Purity

by Jonathan Franzen

  She had to fight the temptation to sext him a picture of her private thing. She was the latest of those women who stayed loyal to him. The alteration of her brain by wooden spoon was apparently ongoing.

  It wasn’t hard to conceal the state of her brain from Tom and Leila, but its alteration was the reason she’d flown directly from Bolivia to Denver without stopping to see her mother. Her mother could be scarily perceptive about her state of mind. No sooner had Pip arrived in Denver than she’d been forced to conceal it from her.

  “Purity,” her mother had said on the telephone. “When you told me you couldn’t find anything out about your father in Bolivia, were you lying to me?”

  “No. I don’t tell lies to you.”

  “You didn’t find anything out?”

  “No!”

  “Then tell me why you had to go to Denver.”

  “I want to learn to be a journalist.”

  “But why did it have to be Denver? Why that online magazine? Why not someplace closer to home?”

  “Mom, this is the time when I need to be on my own for a while. You’re getting older, I’m going to be there for you. Can’t I have a couple of years where I get to be away?”

  “Did Andreas Wolf want you to go to that place?”

  Pip hesitated. “No,” she said. “They just happened to have an intern position I applied for.”

  “It was the only news service in the country accepting applications?”

  “You just don’t like it because it’s in a different time zone.”

  “Purity. I’m going to ask again: are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes! Why are you asking me?”

  “Linda helped me use her computer, and I looked at the website. I wanted to see for myself.”

  “And? It’s a great site, right? It’s serious long-form investigative journalism.”

  “I have the feeling you’re not telling me things you should be telling me.”

  “I’m not! I mean, I’m not not.”

  However sensitive to smells her mother was, she had an even keener nose for moral failings. She could smell that Pip was doing something wrong in Denver, and Pip resented her for it. She’d already denied herself Andreas because of something her mother had said. To live up to her mother’s ideal, she’d behaved more worthily than she’d had to, and she felt she deserved credit for it, even though her mother knew nothing about it. She was in no mood to be lectured.

  But her mother had been sulking ever since. Not returning phone messages and then, when Pip did reach her, not joyfully ejaculating but making her displeasure known with sighs and silences and monosyllabic answers to Pip’s dutiful questions. Pip had finally gotten angry and stopped calling altogether. She hadn’t even told her mother she’d moved in with Tom and Leila. For a while, living with them, she’d felt vindicated in her belief that she could have been a well-adjusted and effective person if she’d had a pair of parents like these. They’d already done so much to help her that finding her real father had ceased to be a burning priority. But preferring them as parents made her pity her mother, who was alone in Felton and had done her best with the poor resources she had. Pip’s life seemed like a conspiracy to betray every single person in it. And now Tom seemed to have a thing for her, which amounted to yet another betrayal, a betrayal of Leila that Pip hadn’t intended and couldn’t control. It was all making her even more dependent on her nightly textings with Andreas and the self-touching she often did afterward.

  Tom was still snoring when she ventured out to the bathroom. From downstairs came a smell of coffee and the faint patter of a keyboard. Pip felt pity for Leila, too. And for Tom, if he was attracted to her. And of course for Andreas, and for Colleen. Apparently pity and betrayal were related.

  Back in her bed, she texted Andreas. It was too late at night to expect a reply, and she should have just gone to sleep, but instead she appended further texts.

  She was erasing the last message, which she’d typed only as a masturbation aid, when a reply came in from Los Volcanes.

  She was surprised. It was four in the morning in Bolivia.

  She waited ten minutes, second-guessing herself, for his reply to her temerity. She knew she was behaving badly, trying to keep him interested after having twice rejected him. But right now their texting was the closest thing she had to a sex life. She typed more:

  His text was like a sock in the jaw. Her hands jumped away from her device, letting it fall between her legs. Was he jealous of Tom? It seemed important to set the record straight, and so she picked up the device again. She cursed the errors her trembling finger made.

  She fell on her side with a whimper and pulled the comforter over her head. She couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong—she’d said she wasn’t interested in Tom. Why was Andreas punishing her now? She writhed under the comforter, trying and failing to make sense of what he’d written, until the comforter became a tormentor. Sweating all over, she threw it off and went downstairs to the dining room, where Leila was working.

  “You’re still awake?” Leila said.

  Her smile was troubled but not phony. Pip sat down across the table from her. “Can’t sleep.”

  “Do you want an Ambien? I have a veritable cornucopia.”

  “Will you tell me what you found out in Washington?”

  “Let me get you an Ambien.”

  “No. Just let me sit here while you work.”

  Leila smiled at her again. “I like that you can be honest about what you want. It’s something I still struggle with.”

  Her smiles were taking some of the sting off Andreas’s brutal words.

  “But let me try it,” Leila said. “I want you to not sit here while I work.”

  “Oh,” Pip said, very hurt.

  “It makes me self-conscious. If you really don’t mind?”

  “No, I’ll leave. It’s just—” Outburst Alert. Outburst Alert. “I don’t know why you’re being so weird to me. I didn’t do anything to you. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  Leila was still smiling, but something was glittering in her eyes, something awfully similar to hatred. “I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me work.”

  “Do you think I’m a home-wrecker? Do you think I’d ever in a million years do that to you?”

  “Not intentionally.”

  “Then why are you being this way, if it’s not my fault?”

  “Do you know who your father is?”

  “My father?” Pip made an insultingly baffled face and gesture.

  “Are you ever curious?”

  “What does any of this have to do with my father?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Well, I wish you wouldn’t. I already feel like I walk around in life with this sign hanging from my neck, BEWARE OF DOG, DIDN’T HAVE FATHER. It doesn’t mean I want to have sex with every older man who comes my way.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I can pack my things and move out tomorrow. I’ll quit my job, too, if that would help.”

  “I don’t want you to do either of those things.”

  “Then what? Wear a burka?”

  “I’m going to be spending more time with Charles. You and Tom can have the house to yourselves to work out whatever you have to work out.”

  “There is nothing to work out.”

  “The point is simply—”

  “I thought you guys were sane and normal. That’s part of what I love about you. And now it’s like I’m a lab rat you’re leaving alone in a cage with another rat to see what happens.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “Sure feels like it.”

  “Tom and I are having some trouble. That’s all it is. Can I get you an Ambien?”

  Pip took the Ambien and woke up alone in the house. In the windows was a pale gray Colorado morning sky of the sort from which she’d learned not to predict the afternoon weather—it could snow or turn shockingly warm—but she was grateful for the br
ight overcast; it matched her spirits. She’d been terminated by Andreas but also released; she felt both bruised and cleaner. After reheating and eating some frozen waffles, she went out walking toward downtown Denver.

  The air smelled like spring, and the Rockies, behind her, all snowy, were there to remind her that she still had many things to do in life, such as going up to Estes Park and experiencing the mountains from close range. She could do this after she made her confession to Tom and before she returned to California. In the crisp air, she saw clearly that the time to confess had come. As long as she’d had her late-night textings and touchings, she’d had some reason to have planted the spyware and to avoid the awfulness of telling Tom about it: she was bewitched and enslaved by Andreas. Now there was no reason, nor any sense in trying to preserve the life she had going in Denver, however eagerly she’d taken to it. The whole thing was built on lies, and she wanted to come clean.

  Her resolve was firm until she arrived at DI and was reminded that she loved the place. The overhead lights were off in the main space, but two journalists were in the conference room and Pip could hear Leila’s pretty telephone voice in her task-lighted work space. Pip hesitated in the corridor, wondering if she could still avoid confessing. Maybe if the spyware disappeared? But whatever was upsetting Leila wasn’t going away. If she was upset about Tom liking Pip too much, a full confession would certainly put an end to that. Pip took the long way around to his office, avoiding Leila.

  His door was standing open. As soon as he saw Pip, he reached quickly for his computer mouse.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Are you in the middle of something?”

  For a moment, he seemed totally guilty. He opened his mouth without saying anything. Then, collecting himself, he told her to come in and shut the door. “We’re in battle mode,” he said. “Or Leila’s in battle mode. I’m in Leila-care mode. Her engine runs hot when she’s afraid of being scooped.”

  Pip shut the door and sat down. “I gather she got something big yesterday.”

  “Ghastly thing. Major story. Bad for everyone except us. It’s very good for us, assuming we’re the ones to break it. She’ll fill you in—she’s going to need your help.”

  “An actual weapon went missing?”

  “Yes and no. It never left Kirtland. Armageddon was averted.” Tom leaned back in his chair, catching the fluorescent light on his terrible glasses. “This was probably before your time, but there used to be a countdown-to-Armageddon clock. Union of Concerned Scientists, I believe. It would be four minutes to midnight, and then there’d be a new round of arms-control talks, and the clock would go back to five minutes before midnight. It all seems vaguely cheesy and ridiculous now, like everything else from those years. What kind of clock runs backward?”

  He seemed to be free-associating to conceal something.

  “They still have that clock,” Pip said.

  “Really.”

  “But you’re right, it feels dated. People are more advertising-literate these days.”

  He laughed. “Plus it turns out that it wasn’t actually five minutes to midnight in 1975, otherwise we’d all be dead now. It was nine fifteen or something.”

  Pip’s own countdown-to-confession clock was stuck at one second before midnight.

  “Anyway, Leila’s on the ragged edge,” Tom said. “She comes across as so unthreatening that people don’t realize how competitive she is.”

  “I’m realizing it, a little bit.”

  “A couple of years ago, she was way out in front on the Toyota recall story, or she thought she was. She thought she had time to nail it down tight and break it complete. And then suddenly she starts hearing from her contacts in the agencies. They’re calling her to tell her they just heard an amazing story from the Journal’s guy. These were people who hadn’t known anything, hadn’t told her anything, and now they had the whole story! She’s hearing that the Journal’s guy was up all night drafting. She’s hearing that the Journal is already lawyering it. And there’s no worse feeling. No worse thing to write than a story where you have to credit the guy you were way ahead of until two days ago. Apparently the WaPo’s on the Kirtland story—Leila found that out yesterday. We’re still ahead, but probably not by much.”

  “Is she drafting?”

  “That’s what sleepless nights are for. I’d almost rather get scooped than see her in the state she’s in. You need to help me try to keep her halfway sane.”

  Pip was starting to feel bad about having lashed out at Leila; to wonder if she was simply overstressed by work.

  “But listen,” Tom said, leaning forward. “Before you go, I want to ask you a personal question.”

  “I actually had something to—”

  “We were talking about your dad the other night. And I’ve been thinking—you’re a great researcher. Have you ever tried to find him?”

  She frowned. Why did people keep asking her about her father? In her guilty frame of mind, she had the curious thought that Andreas was secretly her father. That this was why her mother was so hostile to him. That Tom and Leila had discovered the spyware and knew more about her than she herself did. Andreas as her dad: the thought was crazy but had a certain logic, the logic of ick, the logic of guilt.

  “Yeah, I’ve tried,” she said. “But my mom covered her tracks really well. The only thing I’ve got is her made-up name and my approximate date of birth. I always seemed to be the right size for the grade I was in. But I know my birth certificate is fake.”

  The look Tom was giving her was worrisomely loving. She lowered her eyes.

  “You know,” she said, “I’m not a very good person.”

  “What are you talking about? What’s not good about you?”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t always tell the truth.”

  “About what? About your father?”

  “No, that part is true.”

  “Then what?”

  Just say it, she thought. Say: I was in Bolivia, not California …

  There was a tap on the door.

  Tom jumped to his feet. “Come in, come in.”

  It was Leila. She looked at Pip and spoke to Tom. “I was on the phone with Janelle Flayner. I was thinking last night about something she’d said to me. Something like ‘It’s about time someone listened.’”

  “Leila,” Tom said gently.

  “Hear me out. This is not paranoia. She said that, and I called her, and it turns out that, yes, she did communicate with someone else. Before me. While Cody’s pictures were still up on Facebook, she sent a message to the famous leaker. ‘The Sunshine Boys?’ That’s what she said. The Sunshine Boys. The place that everybody sends their tips to.”

  Pip had one of those double blushes, a mild one followed by a burning whole-body wave.

  “So what?” Tom said, less gently.

  “Well, Mrs. Flayner didn’t hear back. Nothing ever happened.”

  “Good. Happy ending. He couldn’t do shit from Bolivia. To cover a story like this, you need boots on the ground.”

  “Well, but Wolf never put the pictures up. He puts up twenty things a day—there’s no filter. But for some reason he didn’t put this one up.”

  “I’m serenely unworried.”

  “I’m radically worried.”

  “Leila. He’s had the information for almost a year. Why would he suddenly decide to float it in the next five days?”

  “Because these stories have a boiling point. Suddenly everyone starts talking overnight. If he gets one more leak, he can spit in the soup. It’s bad enough if the Post does it to me. But if that guy gets there first—”

  “The world looks very scary when you haven’t slept. You’re the one who’s sitting on the elephant. You’re the only one who can connect the dots from Amarillo to Albuquerque.”

  “People steal elephants. It happens all the time.”

  “If you want to worry about something, worry about the Post.”

  Leila laughed raggedly. “I’m all over that
, too. They’ve got to be days ahead of me on the Kirtland drug scandal. Probably weeks. There’s no way I can cover it when I’m also confirming the nuke story.”

  “You’ll pick up enough of it collaterally. It’s fine if the Post has more detail on it, so long as we’re first. Let them add the salt to our soup. Worst case, they’re out in front with a drug story, and we follow with an Armageddon story.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want to do a co-op with them?”

  “With a Jeff Bezos joint? I can’t believe you’re even asking.”

  “Then prepare for me to be a wreck.”

  Leila left, and Tom gazed after her. “I hate to see her like this,” he said. “It feels like the end of the world to her when she gets beaten.”

  Pip wondered if she’d been mistaken. He wasn’t seeming like a man in love with anyone but Leila.

  “Do you have your phone?” he said.

  “My phone?”

  “I want to make some calls to the Post. Dial some numbers and see who’s there on a Saturday. If the people I have in mind aren’t there, she can worry a little less.”

  Even though Pip had come here to confess, she was tempted to say she didn’t have her device with her; it was radioactive with incriminating texts. But to claim not to have it was dumb and implausible. When she handed it over to Tom, it felt like a small bomb, and when she left his office she stationed herself outside the door, hoping her proximity would inhibit him from reading her texts.

  She saw that she’d lost her nerve and wouldn’t be confessing anything today. If, as she now suspected, she’d been mistaken about Tom’s interest in her, there might be nothing so terrible about her situation that uninstalling Andreas’s spyware couldn’t fix it. When Tom emerged from his office, smiling, she took her phone to the ladies’ room and locked herself in a stall.