Strong Motion: A Novel

by Jonathan Franzen

  Jurene still went to the same cottage she’d been renting for twenty years in Barnstable, on the Cape. She was going there Sunday. “After I’ve been at the Cape I can smell the smell here for about two days before I’m used to it again. You want to know something really peculiar, though, sometimes on the Cape I can smell it at the beach.”

  “It’s like a ringing in your ear, except in your nose.”

  “No, I’m talking about the smell. Here.” Jurene produced a handful of low-resolution pictures of a snowman and a snow fort and a snowball fight in the little front lawn. In the background of every one of them, well behind the houses across the street, was Sweeting-Aldren’s drilling derrick. There was nothing else it could be; no chemical process that Renée knew of required a structure like that. The date was stamped on the back: February 1970. “Can I have one of these?”

  “Borrow ’em, sure. Why don’t I see if can find the negatives.” She opened a drawer in which negatives were under such pressure that some of them sprang out and fluttered to the floor. She left them there while, on second thought, she opened a tin of butter cookies and arranged them on a painted plate. Renée held her glass of Amaretto to the graying light in the window. A label on the bottle said According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  The sky was deepening as if the land were on a slope and sliding towards a precipice. In the parking lot of an office complex affording a good view of Sweeting-Aldren, she sat on the hood of the Mustang with the Caddulo pictures and a 71/2-minute USGS topo map, comparing perspectives on a cooling tower, trying to triangulate a location for the derrick. Thousands of pig-sized and cow-sized boulders, some of them possibly glacial and native, shored up the hillside on which the complex stood.

  A voice spoke from right behind her: “What ugly children.”

  She turned and weathered a spasm of fright. Rod Logan was standing by the car, holding a picture that had been lying on the hood.

  “Give me that,” she said.

  Behind her in the parking lot, junior executives were walking to their shiny cars. Rather than risk a scene, Logan handed her the picture. He strolled to the brink of the asphalt and peered down at the yellow pond below the boulders.

  “You know,” he said, “in the old days, people like you, they’d come around, they’d get warned, and if they kept coming around they’d have the shit beaten out of them, and nobody would really complain or litigate, it was just part of the way the game was played. But everybody’s gotten so gosh-damed kind and gentle lately. It’s reached a point where all I can really do is ask you politely to clear out, and if you choose not to, we’re no longer on terra firma, if you know what I mean. We don’t know what kind of procedures are required. There’s no literature on it.”

  Renée got in the car.

  “This is quite the stylish car, incidentally. Nice duds, too. Looks like you’ve found a wealthy patron.”

  She started the engine. Logan leaned over her, looking straight down on her lap.

  “Goodbye, Renée.”

  She made another trip to the Square, stopping at the clinic in the Holyoke Center and then dropping off the Caddulo negatives for enlargements. The rest of the weekend, late into both nights, she worked at a console in the lab. Not a single person disturbed her until Sunday afternoon, when a few students drifted through, said hello, executed Diane, etc. No one looked at what she was writing.

  Her abstract read:

  Recent seismicity in Peabody, Mass., and the prolonged sequence in 1987 have displayed the swarm-like character of known instances of induced seismicity. Until now the resemblance has been disregarded because of the relatively great focal depths of the earthquakes (3-8km) and the absence of reservoirs and injection wells in the focal area. However, photographic and archival evidence strongly indicates that in 1969-70 Sweeting-Aldren Industries of Peabody drilled an exploratory well to a depth in excess of 6 km, and that the well has subsequently been used for waste disposal. Current research locates observed activity on a steeply dipping basement fault striking SW-NE. Models of fluid migration and fault activation are proposed, the temporal distribution of observed seismicity is explained, and the legal implications of Sweeting-Aldren’s role are briefly discussed.

  She described the tectonic environment of the Peabody earthquakes. She marked likely well-sites on the best of her aerial photographs. In footnotes she mentioned Peter Stoorhuys and David Stoorhuys by name. She made pictures:

  She wrote that the absence of earthquakes between 1971 and 1987 indicated that there were no stressed faults in the immediate vicinity of the injection well. It had taken as long as sixteen years for fluid to be forced far enough into the surrounding rock for it to reach the fault(s) on which the earthquakes were taking place. This indicated that very significant volumes of waste had been injected, and that the rock formation at a depth of 4 km was loose enough to accept this volume at pumping pressures low enough to be commercially attractive. The conventions of scientific prose served to clarify and heighten the passion with which she wrote. She was so absorbed in her arguments that it shocked her, at the mirror in the women’s bathroom on the second floor, to see the expensive, tarty clothes she was wearing.

  Monday afternoon, after sleeping late, she picked up the Caddulo enlargements, bought some red nail polish, and stopped by the Holyoke Center again. Back in Hoffman she saw a flabby, sunburnt woman standing in the hall outside her office, looking very lost. Brown daisy-shaped pieces of felt were sewn onto the chest of her yellow sweat suit and the thighs of her yellow sweatpants; a button pinned to her shoulder said ADOPTION NOT ABORTION. Renée had heard that people like this were still dropping in from time to time, but she hadn’t seen one personally since the week her phone and mail harassment started.

  The woman sidled up to her and spoke confidentially. She had a twang. “I’m looking for a Dr. Seitchek?”

  “Oh,” Renée said indifferently. “She’s dead.”

  “She’s dead!” The woman drew her head back like an affronted hen. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  “No, I’m joking. She’s not dead. She’s standing right in front of you.”

  “She is? Oh, you. What’d you say you’re dead for?”

  “Just a joke. Let me guess what you’re here for. You came to my abortion clinic to complain to me personally.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Clairvoyant,” Renée said, touching her temple. She saw that Terry Snall had stopped at the bottom of the staircase. He had his hands on his hips and was exuding tremendous discombobulation over the way she was dressed. She turned her back to him. “Let me ask you,” she said to the visitor. “Does this building look to you like an abortion clinic?”

  “You know, I was just wondering that myself.”

  “Well, you see, it’s not. And I’m not a medical doctor. I’m a geologist.” On an impulse, she spun and pointed. “Terry, though. Terry performs abortions. As a sideline, don’t you, Terry?”

  “That’s not funny, Renée. That’s not at all funny.”

  “He denies it,” she explained, “because he doesn’t want you to harass him. But he’s part of the whole—abortion—conspiracy.” She hugged herself tightly, turning one shoe on its heel. There was an awkward silence, disturbed only by the whining of the line printer behind a closed door.

  “Well,” the visitor said. “She already lied to me once. She said she was dead!”

  “That’s what Renée is like,” Terry said. “She thinks she can do anything she wants. She thinks she’s a cut above.”

  Renée spun again, still hugging herself. “But that’s because I can do anything I want. And I’m going to, Terry! You watch me.” She approached the woman, who, though she was bigger and taller, took a wary step backward. “Where are you from?”

  “You mean originally? I’m from Herculaneum, Missouri. But I live in Chelsea now.�
��

  “You belong to Stites’s church.”

  “The Reverend Stites.”

  “The Reverend Stites who claims he has nothing to do with phone and mail harassment.”

  “Oh, he don’t, see.” Oblivious to having let the word “harassment” pass, the woman unzipped her swollen beige purse. “This letter here I got forwarded from Herculaneum.”

  Renée turned to throw an amused glance at Terry, but he was gone. “What’s your name?” she asked the woman.

  “Me? Mrs. Jack Wittleder.”

  “Glad to meet you, Jack.”

  “Oh, not Jack. Jack’s my husband’s name.”

  “Oh. So what’s your real name?”

  “My friends and brethren call me Bebe. But that’s not my real, legal name. You see, Dr. Seitchek, I don’t know about you, but in my part of the world, when a woman marries—”

  “Yeah yeah yeah.”

  Mrs. Jack Wittleder was hurt. She sighed, batting her eyelashes. “I don’t know what you’re doing on my list, if it’s true what you say. This is number 20 Oxford Street? Couldn’t of been a mistake, if it’s Hoffman Laboratories and you’re Dr. Seitchek. I keep calling you and calling you, and no one answers. The phone rings and you don’t answer it?”

  “That’s how it works, yes.”

  “But there must be some reason why you’re on the list. Did you—? Tell me, when do you believe human life begins?”

  “At thirty.”

  Mrs. Jack Wittleder shook her head. “It is a far greater sin to mock the Lord than be atheistic, Dr. Seitchek. Now, I’m not an educated woman, not compared to a Harvard-University doctor, but the Bible tells us that we don’t know God with our mind, we know Him with our heart, and we don’t see Him with our eyes, we see Him with our heart, and it may be that my heart knows what’s right and wrong better than a professor’s brain can.”

  “Doubtless. But you see, I’m kind of busy.”

  “Too busy to think about what’s right and wrong.”

  Renée smiled. “You got it.”

  “Well. You’re honest. Say that for you. I don’t guess you read the Bible.”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you know that the truth about human life on earth is in the Bible and nowhere else?”

  “Yeah, I understand, you want to draw me in, but—”

  “No, Dr. Seitchek. I don’t want to draw you in. I want to take you to the place where I found happiness.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In the church that is the bride of Christ. The Reverend Stites’s church.”

  “Oh. I see. The bride of Christ is in a tenement in Chelsea.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you go around to clinics like this one and try to enlist new members from all your sympathizers there.”

  “No. Only when I find an opportunity to plant some seeds in people.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve already been sown.”

  Mrs. Jack Wittleder glanced up and down the hall to make sure they were alone. She lowered her voice. “What exactly do you mean by that, Dr. Seitchek?”

  The sport drained out of Renée’s face. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  “Come along with me,” Mrs. Jack Wittleder urged. “The Reverend Stites is a kind and erudite young man, he’s helped me so much. I’m sure he could help you too.”

  “I don’t need his help.”

  “You’re talking to me. Nobody else has given me the time of day. Come along and you’ll see.”

  Renée walked up the hall and turned around in front of a giant picture of the earth at a depth of 1,500 kilometers. She came back wreathed in smileyness. “All right, Mrs. Wittleder.”

  “Call me Bebe.”

  “Bebe, I’d love to come with you. Are you happy about that? I’m going to come with you and see your lovely church. Terry!” she called. “Terry!”

  A beard, red lips, and glasses appeared in a doorway. “What?”

  “Do you want to go to Chelsea with me? See the famous church? You could talk to the people who’ve been tying up your telephone. Give ’em a piece of your mind.”

  Terry shook his head ominously. “If I were you,” he said to Bebe, “I wouldn’t take her. She just wants to make you look bad.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Renée said.

  “She just wants to get even,” Terry said.

  “God, what a sweet guy.”

  “You did already lie to me twice,” Bebe reflected.

  “Well, I’m not lying now. So just wait here a second.” She went into the console room and copied her new paper onto a 51/2-inch tape, inserted a write-protect ring, and left it in a drawer. She stowed the enlargements separately.

  Then they went to Chelsea.

  All the way to Park Street a Seeing Eye dog observed Renée with a sultry expression. Bebe conferred a condescending smirk on every rider in the subway car—even the blind man got one, and each black person received several—but Renée suspected this was more a product of midwestern insecurity than of arrogance.

  “Do you have a pen?” she whispered, nodding at a Planned Parenthood announcement on the ad strip above the seats. “Why don’t you deface that advertisement? Or, wait. Why don’t you just go ahead and tear it down?”

  “That’s not right.”

  “Oh, come on,” Renée whispered. “Do it. It’s a lesser crime to prevent a greater crime.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “You’re afraid of what people will say. That means your faith isn’t strong enough.”

  “My faith,” said Bebe, touching the brown daisy on her chest. “Is my business.”

  It was a long walk from the Wood Island subway stop to the Church of Action in Christ. Chelsea Street traversed a neighborhood of giant cylinders marked with red numbers in white circles. It crossed a drawbridge whose gridwork surface sang beneath the tires of the heavy traffic. Renée looked up at the solid concrete counterweight suspended above her (it was the size of a mobile home) and considered how the glassy wealth of downtown Boston required a counterweight in these industrial square miles, where vacant lots collected decaying windblown newsprint, and the side streets were cratered, and the workers had faces the nitrite red of Fenway Franks. A Ford Escort with Day-Glo green custom windshield wipers crossed the bridge, tailgated by a Corvette that identified itself as an Official Pace Car, 70th Indianapolis 500, May 27th, 1985.

  Bebe walked incredibly slowly. She said she’d been in the church for five months. Her day began at sunrise with communal prayers and hymn-singing, followed by breakfast. Missionary work, which was “voluntary but expected,” commenced at eight-thirty. There was a host of sites to be picketed, and members were encouraged to picket on a round-robin basis, in groups of three to six. “Groups of Twelve” were formed when the spirit moved among the community and twelve Chosen members spontaneously resolved to prevent a day’s complement of murders at one of several notorious clinics. Bebe had not yet been part of a Group of Twelve, though she had witnessed the arrest of one and had participated in the daily jail visitations. She told Renée that the last five months had been the most meaningful and light-filled time she’d ever known.

  God is . . . Pro-Life! said the banner over the entrance to the tenement. The building was the last in a complex of brick cubes with small, square windows; as if the building’s architect had foreseen its future as a church, the central clerestory was vertically bisected by narrow windows reminiscent of cathedrals.

  Several dozen women were at work in the main hall, a low-ceilinged linoleumed room that had probably once been a community center or nursery. A cheerful smell of tempera was in the air. “My sister will be among us tomorrow,” said one elderly artisan putting the finishing touches on a poster that Renée turned her head to read:

  “I’d almost given up and then she called and said she was coming.”

  “Praise the Lord, Jesus gets the glory.”

  “Amen.”

  Your convenience is homicide. Jesus was a
n unplanned pregnancy. THANKS MOM I LIFE.

  Bebe had disappeared, leaving Renée alone in the center of the room, in her black clothing and black sunglasses, surrounded by women of all ages in their pastels and aggressively unerotic hairdos. More and more of them were looking at her. Just two weeks ago the gazes crawling all over her back might have broken down her self-possession, but she could stand them now.

  At the front of the room a woman in a white sweat suit with a whistle and a cross around her neck was clapping her hands. She was like every gym teacher Renée had had in high school. “All right, everybody, time to clean it up. We’re going to watch a video together. Let’s go! Clean it up!” She walked around the perimeter, pulling down tattered blackout shades while the painters obediently closed their tempera jars. Renée planted herself against the rear wall. There were men here, a sad little assortment sitting cross-legged and looking at their hands.

  The women clustered like Camp Fire Girls in front of a cart with video equipment on it. The lights went out. The show began.

  To three-chord Marin County music, a mare suckles her foal in a summer field with the Tetons in the background. Adorable fox cubs trot down a forest path behind their mother. Birds sing and stuff food down the traps of their chicks. Cut to a club in TriBeCa, guitars screaming, strobes flashing. A woman in shades and purple lipstick laughs, showing teeth, and says, “Unnatural acts.” Back in the Tetons, a freckled mother in a gingham dress watches her toddlers pick wildflowers. The sun shines through her auburn hair. “Mommy!” a toddler cries. In the shimmering distance the father is chopping wood. We see the swell of a new pregnancy beneath the gingham. Guitars shriek outside the door of the high-tech ladies’ room, where two black girls in stiletto heels arch their backs like porn queens as they take cocaine nasally. A stutter zoom through the door of an empty stall: twenty-four-week fetus, red as life, is floating in the toilet bowl. Time-lapse blossoming of a downy gentian. Waddling prairie-dog pups. Calf craning its neck for teat of cow. Ducklings in Jackson Hole. By a dancing fire, behind a Vase-lined lens, Our Lady of the Gingham Dress holds a child on each knee and kisses them, kisses them, kisses them. The guitars more assonant yet white hands, black hands, hands with heavy jewelry push the flush lever viciously, but the fetus is like one of those turds that will not go down. Strobes flash. The thwarted hands contort in rage. A child rocks her doll to sleep. Mare and foal canter in super slo-mo . . .