Freedom. Jonathan Franzen
Poor Walter. First he’d set aside his acting and filmmaking dreams out of a sense of financial obligation to his parents, and then no sooner had his dad set him free by dying than he teamed up with Patty and set aside his planet-saving aspirations and went to work for 3M, so that Patty could have her excellent old house and stay home with the babies. The whole thing happened almost without discussion. He got excited about the plans that excited her, he threw himself into renovating the house and defending her against her family. It wasn’t until years later—after Patty had begun to Disappoint him—that he became more forgiving of the other Emersons and insisted that she was the lucky one, the only Emerson to escape the shipwreck and survive to tell the tale. He said that Abigail, who’d been left stranded to scavenge emotional meals on an island of great scarcity (Manhattan Island!), should be forgiven for monopolizing conversations in her attempt to feed herself. He said that Patty should pity her siblings, not blame them, for not having had the strength or the luck to get away: for being so hungry. But this all came much later. In the early years, he was so fired up about Patty, she could do no wrong. And very nice years they were.
Walter’s own competitiveness wasn’t family-oriented. By the time she met him, he’d already won that game. At the poker table of being a Berglund, he’d been dealt every ace except maybe looks and ease with women. (His older brother—who is currently on his third young wife, who is working hard to support him—got that particular ace.) Walter not only knew about the Club of Rome and read difficult novels and appreciated Igor Stravinsky, he could also sweat a copper pipe joint and do finish carpentry and identify birds by their songs and take good care of a problematic woman. He was so much his family’s winner that he could afford to make regular voyages back to help the others.
“I guess now you’re going to have to see where I grew up,” he’d said to Patty outside the Hibbing bus station, after she’d aborted the road trip with Richard. They were in his dad’s Crown Victoria, which they’d fogged up with their hot and heavy breathing.
“I want to see your room,” Patty said. “I want to see everything. I think you’re a wonderful person!”
Hearing this, he had to kiss her for another long while before resuming his anxiety. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I’m still embarrassed to take you home.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. You should see my home. It’s a freak show.”
“Yeah, well, this is not anything as interesting as that. This is just your basic Iron Range squalor.”
“So let’s go. I want to see it. I want to sleep with you.”
“That sounds great,” he said, “but I think my mom might be uncomfortable with it.”
“I want to sleep near you. And then I want to have breakfast with you.”
“That we can arrange.”
In truth, the scene at the Whispering Pines was sobering to Patty and touched off a moment of doubt about what she’d done by coming to Hibbing; it unsettled that self-contained state of mind in which she’d run to a guy who physically didn’t do for her what his best friend did. The motel wasn’t so bad from the outside, and there was a non-depressing number of cars in the parking lot, but the living quarters, behind the office, were indeed a long way from Westchester. They lit up a whole previously invisible universe of privilege, her own suburban privilege; she had an unexpected pang of homesickness. The floors were spongily carpeted and sloped perceptibly toward the creek in back. In the living/dining area was a hubcap-sized, extensively crenellated ceramic ashtray within easy reach of the davenport where Gene Berglund had read his fishing and hunting magazines and watched whatever programming the motel’s antenna (rigged, as she saw the next morning, to the top of a decapitated pine tree behind the septic field) was able to pull down from stations in the Twin Cities and Duluth. Walter’s little bedroom, which he’d shared with his younger brother, was at the bottom of the downslope and permanently damp with creek vapors. Running down the middle of the carpeting was a line of gummy residue from the duct tape that Walter had put down as a child to demarcate his private space. Paraphernalia from his striving childhood were still ranged along the far wall: Boy Scout handbooks and awards, a complete set of abridged presidential biographies, a partial set of World Book Encyclopedia volumes, skeletons of small animals, an empty aquarium, stamp and coin collections, a scientific thermometer/barometer with wires leading out a window. On the room’s warped door was a yellowed homemade No Smoking sign, lettered in red crayon, its N and its S unsteady but tall in their defiance.
“My first act of rebellion,” Walter said.
“How old were you?” Patty said.
“I don’t know. Maybe ten. My little brother had bad asthma.”
Outside, the rain was coming down hard. Dorothy was asleep in her room, but Walter and Patty were both still buzzing with lust. He showed her the “lounge” that his dad had operated, the impressive stuffed walleye mounted on the wall, the birch-plywood bar that he’d helped his dad build. Until recently, when he had to be hospitalized, Gene had stood smoking and drinking behind this bar in the late afternoon, waiting for his friends to get off work and give him business.
“So this is me,” Walter said. “This is where I come from.”
“I love that you come from here.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I’ll take it.”
“Just that I admire you so much.”
“That’s good. I guess.” He went to the front desk and looked at keys. “How does Room 21 sound to you?”
“Is it a good room?”
“It’s very much like all the other rooms.”
“I’m twenty-one years old. So it’s perfect.”
Room 21 was full of faded and abraded surfaces that, in lieu of being refurbished, had been subjected to decades of vigorous scouring. The creek-dampness was noticeable but not overwhelming. The beds were low and standard sized, not queen.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want,” Walter said, setting her bag down. “I can take you back to the station in the morning.”
“No! This is fine. I’m not here for vacation. I’m here to see you, and to try to be useful.”
“Right. I’m just worried that I’m not actually what you want.”
“Oh, well, worry no more.”
“Well, I’m still worried.”
She made him lie down on a bed and tried to reassure him with her body. Soon enough, though, his worry boiled up again. He righted himself and asked her why she’d gone on the road trip with Richard. It was a question she’d allowed herself to hope he wouldn’t ask.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I wanted to see what a road trip was like.”
“Hm.”
“There was something I had to see about. That’s the only way I can explain it. There was something I had to find out. And I found it out, and now I’m here.”
“What did you find out?”
“I found out where I wanted to be, and who I wanted to be with.”
“Well, that was quick.”
“It was a stupid mistake,” she said. “He’s got a way of looking at a person, as I’m sure you know. It takes a while for a person to sort out what she actually wants. Please don’t blame me for that.”
“I’m just impressed that you sorted it out so quickly.”
She had an impulse to start crying, and yielded to it, and Walter for a while became his best comforting self.
“He wasn’t nice to me,” she said through tears. “And you’re the opposite of that. And I so, so, so need the opposite of that right now. Can