Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

“I admire your capacity for admiring,” Katz said. And added, as the taxi crawled through traffic at a complex diagonal intersection, “I don’t think I can do this thing for you, Walter. I’m experiencing high levels of shame.”

“Just do what you can. Find your own limits. If all you want to do is come down in May for a day or two and meet the interns, maybe have sex with one of them, that’s fine with me. That would be a lot already.”

“Thinking of going back to writing songs.”

“That’s great! That’s wonderful news. I’d almost rather have you do that than work for us. Just stop building decks, for God’s sake.”

“Might need to keep building decks. Can’t be helped.”

The mansion was dark and quiet when they returned to it, a single light burning in the kitchen. Walter went straight up to bed, but Katz lingered for a while in the kitchen, thinking Patty might hear him and come down. Aside from everything else, he was now craving the company of someone with a sense of irony. He ate some cold pasta and smoked a cigarette in the back yard. Then he went up to the second floor and back to the little room of Patty’s. From the pillows and blankets he’d seen on the foldout sofa the evening before, he had the impression that she slept in it. The door was closed and no light showed around its edges.

“Patty,” he said in a voice she could have heard if she’d been awake.

He listened carefully, enveloped in tinnitus.

“Patty,” he said again.

His dick didn’t believe for one second that she was sleeping, but it was possible that the door was closed on an empty room, and he had a curious reluctance to open it and see. He needed some small breath of encouragement or confirmation of his instincts. He went back down to the kitchen, finished the pasta, and read the Post and the Times . At two o’clock, still buzzing with nicotine, and beginning to be pissed off with her, he went back to her room, tapped on the door, and opened it.

She was sitting on the sofa in the dark, still wearing her black gym uniform, staring straight ahead, her hands clutching each other on her lap.

“Sorry,” Katz said. “Is this OK?”

“Yes,” she said, not looking at him. “But we should go downstairs.”

There was an unfamiliar tightness in his chest as he descended the back staircase again, an intensity of sexual anticipation that he didn’t think he’d felt since high school. Following him into the kitchen, Patty closed the door to the staircase behind her. She was wearing very soft-looking socks, the socks of somebody whose feet weren’t so young and well-padded anymore. Even without the boost of shoes, her height was the same agreeable surprise it had always been to him. One of his own song lyrics popped into his head, the one about her body being the body for him. It had come to this for old Katz: he was being moved by his own lyrics. And the body for him was still very nice, not actively displeasing in any way: the product, surely, of many hours of sweating at her gym. In white block letters on the front of her black T-shirt was the word lift.

“I’m going to have some chamomile tea,” she said. “Do you want some?”

“Sure. I don’t think I’ve ever had chamomile tea.”

“Ah, what a sheltered life you’ve lived.”

She went out to the office and came back with two mugs of instantly hot water with tea-bag labels dangling.

“Why didn’t you answer me when I went up the first time?” he said. “I’ve been sitting down here for two hours.”

“I guess I was lost in thought.”

“Did you think I was just going to go to bed?”

“I don’t know. I was sort of thinking without thinking, if you know what I mean. But I understood that you would want to talk to me, and I knew I had to do it. And so here I am.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“No, it’s good, we should talk.” She sat down across the farmer’s table from him. “Did you guys have a good time? Jessie said you went to a concert.”

“Us and about eight hundred twenty-one-year-olds.”

“Ha-ha-ha! You poor thing.”

“Walter enjoyed himself.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did. He’s quite the enthusiast about young people these days.”

Katz was encouraged by the note of discontent. “I take it you’re not?”

“Me? Safe to say no. I mean, my own children excepted. I do still like my own children. But the rest of them? Ha-ha-ha!”

Her thrilling, lifting laugh hadn’t changed. Underneath her new haircut, though, underneath her eye makeup, she was looking older. It only went in one direction, aging, and the self-protective core of him, seeing it, was telling him to run while he still could. He’d followed an instinct in coming down here, but there was a big difference, he was realizing, between an instinct and a plan.

“What don’t you like about them?” he said.

“Oh, well, where to begin?” Patty said. “How about the flipflop thing? I have some issues with their flipflops. It’s like the world is their bedroom. And they can’t even hear their own flap-flap-flapping, because they’ve all got their gadgets, they’ve all got their earbuds in. Every time I start hating my neighbors around here, I run into some G.U. kid on the sidewalk and suddenly forgive the neighbors, because at least they’re adults. At least they’re not running around in flipflops, advertising how much more laidback and reasonable they are than us adults. Than uptight me, who would prefer not to look at people’s bare feet on the subway. Because, really, who could object to seeing such beautiful toes? Such perfect toenails? Only a person who’s too unluckily middle-aged to inflict the spectacle of her own toes on the world.”

“I hadn’t particularly noticed the flipflops.”

“You really do lead a sheltered life, then.”

Her tone was somehow rote and disconnected, not teasing in a way that he could work with. Denied encouragement, his sense of anticipation was waning. He was beginning to dislike her for not being in the state he’d imagined he would find her in.

“And the credit-card thing?” she said. “Using a credit card to buy one hot dog or one pack of gum? I mean, cash is so yesterday. Right? Cash actually requires you to add and subtract. You actually have to pay attention to the person who’s giving you your change. Like, for one tiny little moment, you have to be less than one-hundred-percent cool and checked into your own little world. But not with a credit card you don’t. You just blandly hand it over and blandly take it back.”

“That’s more like what the crowd was tonight,” he said. “Nice kids, just a little self-absorbed.”

“You’d better get used to it, though, right? Jessica says you’re going to be up to your armpits in young people all summer.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“It sounded more like definitely.”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking of bailing. In fact, I already said so to Walter.”

Patty stood up to put their tea bags in the sink and remained standing, her back to him. “So this might be your only visit,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, then, I suppose I should be sorry I didn’t come down sooner.”

“You could always come up and see me in the city.”

“Right. If I’d ever been invited.”

“You’re invited now.”

She wheeled around with narrowed eyes. “Don’t play games with me, OK? I don’t want to see that side of you. It actually sort of makes me sick. OK?”

He held her gaze, trying to show her that he meant it—trying to feel that he meant it—but this seemed only to exasperate her. She retreated, shaking her head, to a far corner of the kitchen.

“How are you and Walter getting along?” he said unkindly.