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...
“I don’t deserve joy!”
“No one does. It’s a gift from God.”
And Becky had been so happy. Finally a spring-semester senior, walking among underclassmen but feeling a new commonality with the Class of ’72, she’d made a point, every day, of being friendly to at least one classmate she’d never spoken to before, a boy taking metal shop, a girl from the Baptist church where she and Tanner had worshiped. It was a kind of daily Christian service, and then, on the weekend, if she and Tanner had time, they stopped by a party approved by Jeannie Cross and stayed for half an hour, not drinking, just putting a seal on the proceedings, before slipping away to a realm beyond high-school reckoning.
By late March, she had an acceptance letter from Lake Forest College and realistic hopes for Lawrence and Beloit. The anticipation of sweater weather in Wisconsin, a dorm room looking out on a quadrangle dappled with fallen leaves, new school spirit to be developed, new social heights to be scaled, was almost one blessing too many, because she already had a summer in Europe to look forward to. Earlier in the month, at a gig in Chicago not attended by her, Tanner had met a young couple from Denmark who’d loved his show and happened to be the organizers of a folk-music festival in Aarhus. American folk was huge in Europe, a whole circuit of summer festivals had slots to be filled by American performers, and a solo billing in Aarhus, which the Danish couple had offered Tanner, could open doors to all of them. Tanner had returned from the gig more excited than Becky had ever seen him. Wouldn’t it be amazing, he said, to experience Europe together, be part of the scene, and meet the likes of Donovan, if not Richie Havens?
Becky hadn’t been thinking of Europe at all. After Christmas, to abide by her promises to Jesus, she’d shared her inheritance with her brothers. She could no longer afford a big European trip with her mother, and given how her mother had been acting, smoking her cigarettes, paying little attention to anyone but herself, she’d quietly decided to stay home with Tanner. But to be in Europe with him? To whirl in his arms on the Champs-Élyseés? Cross the Alps together in a sleeper car? Toss coins into the Trevi Fountain and make wishes for each other? All she needed to do was save up money and disinvite her mother.
Owing to some marital strife about which Becky had learned only enough to be revolted by her father, her mother had moved into their house’s third-floor storage room, fashioned a bed for herself in a low-ceilinged corner of it, and positioned an old escritoire beneath its window. When Becky ventured up to the third floor, after a school day rendered useless by visions of Europe, her mother was sitting at her desk in a haze of stale smoke. In lieu of smoking, she twisted a mechanical pencil while Becky laid out her plan.
“I don’t need to go to Europe,” her mother said. “But I’m not sure your going with Tanner is a good idea.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I’m not questioning your good sense. I was impressed by the decision you made about your money—it was a very loving thing to do. But my understanding was that you were saving your share of it for college.”
“I hardly have to pay for anything but the plane ticket. If Tanner gets into other festivals, they’ll cover our expenses.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I’ll still have enough for two years of school. After that, I’ll be working summers, and I can get financial aid.”
Her mother continued to twist the pencil. She’d lost so much weight that a resemblance to Aunt Shirley had emerged. It couldn’t have been healthy to lose that much weight so quickly.
“I haven’t wanted to ask,” she said, “because I know it’s uncomfortable for you. But—have you and Tanner had sex?”
Becky felt her face burn.
“I’m not trying to embarrass you,” her mother said. “A simple yes or no will do.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Okay.”
“That is—no. We haven’t.”
“That’s fine, honey. It’s more than fine—it’s lovely. I’m proud of you. But if you want to go to Europe with your boyfriend, I’ll need to know you have good protection.”
Becky blushed again. Her friends all assumed that she and Tanner were having intercourse, and she’d done nothing to disabuse them. She’d enjoyed the secret that she and Tanner shared, the secret of her chastity, and the feeling of power and goodness it brought her. But to hear the same assumption from her mother was weirdly awful.
“Do you have protection?” her mother said.
“Do you want me to be having sex?”
“Dear God, no. Why would you think that?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Honey, I know you can. It’s just—I also know how things can happen.”
“What are you doing up here, anyway?”
Her mother sighed. “I am proofreading for the Great Books Foundation.”
“I mean sleeping up here. Hiding up here.”
“Your father and I are unhappy with each other.”
“Yeah, who would have guessed.”
“I know. I know it’s been uncomfortable for you. I apologize for that.”
“It’s your life. I just don’t feel like listening to your advice.”
Her mother set down the pencil. “It’s not advice. If you want to go to Europe with Tanner, it’s a requirement. In fact, I think you should see a doctor right away. Will you let me make you an appointment?”
“I can make my own appointment.”
“Whatever you prefer.”
“I’ll go do it right now. Do you want to listen on Dad’s phone? Make sure I get my appointment?”
“Becky—”
There were three doors to slam on the way to her bedroom, and she slammed all three. The world seemed upside down to her. Premarital sex was supposed to be wrong, but Tanner had already had it with someone else, her friends expected her to have it, Clem expected her to have it, even her mother expected her to have it. Probably Judson, too, if anyone had asked him!
She wasn’t a prude. She liked necking and petting and—coming. There had been moments when she was carried away into wanting Tanner inside her, moments when sex seemed like a blessing that God intended her to crave. What had saved her, each time, was Tanner’s own hesitation. By firmly defining her limits from the outset, she’d made her virginity a thing for which the two of them shared responsibility, a jewel they participated equally in guarding, so that, when she forgot herself, Tanner was there to catch her. If this wasn’t how real love worked, she didn’t know what real love was.
Resentfully, as though forced to do chores while her friends were at the swimming pool, she went to her mother’s gynecologist and submitted to being “fitted” for a diaphragm and tested on her ability to properly insert it. She was given a tube of jelly like the one that Laura Dobrinsky had once thrown at her face. The gear she brought home reduced love to something medical. It connected her, sordidly, to all the other girls in New Prospect with similar gear in their drawers.
And yet: wasn’t it wrong to feel superior to those girls? Despite much prayer and reading of the Gospels, she had yet to recapture the spiritual ecstasy she’d experienced after smoking pot, the bodily yearning to be Christ’s servant, but the essence of her revelation had stayed with her: she was sinfully proud and needed to repent. Ever since that revelation, and beginning with the sharing of her inheritance, she’d endeavored to be a good Christian, but the paradox of doing good was that she felt even prouder of herself. It was as if, although the terms had changed, she was still pursuing superiority. In the Gospels, Jesus paid more attention to the poor and the sick, to the iniquitous and the despised, than to the righteous and the privileged. Now that she’d taken the step of obtaining contraception, she wondered if withholding herself from the man she loved might constitute, in itself, a kind of vanity. Hadn’t God revealed Himself to her precisely at her lowest moment? Might it not paradoxically be more Christian to humble herself, accept that she was one of those girls, and yield up her jewel?