Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

At times like this, he felt like a sick old fucker living in the woods, and he was careful to turn his phone off, lest Jessica call to check up on him. Joey he could still be himself with, because Joey was not only a man but a Berglund man, too cool and tactful to intrude, and although Connie was trickier, because there was always sex in Connie’s voice, sex and innocent flirtation, it was never too hard to get her chattering about herself and Joey, because she was so happy. The real ordeal was hearing from Jessica. Her voice sounded more than ever like Patty’s, and Walter was often perspiring by the end of their conversations, from the effort of keeping them focused on her life or, failing that, on his work. There had been a time, after the car accident that had effectively ended his life, when Jessica had descended on him and nursed him in his grief. She’d done this partly in expectation of his getting better, and when she’d realized he would not be getting better, didn’t feel like getting better, never wanted to get better, she’d become very angry with him. It had taken him several hard years to teach her, with coldness and sternness, to leave him alone and attend to her own life. Each time a silence fell between them now, he could feel her wondering whether to renew her therapeutic assault, and he found it deeply grueling to invent new conversational gambits, week after week, to prevent her from doing so.

When he finally got home from his Minneapolis errand, after a productive three-day visit to a big Conservancy parcel in Beltrami County, he found a sheet of paper stapled to the birch tree at the head of his driveway. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? it asked. MY NAME IS BOBBY AND MY FAMILY MISSES ME. Bobby’s black face didn’t reproduce well in photocopy—his pale, hovering eyes looked spectral and lost—but Walter was now able to see, as he hadn’t before, how somebody might find such a face worthy of protection and tenderness. He didn’t regret having removed a menace from the ecosystem, and thereby saved many bird lives, but the small-animal vulnerability in Bobby’s face made him aware of a fatal defect in his own makeup, the defect of pitying even the beings he most hated. He proceeded down his driveway, trying to enjoy the momentary peace that had fallen on his property, the absence of anxiety about Bobby, the spring evening light, the white-throated sparrows singing pure sweet Canada Canada Canada , but he had the sense of having aged many years in the four nights he’d been away.

That very evening, while frying some eggs and toasting some bread, he got a call from Jessica. And maybe she’d called him with a purpose, or maybe she heard something in his voice now, some loss of resolve, but as soon as they’d exhausted the meager news that her foregoing week had produced, he fell silent for so long that she was emboldened to renew her old assault.

“So I saw Mom the other night,” she said. “She told me something interesting that I thought you might want to hear. Do you want to hear it?”

“No,” he said sternly.

“Well, do you mind if I ask why not?”

From outdoors, in blue twilight, through the open kitchen window, came the cry of a distant child calling Bobby!

“Look,” Walter said. “I know you and she are close, and that’s fine with me. I’d be sorry if you weren’t. I want you to have two parents. But if I were interested in hearing from her, I could call her up myself. I don’t want you in the position of carrying messages.”

“I don’t mind being in that position.”

“I’m saying I mind. I’m not interested in getting any messages.”

“I don’t think this is a bad message she wants to send you.”

“I don’t care what kind of message it is.”

“Well then can I ask you why you don’t just get divorced? If you don’t want to have anything to do with her? Because as long as you’re not divorced, you’re sort of giving her hope.”

A second child’s voice had now joined the first, the two of them together calling Bobbbby! Bobbbbbby! Walter closed the window and said to Jessica, “I don’t want to hear about it.”

“OK, fine, Dad, but could you at least answer my question? Why you don’t get divorced?”

“It’s just not something I want to think about right now.”

“It’s been six years! Isn’t it time to start thinking about it? If only out of simple fairness?”

“If she wants a divorce, she can send me a letter. She can have a lawyer send me a letter.”

“But I’m saying, why don’t you want a divorce?”

“I don’t want to deal with the things it would stir up. I have a right not to do something I don’t want to do.”

“What would it stir up?”

“Pain. I’ve had enough pain. I’m still in pain.”

“I know you are, Dad. But Lalitha’s gone now. She’s been gone for six years.”

Walter shook his head violently, as if he’d had ammonia thrown in his face. “I don’t want to think about it. I just want to go out every morning and see birds who have nothing to do with any of it. Birds who have their own lives, and their own struggles. And to try to do something for them. They’re the only thing that’s still lovely to me. I mean, besides you and Joey. And that’s all I want to say about it, and I want you not to ask me any more.”

“Well, have you thought of seeing a therapist? Like, so you can start moving on with your life? You’re not that old, you know.”

“I don’t want to change,” he said. “I have a bad few minutes every morning, and then I go and tire myself out, and if I stay up late enough I can fall asleep. You only go to a therapist if you want to change something. I wouldn’t have anything to say to a therapist.”

“You used to love Mom, too, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I only remember what happened after she left.”

“Well, she’s fairly lovely herself, actually. She’s fairly different from the way she used to be. She’s become sort of the perfect mom, unbelievable as that may sound.”

“Like I said, I’m happy for you. I’m glad you have her in your life.”

“But you don’t want her in your life.”

“Look, Jessica, I know that’s what you want. I know you want a happy ending. But I can’t change my feelings just because it’s something you want.”

“And your feeling is you hate her.”

“She made her choice. And that’s all I have to say.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, but that is just grotesquely unfair. You were the one who made the choice. She didn’t want to go.”

“I’m sure that’s what she tells you. You see her every week, I’m sure she’s sold you on her version, which I’m sure is very forgiving of herself. But you weren’t living with her for the last five years before she left. It was a nightmare, and I fell in love with someone else. It was never my intention to fall in love with someone else. And I know you’re very unhappy that I did. But the only reason it happened was that your mother was impossible to live with.”

“Well then you should divorce her. Isn’t that the least you owe her after all those years of marriage? If you thought well enough of her to stay with her for all the good years, don’t you at least owe her the respect of honestly divorcing her?”

“They weren’t such good years, Jessica. She was lying to me the whole time—I don’t think I owe her so very much for that. And, like I said, if she wants a divorce, it’s available to her.”

“She doesn’t want a divorce! She wants to get back together with you!”

“I can’t even imagine seeing her for one minute. All I can imagine is unbearable pain at the sight of her.”

“Isn’t it possible, though, Dad, that the reason it would be so painful is that you still love her?”