Crossroads
- Автор: Франзен Джонатан
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Crossroads». Краткое содержание книги:
Universally recognized as the leading novelist of his generation, Jonathan Franzen is often described as a teller of family stories. Only now, though, in *Crossroads* , has he given us a novel in which a family, in all the intricacy of its...
“That’s a blessing,” she said.
“You haven’t seen Perry. He hasn’t said a coherent word since they picked him up. He just moans and covers his face. I give a lot of credit to the Farmington police. They put him in the cell that was closest to the desk. If they hadn’t been on top of it, he might have broken his skull open. My guess is that he’s—I mean, based on my counseling experience— I suspect he’s manic-depressive.”
She gasped, in spite of herself, at the evil hyphenated word. Outside the car, a blighted part of Albuquerque was passing by. Warped plywood on storefronts, broken bottles in the gutter. Her father in the evil state, playing ragtime at three in the morning, before the crash.
“Are we sure it wasn’t the drugs? What drugs did he have?”
“Cocaine.”
“Cocaine? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Neither have I. Neither has Ambrose. Where he got it, why he had so much of it—no idea.”
“Well, could that be why he crashed? If he was withdrawing—”
“No,” Russ said. “I’m sorry, but no. It’s my fault, Marion—I knew he wasn’t right. David Goya told me he wasn’t right. He was obviously not right, and now—there was another thing, last night. Early this morning. When he came out of sedation, they had to restrain him again. He’s psychotically depressed.”
A pair of hands was moving randomly in front of her. She directed them toward the cigarettes in her purse. It was good to give them a task.
“Anyway,” Russ said, “we’re looking at a long recovery. I don’t know if they’ll bill us for his time in the facility here, but Lawless is going to cost at least five hundred dollars, probably a lot more. Then however many weeks or months in a private hospital, and further treatment after that. Are you sure you want to be hearing this now?”
She’d got a cigarette lit. It helped a little. “Yes. I want to know everything.”
“We also need to pay for the barn he burned. It was on tribal land, and I’d be shocked if the owners had insurance. I gather there were tractors, other equipment, plus the building itself. I don’t know how many thousands of dollars, but it’s thousands. I called the church office while I was waiting for you, and Phyllis checked the liability policy—it won’t help us. We do have the three thousand that Becky gave Perry. We can also borrow some of the money she gave Clem and Judson. But we’re going to need a lot more.”
“I’ll get a full-time job.”
“No. This is my responsibility. The question is whether I can get a big enough loan.”
“I’ll work until I’m eighty, if that’s what it takes.”
Russ veered over and braked to a hard stop, so he could look at her directly. “We need to get something straight. This is entirely my responsibility. Do you understand?”
She shook her head emphatically.
“I didn’t listen to you,” he said. “A year ago. You wanted to send him to a psychiatrist, and I didn’t listen. Five days ago—again, I didn’t listen. He was as good as telling me he’d lost his mind. And—God! I didn’t listen.”
She sucked on the cigarette. “It’s not your fault.”
“And I’m telling you it is. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
Through the windshield, she watched an emaciated kid, not much older than Perry, shamble out of a liquor store. His shirt was untucked, his pants barely clinging to his hips. He had a bottle in a paper bag.
“Where are we going? I’m already sick of this car.”
“It is entirely my fault, and that’s the end of it.”
“I don’t care whose fault it is. Just get me out of this car. I’m having a panic attack.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t smoke.”
“Where are we going? Why are we stopped here?”
With a heavy sigh, Russ put the car back into gear.
The next thing she knew, they were in the parking lot of a Ramada Inn, and her desperation to leave the car had passed. The car now seemed relatively secure to her. She closed her eyes while Russ went inside to register.
It was strange, considering God’s everpresence in her, how rarely she felt moved to pray. In her guilt, in Arizona, she’d prayed incessantly, but she’d stopped when she married Russ, just as she’d stopped keeping a diary. Only after the births of her children, for which thanks were manifestly due, could she remember really praying. The weekly prayers she said in church were more lateral than vertical, more about belonging to a congregation. God already knew what she was thinking, so she didn’t need to tell Him, and it seemed silly to trouble an infinite Being for minor favors. But the favor she needed now was large.
Dear God, I accept your will, and you’ve given me no more than what I deserve. But please let it be your will that Perry gets better, the same way you once let me get better. Please also let it be your will that I don’t go crazy again. I want to be myself, I want to be fully present for Russ, and you know how I love you. If you would keep my mind clear enough to recognize your will, I would be so very grateful. Whatever your will requires of me, I will gladly do.
She opened her eyes and saw two sparrows, one more boldly patterned than the other, picking through detritus at the base of a concrete parking strip. She felt calmer for having asked. It was the asking that mattered, not the answer. She decided that, for the remainder of her life, she would pray every day. In a world suffused with God, prayer ought to be as regular as drawing breaths.
Cheered by this insight, she got out of the car with her purse. Russ was crossing the parking lot with the room key. She ran up to him and said, “Have you prayed?”
“Uh, no.”
“Let’s go do it. We can get the luggage later.”
He seemed worried about her, but she didn’t feel like stopping to explain. Their room was at the very end of the first floor. She hurried ahead while he followed with the key.
The room was stuffy, the late sun beating on the curtains. She immediately kneeled on the floor. “Here, anywhere. It doesn’t matter. Will you kneel with me?”
“Um.”
“We’ll pray, and then we can talk.”
He still seemed worried, but he kneeled by her and knit his fingers together.
Oh, God, she prayed. Please be merciful to him. Please let him know you’re there.
This was all she had to say, but Russ apparently had more. It might have been five minutes before he stood up and turned on the air conditioner.
“I know it’s private,” she said, “but—did you find Him?”
“I don’t know.”
“If we’re going to get through this, we need to stay connected.”
“I’m not like you. You were always so—it was always easy with you and God. It’s not so easy for me.”
He made her access to God sound slutty, like her talent for quick orgasms. She joined him in the air conditioner’s coolish outflow. It was a very long time since the two of them had been alone in a hotel room, almost as long as since Bradley had taken her to one. Had she ever been alone with a man in a hotel room without having sex? Possibly not.
“Usually it helps to be in a bad place,” Russ said. “But the place I’m in now is so bad…”
His shoulders began to shake, and he covered his face. When she tried to comfort him, he shuddered.
“Russ. Honey. Listen to me. I ignored things, too. I could see Perry wasn’t right, and I ignored it. This isn’t your fault.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I believe I do.”
“You have no idea what I’ve done! No idea!” He looked around wildly. “I’m going to get the luggage.”
She took her purse to the bathroom and unwrapped a drinking glass. The thinness of the woman in the mirror was a continuing surprise. Russ would now be stuck with this woman indefinitely, and she wondered if he might want her again. However deserving she was of God’s punishment, she was surely still allowed some pleasure. She wondered, indeed, if priming herself for Bradley but returning to Russ, excited and unsatisfied, had been part of God’s plan. She freshened her lipstick.