Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

“Those were things you wanted.”

“You didn’t?”

“For you. I wanted them for you.”

“Oh, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. You wanted them for you, too. You were competing with Richard the whole time, and you know it. The only reason you’re forgetting it now is that it didn’t work out so great. You’re not winning anymore.”

“Winning has nothing to do with it.”

“Liar! You’re just as competitive as I am, you just won’t tell the truth about it. That’s why you won’t leave me alone. That’s why I’ve got to get that precious job. Because I’m making you a loser .”

“I can’t listen to this. This is some alternate reality.”

“Well, whatever, don’t listen, but I’m still on your team. And, believe it or not, I still want you to win. The reason I’m helping Joey is he’s on our team, and I will help you, too. I will go out tomorrow, for your sake, and I will—”

“Not for my sake.”

“YES, FOR YOUR SAKE. Don’t you get it? I have no sake. I don’t believe in anything. I don’t have faith in anything. The team is all I’ve got. And so I’ll get some kind of job for your sake, and then you can just leave me the hell alone, and let me send Joey however much money I make. You won’t see so much of me anymore—you won’t have to be so disgusted.”

“I’m not disgusted.”

“Well, that is beyond my comprehension.”

“And you don’t have to get a job if you don’t want to.”

“Yes, I do! It’s pretty clear, isn’t it? You’ve made it pretty clear.”

“No. You don’t have to do anything. Just be my Patty again. Just come back to me.”

She cried then, torrentially, and he lay down with her. Fighting had become their portal to sex, almost the only way it ever happened anymore. While the rain lashed and the sky flashed, he tried to fill her with self-worth and desire, tried to convey how much he needed her to be the person he could bury his cares in. It never quite worked, and yet, when they were done, there came a stretch of minutes in which they lay and held each other in the quiet majesty of long marriage, forgot themselves in shared sadness and forgiveness for everything they’d inflicted on each other, and rested.

The very next morning, Patty had gone out and looked for work. She came back in less than two hours and skipped into Walter’s office, in the mansion’s many-windowed “conservatory,” to announce that the local Republic of Health had hired her as a front-desk greeter.

“I don’t know about this,” Walter said.

“What? Why not?” Patty said. “It’s literally the only place in Georgetown that doesn’t embarrass me or sicken me. And they had an opening! It’s a very lucky thing.”

“Front-desk greeter just doesn’t seem appropriate, given your talents.”

“Appropriate to who?”

“To people who might see you.”

“And which people are these?”

“I don’t know. People I might be hitting up for money, or legislative backing, or regulatory help.”

“Oh, my God. Are you listening to yourself? Are you hearing what you just said?”

“Look, I’m trying to be honest with you. Don’t punish me for being honest.”

“I’m punishing you for your content , Walter, not your honesty. I mean! ‘Not appropriate.’ Wow.”

“I’m saying you’re too smart for an entry-level gym job.”

“No, you’re saying I’m too old. You wouldn’t have a problem with Jessica working there for the summer.”

“Actually, I’d be disappointed if that’s all she wanted to do with her summer.”

“Oh, good Lord, then. I truly cannot win. ‘Any job is better than no job, or, but, no, sorry, wait, the job that you actually want and are well qualified for is not better than no job.’ ”

“OK, fine. Take it. I don’t care.”

“Thank you for not caring!”

“I just think you’re selling yourself way short.”

“Well, maybe it’ll only be temporary,” Patty said. “Maybe I’ll get my realtor’s license, like every other unemployable wife around here, and start selling squalid little crooked-floored town houses for two million dollars. ‘In this very bathroom, in 1962, Hubert Humphrey had a large bowel movement, which, in recognition of this historic movement, the property has been placed on the National Registry, which explains the hundred-thousand-dollar premium its owners are demanding. There’s also a small but rather nice azalea bush behind the kitchen window.’ I can start wearing pinks and greens and a Burberry raincoat. I’ll buy a Lexus SUV with my first big commission. It’ll be much more appropriate.”

“I said OK.”

“Thank you, honey! Thank you for letting me take the job I want!”

Walter watched her stride out the door and stop by Lalitha’s desk. “Hi, Lalitha,” she said. “I just got a job. I’m going to work at my gym.”

“That’s nice,” Lalitha said. “You like that gym.”

“Yeah, but Walter thinks it’s inappropriate. What do you think?”

“I think any honest work can bring a human being dignity.”

“ Patty ,” Walter called. “I said it was OK.”

“See, now he’s changed his mind,” she said to Lalitha. “Before, he was saying it was inappropriate.”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“Right, ha-ha-ha, I’m sure you did. But it’s important to pretend otherwise, OK?”

“Don’t leave the door open if you don’t want to be heard,” Lalitha said coldly.

“We all have to work really hard on pretending.”

Becoming a front-desk greeter at Republic of Health did for Patty’s spirits everything Walter had hoped a job would do. Everything and, alas, more. Her depression immediately seemed to lift, but this only showed how misleading the word “depression” was, because Walter was certain that her old unhappiness and anger and despair were all still present beneath her bright and brittle new way of being. She spent her mornings in her room, worked the p.m. shift at the gym, and didn’t get home until after ten. She began reading beauty and fitness magazines and noticeably using eye makeup. The sweatpants and baggy jeans that she’d been wearing in Washington, the sort of unconfining clothes that mental patients spend their days in, gave way to closer-fitting jeans that cost actual money.

“You look great,” Walter said one evening, trying to be nice.

“Well, now that I have an income,” she said, “I need something to spend it on, right?”

“You could always make charitable contributions to the Cerulean Mountain Trust instead.”

“Ha-ha-ha!”

“Our need is great.”

“I’m having fun, Walter. A tiny little bit of fun.”

But she didn’t really seem like she was having fun. She seemed like she was trying to hurt him, or spite him, or prove some kind of point. Walter began working out at Republic of Health himself, using a stack of free passes she’d given him, and he was unsettled by the intensity of the friendliness she directed at the members whose cards she scanned. She wore tiny-sleeved, provocatively sloganed Republic T-shirts (PUSH, SWEAT, LIFT) that highlighted her beautifully toned upper arms. Her eyes had a speed-freak glitter, and her laugh, which had always thrilled Walter, sounded false and ominous when he heard it echoing behind him in the Republic’s foyer. She was giving it to everybody now, giving it indiscriminately, meaninglessly, to every member who walked in off Wisconsin Avenue. And then one day he noticed a breast-augmentation brochure on her desk at home.

“Jesus,” he said, examining it. “This is obscene.”

“Actually, it’s a medical brochure.”

“It’s a mental-illness brochure, Patty. It’s like a guide to how to become more mentally ill.”