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...
“Okay, noted. But can I tell you one other terrible thing?”
She repositioned herself again, putting her back against the passenger door and one of her feet against his seat belt. He felt a tug in the belt, across his groin.
“I still have Larry’s bag of pot,” she said. “Can you believe it? I went to flush it down the toilet, so he could hear me doing it, but somehow I didn’t do it. I hid it in my bedroom.”
Everything Russ had just said about his youth was hogwash. The age he wanted to be was exactly the age of Frances.
“I’m waiting, Reverend Hildebrandt. Are you going to tell me I did a bad thing?”
“Legally, I suppose there is some hazard.”
“Oh, come on. No one’s going to kick my door down.”
“Still. What are you planning to do with it?”
“Well, um—what do you think I’m going to do with it?”
He nodded. He felt some pastoral responsibility to steer her from the path of iniquity, but he didn’t want to seem like a square. “In that case,” he said, “I suppose my concern would be that it complicates your message to Larry. If you’re telling him that drugs are bad for him—”
“That’s why I asked you how young is too young. Because I’m not too young. I’m trying to start my life all over at thirty-seven. I’m curious to try new things, and I had this image … I was thinking, you know, maybe I could invite Kitty, and you could invite your wife. The four of us could do a little experiment together, to see what all the fuss is about. If we’re forbidding our kids to do something, shouldn’t we know what we’re forbidding?”
“I don’t need to jump off a cliff to know that children shouldn’t be jumping off a cliff.”
“But what if it turns out to be great? What if it helps us understand our kids better? Or, I don’t know, just generally expands our minds. I was thinking, if you were there with me, it would be okay to try it. You’re a man of God, and you’re not a fearful person. You’re the opposite of the usual kind of minister.”
She could hardly have said anything more warming to his heart and loins. An early dusk was gathering, snow whitening the metal surfaces along the road, slush mottling the sidewalks. It was the best of days again.
“I don’t think my wife would be interested,” he said.
“Okay. Just you and me and Kitty, then.”
While he groped for a plausible reason to exclude Kitty as well, Frances gave him a playful little kick on the hip.
“Unless you don’t think we need a chaperone,” she said.
Among the revelations of the night before, in the front seat of Tanner’s VW bus, had been the excellence of lips. In the past, Becky’s lips had mostly just annoyed her, by being chapped or by wearing off her lipstick unevenly, their sensitivity in spin-the-bottle situations a matter of ticklishness and grossness. Only when they found their way to Tanner’s lips, which mirrored hers but had their own unpredictable volition, did she discover their connection to every nerve in her body. His mustache was at once plushy and sharp-bristled, his tongue shy at first but then less so, his teeth unexpectedly close to the action. Every sensation was a novelty, every angle of contact subtly different. The reality of kissing Tanner Evans was shockingly much better than the idea of it. She could have done it for hours, insensible of the discomfort of twisting sideways on the passenger seat, if they hadn’t been interrupted by noises in the parking lot.
“Hey, that’s Tanner’s van,” they heard a girl say.
In the imperfect darkness, he pulled away from Becky and cocked an ear. The voices of the girl and a second girl receded, presumably heading into the back room of the Grove.
“We should get out of here,” he said.
Having thrown herself at him, Becky understood his not wanting to be caught with her, but to her the hazard of being caught was thrilling. She drew him close and kissed him again. Moments later, the voices were back.
“Tanner?” the girl called, approaching the bus. “Laura?”
Tanner jerked away and peered out the window. Catching his panic, Becky bent over double and tried to hide her face in her hair, but it was obviously insufficient cover. She groped behind her, felt the Navajo blanket that was draped over the passenger seat, and pulled it over her head. From under its dusty woolenness she heard Tanner rolling down the window.
“Sally, yeah, hey,” he said.
“Are you guys coming in?”
It was Sally Perkins, Laura Dobrinsky’s good friend.
“Yeah,” Tanner said. “Yeah, I’m just helping a friend here for a second.”
Through the wool, Becky could feel Sally Perkins’s eyes on her ridiculous blanketed form.
“Laura’s not here?” Sally said.
“Uh, no.”
“Marcie and I are celebrating, if you felt like joining us. She just turned legal.”
“Yeah, um. That sounds—yeah.”
“See you inside?”
When Sally was gone, Becky sat up giggling and shrugged off the blanket. “Oops,” she said. This would have been a natural moment to ask about the status of Tanner and Laura as a couple, but he was giggling, too. For now, Becky thought, it was enough to share a secret with him, to be his partner in crime. She already had a sleepless night’s worth of new sensations to process and relive, and it seemed unwise to overstay her welcome. “You should go inside,” she told him.
“I don’t even like Marcie Ackerman.”
“It’s okay.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You do like me?”
“Yes! Why do you think I came down here?”
“So maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Definitely. We could—” He slumped. “Actually, tomorrow’s not so great.”
“I don’t have anything all day until the concert.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. I have to work until four, and then we’ll be setting up.”
By we he meant his band. He meant the Natural Woman. Becky’s nerves, hypersensitized by kissing, were defenseless against her disappointment.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “What about Friday?”
“Friday’s Christmas Eve. Clem’s coming home. I’ll be busy with my family.”
“Right.”
“So I guess I’ll just see you when I see you.” She reached for the door latch. “Maybe in church, if I decide to go again.”
“Becky—”
“It’s okay. I understand. You’re really busy tomorrow.”
As she opened the door, he grabbed her shoulder. “I don’t have to be at the church until five thirty. I could meet you somewhere before then.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No, I want to.” His expression was pleading. “I want to.”
Satisfied that she had power over him, unsure only about the extent of it, she declined his offer of a ride and left him to Sally and Marcie. As she walked home, alone, the image of herself cowering beneath the Navajo blanket became less funny, more troubling. She was now officially the kind of girl who stole another girl’s boyfriend. She couldn’t tell if she sincerely felt guilty or was just scared of being confronted by the Natural Woman.
They’d agreed to meet at Treble Clef, the music store where he worked. As the appointed hour approached, Becky forced herself to linger at New Prospect Books, leafing through European travel guides, until she was a few minutes late. It was Tanner’s job to be eager now, not hers. In her shoulder bag she had the colored pencils that Judson had requested, a velveteen-boxed pen and mechanical pencil for Clem, and a Laura Nyro album so desirable to her she didn’t care if Perry wanted it himself. She’d stuck to her usual Christmas budget, despite the thirteen thousand dollars in her savings account, and had postponed the last of her buying until she could ride to the shopping mall in Jeannie Cross’s Mustang in the morning. The cellophane-wrapped newness of the items in her bag, which was the thing about Christmas presents—that they passed unused through the hands of the giver, were wonderfully new-feeling and new-smelling when the recipient unwrapped them—was of a piece with the freshness of the snow beneath her feet, the world’s rebirth in whiteness, when she finally walked around the corner to the music store. Being kissed had made her feel like a brand-new person, a just-opened present whose life was imminent but unbegun. When she saw Tanner standing in the snow by his bus, outside the store, he seemed equally new to her, because she had an actual date with him. She recognized his fringed jacket, the dark fall of his hair on his shoulders, but what a difference there was between wishing for a thing and finding it yours on Christmas morning.