Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

A grueling haul across the Rust Belt pushed their total trip mileage past ten thousand, their petroleum consumption past thirty barrels. It happened that their arrival in the Twin Cities, in mid-August, coincided with the first autumn-smelling cold front of the summer. All across the great boreal forest of Canada and northern Maine and Minnesota, the still substantially intact boreal forest, warblers and flycatchers and ducks and sparrows had completed their work of parenting, shed their breeding plumage for better camouflaging colors, and were receiving, in the chill of the wind and the angle of the sun, their cue to fly south again. Often the parents departed first, leaving their young behind to practice flying and foraging and then to find their own way, more clumsily, and with higher mortality rates, to their wintering grounds. Fewer than half of those leaving in the fall would return in the spring.

The Sick Chelseas, a St. Paul band that Walter had once heard opening for the Traumatics and guessed would not survive another year, were still alive and had managed to pack the Free Space event with enough fans to vote them on to the main event in West Virginia. The only other familiar faces in the crowd were Seth and Merrie Paulsen, Walter’s old neighbors on Barrier Street, looking thirty years older than everybody else except Walter himself. Seth was very taken with Lalitha, could not stop staring at her, and overruled Merrie’s pleas of tiredness to insist on a late, post-battle supper at Taste of Thailand. It became a real noseynessfest, as Seth prodded Walter for inside dope on Joey and Connie’s now notorious marriage, on Patty’s whereabouts, on the precise history of Walter and Lalitha’s relationship, and on the circumstances behind Walter’s spanking in the New York Times (“God, you looked bad in that”), and Merrie yawned and arranged her face in resignation.

Returning to their motel, very late, Walter and Lalitha had something resembling an actual quarrel. Their plan had been to take a few days off in Minnesota, to visit Barrier Street and Nameless Lake and Hibbing and to see if they could track down Mitch, but Lalitha now wanted to turn around and go straight to West Virginia. “Half the people we have on the ground there are self-described anarchists,” she said. “They’re not called anarchists for nothing. We need to get there right away and deal with the logistics.”

“No,” Walter said. “The whole reason we scheduled St. Paul last was so we could take some days here and rest up. Don’t you want to see where I grew up?”

“Of course I do. We’ll do it later. We’ll do it next month.”

“But we’re already here . It won’t hurt to take two days and then go straight to Wyoming County. Then we won’t have to come all the way back. It doesn’t make any sense to drive two thousand extra miles.”

“Why are you being this way?” she said. “Why don’t you want to deal with the thing that’s important right now, and deal with the past later?”

“Because this was our plan.”

“It was a plan , not a contract.”

“Well, and I guess I’m a little worried about Mitch, too.”

“You hate Mitch!”

“It doesn’t mean I want my brother living on the street.”

“Yes, but one more month won’t hurt,” she said. “We can come straight back.”

He shook his head. “I also really need to check the house out. It’s been more than a year since anyone was there.”

“Walter, no. This is you and me, this is our thing, and it’s happening right now.”

“We could even leave the van here and fly out and rent a car. We’d only end up losing one day. We’d still have a whole week to work on logistics. Will you please do this for me?”

She took his face in her hands and gave him a border-collie look. “No,” she said. “You please do this for me .”

“You do it,” he said, pulling away. “You fly out. I’ll follow in a couple of days.”

“ Why are you being this way? Was it Seth and Merrie? Did they get you thinking too much about the past?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Well, put it out of your mind and come with me. We have to stay together.”

Like a cold spring at the bottom of a warmer lake, old Swedish-gened depression was seeping up inside him: a feeling of not deserving a partner like Lalitha; of not being made for a life of freedom and outlaw heroics; of needing a more dully and enduringly discontented situation to struggle against and fashion an existence within. And he could see that simply by having these feelings he was starting to create a new situation of discontent with Lalitha. And it was better, he thought, depressively, that she learn sooner rather than later what he was really like. Understand his kinship with his brother and his father and his grandfather. And so he shook his head again. “I’m going to stick to the plan,” he said. “I’m going to take the van for two days. If you don’t want to come with me, we’ll get you a plane ticket.”

Everything might have been different if she’d cried then. But she was stubborn and spirited and angry with him, and in the morning he drove her to the airport, apologizing until she made him stop. “It’s OK,” she said, “I’m over it. I’m not worrying about it this morning. We’re doing what we have to do. I’ll call you when I get there and I’ll see you soon.”

It was Sunday morning. Walter called Carol Monaghan and then drove on familiar avenues up to Ramsey Hill. Blake had cut down a few more trees and bushes in Carol’s yard, but nothing else on Barrier Street had changed much. Carol embraced Walter warmly, pushing her breasts into him in a way that didn’t feel quite familial, and then, for an hour, while the twins ran squealing around the child-proofed great-room and Blake stood up nervously and left and came back and left again, the two parents made the best of being in-laws.

“I was dying to call you as soon as I found out,” Carol said. “I literally had to sit on my hand to keep from dialing your number. I couldn’t understand why Joey didn’t want to tell you himself.”

“Well, you know, he’s had some difficulties with his mother,” Walter said. “With me, too.”

“And how is Patty? I hear you guys are not together anymore.”

“That’s true enough.”

“I’m not going to bite my tongue on this one, Walter. I’m going to speak my mind even though it’s always getting me in trouble. I think this separation was a long time coming. I hated to see the way she treated you. It always seemed like everything had to be about her . So there—I said it.”

“Well, Carol, you know, these things are complicated. And she’s Connie’s mother-in-law, too, now. So I hope the two of you can find some way to work things out.”

“Ha. I don’t care about me, we don’t need to see each other. I just hope she recognizes what a heart of gold my daughter has.”

“I certainly recognize that myself. I think Connie’s a wonderful girl, with a lot of potential.”

“Well, you always were the nice one of the two of you. You always had a heart of gold yourself. I was never sorry to be your neighbor, Walter.”

He chose to let the unfairness of this pass, chose not to remind Carol of the many years of generosity that Patty had shown her and Connie, but he did feel very sad for Patty’s sake. He knew how hard she’d tried to be her better self, and it grieved him to be aligned now with the many people who could see only the unfortunate side of her. The lump in his throat was evidence of how much, in spite of everything, he still loved her. Dropping to his knees for some polite interaction with the twins, he was reminded of how much more comfortable than he she’d always been with little kids, how forgetful of herself she’d been with Jessica and Joey when they were the twins’ age; how blissfully absorbed. It was much better, he decided, that Lalitha had gone on to West Virginia and left him alone to suffer in the past.