Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

“Have you been to the Kibbutz of New Jersey yet?” Abigail said. “Have you seen their milch cow ?”

“No, I’m going out there tomorrow,” Patty said.

“If you’re lucky, Galina won’t remember to take the collar and leash off Edgar before you get there, it’s such a verrrry handsome look. Very manly and religious. You can definitely bet she won’t bother washing the cow shit off the kitchen floor.”

Patty here explained her proposal, which was that Joyce sell the estate, give half the proceeds to Ray’s brothers, and divide the rest among Abigail, Veronica, Edgar, and herself (i.e., Joyce, not Patty, whose financial interest was nugatory). Abigail shook her head continuously while Patty explained it. “To begin with,” she said, “did Mommy not tell you about Galina’s accident? She hit a school crossing guard in a crosswalk. Thank God no children, just the old man in his orange vest. She was distracted by her spawn , in the back seat, and plowed straight into him. This was only about two years ago, and, of course, she and Edgar had let their car insurance lapse, because that’s the way she and Edgar are. Never mind New Jersey state law, never mind that even Daddy had car insurance. Edgar didn’t see the need for it, and Galina, despite living here for fifteen years, said everything was different in Rrrrussia, she had no idea . The school’s insurance paid the crosswalk guard, who basically can’t walk now, but the insurance company has a claim on all their assets, up to some ungodly sum. Any money they get now goes straight to the insurance company.”

Joyce, interestingly, had not mentioned this to Patty.

“Well, that’s probably as it should be,” she said. “If the guy is crippled, that’s where the money should go. Right?”

“It still means they run away to Israel, since they’re penniless. Which is fine with me—sayonara! But good luck selling that to Mommy. She’s fonder of the spawn than I am.”

“So why is this a problem for you?”

“Because,” Abigail said, “Edgar and Galina shouldn’t get a share at all, because they’ve had the use of the estate for six years and pretty well trashed it, and because the money’s just going to vanish anyway. Don’t you think it should go to people who can actually use it?”

“It sounds like the crossing guard could use it.”

“He’s been paid off. It’s just the insurance company now, and companies have insurance for these things themselves.”

Patty frowned.

“As for the uncles,” Abigail said, “I say tough tittie. They were sort of like you—they ran away. They didn’t have to have Granddaddy farting up every holiday like we did. Daddy went over there practically every week, his whole life, and ate Grandmommy’s nasty stale Pecan Sandies. I sure don’t remember seeing his brothers doing that.”

“You’re saying you think we deserve to be paid for that.”

“Why not? It’s better than not being paid. The uncles don’t need the money anyway. They’re doing verrrrry well without it. Whereas for me, and for Ronnie, it would make a real difference.”

“Oh, Abigail!” Patty burst out. “We’re never going to get along, are we.”

Perhaps catching a hint of pity in her voice, Abigail pulled a stupid-face, a mean face. “ I’m not the one that ran away,” she said. “I’m not the one who turned her nose up, and could never take a joke, and married Mr. Superhuman Good Guy Minnesotan Righteous Weirdo Naturelover, and didn’t even pretend not to hate us. You think you’re doing so well, you think you’re so superior, and now Mr. Superhuman Good Guy’s dumped you for some inexplicable reason that obviously has nothing to do with your sterling personal qualities, and you think you can come back and be Miss Lovable-Congenial Goodwill Ambassador Florence Nightingale. It’s all verrrry interesting.”

Patty made sure to take several deep breaths before replying to this. “Like I said,” she said, “I don’t think you and I are ever going to get along.”

“The whole reason I have to call Mommy every day,” Abigail said, “is that you’re out there trying to wreck everything. I’ll stop bothering her the minute you go away and mind your own business. Is that a deal?”

“In what way is it not my business?”

“You said yourself you don’t care about the money. If you want to take a share and give it to the uncles, fine. If that helps you feel more superior and righteous, fine. But don’t tell us what to do.”

“OK,” Patty said, “I think we’re almost done here. Just—so I’m sure I’m understanding this—you think that by taking things from Ray and Joyce you’ve been doing them a favor all your life? You think Ray was doing his parents a favor by taking things ? And that you deserve to be paid for all these great favors?”

Abigail made another peculiar face and appeared to consider this. “Yes, actually!” she said. “You actually put that pretty well. That is what I think. And the fact that it obviously seems strange to you is the reason you don’t have any business messing with this. You’re no more part of the family than Galina at this point. You just still seem to think you are. So why don’t you leave Mommy alone and let her make her own decisions. I don’t want you talking to Ronnie, either.”

“It’s not actually your business whether I talk to her.”

“It is so my business, and I’m telling you to leave her alone. You’ll just get her confused.”

“This is the person whose IQ is, like, one-eighty?”

“She’s not doing well since Daddy died, and there’s no reason to go tormenting her. I doubt you’ll listen to me, but I know what I’m talking about, having spent approximately a thousand times more time with Ronnie than you have. Try to be a little considerate.”

The once-manicured old Emerson estate, when Patty went out there the next morning, looked like some cross between Walker Evans and nineteenth-century Russia. A cow was standing in the middle of the tennis court, now netless, its plastic boundary lines torn and twisted. Edgar was plowing up the old horse pasture with a little tractor, slowing to a standstill every fifty feet or so when the tractor bogged down in the rain-soaked spring soil. He was wearing a muddy white shirt and mud-caked rubber boots; he’d put on a lot of fat and muscle and somehow reminded Patty of Pierre in War and Peace . He left the tractor tilting severely in the field and waded over through mud to the driveway where she’d parked. He explained that he was putting in potatoes, lots of potatoes, in a bid to make his family more perfectly self-sufficient in the coming year. Currently, it being spring, with last year’s harvest and venison supplies exhausted, the family was relying heavily on food gifts from the Congregation Beit Midrash: on the ground outside the barn door were cartons of canned goods, wholesale quantities of dry cereal, and shrink-wrapped flats of baby food. Some of the flats were opened and partly depleted, giving Patty the impression that the food had been standing in the elements for some time without being carried into the barn.

Although the house was a mess of toys and unwashed dishes and did indeed smell faintly of manure, the Renoir pastel and the Degas sketch and the Monet canvas were still hanging where they always had. Patty was immediately handed a nice, warm, adorable, not terribly clean one-year-old by Galina, who was very pregnant and surveyed the scene with dull sharecropper eyes. Patty had met Galina on the day of Ray’s memorial service but had barely spoken to her. She was one of those overwhelmed mothers engulfed in baby, her hair disordered, her cheeks hectic, her clothes disarranged, her flesh escaping haphazardly, but she clearly could still have been pretty if she’d had a few minutes to spare for it. “Thank you for coming to see us,” she said. “It’s an ordeal for us to travel now, arranging rides and so forth.”