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...
Russ was sitting on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands, as if replicating Perry’s condition. She sat down by him and touched him. When he shuddered, yet again, a suspicion crept into her.
“So,” she said. “What is it that you think you did?”
He rocked himself and didn’t answer.
“You said I had no idea. Maybe you’ll feel better if you tell me.”
“It’s all my fault.”
“So you keep insisting.”
“I—oh. What to say. God told me what to do, and I didn’t listen. And then Ambrose…”
“Ambrose?”
“He was waiting for me. Kevin reported Perry missing, and the sheriff had already put out a bulletin, so Kevin went straight to Farmington, but Wanda and Ambrose had to wait for me in Kitsillie. They waited an hour. An hour.” He shuddered. “I don’t think I mentioned to you— I didn’t mention that one of the parent advisers in Kitsillie was … So, Larry Cottrell was down in Many Farms, and his mother was on the mesa, and we’d had some trouble. The group, I mean. One of the Navajos broke into the school, and I had to … we had to … that is, I and, uh…”
“Larry’s mother.”
“Yes.”
“Frances Cottrell was with you in Kitsillie.”
“Yes.”
Now, at last, she saw the totality of the punishment God intended. Since her fight with Russ at Christmas, he’d made any number of overtures to her, and she’d spurned every one of them. From the overtures, and from his generally low spirits, she’d inferred that the Cottrell woman had opted out of an affair; Marion had gone so far as to make fun of him. Now, in a flash, she saw why he’d returned to Crossroads. Once upon a time, he’d beguiled her with his talk of the Navajos, and it had worked, and so he’d tried it again with the Cottrell woman, and again it had worked. The Cottrell woman was a fool. She herself was a fool. She had no one but herself to blame.
“And now you’re here with me,” she said. “It must be very strange for you. That we have to deal with this together. That we still happen to be married.”
He gave no sign of hearing her.
“I want you to leave me here alone,” she said. “Let me take responsibility. I want you to go and be as happy as you can. This isn’t your problem to deal with.”
He was hitting himself in the head with the heels of his hands. He was lost in his misery, like a little boy, and she couldn’t bring herself to hate him. He was her big little boy, entrusted to her care by God, and she’d driven him away. She grabbed one of his hands, but he kept hitting himself with the other.
“Honey, stop. I don’t care what you did.”
“I committed adultery.”
“So I gather. Please stop hitting yourself.”
“I was committing adultery while our son tried to kill himself!”
“Oh dear. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? What is wrong with you?”
The ground beneath her was firm. She was secure in God’s punishment.
“I’m just thinking how terrible that must feel. If the two things really did happen at the same time—that’s terrible luck. No one deserves that.”
“Terrible?” He staggered to his feet. “It’s beyond terrible. It’s beyond redemption. There’s no use in praying—I’m a fraud.”
“Russ, Russ. I’m the one who gave you permission. Don’t you remember?”
“Stop looking at me! I can’t stand you looking at me!”
She wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be saying that he still cared what she thought of him, still in some way loved her. To spare him from her gaze, she went outside with her purse.
The sun was low, the distant mountains furrowed with deep shadows. At the edge of the parking lot, in the dry residue of a puddle, a sparrow was giving itself a dust bath. The air smelled like Flagstaff and was cooling off rapidly, as it had in the years when she’d walked home at this hour from the Church of the Nativity, counting her steps. She lit a cigarette and watched the sparrow. It was groveling on its belly, prostrating itself, raising its little face to the sky, flicking up dust with its wings, cleansing itself in dirt. She saw what she had to do.
She put out the cigarette and returned to the room. Russ was slumped on the edge of the bed.
“Are you in love with her? You can tell me the truth—it won’t kill me.”
“The truth,” he said bitterly. “What is the truth? When a person is utterly fraudulent, what does love even mean? How can he judge?”
“I’ll take that as a qualified yes. And what about her? Do you think she loves you?”
“I made a mistake.”
“We all make mistakes. I’m just trying to think practically. If you love her and you think she might love you, I don’t want to stand in your way. You can let Perry be my responsibility.”
“I never want to lay eyes on her again.”
“I’m saying I release you. This is your chance to walk away, and I’m warning you. Right this minute is the time to take it.”
“Even if she loved me, which I doubt, the whole thing is too vile.”
“That’s only because you’re feeling guilty. The minute you see her again, you’ll remember that you love her.”
“No. It’s poisoned. Having to sit in that truck with Ambrose for three hours…”
“What does Rick have to do with it?”
Russ shuddered in his sheepskin coat. She’d bought it for him in Flagstaff.
“Do you know what I did to you?” he said. “Three years ago? Marion, do you know what I did? I told a seventeen-year-old girl that I’d lost interest in you sexually.”
Suddenly cold, she went to her suitcase for a sweater. The summer dress was uppermost. She couldn’t bring herself to handle it.
“And you know what else? I never told you the real reason the group kicked me out. It was because I was drooling all over that girl. I didn’t even know I was doing it, but she could see it. And Rick—Rick was there, too. He knows who I am, and—God, God.”
A low voice spoke, her own. “Did you touch her?”
“Sally? No! Absolutely—no. Never. I was just lost in my vanity.”
She had her own vanity. She no longer felt like reciprocating his confession.
“It wasn’t even true,” he said. “When I saw you coming off the plane—what I said to that girl simply wasn’t true. You are very, very attractive to me.”
“Yeah, wait until I’m fat again.”
“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. I just want you to know—”
“That you’ve humiliated me?”
“That I need you. That I would be completely lost without you.”
“Nice. Maybe you should fuck me while you’re at it. It seems to be your thing.”
This shut him up.
“Better do it while you can. I’ve started eating again.” She moved into his field of vision and ran her hands down her flanks. “These hips aren’t going to last.”
“I know you’re hurt. I know you’re angry.”
“What does that have to do with fucking?”
“I mean, yes, if you could forgive me—if we could find our way back—then, yes, I would very much like to … find our way back. But right now—”
“Right now,” she pointed out, “we’re alone in a hotel room.”
“And our son is in a ward three blocks away.”
“I’m not the one going on and on about what I’ve fucked. Or couldn’t fuck but really, really wanted to.”
He covered his ears. Her chest was heaving, but not only with anger. In taunting him with the dirtiest of words, in a hotel room, she’d accidentally turned herself on. There was an itch to be scratched, and it really did seem as if everything else could wait. She pushed his knees apart and dropped to her own.