Strong Motion: A Novel

by Jonathan Franzen

  With exquisite timing, their office trembles and they hear a distant boom, as from an artillery range.

  “I’ve trusted you, X,” says Aldren Jr. “You’ve been world-class, straight tens across the board. And now you’re indicating to me that our disposal costs are going to triple? I don’t think I’m going to remain president if that happens. And I have a personal stake in remaining president. It’s a very meaningful position to me, self-esteem-wise.”

  “I’m indicating we’re looking at a little backup in the waste stream. A little temporary quasi hitch. So that we might be well advised to short-term invest in better incineration and recycling. Either that or consider some major holding-tank-type construction.”

  Aldren Jr. shakes his head very slowly. “I’m hearing figures,” he says, “in the tens of millions. I’m hearing crippling long-term capital investments here. Here when I can already feel the Spaniards breathing down my neck. Can smell the goddamn garlic, X! You know what they’re doing with their waste? They’re pissing it straight into the ocean at Cadiz. Their tankers fill their guts with it, sail to the mid-Atlantic, and blow it out their asses. The worst of it they put in plastic drums and ship to Gabon, and fucking Cameroon. That’s what I’m competing with. Barely competing with. Fighting tooth and nail to compete with. You hear what I’m saying? I’m saying the old ejectorama for me, the dole and heavy fines and potential time in Allenwood for you.”

  Mr. X hears him. He puts a stop to the pumping. With the minuscule waste-processing budget at his disposal, he builds a cluster of huge, flimsy holding tanks on some company land near Lynnfield and stockpiles the most dangerous of his effluents there. The rest of the waste he lets trickle into the sea and air, relying on the company’s good relationship with the EPA to keep him from getting caught. For several years, like a nation trying to be kind of halfway responsible, he holds the line on pumping; and for several years, like the national debt, the stockpile of effluents grows and grows. But finally there’s a natural outbreak of seismicity in nearby Ipswich, and Mr. X’s prudence loses to his fear: he gives the order to resume pumping. Just another half a decade without a seismic disaster, and he’ll be able to retire on a full pension, summer on Nantucket, winter in Boca Raton, play eighteen holes in the morning and have his first Manhattan on the dot of five. Only five more little years! There will be no turning back now. He’s going to cross his fingers, shut his eyes, and pray: Lord, let it fall on someone else’s shoulders.

  In the white light of morning, or rather early afternoon, Bob put the empty whiskey bottle in the recycling carton for Clear Glass, between Soft Plastic and Aluminum, and poured orange juice on a bowl of Cheerios. Bees were pollinating purple thistle outside the window. The cats were cooling in the basement. Upstairs a door opened, and soon Louis appeared, scowling at the light. He had red pillow marks on his face—sleep’s tantalizing glyphs, which every morning signified nothing in a different way. “Did you call her?”

  Bob didn’t answer. He kept his head down, spooning up Cheerios, while Louis searched the refrigerator, drank some fizzless cherry-flavored seltzer, and then stood with his arms crossed like a parent whose patience had run out. “You want me to call her?”

  “Can I finish my breakfast?”

  Louis stood a while longer, arms still crossed. He left the room in unrelenting silence.

  Bob pushed his cereal bowl away. He began to call all the Krasners in Albany, relying on the kindness of directory assistance. His fourth try connected him to a deep female voice with a Russian accent which he knew was Anna’s mother’s before he even asked.

  “No. No,” she said. “She’s not here. She’s overseas.”

  “Does she have a telephone number?”

  “What do you want. Tell me.”

  Bob gave her a scaled-back version of the truth.

  “She knows nothing about Sweeting-Aldren,” said Madame Krasner. “Nothing. I’m not going to give you number.”

  “Would you give her mine?”

  “Who are you. Tell me. Who are you. What do you want, really.”

  “I was a good friend of hers.”

  “Eh. She has so many good friends. She lives in London. She has wonderful husband. Three children. What do you want, that she doesn’t have. No. No. I’m not going to tell you her number. You try someone else.”

  “Would you give her my number?”

  “She lives in London. Her number is not listed. I’m very sorry.” Bob pulled on his hair. Then Madame Krasner gave him Anna’s number. “Very expensive to call,” she said. “Not like calling here. Very expensive. You see, she has money. Oh, does she have money. What can you give, that she doesn’t have?”

  It was dinnertime in London. Through the dining-room windows, Bob could see Louis standing in the pine trees, the bright sun making shadows of the eyes behind his glasses. The red of Melanie’s lipstick was in the pinpricks in the mouthpiece of the telephone. He dialed Anna’s number, and after three rings Anna herself answered. He said his name. She said:

  “Who?”

  “Bob Holland.”

  “. . . Oh, yes, Bob, how are you?”

  “Anna, listen, I’m trying to find out if Sweeting-Aldren drilled a very deep well in Peabody in 1970. Do you happen to remember?”

  The hissing silence on the line was unbroken for so long that he began to think there was no one there. Ghostly tone sequences chattered beneath the hiss. On some continent or other, a phone rang once, twice. Then he heard a burst of male and female laughter, a sociable tumult somewhere very close to where Anna was standing. “I’m sorry, Bob,” she said. “What is it that you wanted to know?”

  He repeated his question. Again there was a silence, and again a burst of laughter. “I . . . don’t really know, Bob. I . . . can’t answer that,” Anna said.

  “What do you mean you can’t answer that? Do you think there might have been a well?”

  “Bob, we have some guests over. I’m very sorry.”

  “I’ve seen your paper,” he said. “You know there was a well. They’ve been pumping waste into it and causing earthquakes. You have to tell me what you know. I won’t use your name, but you have to tell me.”

  “Bob, I really have to get off the phone now.”

  “A simple yes or no. Was there a well?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why won’t you answer me? Would you rather talk to the press? Or the police?”

  The hissing on the line had ceased; he was speaking to a dead phone. He dialed again.

  “Anna—”

  “Bob, I’m busy and I don’t want to talk to you.” Her voice was hard, controlled, angry. “It’s better if you don’t call me.”

  “A yes or a no. Please.”

  “I’m sorry, Bob. I have to go.”

  “Anna—”

  “Goodbye, Bob.”

  IV

  IN THE BLACK

  14

  As a reward for getting her MBA and as consolation for having to start work at the Bank of Boston, Eileen had been vacationing on the Côte d’Azur with Peter. They rented a Peugeot at the airport in Nice and were delighted in Monaco, snubbed in Cannes, drunk in St. Tropez, and painlessly relieved of cash in the smaller towns along the way. At least once a day they ran into recent classmates of Eileen’s. They would be climbing a cobblestone hill past shops with bunches of dried lavender and Provençal scarves swinging and flapping in the mistral, and they would come upon a Roman ruin surrounded by cafés, and from the blinding aluminum chairs a chorus of female voices would chime: “Eileen! Eileen.” Peter would clench his teeth and mutter “Jesus Christ” and roll his eyes invisibly behind his Ray-Bans, because he thought Americans in France should be mute chameleons, but Eileen would step immediately into the shade of the plastic Cinzano or Pernod umbrella where the guys were sitting tight-lipped and training their Ray-Ban gazes on distant cypresses or an azure bay—just like Peter—and the girls were eager to exchange data on who all they’d seen from their class so far (u
ltimately Eileen saw or heard of a total of thirty-five of them, so the Cote d’Azur was a very popular reward for Harvard MBA recipients this year), while Peter, having crossed to the far side of the square, sunned himself on a block of marble hewn by Roman slaves.

  Peter did, in fact, look very European, and Eileen knew he spoke fine French. But when they sat down in a cafe and a waiter came, Peter would look up and his lips would move a little bit, but no sound would come out, and the waiter, not being psychic, would turn to Eileen, who would say, “Uncaffay poor moi, ay oon Pernod poor lum,” and then, to Peter, in a whisper squeaky with exasperation, after the waiter had left: “You have to tell him what you want!” Whereupon Peter’s face would freeze into a smile so fierce and mocking and afraid that at length she felt sorry for him. She kissed his ear, tousled his hair, rubbed his thigh, and said she loved him. There ensued a silence, her face clouding up. “Do you love me?”

  He grinned more fiercely yet and leaned across the table and gave her a not terribly welcome French kiss, still without having spoken a word since they sat down in the café.

  In the afternoon they went to beaches. The question at a beach was always: Should she or shouldn’t she? She was an island of suburban-Chicago modesty in a sea of Euroflesh—Norman mammaries, Belgian genitalia shaded by overhangs of Belgian flab, Dutch teats that were tiny and quivered, uncircumcised Parisian penises that she studied with sly and helpless fascination. Peter reclined on his elbows, staring over his surfer trunks and tanned toes at the emerald waves, while she tried to make up her mind. “I’m going to do it,” she said finally.

  Peter yawned. “That’s what you said yesterday.”

  “Well but today I am.”

  He stared at the waves.

  Reaching behind her back with both hands, she took hold of the hook of her bathing-suit top. She sat like this for five seconds. “Should I do it?”

  “Think carefully,” he said. “It’s an important decision.”

  She pouted. “I’m not going to do it.”

  He stared at the waves. She threw sand at him. He brushed himself off with light little sweeps of his fingers, as if his skin were a record he didn’t want to scratch. The next time he looked at her she was sitting upright on her towel, chin angled towards the sun, with her top on the sand beside her. They hardly spoke until they went back to their hotel, but there he pawed and clutched her body ardently, licking her breasts and climbing her, shuddering with lust like a dog while she smiled at the ceiling, unable to imagine a more perfect contentment.

  The following afternoon she announced: “I’m not going to do it.” White glare from car chrome and café spoons and a certain someone’s Ray-Bans had been drilling into her head since breakfast. The hotel bed had been hot and full of expired alcohol fumes; she was also pretty sure she was getting a urinary-tract infection.

  “It’s up to you,” said Peter, staring at the waves.

  She chewed a fingernail and blinked morosely. Like her mother, no matter how tired she was, she had boundless energy for vacillation. “Do you think I should?”

  In America, Peter was an expert and avid shopper, more certain than Eileen of how a 70/30 poly/cotton blend behaved and more patient than she in marching from store to store until the ideal shirt or shoes came to light. In Europe, however, he considered shopping merely the worst of many ways to blow one’s cover. When Eileen entered a store, he waited a full minute before drifting in after her, and then he knelt near the doorway and tied and retied his shoes as if he’d only come in because his laces were loose. He would page through the French-language editions of the travel books. (He thought this made him appear French.) Direct questions from Eileen elicited blank Ray-Ban stares of non-recognition. He gazed out the shop’s open doorway as if the thoughts of any Frenchman who had come in through such a door would immediately turn to leaving. (But the stores were often full of French people earnestly relating tacky souvenir items to historical battles or to the anthropology of Provence, and spending lavishly.) “It’s fine,” he’d murmur, referring to a gift idea, his eyes on the door.

  “You haven’t even looked at it!”

  “I trust your taste,” his lips unmoving, his eyes on the door.

  The one gift that gave Eileen real trouble was Louis’s. Earlier in the month, when she’d had Louis and his girlfriend over for moussaka, she had neglected to mention that she and Peter were about to leave for France. The fact was that she habitually avoided informing Louis of the plans and acquisitions of property she was making; she always hoped that he wouldn’t ever find out about them; but of course she knew he always would. He would find out that while he was looking for a job and sweating in Somerville with a girlfriend who Eileen personally thought was awfully old for him, his sister had been having fantastic five-course dinners in the South of France. She therefore felt obligated to bring him something nice. At the same time, she could already imagine him making her feel stupid about whatever she decided to buy, because, after all, he had actually lived in France.

  “Cognac,” Peter suggested.

  “It has to be from Provence.”

  “Wine,” Peter said.

  “I have to think about this. I have to think.”

  But the days passed with increasing rapidness, noon turning to nine, nine turning to noon, and she couldn’t ever seem to think. Finally, on the way to the airport in Nice, she dashed into a department store and bought Louis a large knife.

  In Back Bay there was a message from him on her machine, instructing her to call him at his old number. An unfriendly person at his old apartment gave her a new number, which when she dialed it turned out to belong to Louis’s friend Beryl Slidowsky, on whose sofa, he said, he’d been sleeping for several nights.

  “What happened to Renée?” Eileen asked, more innocently than meanly, though she really wasn’t sorry to hear he wasn’t living with her anymore.

  “It’s a problem I’m working on,” Louis said.

  “Oh. You’re trying to get back together.”

  “I’m trying to get her back.”

  “Oh, well—good luck.”

  Louis said he was a fifth wheel at Beryl’s. He wondered if he could crash in Back Bay for a few days. One way or another, he said, it wouldn’t be for long.

  “Um,” Eileen said. “I guess. But if you and Peter can’t get along, it’s not going to be very nice.”

  “Trust me,” Louis said.

  He came over in the evening after her first day at the bank. She had drunk half a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé while waiting for Peter, who still wasn’t home from work. When she let Louis in the door she immediately retreated, falling back on her legs as if the floor had developed a steep negative gradient. She couldn’t believe how much her brother had changed in three weeks. He was wearing his usual black jeans and white shirt, but he seemed taller and older and broader in the shoulders. He’d had his hair cut so short that what remained was dark and velvety, and for some reason he wasn’t wearing glasses. His cheeks were drawn, and dark with a week’s beard, his eyes hollow and shining in the absence of lenses, with gray satin semicircles of tiredness beneath them.

  “I—got this tan in France,” Eileen said in a too-loud voice. It was the first thing that came into her head.

  “Yeah, I heard you were over there,” Louis said without interest.

  “What happened to your glasses?”

  “Somebody stepped on them.”

  “Have you had dinner?”

  “If it’s OK with you,” he said, “I think I’ll be by myself for a while. I can come out later.”

  At eleven o’clock he still hadn’t come out. Eileen left Peter in bed with the news and tapped on the door of the second bedroom. Louis, minus his shirt, was bending low over the desk they had in there and writing in a notebook. At the top of the notebook page she could read the words Dear Renée. He didn’t try to hide them.

  “I brought you something from France,” Eileen said. Jet lag and drinking and the day’s terrors of
job orientation had conspired to puff her eyes up and reduce her skin to red shininess. She handed Louis the box with the knife in it.

  He frowned. “This is very nice. You got this for me?”

  “It’s for your kitchen. You have to pay me a penny for it. It’s the superstition. You have to pay me for it or it’s bad luck.”

  Obediently, unhurriedly, he took a penny from his pocket and held it out to her. But she had turned away towards the convertible futon sofa. She was looking at Louis’s small nylon duffel bag, which was now apparently the size of all the possessions that mattered to him. “You’re really broken up about her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Louis said.

  “Did you want to tell me what happened?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you want me to do something? I could try and talk to her, if you wanted.”

  “It’s OK.”

  She nodded; but it was more like her heavy head just falling forward. She stared at the floor and spoke in a low, trembling voice. “You know, you’re very, very cute, Louis. There are lots of girls who’d think you’re totally cute. And you’re smart, and independent, and strong, and you’re interesting, and you’re going to do anything you want. Lots and lots of girls are going to want to go out with you. You’re going to go to Europe again and you’ll be really confident. You’re going to have a good life. Did you know that?” She shot him an accusing look. “I used to feel sorry for you. But I don’t anymore. I know you’re all broken up about her, but I don’t feel sorry at all. So just try to feel OK. I mean I guess I hope you get her back, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t.”

  Louis sat and looked at her with the submissive sadness of a pet who knew he had damaged property but had never meant to. Eileen put her hand on the doorknob, not turning it but holding it as though it were a mother’s hand. “I don’t know why you make me feel so rotten.”

  “I’m not trying to,” Louis said.