Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

  “Go away,” she said. “I didn’t say you could come in.”

  Increasing her irritation, he sat down beside her. Skin-crawling repugnance was probably a normal response to a pubescent brother’s proximity, the abnormal thing her lack of a similar response to Clem, but the badness she sensed in Perry made the repugnance especially intense. She scooched away from him and wiped her face on her pillowcase.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Nothing you would understand.”

  “I see. You think I lack empathy.”

  She did suspect that he lacked empathy, but this wasn’t the point. “I’m upset,” she said, “about something that has nothing to do with you.”

  “I’m sensing a barrier to our getting to know each other better.”

  “Get out of my room!”

  “Joke, sister. That was a joke.”

  “I got the joke. Okay? Now please get out of my room.”

  “There’s something I need to say to you. But I have the distinct impression that you’ve been trying to stay away from me.”

  It was true that she’d been avoiding him, even more than usual, since the night he’d drawn her as his partner in a Crossroads dyad exercise. During the exercise, she’d felt proud of confronting him with his selfishness and self-involvement; excited to think that Crossroads was empowering her to become the family truth-teller. She’d guessed that she was hurting him, to the extent that an amoral brainiac was capable of being hurt, but she’d hoped that her honest witnessing might foster his own personal growth. Ever since that night, though, the sight of him had troubled her. No matter how on-target her assessment of his faults had been, no matter how much the truth had needed airing, she felt that somehow she, not he, had done a wrong thing.

  “Here’s what I’ve been wanting to say,” he said. “To put it very simply, you were right. In our coat-closet conversation, which you’ll no doubt remember. I’ve come to the conclusion that you were right.”

  His highbrow intonations were repellent. She reared away from him and stood up. “Where’s Judson?”

  “Judson is mulling the Stratego board. He luxuriates in the planning aspect.”

  “And Mom? Did she come home?”

  “I’ve seen neither hide nor hair all day.”

  “That’s weird,” Becky said, heading to the door.

  “Excuse me?” Perry jumped up and blocked her escape. “Did you not hear what I just said to you?”

  “Please get out of my way.”

  “I think I’m entitled to two minutes of your attention, Becky. You said you wanted a relationship with me. You said, ‘You’re my brother.’ That is a direct quote.”

  “That was Crossroads. You’re supposed to say you want a relationship with everybody.”

  “Ah, so, in fact, you don’t want a relationship with me.”

  “Will you give me a break? I’m having a really shitty day.”

  “And that’s your response? Just walk away?”

  Walking away was a well-known Crossroads no-no. Becky rolled her eyes and said, “Fine. Thank you for saying I was right. I’m not sure I was, but thank you for saying it. Now can I please go blow my nose?”

  Perry stepped aside but followed her into the bathroom. For no fathomable reason, its Depression-era tub and sink had been installed in one cramped corner, leaving a needlessly large expanse of floor tiles, now cracked and discolored. Perry shut the door and sat down on the laundry hamper while Becky blew her nose.

  “When I say you were right,” he said, “I mean that you were right that I’ve never taken you seriously enough. We can skip over my reasons for that—they do me no honor. Suffice it to say I’ve never given you the credit you deserve. You were right to call me on that.”

  “Perry, come on. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I need to say it. I’ve been unjust to you. And you were honest with me.”

  She threw up her arms in frustration. Wrong time, wrong place for a Crossroads dyad.

  “I need you to believe,” he went on, “that I’m trying to become a better person. That I’ve taken everything you said to me to heart. I won’t bore you with every detail, but I’ve made some changes. I’ve sworn off intoxicants, for one thing.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Is that what this is about? Were you afraid I was going to nark on you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, good. I’m glad to hear you’ve done some thinking. I’m glad my criticism was constructive.”

  “I need your help, though. I need—”

  He broke off, his face reddening. She prayed that he wouldn’t start crying on her. The one time she’d seen him cry at Crossroads, a hundred other people had been there to perform the task of touching him. It was strange that a person so visibly emotional, so ready to cry, both in public and in private, should persistently give her the impression that his emotings were detached from any real thing inside him. It made her feel as if something were wrong with her head.

  “It’s hard enough,” he said, “to be in the same house with you and feel like I’m your enemy. But if we’re going to be together in Crossroads, too, we need to find a way to have a better relationship.” He took a deep breath. “I want to be your friend, Becky. Will you be my friend?”

  Too late, she saw that she’d been cornered. She well knew, as did he, that the biggest of all Crossroad no-nos was to reject a person’s offer of friendship. You had to accept the offer even if you didn’t really mean to spend time with the person. If she spurned Perry’s offer, and then went to Crossroads and practiced unconditional love, accepted the unqualified worth of everyone else in the group, became “friends” with whoever asked her, he would know she was a hypocrite. She would be a hypocrite. Craftily or not, he’d cornered her.

  Overcoming her natural repugnance, the way Jesus had done with lepers, she went and crouched at his feet by the hamper. “I have a lot of trust issues with you,” she said.

  “For good reason. I am so sorry.”

  “You’re right, though. We should try to get to know each other better. If you’re willing to try, so am I.”

  Now he did let out a sob, but only one, a kind of gulp. He slid off the hamper and put his arms around her. “Thank you,” he said into her shoulder.

  Returning his hug wasn’t so bad. Whatever precociously illicit things he might have done in secret, he was still a human being, still basically just a boy. He was small for a Hildebrandt, truly her little brother. At the feel of his narrow shoulders in her arms, something maternal stirred in her. He tried to cling to her when she stood up.

  “I wonder where Mom is,” she said. “Are you sure she didn’t come home?”

  “Jay said he hadn’t seen her. It’s conceivable she went straight to the Haefles’.”

  “Not in her exercise clothes.”

  “Good point.”

  She had to admit that in the wake of their embrace she felt slightly more at ease with him.

  “It’s weird,” she said. “She made such a big deal about me being home by six.”

  “What for?”

  “So I can go to the reception.”

  “What are you doing that for? You’ll miss half the concert.”

  Disappointment welled up in her again. She turned away to hide it from him. “I’m not going.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Is that what you were crying about?” He jumped up and put a hot little hand on her shoulder. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  She almost laughed. “You mean, now that we’re friends? That’s pretty slick, Perry.”

  “I guess I deserve that, but you have me all wrong.”

  “Part of being a friend is respecting a person’s boundaries.”

  “Fair enough. I just wish you’d give me a chance. I know I haven’t earned your trust. I haven’t earned anybody’s trust. But whe
n I heard you crying, I thought, ‘She’s my sister.’”

  “Judson’s probably wondering when you’re coming back.”

  “I’m going right now. Unless you want to tell me—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay, but listen. If you change your mind about the concert, I’ll be here with Jay. You and I can walk over together when you’re back.”

  Returning to her room, lying down on her bed, she tried to make sense of Perry’s sudden kindness to her. Ordinarily, she would have assumed he had some hidden selfish motive. But in hugging him she’d caught a glimmer of the unqualified worth of every human being. Perry had no choice but to be his hot-handed, overly articulate little self, and the vulnerability he’d revealed to her hadn’t seemed like just an act. Walking to the church with her pothead little brother, being together in the snow with him, was the bizarrest of scenarios, but the chance of their becoming friends was exciting in its very slenderness. She’d always had, in Clem, the only brother she needed, but now Clem was far away, preoccupied with his evidently fascinating girlfriend. The biggest barrier to Becky’s relationship with Perry had been her feeling that he disdained her for her lesser intelligence. Maybe all she’d needed was some sign that he respected her and was interested in her as a person. Now that he’d given her such a sign, maybe they really could be friends. Maybe her whole family could be happier, beginning with the unlikely duo of her and Perry.

  The feeling of goodwill with which she’d awakened in the morning, before losing it in the ice cave of Tanner’s bus, was coming back. She felt a particular glow of gratitude for Crossroads, which had taught her to take risks. The risk she’d taken with Tanner had brought her pain, but in the glow of her goodwill she could see that she might have overreacted, might have pushed him too hard on the wrong night, might have set too much store on the outward appearance of going to the concert with him. Meanwhile, the risk of confronting Perry, in the coat closet at church, had encouraged him to take his own risk, by offering her his friendship. For better and for worse, but mostly for better, Crossroads was making her more alive.

  At six o’clock, though there was still no sign of either of her parents, she got up to make herself presentable. The spectacle of blotch reflected in the bathroom mirror discouraged her, but she brushed her hair, reapplied her makeup, and went and knocked on Perry and Judson’s door.

  “Who is it?” Perry answered sharply.

  “The war-game police. I’m coming in.”

  Opening the door, she saw Perry reclining on one elbow and Judson kneeling over their homemade board game, his ankles crossed beneath him in a position that would have excruciated anyone older than ten. With a subtle movement of her head, she beckoned Perry into the hallway. He hopped right up.

  “Do you have any eye drops?” she asked him in a low voice.

  “Yes, as it happens, I do.”

  She waited while he ran upstairs to the third floor, thereby betraying where he’d been hiding his paraphernalia. The complicity in their transaction, like the complicity of being in on the secret of his and Judson’s war game, was giving her a sense of what life might be like in a happier family, with her at the center of it.

  “You can keep this,” Perry said, returning with a bottle. “My eye-drop-using days are over.”

  “Are you worried about Mom? The fact that she hasn’t even called?”

  “You think she’s lying frozen in a snowdrift.”

  “It’s just weird.”

  Perry frowned. “What time does the reception start?”

  “Six thirty.”

  “So here’s an idea. Why don’t you go to the concert and let Jay and me go to the Haefles’? Admittedly, I’m judging only by appearances, but I have the sense you don’t actually want to miss the concert.”

  “I don’t think the Haefles want little kids there.”

  “Assuming you don’t put me in that category, I think you’re underestimating Jay. He has an old soul.”

  Becky considered her long-haired brother. To feel allied with his brainpower, rather than mocked and threatened by it, was a strange sensation. “You would do that for me?”

  It was painful to recall, but Russ had loved Rick Ambrose.

  Once upon a time, in New York, at the seminary on East Forty-ninth Street, Russ and Marion had been the It couple, into whose married-student apartment other young seminarians crowded three or four nights a week to smoke their cigarettes, listen to jazz, and inspire one another with visions of modern Christianity’s renaissance in social action. Twiggy, pretty Marion, more deeply and eclectically read than anyone else, wearing snug pedal pushers and bulky sweaters that evoked the Welsh countryside of Dylan Thomas, was the envy of Russ’s fellow seminarians. Whatever she and Russ did was ipso facto the hip thing. Even pulling up stakes and relocating to rural Indiana, which he’d felt obliged to do when Marion became pregnant and his applications for more exotic postings were rejected, had seemed like an edgy move. Only when Marion withdrew into motherhood, grew heavier and wearier, and Russ needed to come up with fifty sermons a year, rewritten by Marion and delivered in two churches with a combined flock of fewer than three hundred, at eight thirty and ten o’clock every Sunday, did the life she’d once made large for him begin to feel inescapably small. Whenever he contrived a respite from the Indiana farmhouse, by begging favors of pastors from nearby churches, and attended conferences in Columbus or Chicago or protested for civil rights, he was bittersweetly reminded of the edge that he and Marion had lost.

  In prosperous New Prospect, although he continued to agitate for social justice, the political sleepiness of First Reformed had just about defeated him when Rick Ambrose arrived to wake it up. Where Russ came by his alienation from the suburbs honestly, by virtue of his Mennonite childhood, Ambrose’s was adopted. He’d been the causeless young rebel in the otherwise happy family of an endocrinologist in Shaker Heights, Ohio. On the night of his high-school graduation, he and his girlfriend had ridden his motorcycle down the main drag of Shaker Heights and straight out of town. A month later, on a highway in Idaho, he and the girl had been passed by four teenagers doing a hundred miles an hour in a Chevy that broadsided a rancher crossing in front of them in his pickup. Beside the road, staring at teenaged death, Ambrose had heard a bell-clear calling from God. Seven years later, as a minister in training, he felt called to work with troubled young people. When he came to Russ’s office to accept, in person, the job of director of youth programming, he flattered Russ. A congregation in Oak Park had offered him a position with better pay, but he’d chosen First Reformed because, he said, he admired Russ’s vocal commitment to peace and justice. He said, “I think we’ll make a great team.”

  Warmed by the sense of being recognized, and taken with the simmering charisma of his young associate, imagining they might become friends, Russ repeatedly invited him to dinner at the parsonage. When Ambrose finally accepted, and lingered at the table after the kids had been excused, he paid so much attention to Marion that Russ felt uneasy about the scant attention he’d lately given her himself. Marion had never been a flirt, but she seemed enjoyably energized by Ambrose’s intensity. After he left, Russ was surprised to hear she hadn’t liked him. “That glower of his,” she said. “It’s like a mind-control trick he picked up somewhere and fell in love with. It’s a car salesman’s trick—making people afraid they don’t have your approval. They’ll do anything to get it, and they never stop to wonder why they even want it.”

  It was true that, for all his foul-mouthed forthrightness, there was something unknowable about Ambrose, and Russ never quite shook the awareness of his affluent background, in contrast to his own. But Russ had an eager and generous heart, which suited him well to the ministry, and Ambrose had been right: they made a good team. Their mentoring styles were complementary, Ambrose’s psychological and streetwise, Russ’s more political and Bible-oriented, and he was grateful that Ambrose took charge of the stormier kids in the youth fellowship, leaving him to l
ead the others by example.

  After hearing Russ’s stories of his time among the Navajos, Ambrose had proposed that the fellowship refocus itself on a spring work camp in Arizona. Russ loved the idea so much that he soon forgot it hadn’t been his. Arizona was his place, after all. Arriving on the arid reservation, landing in waste and privation beyond what anyone else on the bus had experienced, he felt forty pairs of suburban teenage eyes looking to him for courage and guidance. It transpired that Ambrose, though he had the swagger of a tough who didn’t shy from manual labor, couldn’t so much as drive a clean nail without first bending two of them. Time and again, he came to Russ, or even to Clem, for help with seemingly elementary tasks. Although his ineptitude later became a real issue—was arguably, indeed, the catalyst of Russ’s humiliation—on the first spring trip it served to highlight Russ’s capability.

  By the following October, so many teenagers were thronging to the fellowship that Russ worried about a surprise inspection by the fire marshal. Beyond the sheer numbers, what excited him was the kind of kids who were joining. There were long-haired musicians, there was a raft of blond girls from the Episcopal church, there were even some Black kids, and they weren’t just seeking spiritual renewal. They wanted to invite guest speakers from the inner city and the peace movement, they wanted to examine their suburban affluence. For six years, in his sermons, Russ had tried to awaken the adult congregation of First Reformed to the implications of its privilege. Now, suddenly, for the first time since New York, he was at the center of the It place. He knew he had Ambrose to thank for this, but he also knew that reports of the Arizona trip had set the high school afire, and that the promise of a second trip was driving the rise in membership numbers. In November, after a rollicking Sunday-night meeting, Ambrose, who so rarely smiled, turned to Russ with a cockeyed grin.

  “Pretty wild, isn’t it.”

  “Incredible,” Russ said.

  “I counted fourteen kids who weren’t here last week.”

  “Absolutely incredible.”