who, if he wants to go out, might consider asking me .”

It occurred to Denise that Enid would probably enjoy a weekend with Kenny Kraikmeyer at Lake Fond du Lac, and that Kenny would probably have a better time there than Alfred would.

After dinner she biked over to the oldest house in the suburb, a high-ceilinged cube of antebellum brick across the street from the boarded-up commuter rail station. The house belonged to the high-school drama teacher, Henry Dusinberre, who’d left his campy Abyssinian banana and gaudy crotons and tongue-in-cheek potted palms in his favorite student’s care while he spent a month with his mother in New Orleans. Among the bordelloish antiques in Dusinberre’s parlor were twelve ornate champagne glasses, each with an ascending column of air bubbles captured in its faceted crystal stem, that he allowed only Denise, of all the young thespians and literary types who gravitated to his liquor on Saturday nights, to drink from. (“Let the little beasts use plastic cups,” he would say as he arranged his wasted limbs in his calfskin club chair. He had fought two rounds against a cancer now officially in remission, but his glossy skin and protuberant eyes suggested that all was not well oncologically. “Lambert, extraordinary creature,” he said, “sit here where I can see you in profile. Do you realize the Japanese would worship you for your neck? Worship you.”) It was in Dusinberre’s house that she’d tasted her first raw oyster, her first quail egg, her first grappa. Dusinberre steeled her in her resolve not to succumb to the charms of any (his phrase) “pimpled adolescents.” He bought dresses and jackets on approval in antique stores, and if they fit Denise he let her keep them. Fortunately, Enid, who wished that Denise would dress more like a Schumpert or a Root, held vintage clothing in such low esteem that she actually believed that a spotless embroidered yellow satin party dress with buttons of tiger-eye agate had cost Denise (as she claimed) ten dollars at the Salvation Army. Over Enid’s bitter objections she’d worn this dress to her senior prom with Peter Hicks, the substantially pimpled actor who’d played Tom to her Amanda in The Glass Menagerie . Peter Hicks, on prom night, had been invited to join her and Dusinberre in drinking from the rococo champagne glasses, but Peter was driving and stuck with his plastic cup of Coke.

After she watered the plants, she sat in Dusinberre’s calfskin chair and listened to New Order. She wished she felt like dating someone, but the boys she respected, like Peter Hicks, didn’t move her romantically, and the rest were in the mold of Kenny Kraikmeyer, who, though bound for the Naval Academy and a career in nuclear science, fancied himself a hipster and collected Cream and Jimi Hendrix “vinyl” (his word) with a passion that God had surely intended him to bring to building model submarines. Denise was a little worried by the degree of her revulsion. She didn’t understand what made her so very mean. She was unhappy to be so mean. There seemed to be something wrong with the way she thought about herself and other people.

Whenever her mother pointed this out, though, she had no choice but to nuke her.

The next day she was taking her lunch hour in the park, sunning herself in one of the tiny sleeveless tops that her mother was unaware she wore to work beneath her sweaters, when Don Armour appeared from nowhere and dropped onto the bench beside her.

“You’re not playing cards,” she said.

“I’m going crazy,” he said.

She returned her eyes to her book. She could feel him looking at her body pointedly. The air was hot but not so hot as to account for the heat on his side of her face.

He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “This is where you come and sit every day.”

“Yes.”

He wasn’t good-looking. His head seemed too large, his hair was thinning, and his face had the dusky nitrite red of a wiener or bologna, except where his beard made it blue. But she recognized an amusement, a brightness, an animal sadness in his expression; and the saddle curves of his lips were inviting.

He read the spine of her book. “Count Leo Tolstoy,” he said. He shook his head and laughed silently.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just trying to imagine what it’s like to be you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean beautiful. Smart. Disciplined. Rich. Going to college. What’s it like?”

She had a ridiculous impulse to answer him by touching him, to let him feel what it was like. There was no other way, really, to answer.

She shrugged and said she didn’t know.

“Your boyfriend must feel very lucky,” Don Armour said.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He flinched as if this were difficult news. “I find that puzzling and surprising.”

Denise shrugged again.

“I had a summer job when I was seventeen,” Don said. “I worked for an old Mennonite couple that had a big antique store. We used this stuff called Magic Mixture — paint thinner, wood alcohol, acetone, tung oil. It would clean up the furniture without stripping it. I’d breathe it all day and come home flying. Then around midnight I’d get this wicked headache.”

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Carbondale. Illinois. I had this idea that the Mennonites were underpaying me, in spite of the free highs. So I started borrowing their pickup at night. I had a girlfriend who needed rides. I crashed the pickup, which was how the Mennonites found out I’d been using it, and my then-stepdad said if I enlisted in the Marines he would deal with the Mennonites and their insurance company, otherwise I was on my own with the cops. So I joined the Marines in the middle of the sixties. It just seemed like the thing to do. I’ve got a real knack for timing.”

“You were in Vietnam.”

Don Armour nodded. “If this merger goes through, I’m back to where I was when I was discharged. Plus three kids and another set of skills that no one wants.”

“How old are your kids?”

“Ten, eight, and four.”

“Does your wife work?”

“She’s a school nurse. She’s at her parents’ in Indiana. They’ve got five acres and a pond. Nice for the girls.”

“Are you taking some vacation?”

“Two weeks next month.”

Denise had run out of questions. Don Armour sat bent over with his hands pressed flat between his knees. He sat like this for a long time. From the side, she could see his trademark smirk wearing through his impassivity; he seemed like a person who would always make you pay for taking him seriously or showing concern. Finally Denise stood up and said she was going inside, and he nodded as if this were a blow he’d been expecting.

It didn’t occur to her that Don Armour was smiling in embarrassment at the obviousness of his play for her sympathies, the staleness of his pickup lines. It didn’t occur to her that his performance at the pinochle table the day before had been staged for her benefit. It didn’t occur to her that he’d guessed she was eavesdropping in the bathroom and had let himself be overheard. It didn’t occur to her that Don Armour’s fundamental mode was self-pity and that he might, in his self-pity, have hit on many girls before her. It didn’t occur to her that he was already plotting — had been plotting since he first shook hands with her — how to get into her skirt. It didn’t occur to her that he averted his eyes not simply because her beauty caused him pain but because Rule #1 in every manual advertised at the back of men’s magazines (“How to Make Her WILD for You — Every Time!”) was Ignore Her. It didn’t occur to her that the differences of class and circumstance that were causing her discomfort might be, for Don Armour, a provocation: that she might be an object he desired for its luxury, or that a fundamentally self-pitying man whose job was in jeopardy might take a variety of satisfactions in bedding the daughter of his boss’s boss’s boss. None of this occurred to Denise then or after. She was still feeling responsible ten years later.