Strong Motion: A Novel

by Jonathan Franzen

  Renée returned her spoon to its original position. “I’m not unhappy.”

  “You think I have no personal interest in you. You think I took you to lunch to cajole you into answering my questions. Is that what you think? Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re honest with me. I admire that. But you’re wrong, and I want to know how I can show you how wrong you are. Won’t you tell me?”

  “I guess—” Renée was at a loss. “I guess if you didn’t ask me any questions, ever—then I’d have to think there was something else you wanted.”

  “But you’d never believe I wanted to be your friend. Hm. Well, I suppose I can’t entirely blame you.” Melanie dug in her purse as the waiter deposited their drinks. She took out a flat velvet box and pushed it across the table. “This is for you.”

  Renée looked at the box as if it happened to be where her eyes fell while she worried about something else.

  “Do open it.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, really, Renée, I’m about to become quite impatient with you. You don’t need to refuse a gift just to show me you’re an honest person. We reach a point where it becomes insulting to me. Let’s not pretend our circumstances are the same. An older woman who enjoys shopping gives a younger woman a token of her respect and affection, I really don’t see any reason to be so morbidly scrupulous. There. That’s right.” Her eyes shone as Renée suddenly grabbed the box and, after a hesitation, removed a string of pearls.

  “These are beautiful.”

  “With your colors, your hair, your skin. Pearls, platinum, silver, diamonds, I know from similar experience. Put, put them on. That’s right. Of course we have to allow for this being something less than the ideal dress . . .” She handed her compact across the table, mirror upright. “Would you have time for a little shopping after lunch? I’d hate you not wearing these because nothing went.” Renée returned the pearls to the box. “Actually, I’m not sure these are my style.”

  “Oh, is that so? What is your style?”

  “I don’t know. Somerville.”

  “You! You are not a Somerville kind of person, anyone can see that. Not unless Somerville has changed greatly since I was growing up, which I can’t imagine it has.”

  “What makes you think I’m not?”

  “Your manners.”

  “My manners are awful. I’m offending you right and left.”

  “You’re offending me in the manner of a very well bred, well educated, and self-aware young woman. And you know it.”

  Weak though it was, the Campari had gone straight to Renée’s cheeks. She was immune to many things, but not to alcohol and not to a word like “self-aware,” which, when used in reference to her, reliably touched off a small shudder in her body, a spasm of self-love. And after the spasm, a hotness of face, a weightlessness of limbs. She laughed, looking at the pearls. “How much did these cost you?”

  “Yes, keep trying. But you’re going to find me very difficult to offend today.”

  Renée put the pearls around her neck again and held up the compact. The mirror showed her a room broken into darkened, depthless fragments—chandeliers caught in the act of being, tables on a tilting floor, subliminal flashes of herself, a white throat. She spoke deliberately. “Maybe I’ll keep them after all. If it’s all the same to you.”

  “No, in fact, nothing would please me more.”

  “Perfect for the two of us, then.”

  “You’re smiling, and you’re right: what does a professional woman care about jewelry?” Melanie’s own wrist jewelry jingled as she raised her glass. She drank with an actressy angling of her body and twisting of her hand. “But you see I’m just a silly housewife. I have no particularly noble deeds to my credit. And at my age it’s possible to feel as if all one has ever done in life is bring unhappiness to the world. Perhaps you can’t really imagine that unless you’ve had children, but—”

  “I can imagine it.”

  “I believe you, Renée. I believe you can. Perhaps you can also imagine how it feels to realize that your own children consider you a selfish person, and that there’s nothing you can do to change this. They may be quite, quite wrong about you. They are quite wrong about you. But the fact remains that they’re convinced that you’re a selfish old witch, and this hurts you so terribly that you can’t even explain to them why they’re wrong.”

  All that was left of Renée’s drink was ice and pink water. “You know I know your son, don’t you?”

  “You—? Oh yes, of course. I was very irritated with him that particular day. I was irritated that he’d invited people inside, with the house in such a state, although in hindsight I suppose it was all for the best.” Melanie stroked her glass, appearing more and more to speak to herself. “Because there are things I want to say—things I must say—to someone. And if I could only relieve certain anxieties I have—if you could only give me a little advice, or comfort, so we could get that out of the way—I’d want more than anything to spend time with you. I want to make someone happy. And you in particular, I don’t even know why.”

  “What advice?”

  “We don’t need to discuss that yet.”

  Renée leaned forward confidentially. There was a new, wild light in her face, as if great ironies were dawning on her. “I think we should discuss it right now. Then it’s all over with, right?”

  Melanie was about to speak but then she noticed Renée’s empty glass and attracted the waiter’s attention. When the fresh drink came, she watched Renée sip her way deeply into it.

  “I own a house,” she said huskily, “that I can’t insure against earthquake damage and can’t get more than eighty percent of its January value for. Should I sell now and invest the money elsewhere at ten percent? Or are prices going to bounce back up in less than two years? That’s my first question. I also, because of the stupidity and stubbornness of my father, own three hundred thousand shares of a company whose stock has lost a quarter of its value since the first of April, largely because of the threat of earthquakes. I’m about to get control of those shares and I want to know, do I cut my losses, or are the earthquakes going to stop? And there you have it. I’ve told you more about myself than anyone but my attorney knows. Is that clear? I’ve opened my heart, Renée, and it’s in your hands. You can judge for yourself whether I’m simply desperate or whether I’m trusting you because I feel an affinity between us.” With sudden briskness, she took her half glasses from her purse. She scowled at her menu for exactly three seconds before asking Renée, whose menu appeared to be in Arabic, what she thought she was going to have. She was inclining towards the red snapper and the house salad. How did that sound?

  “I need to read the menu,” Renée said.

  Melanie tossed hers aside and gazed at a far corner of the dining room. Finally Renée gave up trying to make sense of the entries. She drank off the remainder of her Campari and soda. “What makes you think I have any advice for you? You read the paper. I read the paper.”

  “I don’t give a hoot what’s in the paper,” said Melanie. “Why not?”

  “Because everyone can read it. It’s automatically worthless as investment information. The markets are depressed now because of all the uncertainty in the papers. They say there probably won’t be any more major earthquakes. But they also say there might very well be.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t you see? Probabilities don’t do me any good. I have to make a decision.”

  “I know. I understand. But why don’t you assume there’s a fifty percent chance of further earthquakes, and sell fifty percent of your stock? Or do twenty percent, if you think there’s a twenty percent chance.”

  “No! No!” Melanie bounced vehemently on her banquette. “You’re not following me. I’m saying that I have already lost one quarter of what I had three months ago, before I could do a thing about it. I’m saying that I will not lose any more, I will not, I will not. If
I sell fifty percent of that stock and it rebounds to its March level, I’ll have suffered a pure loss on that fifty percent.”

  “But you couldn’t do anything about that,” Renée said in a reasonable voice. “So why don’t you just decide that what you inherited is only as much as you have when you get control of it. That’s what you’re starting with, and you can sell it all, and that’s what you got. It still must be a lot, right?”

  Melanie closed her eyes. “This is what I go through with my attorney. This is what my husband tells me. I was hoping that a woman might be able to understand why I refuse, I refuse to be told that this is all I get. This isn’t greed, Renée. It’s a matter of not being stupid. If I have to make the wrong decision, I at least want it to be on someone else’s recommendation. Because I simply could not live having to blame myself.”

  “Blame your father,” Renée ventured.

  “If only that would help. I can blame him for putting me in this position, but I’m still the one in this position.”

  “Larry Axelrod? At MIT. I can put you in touch with him.” Melanie leaned forward, shaking her head and smiling at Renée’s innocence. “Don’t you see? Every investor in Boston is going to him or other people like him. They’ve already had their impact on the market. I don’t get any edge by taking their advice, and what’s more, I don’t believe them. I don’t think they can tell the truth, because they know that all the markets are listening. That’s why they say fifty percent this, fifty percent that.”

  “So you think that because I don’t know anything about New England earthquakes I’m the perfect person to ask.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s very rational of you.”

  “I’m glad you think so. You see, because among other things, I’ve noticed that of all the institutions in Boston, Harvard is the only one not saying anything about the earthquakes. And I have to wonder why that is.”

  “Nobody’s doing local studies right now. We do mainly theory, also global studies and research with global networks.”

  “And you, as an intelligent seismologist, are unable to look at the work being done locally and come to any independent conclusions?”

  “I can come to conclusions. But I don’t see why you think they’re worth more than Larry Axelrod’s.”

  “Renée, I’ve spent half my life among academics, and I’ve seen these Larry Axelrods on television. I know a special mind when I see one. There’s no point in telling me not to trust you, because I’m not going to listen to you. I’m going to trust you, and you’re going to tell me how I can repay you. Because I do intend to repay you.”

  Melanie had put her purse on her lap and rested her hand on the catch. Renée had been expecting this. “You want to know whether to sell the house, and whether to sell the stock. Two simple answers.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I’m wrong?”

  “Well, you’ll know that if you’re right, I’ll be grateful to you. And if I’m grateful to you, you’ll be very, very happy to be a friend of mine.”

  “You mean money.”

  Melanie looked down at her purse as though sorry to find it on her lap. “Preferably not. But whatever your style is. I wouldn’t want to give you something you didn’t find useful.”

  “But if I’m wrong anyway?”

  “I don’t expect you to be wrong, but if you are, I’ll know that you tried very hard to be right. I’ll know that I did everything I possibly could to make the right decision, that I consulted a person I trusted, and we simply had bad luck. As I said, it’s not that I’m so greedy. It’s that I can’t bear the responsibility.”

  “This is Sweeting-Aldren we’re talking about.”

  “That’s right.” Melanie laughed nervously. “I hope you didn’t find that out from Louis. He makes a point of being indiscreet.”

  “I think I can help you,” Renée said.

  “You haven’t seen him again, have you?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You said you knew him. You meant the day of the earthquake. You didn’t see him again after that.”

  “No, actually. Actually I did. He invited me to a party at your daughter’s.”

  “Oh.” Melanie paled, touching her mouth. “I see. And did you go?

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I tried to.”

  “You did not tell me that.” She twisted sideways in her seat, touching every part of her face with her fingers, as if she wasn’t sure it was all there. “And that—that should have been the very first thing you told me.” She nodded to herself. “The very first thing.”

  “I tried to.”

  She swung violently to face Renée. “Are you involved with my son?”

  “No!”

  “Have you been involved with him?”

  “No. No! I went to a party with him. And a few weeks ago I— went to dinner at your sister’s. Your daughter’s. He seemed to think he needed a date. He was very polite to me.”

  “Did you talk about me?”

  “Not at all.”

  “How come your hands are shaking?”

  “Because you’re scaring me.”

  “Did you tell him that I’d called you?”

  “I mentioned it, yeah.”

  “How many hours?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How many hours have you spent with him?”

  She shrugged. “Ten. Eight. I don’t know.”

  Melanie leaned across the table and searched Renée’s face, touching it with her gaze as she’d been touching her own face with her fingers, her fear growing as it sent roots deeper into the gap between the sweetness of the face and the underlying possibility that Renée was lying. It was pathetically evident how much she longed to trust Renée. But she couldn’t get a definite answer from the face, and she’d placed such hopes in it that she couldn’t bear to keep on looking, lest she find her suspicions confirmed. “Oh God.” Again she turned sideways on the banquette. “Oh God, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you call Louis and ask him? If it’s so important to you.”

  “Ten minutes ago you were trying to convince me not to trust you. Now you’re doing the opposite. It’s because I mentioned money. I dare you to say it’s not true.”

  “What’s happened is that you seem to think I have some reason to be lying to you.”

  “You’re not the same person I spoke with two months ago. And now I see why. Now I see why. How could I have not thought of this? Oh, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Are you ladies ready to order?” With a flourish the waiter produced a ballpoint pen.

  Making severe eye contact with him, Melanie donned her glasses and placed her order. Then, while Renée ordered, she clutched the glasses in her fist, squeezing them so hard the plastic creaked, and stared hopelessly across the dining room. Renée covered the fist with her hand. She was thinking so hard that her lips stirred faintly. “I said I could help you,” she said. “I know what you should do with your stock, and you’ll be very happy you asked me. I’m going to help you.”

  Melanie tilted her head back and swallowed.

  “I’m going to tell you what to do,” Renée said. “And I’m so sure I’m right that I’m going to back it up with whatever money I have.”

  The light in her face had become a glittering, intoxicated implacability. She stroked Melanie’s hand. Suddenly fingernails sank into her wrist. A face rushed forward; it smelled of breath, perfume, ingratiating skin cream. “Are you involved with my son?”

  “No!”

  “And you want money from me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to make a deal.”

  “Yes.”

  Melanie slumped back into her seat. “All right.” A full minute passed as she sat and bit her lips, her fears obviously undispelled. Finally Renée asked if she wanted wine.

  “Not for me, thank you. You may order a glass for yourself.”


  “Can I order a bottle?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  “Why don’t we relax and enjoy ourselves?”

  Melanie shook her head hopelessly. “It would have been better to avoid money as a topic. It would have been better to wait. You can mock me now, but I really did have hopes for a different kind of lunch.”

  “I’m going to give you good advice. You won’t be sorry.”

  “I’m sorry already. I’m sorry to have involved you in this. I’m sorry to be involved in it myself.”

  “Let’s just finish, then. Let’s just do the last thing. And then we can relax.”

  Melanie stiffened at this mention of the “last thing.” She hesitated and hesitated before she finally took a matchbook from her purse, wrote a figure on the inside, and nudged it across the tablecloth.

  Renée read the figure, took the pen, and calmly added a zero. “I may want more,” she said. “If I’m right. You’ll need to give me a few days. But I definitely won’t take less, unless . . .” She considered. “Why don’t I take whatever cash I have in the bank and put it up as security? Then we can have a—what would you call it? A sliding scale. The less right I am, the less you give me. If I’m wrong, you keep the security.”

  “I’m not going to discuss this with you. We’ll meet on Tuesday.”

  “See if you can do better in the meantime.”

  “I may do just that.”

  “Uh-huh. Talk to Larry Axelrod.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Renée ate a plate of carpaccio drenched in yellow oil. She kept emptying her wineglass, until she began to glow like an object in a kiln, her selfconsciousness transmuted into volubility as she did her Why I Hate Boston number, her California’s Even Worse number. Melanie might have been listening to a daughter whom she liked and had every reason to be entertained by, and yet seeing in her only reminders of her own heavy heart. Of her relative proximity to death, of her inability to relax and enjoy a lunch, of her estrangement from the world of things that young people talk about. This really does happen to parents who are unhappy, even those who love their children.

  Her tongue curled as she added up the figures on the check. Renée was glowing as if she’d been through a snowstorm. Back on the planet of ceaseless car traffic, in front of the hotel, she asked for money for a cab. Melanie opened her purse on her hip and dug a twenty out. “I’m sure you think it’s silly of me to keep asking. Perhaps it doesn’t even matter. But—”