Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

The trip soon proved to have all the makings of a bust. Jenna’s boyfriend, Nick, shared a rambling, decaying apartment on 54th Street with two other Wall Street trainees who were also gone for the weekend. Joey wanted to see the city, and he wanted even more not to seem to Jenna like some little Eminem-listening juvie, but the living room was equipped with a huge plasma TV and late-model Xbox that Jonathan insisted he immediately join him in enjoying. “See you later, kids,” Jenna said as she and Bethany went out to meet up with other friends. Three hours later, when Joey suggested taking a walk before it got too late, Jonathan told him not to be such a faggot.

“What is wrong with you?” Joey said.

“No, I’m sorry, what is wrong with you ? You should have tagged along with Jenna if you wanted to do girl stuff.”

Doing girl stuff in fact sounded rather appealing to Joey. He liked girls, he missed their company and the way they talked about things; he missed Connie. “You were the one who said you wanted to go shopping.”

“What’s the matter, are my pants not tight enough in the butt for you?”

“It also might be nice to get some dinner?”

“Right, somewhere romantic, just the two of us.”

“New York pizza? Isn’t it supposed to be the world’s best pizza?”

“No, that’s New Haven.”

“OK, a deli then. New York deli. I’m starving.”

“So go look in the fridge.”

“You go look in the fucking fridge. I’m getting out of here.”

“Yeah, fine. Do that.”

“Will you be here when I get back? So I can get in?”

“Yes, honey.”

With a lump in his throat, a girly nearness to tears, Joey went out into the night. Jonathan’s loss of cool was extremely disappointing to him. He was suddenly sensible of his own superior maturity, and as he drifted through the late shopping crowds on Fifth Avenue he considered how he might convey this maturity to Jenna. He bought two Polish sausages from a street vendor and pushed into even thicker crowds at Rockefeller Center and watched the ice skaters and admired the enormous unlit Christmas tree, the stirring floodlit heights of the NBC tower. So he liked doing girl stuff, so what? It didn’t make him a wuss. It just made him very lonely. Watching the skaters, feeling homesick for St. Paul, he called up Connie. She was on her shift at Frost’s and could stay on the phone only long enough for him to tell her that he missed her, to describe where he was standing, and to say he wished he could show it to her.

“I love you, baby,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

The next morning, he got his chance with Jenna. She was apparently an early riser and had already been out to buy breakfast when Joey, rising early himself, wandered into the kitchen in a UVA T-shirt and paisley boxers. Finding her reading a book at the kitchen table, he felt pretty much stark-naked.

“I bought some bagels for you and my undeserving brother,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, considering whether to go and put some pants on or just keep strutting his stuff. Since she showed no further interest in him, he decided to risk not dressing. But then, as he waited on a toasting bagel and stole glances at her hair and her shoulders and her bare, crossed legs, he began to get a boner. He was about to make his escape to the living room when she looked up and said, “I’m sorry, this book? This book is ungodly boring.”

He took cover behind a chair. “What’s it about?”

“I thought it was about slavery. Now I’m not even sure what it’s about.” She showed him two facing pages of dense prose. “The really funny thing? This is the second time I’m reading it. It’s on like half the syllabuses at Duke. Syllabi. And I still can’t figure out what the actual story is. You know, what actually happens to the characters.”

“I read Song of Solomon for school last year,” Joey said. “I thought it was pretty amazing. It’s like the best novel I ever read.”

She made a complicated face of indifference toward him and annoyance with her book. He sat down across the table from her, took a bite of bagel and chewed it for a while, chewed it some more, and finally realized that swallowing was going to be an issue. There was no hurry, however, since Jenna was still trying to read.

“What do you think’s up with your brother?” he said when he’d managed to get a few bites down.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s being kind of a jerk. Kind of immature. Don’t you think?”

“Don’t ask me. He’s your friend.”

She continued to stare at her book. Her disdainful imperviousness was identical to that of the top-tier girls at Virginia. The only difference was that she was even more attractive to him than those girls, and that he was close enough to her now to smell her shampoo. Underneath the table, in his boxers, his half-mast boner was pointing at her like a Jaguar’s hood ornament.

“So what are you doing today?” he said.

She closed her book as if resigning herself to his continued presence. “Shopping,” she said. “And there’s a party in Brooklyn tonight. What about you?”

“Apparently nothing, since your brother doesn’t want to leave the apartment. I have an aunt who I’m supposed to see at four, but that’s it.”

“I think it’s harder for guys,” Jenna said. “Being at home. My dad is amazing , and I’m fine with that, I’m fine with him being famous. But I think Jonathan always feels like he has to prove something.”

“By watching TV for ten hours?”

She frowned and looked directly at Joey, possibly for the first time. “Do you even like my brother?”

“No definitely. He’s just been weird since Thursday night. Like, the way he was driving yesterday? I thought you might have some insight.”

“I think for him the biggest thing is wanting to be liked for his own sake. You know, and not because of who our dad is.”

“Right,” Joey said. And was inspired to add: “Or who his sister is.”

She blushed! A small amount. And shook her head. “I’m not anybody.”

“Ha ha ha,” he said, blushing as well.

“Well, I’m certainly not like my dad. I don’t have any big ideas, or any great ambition. I’m actually quite the selfish little person, when you get right down to it. A hundred acres in Connecticut, some horses and a full-time groom, and maybe a private jet, and I’ll be all set.”

Joey noted that it had taken no more than one allusion to her beauty to get her to open up and start talking about herself. And once the door had opened even just a millimeter, once he’d slipped through the crack in it, he knew what to do. How to listen and how to understand. It wasn’t fake listening or fake understanding, either. It was Joey in Womanland. Before long, in the dirty winter light of the kitchen, as he took instruction from Jenna on how to dress a bagel properly, with lox and onions and capers, he was feeling not greatly more uncomfortable than he would have felt talking with Connie, or his mom, or his grandmother, or Connie’s mom. Jenna’s beauty was no less dazzling than ever, but his boner entirely subsided. He offered her some nuggets about his family situation, and in return she admitted that her own family wasn’t too happy about her boyfriend.

“It’s pretty crazy,” she said. “I think that’s one reason Jonathan wanted to come here, and why he won’t leave the apartment. He thinks he’s somehow going to interfere with me and Nick. Like if he gets in the way, and hovers around, he can make it stop.”

“Why don’t they like Nick?”

“Well, for one thing, he’s Catholic. And he was varsity lacrosse. He’s superbright, but not bright in the way they approve of.” Jenna laughed. “I told him about my dad’s think tank once, and the next time his frat had a party they put a sign on the keg that said Think Tank. I thought it was pretty hilarious. But it gives you an idea.”