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...
He was pleased to see her pitch right in and hustle boxes into the community center. He hoped that Theo, seeing her cheerful industry, might better acknowledge her in the future. As always, the delivery of food and toys was a straightforward transaction. Russ expected no thanks for the donations, and Theo expected no lingering for sociability. When all the boxes were inside, Theo put his hands on his hips and said, “Good. Some ladies will be here in the morning for anybody who wants to stop by.”
“And we will see you here again on Tuesday,” Russ said. He clapped his hands and turned to Frances. “Shall we?”
He saw that she was holding a small, flat package. It was wrapped in Santa Claus paper and red ribbon.
“Will you do something for me?” she asked Theo. “Will you give this to Ronnie tomorrow? Tell him it’s from the lady he made the drawings with?”
Russ hadn’t seen the package in any of the boxes. She must have had it in her coat pocket. He wished she’d mentioned it to him earlier, because Theo was frowning.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s just a set of Flair pens. They’re great for coloring-books.”
“That’s nice,” Theo said. “Some little boy or girl be happy to get that.”
“No, it’s for Ronnie. I got it specially for him.”
“All well and good. But I think you should put that with the other toys.”
“Why? He’s such a sweet boy—why can’t I give him a little present?”
She seemed innocently surprised, innocently hurt. An instinct to protect her welled up in Russ so strongly, he thought he might really be in love with her.
Theo wasn’t similarly moved. “I was given to understand,” he said, “that you and Ronnie’s mother had some words.”
“It’s a gift,” Frances said.
“I already asked you once to leave that boy be. Now I’m asking you again, politely.”
Frances’s hurt was turning to anger. It was an emotion Russ had never seen in her, and the sight of it turned him on. He imagined her angry at him, the full womanly range of her emotions bared to him, in the kind of spat that lovers sometimes had.
“Why?” she said. “I don’t understand.”
Theo rolled his eyes toward Russ, as if she were his woman to control.
“Frances,” Russ said, moving toward her. “Maybe we should trust Theo on this. We don’t know the situation.”
“What is the situation?”
“The situation,” Theo said, “is that Clarice, the boy’s mother, doesn’t want you talking to him. She came and complained to me about that.”
Frances laughed. “Because why? Because she’s such a perfect mother?”
Her derision, too, was sexually exciting to Russ, but morally it was unattractive. He placed a hand on her shoulder and tried to turn her away. “You and I can talk about this later,” he said.
She shrugged off his hand. “I’m sorry, but how is it right for a boy who should be in a special school, getting special attention—how is it okay for him to be wandering around the neighborhood during school hours, cadging quarters?”
“Frances,” Russ said.
“I appreciate your concern,” Theo said evenly. “But I suggest you head home. It’s a long drive in the snow.”
“We really should be going,” Russ agreed.
Frances now did direct her anger at him. “Does this seem right to you? Why isn’t someone calling social services? Isn’t this something the state should know about?”
“The state?” Theo smiled at Russ as if they were in on a joke. “You think the State of Illinois has a functioning child-protection system?”
“What are you smiling at?” Frances said to Russ. “Did I say something funny?”
He erased his smile. “Not at all. Theo is just saying it’s not a perfect system. It’s understaffed and overwhelmed. We can talk about it in the car.”
Again he tried to steer her toward the door, and again she shed his hand. “I want to know,” she said, “why I can’t give a needy boy one tiny little Christmas present.”
The time on the community center’s wall clock was 5:18. Each passing minute deepened the trouble Russ would be in with Marion, and he knew he should insist that they leave. But again his lady was asking him to perform a difficult task—to side with her against an urban minister with whom he’d painstakingly cultivated a relationship.
“I take your point about the gift,” he said to Theo. “But I’m kind of with Frances here. It doesn’t seem right that Ronnie’s on the street by himself.”
Theo threw him a disappointed look and turned to Frances. “You want to take charge of that boy? You want to take that on? Retarded South Side nine-year-old? You ready for that?”
“No,” she said. “That would be a lot for me to take on. But I can’t help—”
“He’s already been in foster care once. Are you familiar with that system?”
“Not—no. Not really.”
“We’re here to learn,” Russ said—managing, in one breath, to patronize Frances and sound idiotic to Theo.
“You got to go pretty far down the list,” Theo said, “to find the family that will take a boy like Ronnie. That’s going to be a family collecting checks for half a dozen kids—to see any profit, you need volume. And how do you handle half a dozen kids?”
“You lock them in a room,” Russ said, to sound less stupid.
“You lock them all up in a room. You don’t spare the rod.”
“That’s a bad system, I agree,” Frances said.
“Then work on changing it, if you want to try to help. Clarice isn’t all bad, she was just too young when she had Ronnie. When she gets herself together, she takes him to the school in Washington Park. That’s on a good day. On bad days he falls through the cracks. He knows to come here when she’s strung out, and sooner or later she always comes to find him. The problem is the men who give her drugs. She gets lost in that, and the only thing that gets her out of it is mother’s pride. If she didn’t have Ronnie, I reckon she’d be dead by now.”
“I can understand that,” Frances said. “I just want to give him something he might like.”
“That’s right. That’s what you want. What I want is for Clarice not to up and tell Ronnie to keep away from a church where he’s safe.”
“Well, so, let me write her a note. Is there a piece of paper I can write on?”
“Frances,” Russ said.
“She needs to know I’m not trying to take Ronnie away from her. Theo can give her the note with the present.”
Theo made his eyes very wide, suggesting a limit to his patience.
“Look,” Russ said. “This is silly. If you want Ronnie to have colored pens, Theo can take off the wrapping paper and give them to him. I don’t think writing a note is a good idea.”
“I wanted him to have a present to unwrap on Christmas.”
Theo, his limit reached, shook his head and walked away. Russ snatched the gift from Frances and hurried after him, into the sanctuary.
“Do me a favor and take this,” he said, pressing the gift on Theo. “She means well. She really does care about Ronnie. She’s just…”
“I was surprised to see her,” Theo said. “I assumed you were coming with Kitty.”
“Yeah, ah. Change of plan.”
The single fluorescent light burning above the altar, behind an old upright piano and a freestanding organ, seemed to intensify the sanctuary’s chill.
“Your private affairs are none of my business,” Theo said. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d take the log out of your eye and tell her to keep clear of that boy. If she won’t do it, she needs to find someplace else to go with her good intentions. I don’t need that kind of thing here.”
Two years of bridge-building with Theo were in jeopardy. Russ knew exactly why Theo was impatient with Frances. He himself had been impatient with other First Reformed ladies who’d joined the circle, Juanita Fuller, Wilma St. John, June Goya. They’d spoken to people in the neighborhood, including Theo, with a treacly sort of maternal condescension, partly a product of fear, partly racism repackaged in self-flattering form. He’d had to ask each of them to leave the circle, and if Theo had now been complaining about anyone but Frances, Russ would have deferred to him and kicked her out. He did believe that the flavor of Frances’s offense was different, more a matter of high spirits and irreverence. But it was possible that he only believed this because he was falling in love with her.