Freedom. Jonathan Franzen
her life in Ramsey Hill. Joey had spent July and August in Montana, working on the high-country ranch of one of Walter’s major Nature Conservancy donors, and had returned with broad, manly shoulders and two new inches of height. Walter, who didn’t ordinarily brag, had vouchsafed to the Paulsens, at a picnic in August, that the donor had called him up to say how “blown away” he was by Joey’s fearlessness and tirelessness in throwing calves and dipping sheep. Patty, however, at the same picnic, was already vacant-eyed with pain. In June, before Joey went to Montana, she’d again taken him up to Nameless Lake to help her improve the property, and the only neighbor who’d seen them there described a terrible afternoon of watching mother and son lacerate each other over and over, airing it all in plain sight, Joey mocking Patty’s mannerisms and finally calling her “stupid” to her face, at which Patty had cried out, “Ha-ha-ha! Stupid! God, Joey! Your maturity just never ceases to amaze me! Calling your mother stupid in front of other people! That’s just so attractive in a person! What a big, tough, independent man you are!”
By summer’s end, Blake had nearly finished work on the great-room and was outfitting it with such Blakean gear as PlayStation, Foosball, a refrigerated beer keg, a large-screen TV, an air-hockey table, a stained-glass Vikings chandelier, and mechanized recliners. Neighbors were left to imagine Patty’s dinner-table sarcasm regarding these amenities, and Joey’s declarations that she was being stupid and unfair, and Walter’s angry demands that Joey apologize to Patty, but the night when Joey defected to the house next door didn’t need to be imagined, because Carol Monaghan was happy to describe it, in a loud and somewhat gloating voice, to any neighbor sufficiently disloyal to the Berglunds to listen to her.
“Joey was so calm, so calm,” Carol said. “I swear to God, you couldn’t melt butter in his mouth. I went over there with Connie to support him and let everybody know I’m totally in favor of the arrangement, because, you know Walter, he’s so considerate, he’s going to worry it’s an imposition on me. And Joey was totally responsible like always. He just wanted to be on the same page and make sure all the cards are on the table. He explained how he and Connie had discussed things with me, and I told Walter—because I knew he’d be concerned about this—I told him groceries were not a problem. Blake and I are a family now and we’re happy to feed one more, and Joey’s also very good about the dishes and garbage and being neat, and plus, I told Walter, he and Patty used to be so generous to Connie and give her meals and all. I wanted to acknowledge that, because they really were generous when I didn’t have my life together, and I’ve never been anything but grateful for that. And Joey’s just so responsible and calm. He explains how, since Patty won’t even let Connie in the house, he really doesn’t have any other choice if he wants to spend time with her, and I chime in and say how totally in support of the relationship I am—if only all the other young people in this world were as responsible as those two, the world would be a much better place—and how much more preferable it is for them to be in my house, safe and responsible, instead of sneaking around and getting in trouble. I’m so grateful to Joey, he’ll always be welcome in my house. I said that to them. And I know Patty doesn’t like me, she’s always looked down her nose at me and been snooty about Connie. I know that. I know a thing or two about the things Patty’s capable of. I knew she was going to throw some kind of fit. And so her face gets all twisted, and she’s like, ‘You think he loves your daughter? You think he’s in love with her?’ In this high little voice. Like it’s impossible for somebody like Joey to be in love with Connie, because I didn’t go to college or whatever, or I don’t have as big a house or come from New York City or whatever, or I have to work an honest-to-Christ forty-hour full-time job, unlike her. Patty’s so full of disrespect for me, you can’t believe it. But Walter I thought I could talk to. He really is a sweetie. His face is beet red, I think because he’s embarrassed, and he says, ‘Carol, you and Connie need to leave so we can talk to Joey privately.’ Which I’m fine with. I’m not there to make trouble, I’m not a troublemaking person. Except then Joey says no. He says he’s not asking permission, he’s just informing them about what he’s going to do, and there’s nothing to discuss. And that’s when Walter loses it. Just loses it. He’s got tears running down his face he’s so upset—and I can understand that, because Joey’s his youngest, and it’s not Walter’s fault Patty is so unreasonable and mean to Connie that Joey can’t stand to live with them anymore. But he starts yelling at the top of his lungs, like, YOU ARE SIXTEEN YEARS OLD AND YOU ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL YOU FINISH HIGH SCHOOL. And Joey’s just smiling at him, you couldn’t melt butter in his mouth. Joey says it’s not against the law for him to leave, and anyway he’s only moving next door. Totally reasonable. I wish I’d been one percent as smart and cool when I was sixteen. I mean, he’s just a great kid. It made me feel kind of bad for Walter, because he starts yelling all this stuff about how he’s not going to pay for Joey’s college, and Joey’s not going to get to go back to Montana next summer, and all he’s asking is that Joey come to dinner and sleep in his own bed and be a part of the family. And Joey’s like, ‘I’m still part of the family,’ which, by the way, he never said he wasn’t. But Walter’s stomping around the kitchen, for a couple of seconds I think he’s actually going to hit him, but he’s just totally lost it, he’s yelling, GET OUT, GET OUT, I’M SICK OF IT, GET OUT, and then he’s gone and you can hear him upstairs in Joey’s room, opening up Joey’s drawers or whatever, and Patty runs upstairs and they start screaming at each other, and Connie and I are hugging Joey, because he’s the one reasonable person in the family and we feel so sorry for him, and that’s when I know for sure it’s the right thing for him to move in with us. Walter comes stomping downstairs again and we can hear Patty screaming like a maniac—she’s totally lost it—and Walter starts yelling again, DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO YOUR MOTHER? Because it’s all about Patty, see, she’s always got to be the victim. And Joey’s just standing there shaking his head, because it’s so obvious. Why would he want to live in a place like this?”
Although some neighbors did undoubtedly take satisfaction in Patty’s reaping the whirlwind of her son’s extraordinariness, the fact remained that Carol Monaghan had never been well liked on Barrier Street, Blake was widely deplored, Connie was thought spooky, and nobody had ever really trusted Joey. As word of his insurrection spread, the emotions prevailing among the Ramsey Hill gentry were pity for Walter, anxiety about Patty’s psychological health, and an overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude at how normal their own children were—how happy to accept parental largesse, how innocently demanding of help with their homework or their college applications, how compliant in phoning in their afterschool whereabouts, how divulging of their little day-to-day bruisings, how reassuringly predictable in their run-ins with sex and pot and alcohol. The ache emanating from the Berglunds’ house was sui generis. Walter—unaware, you had to hope, of Carol’s blabbing about his night of “losing it”—acknowledged awkwardly to various neighbors that he and Patty had been “fired” as parents and were doing their best not to take it too personally. “He comes over to study sometimes,” Walter said, “but right now he seems more comfortable spending his nights at Carol’s. We’ll see how long that lasts.”
“How’s Patty taking all this?” Seth Paulsen asked him.
“Not well.”
“We’d love to get you guys over for dinner some night soon.”
“That would be great,” Walter said, “but I think Patty’s going up to my mom’s old house for a while. She’s been fixing it up, you know.”
“I’m worried about her,” Seth said with a catch in his voice.
“So am I, a little bit. I’ve seen her play in pain, though. She tore up her knee in her junior year and tried to play another two games on it.”
“But then didn’t she have, um, career-ending surgery?”
“It was more a point about her toughness, Seth. About her playing through pain.”
“Right.”
Walter and Patty never did get over to the Paulsens for dinner. Patty was absent from Barrier Street, hiding out at Nameless Lake, for long stretches of the winter and spring that followed, and even when her car was in the driveway—for example, at Christmastime,