Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

  “With a kiss,” she said, “I forgive thee.”

  “You don’t seem right.”

  “I suggest taking the kiss while you can.”

  “Marion?”

  She kissed him, and everything was interchangeable. Not just he and the other man, not just she and the other woman, but past and present. They hadn’t made love in so long, it might as well have been twenty-five years. She in her younger body, he pulling off the coat she’d bought, the air as dry and thin as Arizona’s, the fading light a mountain light. And how easy it had been in Arizona. Along with a faulty mind and a believing heart, God had given her an oversexedness so scratchable that she could relieve it in a public library without attracting notice. And how easy it was again. Seizing on some incidental contact and running with it, she promptly convulsed. She opened her eyes and saw gleaming, in Russ’s eyes, a memory of that orgasmic girl. He’d liked that girl, oh, yes, he had. The gift she’d been given had made him feel powerful. Although she’d misplaced it in the swamp of motherhood, lost it altogether in the wasteland of anxious depression, her refinding of it made him powerful again. His thrusting abandon hurt around the edges, and she would pay for it later, but his excitement excited her. She urged him on, urged herself on. She heard an almost barking sound, an ongoing laugh of surprise, until further convulsing silenced her. He redoubled his efforts, but here, too, the past recurred. As in Arizona, once sated, she remembered her guilt.

  When he’d finished, he rested his full weight on her, his scratchy cheek against her neck.

  “Not so bad,” she said. “Right?”

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “Well. No rush.”

  The only light remaining was from the bedside alarm clock, the only sound the passing of cars in the distance. He kissed her neck.

  “To be with you like this—I’d forgotten.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “It’s such a simple gift.”

  “Shh.”

  The sound of a car passing was like a breaking wave of water. Guilt fluttered in her again.

  “Turning and turning,” he said. “‘Till by turning and turning, we come round right.’ That’s how this feels. Like I’ve been turning and turning…”

  The song was devotional, but she knew what he meant. To bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed. In the plain words of the song was a joy so deep that its roots were inextricable from sorrow’s, and the release of sorrow was even sweeter than the other kind of release. Sorrow was of the heart, and she gave herself to it. As she wept, she felt him hardening inside her. It made her cry harder. She was his again.

  He brushed at her tears with his fingertips. “I never want to leave you.”

  “That’s nice,” she said, sniffing. “But I should probably use the bathroom.”

  “I’m no good for this world. We never should have left Indiana. We should have spent our whole life there, just the two of us and the kids, a community of believers…”

  She moved beneath him, hinting at the bathroom, but he wouldn’t let her go.

  “All I want is a family to provide for. A Lord to worship. And a wife who … Marion, I swear. If you’ll forgive me, simple gifts will be enough.”

  “Shh.”

  “You always know the right thing to do. How you knew we should—this is the last thing I would have imagined happening, but you were right. You’re always right. You were right about—”

  “Shh. Just let me pee.”

  Careful not to stub a toe, she felt her way to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. There was a magician’s trick to be performed, a snap of the fingers that would make Russ’s remorse disappear. His confessions had been piteously sincere, like a little boy’s, and it was time to make her own confession. The sparrow had told her it was time.

  And yet: what if she didn’t? What exactly would be gained by dragging him through Bradley Grant, through Santa, through the abortion, through Rancho Los Amigos? She could clear her conscience by groveling in the dirt, but was it really a kindness to her husband? Now that Perry’s calamity had brought Russ back to her, might it not be better to simply love him and serve him? He was like a boy, and a boy needed structure in his life, and wasn’t remorse a kind of structure? She would never be simple, but she could give him the gift of thinking he’d wronged her more than she’d wronged him. Might this not be kinder than dumping her complexities on him?

  It could have been Satan asking, but she didn’t think it was, because the temptation didn’t feel evil. It felt more like punishment. To not confess her sins to Russ—to renounce her chance to be chastised, maybe pitied, maybe even forgiven—would be to carry the burden for the remainder of her life. The unending burden of being alone with what she knew.

  I need help here. Any kind of sign would be welcome.

  She waited, shivering, on the toilet seat. If God was listening, He gave no indication of it, and while she waited something shifted in her. Although she could always ask Him again later, she’d made her decision.

  Russ had peeled back the bedspread and pulled a sheet over himself. She joined him beneath it. “I have something to say to you, and I want you to listen.”

  He put a hand on her breast. She gently removed it.

  “So you know,” she said, “my father was manic-depressive—”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, you knew he was a suicide. But I never told you about my own troubles. I never told you how disturbed I was when I was Perry’s age. I was afraid of scaring you away, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. Russ, honey, I couldn’t bear it. I loved you so much, I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I knew you were a little crazy.”

  “But it was more than a little. You had a right to know before you married me. I knew what the danger was, and I didn’t tell you. So I don’t want to hear about this being your fault.”

  “It is my fault. I was the—”

  “Shh. Just listen. You’re mixing up two different things. You feel bad about your … indiscretion. And even that, you shouldn’t feel bad about. I gave you my permission.”

  “That doesn’t mean I had to use it.”

  “You were hurt. I hurt you because you’d hurt me—these things happen in a marriage. My point is that you had bad luck. You’re embarrassed by what happened in Kitsillie, you feel guilty about it, and I understand that. But it’s enough. You don’t have to feel guilty about Perry, too. His troubles all come from me.”

  “I knew very well what God wanted me to do.”

  “Sweetie, I didn’t listen to Him, either. From now on, we’ll have to try to do better. That’s why I want us to pray together every day. I want us to change. I want us to be closer. I want us to experience the joy of God together.”

  He shuddered.

  “A terrible thing happened, but there can still be joy. I was looking at the birds outside—can’t we still take joy in Creation? Can’t we take joy in each other?”

  He gave a cry of pain.

  “Shh, shh.”

  “I don’t deserve you!”

  “Shh. I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I don’t deserve joy!”

  “No one does. It’s a gift from God.”

  And Becky had been so happy. Finally a spring-semester senior, walking among underclassmen but feeling a new commonality with the Class of ’72, she’d made a point, every day, of being friendly to at least one classmate she’d never spoken to before, a boy taking metal shop, a girl from the Baptist church where she and Tanner had worshiped. It was a kind of daily Christian service, and then, on the weekend, if she and Tanner had time, they stopped by a party approved by Jeannie Cross and stayed for half an hour, not drinking, just putting a seal on the proceedings, before slipping away to a realm beyond high-school reckoning.

  By late March, she had an acceptance letter from Lake Forest College and realistic hopes for Lawrence and Beloit. The anticipation of sweater weather in Wisconsin, a dorm r
oom looking out on a quadrangle dappled with fallen leaves, new school spirit to be developed, new social heights to be scaled, was almost one blessing too many, because she already had a summer in Europe to look forward to. Earlier in the month, at a gig in Chicago not attended by her, Tanner had met a young couple from Denmark who’d loved his show and happened to be the organizers of a folk-music festival in Aarhus. American folk was huge in Europe, a whole circuit of summer festivals had slots to be filled by American performers, and a solo billing in Aarhus, which the Danish couple had offered Tanner, could open doors to all of them. Tanner had returned from the gig more excited than Becky had ever seen him. Wouldn’t it be amazing, he said, to experience Europe together, be part of the scene, and meet the likes of Donovan, if not Richie Havens?

  Becky hadn’t been thinking of Europe at all. After Christmas, to abide by her promises to Jesus, she’d shared her inheritance with her brothers. She could no longer afford a big European trip with her mother, and given how her mother had been acting, smoking her cigarettes, paying little attention to anyone but herself, she’d quietly decided to stay home with Tanner. But to be in Europe with him? To whirl in his arms on the Champs-Élyseés? Cross the Alps together in a sleeper car? Toss coins into the Trevi Fountain and make wishes for each other? All she needed to do was save up money and disinvite her mother.

  Owing to some marital strife about which Becky had learned only enough to be revolted by her father, her mother had moved into their house’s third-floor storage room, fashioned a bed for herself in a low-ceilinged corner of it, and positioned an old escritoire beneath its window. When Becky ventured up to the third floor, after a school day rendered useless by visions of Europe, her mother was sitting at her desk in a haze of stale smoke. In lieu of smoking, she twisted a mechanical pencil while Becky laid out her plan.

  “I don’t need to go to Europe,” her mother said. “But I’m not sure your going with Tanner is a good idea.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “I’m not questioning your good sense. I was impressed by the decision you made about your money—it was a very loving thing to do. But my understanding was that you were saving your share of it for college.”

  “I hardly have to pay for anything but the plane ticket. If Tanner gets into other festivals, they’ll cover our expenses.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “I’ll still have enough for two years of school. After that, I’ll be working summers, and I can get financial aid.”

  Her mother continued to twist the pencil. She’d lost so much weight that a resemblance to Aunt Shirley had emerged. It couldn’t have been healthy to lose that much weight so quickly.

  “I haven’t wanted to ask,” she said, “because I know it’s uncomfortable for you. But—have you and Tanner had sex?”

  Becky felt her face burn.

  “I’m not trying to embarrass you,” her mother said. “A simple yes or no will do.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Okay.”

  “That is—no. We haven’t.”

  “That’s fine, honey. It’s more than fine—it’s lovely. I’m proud of you. But if you want to go to Europe with your boyfriend, I’ll need to know you have good protection.”

  Becky blushed again. Her friends all assumed that she and Tanner were having intercourse, and she’d done nothing to disabuse them. She’d enjoyed the secret that she and Tanner shared, the secret of her chastity, and the feeling of power and goodness it brought her. But to hear the same assumption from her mother was weirdly awful.

  “Do you have protection?” her mother said.

  “Do you want me to be having sex?”

  “Dear God, no. Why would you think that?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Honey, I know you can. It’s just—I also know how things can happen.”

  “What are you doing up here, anyway?”

  Her mother sighed. “I am proofreading for the Great Books Foundation.”

  “I mean sleeping up here. Hiding up here.”

  “Your father and I are unhappy with each other.”

  “Yeah, who would have guessed.”

  “I know. I know it’s been uncomfortable for you. I apologize for that.”

  “It’s your life. I just don’t feel like listening to your advice.”

  Her mother set down the pencil. “It’s not advice. If you want to go to Europe with Tanner, it’s a requirement. In fact, I think you should see a doctor right away. Will you let me make you an appointment?”

  “I can make my own appointment.”

  “Whatever you prefer.”

  “I’ll go do it right now. Do you want to listen on Dad’s phone? Make sure I get my appointment?”

  “Becky—”

  There were three doors to slam on the way to her bedroom, and she slammed all three. The world seemed upside down to her. Premarital sex was supposed to be wrong, but Tanner had already had it with someone else, her friends expected her to have it, Clem expected her to have it, even her mother expected her to have it. Probably Judson, too, if anyone had asked him!

  She wasn’t a prude. She liked necking and petting and—coming. There had been moments when she was carried away into wanting Tanner inside her, moments when sex seemed like a blessing that God intended her to crave. What had saved her, each time, was Tanner’s own hesitation. By firmly defining her limits from the outset, she’d made her virginity a thing for which the two of them shared responsibility, a jewel they participated equally in guarding, so that, when she forgot herself, Tanner was there to catch her. If this wasn’t how real love worked, she didn’t know what real love was.

  Resentfully, as though forced to do chores while her friends were at the swimming pool, she went to her mother’s gynecologist and submitted to being “fitted” for a diaphragm and tested on her ability to properly insert it. She was given a tube of jelly like the one that Laura Dobrinsky had once thrown at her face. The gear she brought home reduced love to something medical. It connected her, sordidly, to all the other girls in New Prospect with similar gear in their drawers.

  And yet: wasn’t it wrong to feel superior to those girls? Despite much prayer and reading of the Gospels, she had yet to recapture the spiritual ecstasy she’d experienced after smoking pot, the bodily yearning to be Christ’s servant, but the essence of her revelation had stayed with her: she was sinfully proud and needed to repent. Ever since that revelation, and beginning with the sharing of her inheritance, she’d endeavored to be a good Christian, but the paradox of doing good was that she felt even prouder of herself. It was as if, although the terms had changed, she was still pursuing superiority. In the Gospels, Jesus paid more attention to the poor and the sick, to the iniquitous and the despised, than to the righteous and the privileged. Now that she’d taken the step of obtaining contraception, she wondered if withholding herself from the man she loved might constitute, in itself, a kind of vanity. Hadn’t God revealed Himself to her precisely at her lowest moment? Might it not paradoxically be more Christian to humble herself, accept that she was one of those girls, and yield up her jewel?

  As soon as she had the thought, she knew what she wanted. She wanted to fall, and by falling to deepen her relationship with Tanner and Jesus. And she knew exactly how it would happen.

  Her fervor for Crossroads had cooled when her father returned to the group, and she’d been too busy with Tanner to earn the “hours” she needed to be eligible for Arizona. Kim Perkins and David Goya had pressured her to do some marathon last-minute hours-earning, so she could join them in Kitsillie, but when the trip roster for Kitsillie was posted she saw the name not only of her father but of Frances Cottrell. Kim and David still expected Becky to come along with them, but now she had a better plan for Easter vacation. She wouldn’t give herself to Tanner in his van. She would do it with proper ceremony, in the privacy of her otherwise empty house.

  Her only misgivings were related to her family. She wa
s disgusted with her father, because she had reason to believe that he was trespassing against her mother, committing adultery with Mrs. Cottrell. Although Becky wouldn’t trespass against anyone by giving herself to Tanner, she would still, in a sense, be sinking to her father’s level. Worse yet, she’d be sinking to Clem’s, and she was very sorry to give him that satisfaction.

  She hadn’t missed Clem at Christmas, not one bit. His insult of Tanner, his uttering of the word passive, continued to rankle in her heart, and she was sure he would ridicule her discovery of God as well. The mere sight of his empty bedroom, the reminder of the many late nights when she’d lain down on his bed and confided in him, was upsetting to her, vaguely sickening. Her aversion was so strong that it extended to Tanner’s room at his parents’ house. When Tanner showed it to her, during Christmas vacation, she gave it a once-over from the doorway without going in. The room reeked of Laura, who’d been a kind of foster sister to him, a sister he had sex with, and Becky wanted nothing to do with it.

  When her parents, at Christmas dinner, in a rare moment of unity, lamented Clem’s betrayal of the family’s pacifism, she didn’t say a word in his defense. When Tanner, to her surprise, declared that he was blown away by the courage of Clem’s moral convictions, she insisted that Clem was just being an asshole. When Clem proceeded to send her a letter, apologizing for missing the holidays and laying out his rationale for quitting school, she crumpled it and tossed it in her wastebasket, because he hadn’t apologized for insulting Tanner, and when he began to leave phone messages with her mother, asking Becky to call him at such-and-such time on such-and-such day, she ignored them.

  The night before he caught up with her, in February, she’d accompanied the Bleu Notes to a cocktail lounge surprisingly more crowded than it had been in January. Parties of older women had claimed the tables nearest the band, and they were obviously there—drinking away, spending money—because of Tanner. Halfway through the second set, Gig Benedetti himself showed up and joined her at a table in the rear. Gig did the booking for a great many bands, and it pleased her to think that by letting him admire her looks and touch her elbow, by letting him believe they had a private understanding, she’d increased his attention to Tanner. “It hurts me to say it,” Gig said, “but you were right. He’s better off without what’s-her-name. He’s packing in the ladies, and that’s dynamite.” To be complimented on her intelligence, and to see the adoring expressions of Tanner’s fans, to hear their tipsy hooting when he strapped on his twelve-string and played a solo number, and to know that she was the girl who got to be alone with him: she was almost too happy with her life to breathe.