Strong Motion. Jonathan Franzen
blond wood as the two slender barstools in front of it. Shelves reaching nearly to the ceiling displayed several hundred different bottles— liqueurs and digestives with labels in foreign alphabets, a few with pictures of unlikely vegetables. Louis knelt by the gray marble floor behind the bar. There was plenty of room here for a small woman to lie dead, head smashed. It wasn’t hard to see the faint brownish fingers and ridgelines of splashed liquor on the wall. Nor was it hard to see blood. There were traces of it in the sutures between the squares of marble, hardly browned, the nail-polish redness especially visible where the edges of the squares were chipped. Who had cleaned things up? The maid, before her deportation? With his fingertips he pressed on the cold, unyielding marble, putting his body’s weight on it, hearing clearly the whock! of the splitting head.
“Louis. For God’s sake. What are you doing?”
He jumped to his feet. His mother was approaching the bar. “Dropped a coin,” he said.
“You have a morbid interest?”
“No, no, I just happened to come inside this way.”
“You came in—?” Melanie shook her head at the French doors as if they were a grievous disappointment to her. “This house,” she said, “has no security whatsoever. I suppose she expected the pyramid to protect against burglars too. That’s very logical and rational, don’t you think? That’s par for the course.”
Louis heard a faint tinkling in a toilet behind a wall.
“Well. You see where she died.” His mother crossed her arms and gazed up at the liquor bottles with satisfaction. “Personally, I can’t think of anything tackier than putting a full-sized bar like this in your living room. Or do you not agree. Maybe you think everyone should have a saloon in their living room. And a beer keg?”
She looked at Louis as if she actually expected him to reply. “The insult on the injury,” she continued, “is that she probably had it installed with money that didn’t belong to her. I don’t suppose you missed what Mr. Rudman was saying. That she forged a title to this house to borrow money on. What do you think of that, Louis? Do you think that’s proper? Do you think that’s OK?”
With a beautifully shod toe she flipped up one end of a Chinese rug, tilted her head to read the label, and flipped the end down again. She sneered at a coffee table. “Harmonic Lifestyles. Phoenician Deities. Orgone Redux.” She made a gagging, dismissive face. “What do you think of all this, Louis?”
“I think I’m going to scream if you ask me another question like that.”
“Every single thing I see here makes me sick. Sick.” She said this to the portrait above the fireplace.
“But it’s all yours now, right?”
“Effectively. Yes.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I have no idea. I came in here to tell you that you’re making Mr. Rudman and me very nervous lurking around like this. You couldn’t find your father?”
“No.”
“Well, if you want to stay, you can be in the back room, there’s a TV in there, maybe you can find a game on. There’s lots of food in the refrigerator, you can help yourself. Or you could sweep the patio for me, and I have a few other little jobs for someone, but I do not just want you lurking around. This isn’t your house, you know.”
Louis looked at her with neutral expectancy, as if she were a chess opponent who’d made a move he wanted to be sure she wasn’t going to change her mind about. Then, the arbitrary grace period expiring, he said, “You have a good lunch on Thursday?”
“It was a business lunch. I thought I explained that to you at the time.”
“What did you eat?”
“I don’t remember, Louis.”
“You don’t remember? That was three days ago! Piece of fish? Reuben sandwich?”
They could hear Mr. Rudman handling dishes in the kitchen now, whistling a show tune.
“What is it that you want?” Melanie asked levelly.
“I want to know what you had for lunch on Thursday.”
She took a deep breath, trying to contain her annoyance. “I don’t remember.”
He scrunched up his face. “You serious?”
“Louis—” She waved a hand, trying to suggest some generic entrée, something not worth mentioning. “I don’t remember, a piece of fish, yes. Filet of sole. I’m extremely busy.”
“Filet of sole. Filet of sole.” He nodded so emphatically, it was like bowing. Then he froze, not even letting breath out. “Broiled? Poached?”
“I’m going back to the dining room now,” Melanie said, remaining rooted to the center of a Chinese rug. “I’ve had a very upsetting week—” She paused to let Louis challenge this. “A very upsetting week. I’m sure you understand that and can show some consideration.”
“Yeah, well, we’re all grieving in our own way, obviously. It’s just I heard this crazy rumor about your having inherited twenty-two million dollars.” He tried to meet her eyes, but she’d turned away, squeezing her thumbs, fists balled. “Crazy, huh? But getting back to this lunch, let’s see, Mr. Aldren and whatever his name is, Tweedledum, they had steak, right? And Mr. Stoorhuys—” He snapped his fingers. “Rabbit. Half a rabbit, grilled. Or what do you call it? Braised.”
“I’m going back to the dining room now.”
“Just tell me, come on, is that what he had? Did he have rabbit?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t happen to notice—”
“You didn’t notice rabbit? Sort of stretched out on the plate? Maybe a little cranberry sauce with it? Or red cabbage? Potato pancakes? What kind of restaurant was it? Help me picture this, Mom. Was it really expensive?”
Melanie took another deep breath. “We went to a restaurant called La Côte Américaine. I had filet of sole and Mr. Aldren and Mr. Tabscott and Mr. Stoorhuys had soup and grilled steaks or chops, I truly don’t recall exactly what—”
“But not rabbit. You’d recall that.”
“But no, not rabbit, Louis. You’re being quite a bit less funny than you seem to think you are.”
Louis’s eyes narrowed. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get back to the twenty-two million, then. What are you going to do with it?”
“I have no idea.”
“How about a yacht? They make nice gifts.”
“This is not at all funny.”
“So it’s true?”
Melanie shook her head. “It’s not true.”
“Oh, it’s not true. Meaning it’s false. Meaning, what, twenty-one point nine? Twenty-two point one?” “I mean it does not concern you.” “Oh, I see, it doesn’t concern me. Let’s forget it, then, let’s drop it. Hey, people inherit twenty-two million dollars every day. What’d you do at work today? Oh, I inherited twenty-two million dollars, would you pass me the butter?”
“Please stop mentioning that figure.”
“Twenty-two million dollars? You want me to stop mentioning twenty-two million dollars? All right, I’ll stop mentioning twenty-two million dollars. Let’s call it alpha.” He began to pace around the rim of a rug. “Alpha equals twenty-two million dollars, twenty-two million dollars equals alpha, alpha being neither greater than twenty-two million dollars nor less than twenty-two million dollars.” He drew up. “How’d your father get so rich?”
“Please, Louis, I asked you to stop mentioning the