Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

Walter closed his eyes and tried to think of something to say.

“Dad? You there?”

“I’m here, yeah. How old is, um. Simon?”

“I don’t know. Indeterminate. Probably not more than twice Emily’s age. We speculate about whether he colors his hair. Sometimes the color seems to change a little, from week to week, but that could just be body-oil issues. I’m luckily not directly subordinate to him.”

Walter was suddenly worried that he might cry.

“Dad? You there?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“It’s just your cell goes so blank when you’re not talking.”

“Yeah, listen,” he said, “it’s terrific that you’re coming for the weekend. I think we’ll put Richard in the guest room. We’re going to do a long meeting on Saturday and then a shorter one on Sunday. Try to hammer out a concrete plan. Lalitha’s already got some great ideas.”

“No doubt,” Jessica said.

“That’s great, then. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“OK, I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.”

He let the phone slip from his hand and lay crying for a while, silently, shaking the cheap bed. He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to live. Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive’s sake. To throw away his marriage and follow Lalitha had felt irresistible until the moment he saw himself, in the person of Jessica’s older colleague, as another overconsuming white American male who felt entitled to more and more and more: saw the romantic imperialism of his falling for someone fresh and Asian, having exhausted domestic supplies. Likewise the course he’d charted for two and a half years with the Trust, convinced of the soundness of his arguments and the rightness of his mission, only to feel, this morning, in Charleston, that he’d made nothing but horrible mistakes. And likewise the overpopulation initiative: what better way to live could there be than to throw himself into the most critical challenge of his time? A challenge that then seemed trumped-up and barren when he thought of his Lalitha with her tubes tied. How to live?

He was drying his eyes, pulling himself together, when Lalitha got up and came over and put a hand on his shoulder. She smelled of sweet respired martini. “My boss,” she said softly, stroking his shoulder. “You’re the best boss in the world. You’re such a wonderful man. We’ll get up in the morning and everything will be fine.”

He nodded and sniffled and gasped a little. “Please don’t get sterilized,” he said.

“No,” she said, stroking him. “I won’t do that tonight.”

“There’s no hurry about anything. Everything has to slow down.”

“Slow, slow, yes. Everything will be slow.”

If she’d kissed him, he would have kissed her back, but she just kept stroking his shoulder, and eventually he was able to reconstruct some semblance of a professional self. Lalitha looked wistful but not too disappointed. She yawned and stretched her arms like a sleepy child. Walter left her with her sandwich and went next door with his steak, which he devoured with guilty savagery, holding it in his hands and tearing off pieces with his teeth, covering his chin with grease. He thought again of Jessica’s oily, despoiling colleague Simon.

Sobered by this, and by the loneliness and sterility of his room, he washed his face and attended to e-mail for two hours, while Lalitha slept in her undespoiled room and dreamed of—what? He couldn’t imagine. But he did feel that, by coming so close to the brink and then drawing back so awkwardly, they had inoculated themselves against the danger of coming so close again. And this was fine with him now. It was the way he knew how to live: with discipline and self-denial. He took comfort in how long it would be before they traveled together again.

Cynthia, his press person, had e-mailed him final drafts of the full press release and of the preliminary announcement that was going out at noon tomorrow, as soon as the demolition of Forster Hollow had commenced. There was also a terse, unhappy note from Eduardo Soquel, the Trust’s point man in Colombia, confirming that he was willing to miss his eldest daughter’s quinceañera on Sunday and fly to Washington. Walter needed Soquel by his side at the press conference on Monday, to emphasize the Pan-American nature of the park and highlight the Trust’s successes in South America.

It wasn’t unusual for big conservation land deals to be kept under wraps until they were finalized, but rare were the deals containing a bombshell on the order of fourteen thousand acres of forest being opened up to MTR. Back in late 2002, when Walter had merely suggested to the local environmental community that the Trust might allow MTR on its warbler preserve, Jocelyn Zorn had alerted every anti-coal reporter in West Virginia. A flurry of negative stories had resulted, and Walter had realized that he simply couldn’t afford to take his full case to the public. The clock was ticking; there was no time for the slow work of educating the public and shaping its opinion. Better to keep his negotiations with Nardone and Blasco secret, better to let Lalitha convince Coyle Mathis and his neighbors to sign nondisclosure agreements, and wait for all the faits to be accomplis. But now the jig was up, now the heavy equipment was moving in. Walter knew he had to get out in front of the story and spin it his way, as a “success story” of science-based reclamation and compassionate relocation. And yet, the more he thought about it now, the more certain he became that the press was going to slaughter him for the MTR thing. He could be tied up for weeks with putting out fires. And meanwhile the clock was also running on his overpopulation initiative, which was all he really cared about now.

After rereading the press release, with deep unease, he checked his e-mail queue one last time and found a new message, from caperville @nytimes.com.

Hello, Mr. Berglund,

My name is Dan Caperville and I’m working on a story about land conservation in Appalachia. I understand the Cerulean Mountain Trust has recently closed a deal for the preservation of a large forested tract in Wyoming Co. WV. I’d love to talk about that with you at your earliest convenience...

What the fuck? How did the Times already know about this morning’s signing? Walter was so unready to ponder this e-mail, under present circumstances, that he composed a reply immediately and fired it off before he had time to reconsider:

Dear Mr. Caperville,

Thank you so much for your query! I would love to talk to you about the exciting things the Trust has in the works. As it happens, I’m holding a press conference this coming Monday morning in Washington, announcing a major and very exciting new environmental initiative, which I hope you’ll be able to attend. In consideration of your paper’s stature, I can also send you an early copy of our press release on Sunday evening. If you’re available to speak with me early Monday morning, in advance of the presser, I might be able to arrange that as well.

Looking forward to working with you—

Walter E. Berglund

Executive Director, Cerulean Mountain Trust

He copied everything to Cynthia and Lalitha, with the comment WTF?, and then paced the room in agitation, thinking how welcome a second beer would be right now. (One beer in forty-seven years, and already he felt like an addict.) The right thing to do now was probably to wake Lalitha, drive back to Charleston, catch the first morning flight out, move the press conference up to Friday, and get out in front of the story. But it seemed as if the world, the insane-making velocitous world, was conspiring to deprive him of the only two things he truly wanted now. Having already been deprived of kissing Lalitha, he at least wanted to spend the weekend planning the overpopulation initiative with her and Jessica and Richard, before dealing with the mess in West Virginia.