Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

  Satan was gone, vanished seemingly for good, when she emerged from the scene of the crime, a few blocks from Lerner Motors. It was late in the afternoon of December 24. The leading edge of a storm system had crept across the city sky, scalloping it with cloud. The last Seconal she’d swallowed, in the morning, was wearing off. She was light-headed, and the pain in her belly, though not severe yet, felt evil in its novelty. In place of her specific dread, now put to rest, a more general dread was creeping across her sky-wide mind. She still had six dollars and change in her purse, but she couldn’t bring herself to board a streetcar. Weaving a little, pausing to rest against the sides of buildings, she made her way toward her apartment.

  It wasn’t more than twenty blocks away, but traversing that distance finished her off, because she couldn’t get away from him. His elfin face loomed up in window after window. Twinkling-eyed. White-bearded. Dressed in a bright red suit with ermine trim. Posters and greeting cards and cookie tins and life-size manikins all advertised his pawing, wine-breathed malice. She needed more Seconals to get away from him. He was watching her from every direction. His penis was short and fat and tan, like a miniature him. He stood potbellied on a corner, in a red suit, and rang a bell beside a red can into which passersby dropped money. Everywhere, red. She couldn’t get away from red. It was the color of his house. It was how he signaled that wherever she turned he was already there. Red bows, red ribbons. Red-striped candy canes. Shiny stars and crescent moons of metallic red cardboard. The red house. The red car. The red in the sink at her old rooming house. The red wagon. The red wagon. The red wagon. The red wagon. Evil had pursued her all her life, and now the world was exploding with the color of it, and nowhere was there refuge. It found her in her bathroom, the bathroom of her apartment. Red was inside her, too, and it was coming out. She was nothing but a thin-skinned bladder bursting-full of red. Her hands were red, her things were red, there was red on the floor, red on the walls she wiped her hands on. Red annihilated her mind. Merry Christmas.

  “So here’s a memory,” she said. “It’s the best memory I have of Christmas. Do you want to hear it?”

  “I would,” Sophie Serafimides said. “If you’re sure you’re done punishing me.”

  Marion opened her eyes. Out on the rail tracks, snow was falling heavily. The tracks already had a thick coconut frosting.

  “You needed punishing,” she said.

  Sophie didn’t smile. “Tell me your memory.”

  “It was 1946, in Arizona. Russ and I had been together for the better part of a year—we were already a couple in every way except marriage. He still had his alternative service to finish, even though the war was over, but things had gotten very lax at the camp. He could get some days off almost whenever he wanted, and that was nice for me. I’d invited him to Christmas at my uncle Jimmy’s, but he said he had a better idea. There was an old Willys truck that the camp director was willing to let him borrow, and Russ wanted to see more of the Southwest. Jimmy gave us some money as a Christmas present, and off we went. It was a huge deal for Russ, because his parents didn’t know about me, and everywhere we went we had to pretend that we were married. It was a huge act of defiance for him, and I was in love with him. It was heaven to have him all to myself, driving wherever we felt like going. We spent a day in Santa Fe, and then we were in Las Vegas—Las Vegas, New Mexico—when the snow came. Do you know Las Vegas?”

  “I don’t.”

  “It’s an old, old Spanish colonial town up by the Sangre de Cristos. The Willys had bad tires and we got stuck there by the snow. There was only one hotel where people like us could have stayed, and that’s where we had our Christmas. Our room was probably terrible, but we had each other, so I thought it was wonderful. The hotel was on the old town square, with a dining room on the ground floor, and that’s where we ate on Christmas Eve. To be there with Russ felt like a reward beyond anything I deserved. There was frost around the edges of the windows, and actual cowboys—real cowboys in long coats were coming in to have their dinner. There was also a little family, maybe stuck by the snow like us, an Anglo family with two little girls. And it was like those little girls were the family we were going to have. Like we were looking at ourselves in the future, and then the most amazing thing happened. Outside on the square, there was a big truck that somebody had rigged up to look like Santa’s sleigh. There were two reindeer sticking out in front of it, above the hood, and they’d rigged up lights to make it look like they were flying. They’d also lit up the sleigh on the roof of the cab. From a distance, you couldn’t see the truck. All you could see was the reindeer and the sleigh and a cowboy in a Santa suit waving his hand while the truck went around and around in the snow. And—I, uh.”

  Marion faltered, avoiding Sophie’s eyes.

  “I never liked Santa Claus. I thought he was scary and creepy. I had a problem with him. But the look on those two little girls’ faces, when they caught sight of the reindeer and the sleigh—I don’t think I’ll ever see more pure wonder and joy. The girls’ eyes were just huge. One of them said, ‘Oh! Oh!’ And they ran to the window and looked out, and they were saying, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ It was just pure joy and credulity. Their utter belief in what they were seeing was just the most beautiful thing. And all the … all the … I’m sorry, but all the shit I’d been through in California, it just got washed away. It was like I was being reborn, just by watching those girls and their reaction.”

  “That does sound beautiful.”

  “But what does this have to do with anything?”

  The dumpling inclined her head suggestively.

  “Russ didn’t see it the way I did,” Marion said. “He didn’t get it at all. And I couldn’t tell him what it meant to me, because I couldn’t tell him what I’d been through.”

  “It’s never too late to tell him.”

  “No, it’s definitely too late. That Christmas Eve would have been the time to do it. ‘I had an affair with a married man, I tried to break up his marriage by telling his wife, and I got so crazy they had to lock me up on Christmas morning.’ There was no way that story was going to fly, not with Russ.”

  “You were institutionalized on Christmas?”

  “Had I not mentioned that?”

  “You hadn’t.”

  “Well, there you go. That’s how the leopard got his spots.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Now you know why I hate Christmas. We can call it a breakthrough, and I can go home and eat some more sugar cookies. Tra-la-la, tra-la-la. I can live happily ever after.”

  Sophie frowned.

  “We had a horrible fight that night,” Marion said. “Russ and I, in New Mexico. It was our first real fight, and I promised myself we’d never have another one. No matter what it took, I wasn’t going to raise my voice with him again. I would love him and support him and keep my mouth shut. Because he saw something very different when he looked at those two girls. He said he was disgusted by the parents—that they were encouraging their children to worship a false idol. That they were lying to their kids and neglecting the true meaning of Christmas, which had nothing to do with Santa Claus. And I went out of my mind again. I felt like I’d experienced a kind of magical rebirth—something truly Christian, by the way, which was to forgive, oh, not forgive, but to get over … well.”

  She felt herself going red. The dumpling’s eyes were on her.

  “It was … I’m not explaining it right. Santa was … Santa wasn’t … I could see that it was only an illusion. It was just some cowboy in a Santa suit, not … And somehow that, plus the girls—I was sharing in someone else’s joy and wonder. I knew it was only an illusion, but because it was only an illusion I could be an innocent little girl again myself. And that mattered so much to me, and Russ didn’t get it. I was screaming at him, just out of control. I hated him, and I could see I was scaring the daylights out of him, and I said to myself, nope, never going to do that again, ever. And you know what? I never did. Tomorrow will be exactly twen
ty-five years that I’ve been keeping my mouth shut.”

  The dumpling seemed preoccupied. She glanced over her shoulder at the falling snow. “I’m sorry if this is a difficult question,” she said. “But I feel I have to ask again. Is there something important you’re not telling me?”

  A coldness surged in Marion. “What kind of thing.”

  “I’m not quite sure. There was just—something in your tone of voice. I’ve thought I might have heard it once or twice before, and just now I heard it again, very clearly. I’m not saying I’m a world-class practitioner. And, by the way, in case you didn’t know, I don’t believe in Just So stories. I don’t believe there’s a single key that unlocks everything. But when I’ve heard that particular tone of voice in the past, it often turns out that the patient has experienced a particular kind of trauma.”

  The dumpling was relentless.

  “My father killed himself,” Marion said. “My mother didn’t love me. I lost my mind. Is that not enough?”

  “No, that’s a lot,” Sophie said. “And I definitely hear that in your voice, too. But that’s the funny you. That’s the you who survived a rotten childhood and the aftermath of that and made adjustments, made a good life for yourself, found a way to cope with the turmoil in your head. That’s the survivor in you. What I was hearing was something else, and I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just asking.”

  Marion looked at her watch. She was two minutes past the end of their second “hour.” As if the little office were the living room of a certain red bungalow, she stood up hastily and took her coat off the hook. She jammed one arm and then the other into its sleeves. She still had time to run home, raid her hosiery drawer, and buy something nicer for Perry. For twenty-five years, she’d believed that her life with Russ was the blessing she’d received from a forgiving God, a blessing she’d earned by her years of Catholic prayer and penance, a life she continued to earn daily by suppressing the badness in her and keeping her mouth shut. It was true that she’d lately hated Russ at least as much as she still loved him; there was little reason to keep pretending for his sake. But she loved Perry more than ever. His suffering, for which her side of the family was responsible, was the punishment that God had waited three decades to inflict on her.

  “You don’t have to leave on my account,” the dumpling said from behind her. “Costa and I are here until five.”

  Marion faced the door, her hand on the knob. The office was godless, and she knew what God expected of her. She needed to devote herself to Perry and begin atoning for her sins. And yet to leave the office was to relinquish all hope of getting better.

  “Maybe you should tell me about Santa,” Sophie said.

  “Oh, there’s Perry,” Frances Cottrell said, waving. “Speak of the devil.”

  Seeing the pale yellow locks of his son at the corner of Maple Avenue, not twenty seconds after he and Frances had made a clean getaway from First Reformed, Russ was tempted to drive through the stop sign, but the township police station was right across the street. He braked and made himself turn and look where Frances was waving, so as not to seem guilty. Perry was standing on the sidewalk, all-seeing, a plastic bag in his hand. Russ held his gaze for a moment and stepped hard on the gas.

  Speak of the devil?

  “He’s an impressive kid,” Frances said. “I think Larry’s got a little crush on him.”

  Beyond Maple, the speed limit on Pirsig Avenue could safely be broken. Luckier snowflakes were blindly evading the Fury while others met their end on the windshield. If Perry had been standing anywhere but at the stop sign, he might not have seen that Russ’s only passenger was Frances. Now Russ could only hope that Perry would forget; and there was little chance of that.

  “So here’s an awkward question,” Frances said.

  Russ eased up on the gas. “Mm?”

  “Since I have you all to myself today, this is kind of like private counseling, right? Even though we’re not in your office? It’s still confidential?”

  “Absolutely,” Russ said.

  Frances had been bouncing and repositioning her limbs ever since she got in the car. Her left foot, on the bench seat, was currently no more than an inch from his leg. “I’m wondering,” she said, “how old you think your kids should be before they try marijuana.”

  “My kids?”

  “Yes, or any kids. How young is too young?”

  “Well, marijuana is illegal. I don’t think any parent wants to see his children breaking laws.”

  Frances laughed. “Are you really that square?”

  The coat he was wearing, the coat she’d admired, wasn’t the coat of a square. The blues 78s he’d brought for her and left in his office weren’t the records of a square. The thoughts he had about her weren’t a square’s thoughts.

  “I’m not against breaking the law,” he said. “Gandhi broke the law, Daniel Ellsberg broke the law. I don’t think rules are sacred. I just don’t see that breaking drug laws serves any meaningful purpose.”

  “Wow. Okay.”

  He could hear that she was smiling, but the dichotomy of square and hip, the unfairness of it, was offensive to him.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a square,” she said. “I think it’s cute. But I gather you’ve never tried pot yourself?”

  “Ah, no. Have you?”

  “Not—yet.”

  There was a twinkle in her voice. He took his eyes off the road and saw that she was watching him for a reaction. She seemed very activated, very happy with herself; seemed ready to play. He, too, had come to play, but his game wasn’t flirting. He had no faith in his skills there.

  “Your question,” he said. “Were you asking about your son?”

  “Yes, partly. But also partly about yours.”

  “My son? You mean Perry?”

  “Yes.”

  His son? Using drugs? Well, of course. It made such perfect sense, Russ couldn’t believe he hadn’t suspected it before. God damn Marion.

  “Can I tell you some things?” Frances said. “Since we’re having a confidential session?”

  The white flurry on the road ahead of them was thick and disorienting. He kept his eyes on it, but he could feel her leaning toward him in her hunting cap.

  “Do you remember,” she said, “when I came to see you last summer?”

  “I do. I remember it very well.”

  “So, I was in a bad place, but I wasn’t very honest with you. Actually, I wasn’t even a little bit honest. You were so nice about Bobby, about losing a husband, but that wasn’t really why I was there. I was upset because I’d just found out that the man I’d been seeing was also seeing someone else.”

  The brittle rubber of the Fury’s wipers shuddered on the windshield. Russ wanted to ask a clarifying question, to confirm that seeing meant what it seemed to, but he didn’t trust his voice. A day that had begun well was now conclusively terrible. As stupid as he’d been about Perry, he’d been even stupider about Frances. It had never occurred to him that another man might already have swooped in on her. Last summer, she’d been widowed for barely a year.

  She leaned back into her corner of the front seat. “It was one of those things that seemed too good to be true because it was. One of my old girlfriends set us up on a date, and it just immediately felt right—we clicked right away. Philip’s a surgeon, and he’d been in the service. He’d served on one of the same bases Bobby had, so we had that in common, and heart surgery is like the medical equivalent of being a fighter pilot—not for the faint of heart. Philip’s got a gorgeous apartment in one of the high-rises on the lake, just north of the Loop, with an incredible view. As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘Okay, sign me up!’ In hindsight, it was way too early for me to be thinking that way, but I just wanted everything to be right again. I wanted there to be four of us, not three.”

  Russ tried to imagine the scenario in which Frances had been in the heart surgeon’s apartment and not had intimate relations with him.

  “I w
anted Larry and Amy to meet him,” she said. “I thought we could all have lunch and go to the Field Museum. I kept pushing until finally one night he tells me, in the spirit of full disclosure, that there’s something I should know. Apparently, the entire time I’ve known him, he’s been seeing someone else. A nurse, of course. Younger than me, of course. So that’s where my head was when I came to see you. I really was missing Bobby, but not for the right reasons. I’d kind of had my heart broken.”

  The black exhaust of a dump truck in front of Russ was soiling the snow before it even reached the ground. “I see,” he said.

  “But here’s something else I didn’t tell you. Things hadn’t actually been so wonderful with me and Bobby. I was only twenty-one when we got married. He was my brother’s best friend, he was piloting planes that broke the sound barrier, he was awesomely good-looking, and I was the girl who got to marry him. He was gone a lot, but I didn’t mind that—I was an officer’s wife, which had its privileges. He was stationed at Edwards when the kids were born, and I would have followed him anywhere—it wasn’t me who made him quit the air force. But he wanted the kids to grow up in one place, in one school district, and the pay was a lot better with General Dynamics. And then as soon as we were there in Texas he decided he’d made a mistake. He missed the military, and I could tell he blamed me, even though it wasn’t my fault. Year after year, I watched him get more angry. Everyone knew he was a stud, and it wasn’t like I was giving him an argument, but he kept making me pass these loyalty tests. If I laughed too hard at something a neighbor said, it meant I was flirting with him, and Bobby wouldn’t let it go until I admitted that the neighbor was less of a man than he was. If I watched the news and made some comment about the war not going well, he’d start interrogating me. Didn’t I agree that America was the most powerful country on earth? With the best economic system? Weren’t we morally obliged to keep the Communists from expanding their blah-blah-blah? He honestly believed the reason so many troops were getting killed was that the protesters at home were undermining their morale. I was getting boys killed, by having doubts about the war. And Larry, he wanted to be an astronaut, but he wasn’t exceptional at sports, wasn’t a straight-A student, and Bobby was constantly yelling at him. ‘Do you think you get to be an astronaut by not sliding hard into second base? Do you think John Glenn ever got a B on an algebra test?’ Larry was just a dreamy kid who was interested in space, and he was so proud of Bobby, so desperate to please him, his disapproval was a torture. Have you ever seen the cockpit of an F-111?”