Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

  “I’ll have you know I’ve gotten better at carpentry and plumbing.”

  “You’ll never be as good as me. I’ve got any number of skills to feel good about. But all I have to do is think of you, and—none of them matters.”

  Russ glanced at Ambrose, caught the gaze of his dark eyes, and quickly looked away again.

  “I feel for you, Russ. But you probably don’t want to hear that.”

  “You’re damn right I don’t. It’s easier for me if you’re an asshole. Which, by the way, I think you are. I think you’re a raging egomaniac. I think Crossroads for you is one big power trip. I think you get off on having all the pretty girls lined up outside your office. You’re an even bigger fraud than I was, but it doesn’t matter, because the kids still love you. You really do help them, because they’re too stupid to see through you. And then I don’t just hate you—I hate the kids for loving you.”

  “What if I told you that I worry about the same thing? That I wrestle with these questions all the time?”

  “That would be interesting. It’s interesting to imagine you as a person more or less like me, trying to be good, trying to serve God, but constantly doubting yourself. Rationally, I ought to be able to build on that and find a way to forgive you. But as soon as I put your face to the person I’m imagining, I’m sick with hatred. All I can see is you having it both ways. Getting off on your power and feeling good about the fact that it worries you. Being an asshole and congratulating yourself on your ‘honesty’ about it. And maybe everyone does that. Maybe everyone finds a way to feel good about their fundamental sinfulness, but it doesn’t make me hate you any less. It’s the other way around. I hate you so much that I start hating all of humanity, including myself. The idea that you and I are in any way alike—it’s disgusting.”

  “Wow.” Ambrose shook his head, as if in wonder. “I knew things were bad, but I had no idea.”

  “Do you see what I’ve been dealing with?”

  “I guess I should be honored that I loom so large in your imagination.”

  “Really? I thought you were the Second Coming. I’d have thought you’d be used to looming large.”

  “But what you’re saying now, the way you’re speaking to me—there’s a level to this that I never saw when you were in the group. A level of honesty, vulnerability. If you could have opened yourself up like this even once … It’s kind of amazing to see it now.”

  “Yeah, screw that. Screw you. I mean, Jesus Christ, Rick—you approve of my honesty? Who the hell are you to approve of me? I’m an ordained minister—I’m twice your age! I’m supposed to sit here and be grateful that some posturing upper-middle-class asshole from Shaker Heights approves of me? When he couldn’t care less if I approve of him?”

  “You misunderstood me.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Joseph and his brothers. I know how you feel about citing Scripture, but you’ll remember that the Bible is very clear on who the bad guys were. The older brothers sold Joseph into slavery, because why? Because they were envious. Because the Lord was with Joseph. That’s the refrain in Genesis: The Lord was with Joseph. He was the wunderkind, the favorite son, the person everyone went to with their dreams, because he had the gift from God. Everywhere he went, people put him in charge, they raised him up and praised him. And boy, did his approval matter to them. When I used to read Genesis as a young person, it seemed crystal clear who was good and who was bad. But you know what? When I read that book now, Joseph makes me sick. My sympathies are completely with the brothers, because God didn’t choose them. It was all preordained, and they were the unlucky ones, and it’s incredible: I hate you so much, I’ve started hating God!”

  “Yikes.”

  “I ask myself what I did to offend Him, what kind of abominations I committed, that I deserved the curse of you coming to this church. Or whether it was just His plan when He created me. That I be the bad guy. How am I supposed to love a God like that?”

  Ambrose leaned forward, bringing his head closer to the height of Russ’s.

  “Try to think,” he said. “Let’s both try to think. Is there anything I could say to you that wouldn’t set you off? I can’t express sympathy, I can’t say I admire you, I can’t apologize. It seems like literally any human response I could give you, you’ll turn it against me.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “Then what did you come here for? What do you want?”

  “I want you to be a person you could never be.”

  “What kind of person is that?”

  Russ considered the question. It was a relief to finally air his feelings, but he was following a familiar pattern. Later on—soon—he would be mortified by everything he’d said. For better or worse, this was who he was. When he saw the answer to Ambrose’s question, he went ahead and spoke it.

  “I want you to be a person who needs something. Who cares about my approval. You ask me what you could say that wouldn’t set me off, well, there is one thing. You could say you loved me, the way I used to love you.”

  Ambrose sat up straight again.

  “Don’t worry,” Russ said. “Even if you could say it, I wouldn’t believe you. You never loved me, and both of us know it.”

  Afraid that he might cry, like a little girl, he closed his eyes. It seemed unfair that he’d been punished for loving Ambrose. Punished for loving Clem, too. Punished even for loving Marion, because she was the one person who loved him in return, and she was the very person he seemed fated to injure. Shouldn’t his capacity for love, which was the essence of Christ’s gospel, have earned him a modicum of credit with God?

  “Wait here,” Ambrose said.

  Russ heard him get up and leave the office. Even on his worst days, especially on his worst days, his unhappiness had been a portal to God’s mercy. Now he could find no reward in it at all. He couldn’t even count on the reward of being allowed to call Frances, because he’d failed at the task she’d set him.

  Ambrose returned holding a collection plate from the sanctuary. When he crouched and set it on the floor, Russ saw that it was filled with water. Ambrose loosened the laces of the work shoes Russ was wearing. He’d bought them at Sears. “Lift your foot,” Ambrose said.

  “Don’t.”

  Ambrose lifted the foot himself and took off the shoe. Russ squirmed, but Ambrose held his leg and pulled off his sock. The ritual was too sacred, had too many biblical associations, for Russ to resist it by kicking him away.

  “Rick. Really.”

  Intent on his work, Ambrose pulled off the other shoe and sock.

  “Seriously,” Russ said. “You want to play Jesus?”

  “By that logic, anything we ever do to emulate him is grandiose.”

  “I don’t want you washing my feet.”

  “The gesture wasn’t original to him. It had a more general meaning, as an act of humility.”

  The water in the plate was very cold—it must have come from a drinking fountain. Russ watched powerlessly while Ambrose, on his knees, his black hair hanging in his eyes, washed one foot and then the other. He took a flannel shirt from the back of his desk chair and gently dried Russ’s feet with it. Then, leaning forward, head bowed, he grasped Russ’s hand.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m praying for you.”

  “I don’t want your prayers.”

  “Then I’m praying for myself. Shut the fuck up.”

  Russ knew better than to try to pray his way out of his hatred—he’d tried it a hundred times to no avail. What moved him now was the hand grasping his. It was slender, black-haired, still youthful. It was just a human hand, a young man’s hand, and it reminded him of Clem. His chest began to shake. Ambrose tightened his grip; and Russ surrendered to his weakness.

  He must have wept for ten minutes, with Ambrose kneeling at his feet. The goodness of Christ, the meaning of Christmas, was in him again. He’d forgotten its sweetness, but now he remembered. Remembered that when he was bathed in God
’s goodness it was enough to simply remain in it, experience the joy of it, not think of anything, just be there. When Ambrose finally released his hand, Russ clutched at it. He didn’t want the moment to end.

  Ambrose went away with the collection plate, and Russ put on his socks and shoes. His previous experiences of grace, most of them in his adolescence and his early twenties, had left his mind in a state of calm clarity, a kind of early-morning stillness that daily life would soon dispel. With the same clarity, now, he accepted that the Lord was with Ambrose.

  “I feel better,” he announced when Ambrose returned.

  “Then I’m not going to say another word. Let’s not mess it up.”

  Standing up, Russ was reminded of how short his nemesis was. He looked like a long-haired boy with a bandito costume mustache. Russ suspected that his hatred was merely subdued, not vanquished, but his clarity was holding. He felt no envy of the shelves of gifts the teenagers had given Ambrose. On the lower shelf was a long feather, doubtless from Arizona, the tail feather of a hawk. He picked it up and twirled the quill between his fingers. It was better to have nothing. Better to be like the Navajos, the Diné, as they called themselves, in Diné Bikéyah, among the four sacred mountains. The Diné had nothing. In their hogans, they lived with almost nothing. Even in better times, before the Europeans came, they had never had much. But spiritually they were the richest people he’d ever known.

  “I want to go to Arizona,” he said.

  Becky was literally following in Laura Dobrinsky’s steps. Behind the drugstore, she found a single set of deep footprints leading up a flight of wooden stairs. At the top of them, outside a weather-beaten door, she looked down to make sure Clem hadn’t followed her. She was very afraid of Laura, but she had no time to waste. She knocked on the door and waited. Hearing nothing from within, she knocked again and tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.

  Stepping inside, into a kitchenette, she saw Laura kneeling on a floor carpeted in tangerine shag. She was wearing her biker jacket and stuffing a fiberfill sleeping bag into a nylon sack. Beside it was a jumble of toiletries, a stack of books, and a military-style backpack, a sweater sleeve dangling from its mouth. An electrical space heater was scenting the air with burned dust.

  “Laura?”

  Laura stiffened, not turning her head.

  “I know you don’t want to see me,” Becky said, “but this isn’t about me. This is about Tanner’s career. He really needs you to play tonight. Will you please do that?”

  “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  “I talked to the agent. I talked to Gig, and you know why he’s here? Because of you. I mean, you’re such an amazing singer. I know you must be hurt, but—Gig’s dying to hear you.”

  “I know you must be hurt,” Laura echoed in a babyish voice. She punched the last of the sleeping bag into the nylon sack and tightened the drawstring.

  “I’m sorry,” Becky said, moving toward her. “I wish I could take everything back. I wish I’d known yesterday—that there’s a right path. A right way to live. I was on the wrong path.”

  “And praise be to Jesus for showing you the way.”

  Becky struggled to forbear. “My point is, you shouldn’t take it out on Tanner. It’s my fault, not his. Can’t you take one hour to help him when he truly needs you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m splitting. Going to San Francisco.”

  “I’m saying right now, though.”

  “Right now is when I’m doing it.”

  “Now? There’s like a foot of snow out there.”

  “No better time to thumb a ride. Everybody wants to help a stranger.”

  Laura loosened straps on the backpack and pushed the sleeping bag under them. Tanner had said it himself—she was radical.

  “I just think,” Becky said, “if you cared enough about Tanner to be with him for however long—”

  “Four years, sister.”

  “Don’t you still want the best for him?”

  Laura looked up through her pink lenses. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “No, I get that you’re angry. I get that I did a bad thing. But we both love Tanner—”

  “Oh really. You love him.”

  “I—think so.”

  “Well, isn’t that the sweetest thing.”

  Laura rooted in the pile of toiletries, and something came flying at Becky’s face. She caught it defensively. It was a toothpaste tube, halfway rolled up from the bottom. Seeing the word Gynol, she dropped it. Not toothpaste.

  “A little present for you,” Laura said. “Unless—Jesus. You’re probably on the Pill.”

  Becky’s hand felt dirtied. She rubbed it on her coat.

  “Not that a cheerleader would care, but you do realize you’re just buying into the male-industrial complex? Messing with your hormones for their pleasure? There’s nothing a dick loves better than trouble-free access. Even Tanner tried to get me on the Pill. You’re going to make him sorry he ever bothered with me.”

  The room was underheated, but Becky was sweating. The gagging sensation in her chest was like the carsickness of her childhood, the prospect of sex unfolding like a mountain road ahead of her, a hundred curves coming to make her even sicker. She’d gotten into the car of being Tanner’s. Now she wished it would slow down.

  “My point is,” she said unsteadily, “he really needs you to play tonight.”

  “Or wait. Wait.” The eyes behind the pink lenses narrowed. “Have you even had sex?”

  “Have I—?”

  “Oh my God. Of course you haven’t. No, please, no, the Bible says you shouldn’t touch me there.” Laura laughed. “Not that being a churchgoer ever stopped our boy. He’s quite the frisky Christian. You’d better be ready for that.”

  The cold sweat of carsickness.

  “Or, no, I hope you’re not ready. I hope the only thing you let him do with you is sing hymns. Serve him right.”

  “Please,” Becky said. “We need to go right now. The agent is there, he came to hear you, and I just think—we should go.”

  “I told you to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Please, Laura.”

  Laura sprang to her feet and came at Becky. Why Becky dropped to her knees, she couldn’t have said. Maybe she didn’t want to be so much taller, maybe it was a gesture of supplication. But, finding herself kneeling again, she bowed her head and pressed her palms together. Please help Laura, she prayed. Please forgive me.

  Laura shrieked. “What the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Becky kept her head bowed. From above her came a sputtering, and then a cold hand was in her hair, grabbing a fistful of it, violating her physical sanctity, trying to yank her to her feet. She could feel hairs tearing from their roots, but she refused to stand up. The hand let go. An instant later, she was walloped in the ear. The blow was vicious, there was wristbone in it, and sparks in her vision—stars. She saw stars. The blow that followed was neck-wrenching, brain-shaking. Worse than the pain was the sheer fact of violence. No one had ever hit her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to keep praying.

  Now Laura was kneeling, too. Her fingertips brushed Becky’s ear, which felt skinless and hot. “Becky, I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

  Please, God. Please, God.

  “I’m—shit. I’m no better than my old man.”

  At the change in Laura’s voice, which might have been an answer to her prayer, something stirred in Becky’s core—the same opening-up that she’d experienced in the sanctuary. God was still there. She concentrated, not wanting to lose her connection to Him. But Laura spoke again.

  “You know about that, right? Tanner told you?”

  Becky shook her head.

  “He didn’t tell you why I moved in with him? With his family?”

  It was news to Becky that Laura had lived with the Evanses. Never mind the why of it.

  “I know what it’s like to be hit,” Laura said
. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”

  “It’s all right. I did a bad thing to you, too.”

  “That’s exactly how my old man made me feel. Like I deserved it.” Laura touched Becky’s shoulder. “Are you really all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “An open hand can do a lot of damage. Like, I’m partially deaf in one ear. It was Tanner’s mom who noticed. She was my piano teacher, and now she’s basically my mother. The other one—I can’t even be in the same room with her. He still hits her, and she still thinks she deserves it.”

  Becky felt grateful—to God—that Laura was speaking more kindly, but beneath the gratitude were the beginnings of a grievance with Tanner. He hadn’t told her that Laura’s father had beaten her; that Laura had lived with his family; that she was practically his sister. If Becky had understood the depths of what she was stepping into, she would have been more careful. The harm she’d proceeded to cause was partly her fault, but it seemed to her that it was partly also Tanner’s.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “It’s just the left ear.”

  “No, I mean, about everything. I’m sorry about everything. I’m thinking—maybe I should step aside. Leave the two of you alone.”

  “Too late for that, sister. He’s in love with you.”

  Again the carsick vista.

  “I asked him point-blank,” Laura said. “That was his answer.”

  “But it’s only because I threw myself at him. If I just went away…”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “But I know he still has feelings for you. If I just—”

  “Mess with his emotions and walk away? That truly would be a cunt move. Not that I can’t see you doing it.”

  Loudly, or angrily, it seemed, a telephone rang. The phone was on the wall in the kitchenette. Laura gave it an uninterested glance.

  “I’m the one who’s going to split,” she said. “I should have done it years ago.” She stood up and added, “I’m sorry I hit you.”