Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

“Yes, definitely. I’m thinking of majoring in econ.”

“That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. Now, I didn’t have to make my own money, although I don’t mind saying I’ve done a pretty good job of managing what I was given. I owe a lot to my great-grandfather in Cincinnati, who came over here with nothing. He was given an opportunity in this country, which gave him the freedom to make the most of his abilities. That’s why I’ve chosen to spend my life the way I have—to honor that freedom and try to ensure that the next American century be similarly blessed. Nothing wrong with making money, nothing at all. But there has to be something more in your life than that. You have to choose which side you’re on, and fight for it.”

“Absolutely,” Joey said.

“There may be some good-paying summer jobs at the Institute this summer, if you’re interested in doing something for your country. Our fund-raising’s been off the charts since the attacks. Very gratifying to see. You could think about applying if you’re so inclined.”

“Definitely!” Joey said. He was sounding to himself like one of Socrates’ young interlocutors, whose lines of dialogue, on page after page, consisted of variations on “Yes, unquestionably” and “Undoubtedly it must be so.” “That sounds great,” he said. “I’ll definitely apply.”

Putting too much draw on the cue ball, Jonathan scratched unexpectedly, thereby negating all the points he’d accumulated on his run. “Fuck!” he cried, and added, for good measure, “ Fuck! ” He banged his cue on the edge of the table; and there ensued an awkward moment.

“You have to be especially careful when you’ve run up a big score,” his father said.

“I know that, Dad. I know that . I was being careful. I just got a little distracted by you guys’ conversation.”

“Joey, your turn?”

What was it about witnessing a friend’s meltdown that made him uncontrollably want to smile? He had a wonderful sense of liberation, not having to interact with his own dad in these ways. He could feel more of his good luck returning with each passing moment. For Jonathan’s sake, he was glad that he immediately missed his own next shot.

But Jonathan turned pissy on him anyway. After his father, twice victorious, went back upstairs, he began calling Joey a faggot in not-so-funny ways and finally said he didn’t think that going to New York with Jenna was such a good idea.

“Why not?” Joey said, stricken.

“I don’t know. I just don’t feel like it.”

“It’s going to be awesome. We can try to get into Ground Zero and see what it looks like.”

“That whole area’s blocked off. You can’t see anything.”

“I also want to see where they film the Today show.”

“It’s stupid. It’s just a window.”

“Come on, it’s New York. We’ve got to do this thing.”

“Well, so go with Jenna then. That’s what you want anyway, isn’t it? Go to Manhattan with my sister, and then work for my dad next summer. And my mom’s a big horse rider. Maybe you want to ride horses with her, too.”

The one bad aspect of Joey’s good fortune were the moments when it seemed to come at someone else’s expense. Never having experienced envy himself, he was impatient with its manifestations in other people. In high school, more than once, he’d had to terminate friendships with kids who couldn’t handle his having so many other friends. His feeling was: fucking grow up already. His friendship with Jonathan, however, was nonterminable, at least for the remainder of the school year, and although Joey was annoyed by his sulking he did keenly understand the pain of being a son.

“So, fine,” he said. “We’ll stay here. You can show me D.C. You want to do that instead?”

Jonathan shrugged.

“Seriously. Let’s hang out in D.C.”

Jonathan brooded about this for a while. Then he said, “You had him on the run, man. All that bullshit about the noble lie? You had him on the run, and then suddenly you got this shit-eating grin. You’re such a fucking little faggot suck-up.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see you saying anything, either,” Joey said.

“I’ve already been through it.”

“Well then why should I go through it?”

“Because you haven’t been through it yet. You haven’t earned the right not to. You haven’t fucking earned anything.”

“Said the kid with the Land Cruiser.”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m going to go do some reading.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll go to New York with you. I don’t even care if you sleep with my sister. You probably deserve each other.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll find out.”

“Let’s just be friends, OK? I don’t have to go to New York.”

“No, we’ll go,” Jonathan said. “Pathetically enough, I really don’t want to drive that Cabriolet.”

Upstairs, in his turkey-smelling bedroom, Joey found a stack of books on the nightstand—Elie Wiesel, Chaim Potok, Exodus , The History of the Jews —and a note from Jonathan’s father: Some kindling for you . Feel free to keep or pass along . Howard . Flipping through them, feeling both a deep lack of personal interest and a deepening respect for people who were interested, Joey became angry with his mother all over again. Her disrespect of religion seemed to him just more of her me me me: her competitive Copernican wish to be the sun around which all things revolved. Before he went to sleep, he dialed 411 and got a number for Abigail Emerson in Manhattan.

The next morning, while Jonathan was still sleeping, he called Abigail and introduced himself as her sister’s son and said he was coming to New York. In response, his aunt cackled weirdly and asked him if he was good with plumbing.

“Beg pardon?”

“Things are going down but they’re not staying down,” Abigail said. “It’s kind of like me after too much brandy.” She proceeded to tell him about the low elevation and antiquated sewers of Greenwich Village, about her super’s holiday plans, about the pros and cons of ground-floor courtyard apartments, and about the “pleasure” of returning at midnight on Thanksgiving and finding her neighbors’ incompletely disintegrated flushings floating in her bathtub and washed up on the shores of her kitchen sink. “It’s all verrrrrrry, very lovely,” she said. “The perfect kickoff to a long weekend of no super.”

“Well, so, anyway, I thought maybe we could meet up or something,” Joey said. He was already having second thoughts about this, but his aunt now became responsive, as if her monologue had been a thing she’d just needed to flush from herself.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve seen pictures of you and your sister. Verrrrrry handsome pictures, in your verrrrrry beautiful house. I think I might even recognize you on the street.”

“Uh huh.”

“My apartment is unfortunately not so beautiful at the moment. A little fragrant also! But if you’d like to meet me at my favorite café, and be served by the gayest waiter in the Village, who is my personal best male bud, I’d be verrrrry happy to. I can tell you all the things your mother doesn’t want you to know about us.”

This sounded good to Joey, and they made a date.

For the trip to New York, Jenna brought along a high-school friend, Bethany, whose looks were ordinary only by comparison. The two of them sat in back, where Joey could neither see Jenna nor, between the endless stereo whining of Slim Shady and Jonathan’s chanting of his lyrics, make out what she and Bethany were talking about. The only interactions between back and front were Jenna’s criticisms of her brother’s driving. As if his hostility toward Joey the night before had been transmuted into road rage, Jonathan was tailgating at eighty and muttering abuse at less aggressive drivers; he seemed in general to be reveling in being an asshole. “Thank you for not killing us,” Jenna said when the SUV had come to rest in a staggeringly expensive midtown parking garage and the music had blessedly ceased.