Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

  “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.

  Instead of embracing her, he helped her—not to say hustled her—into the bus and ran around to the driver’s side. Wet snow on the windows had made an ice cave of the interior, private but dreary. The rear of the bus was piled with amps and instrument cases that seemed impatient to be unloaded. After Tanner had started the engine and turned up the heater, Becky waited for him to lean over. She’d made the first move the night before, so now it was his turn. Her entire self was poised to open itself up to him as soon as he kissed her. But he was nodding to himself, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “I just got some news,” he said. “It’s pretty far-out.”

  She turned to him and presented her face, to suggest that his news could wait.

  “Do you remember that time we were talking in the sanctuary?”

  “Do I remember it?”

  “Well, it got me thinking,” he said. “You got me thinking. I realized it was time for me to take the next step.”

  In Becky’s mind, his next step was to make a definitive break with Laura Dobrinsky. If the news was that he’d done it without her having insisted on it, she was happy to hear it.

  “So, you know Quincy, right?”

  Quincy Travers was one of Tanner’s black friends, the drummer for the Bleu Notes.

  “So Quincy’s been playing with this guy from Cicero whose cousin is an agent. A really good agent—he gets his acts into clubs all over Chicago. And you know what? He’s going to be there tonight. I just got a call back from him.”

  Becky shivered in the long coat her aunt had given her. The seat of the bus was much colder than it had been the night before. “That’s great,” she said.

  “I know. This is our biggest crowd of the year by far. It’s the perfect showcase.”

  The VW’s little vents were blowing nothing but freezing air.

  “Congratulations,” Becky said.

  “I only made the call because of you.” Tanner took her gloved hands in his bare hands and squeezed them, as if to infuse her with enthusiasm. “Just knowing you understood what I’m trying to do—that made a huge difference.”

  Only abstractly did she appreciate being thanked. She didn’t like sitting in an ice cave, talking about his music career and not about the night before. She didn’t like imagining him and Laura and the Bleu Notes playing more gigs around Chicago.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Nothing. That’s great news.”

  He tenderly put two fingers on her cheek, but she averted her face. The lumpy, shadowy snow coating her window was like the cellulite pictured in her mother’s Redbooks. Tanner rested his chin on her shoulder, his mouth near her ear. “When I see you, I feel like I can do anything.”

  She tried to speak, shivered, tried again. “And Laura?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought she was your girlfriend.”

  He sat up straight. Outside the bus, teenaged boys were bellowing in the snow.

  “I’m just wondering where I stand,” Becky said. “I mean, after last night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, shouldn’t we talk about it? Or is that too Crossroads?”

  “It’s pretty Crossroads.”

  “I only joined because of you. I thought you loved it.”

  “Yeah. I know. I have to have a conversation with her. It’s just—here’s the thing.”

  A snowball hit the frosted windshield. It stuck there, a darker blurry mass, and now a red-fingered hand was swiping snow off Becky’s window. Through the cleared glass, she saw a junior-high kid packing a snowball. He fired it across the street, and another one slammed into the side of the bus. Tanner popped open his door, shouted at the kids, and shut the door again. “Stupid juvies.”

  Becky waited.

  “So, it’s hard,” he said. “Everybody sees Laura as this intense, scary person, but there’s a side of her that’s really insecure. Really vulnerable. And—well, here’s the thing.”

  “Who you want to be with,” Becky said firmly.

  “I know. I know what I need to do. It’s just—tonight is not the night to have that conversation. Laura doesn’t even care if we get an agent, but the rest of us do, and she’s so radical, I can see her just walking out. Which—there go our keyboards, there go my harmonies. Even if she plays, and she’s up there pissed off with me, it’s going to be a mess.”

  Realistically, Becky knew there wasn’t any rush. The fact of their having kissed, the fact of her sitting in his bus with him now, the fact of their having this conversation, was evidence of the inroads she’d made on his heart. If only she hadn’t set her own heart on going to the concert with him! It was too late to undo how fervidly she’d imagined walking into the church on his arm, showing the world that he was hers, and telling Jeannie Cross about it in the morning.

  “Aren’t there other agents?”

  “There are tons of agents,” Tanner said. “But this guy, Benedetti, he’s supposed to be really good, and this isn’t like playing the Grove. Darryl Bruce is home from college, he’s sitting in on lead guitar, and Biff Allard is bringing his congas. We’ve got a really full sound tonight, and the perfect audience.”

  “I thought the main thing was your record. Your demo, with your songs.”

  “Yeah. It still is. But you were right—I need to think bigger. I need to be playing four times as many gigs, building up an audience, making contacts.”

  Becky hoped he couldn’t see, in the dreary cave light, that she was clenching her face muscles to keep from crying. “But so … if Laura’s in the band … and you’re playing gigs … how does that work?”

  “I can find someone to replace her. I just can’t do it in the next three hours.”

  An embarrassing squeak escaped from Becky’s throat. She cleared it loudly. “So,” she said. “You’re breaking up with her?”

  When Tanner didn’t answer, she looked and saw that his eyes were closed, his hands pressed together between his knees.

  “It’s kind of important for me to know,” she said. “After what happened last night.”

  “I know. I know. It’s just hard. When you’ve been with a person for so long, and she’s still so into you. It’s hard.”

  “Or maybe you just don’t really want to.”

  “That’s not it. I swear to God, Becky. This is just a bad night to do it.”

  The need to cry could be as urgent as the need to pee. She picked up her shoulder bag. “I should probably go.”

  “You just got here.”

  “It’s all right. There’s a reception I told my mom I couldn’t go to because I was going to the concert. I can at least make her happy.”

  “I’m not saying you can’t go to the concert.”

  “You want me to go there and act like nothing happened? Or, what, I’m supposed to put a blanket over my head again?”

  He filled his fists with his hair and pulled on it.

  “It’s almost like you’re ashamed of me,” she said.

  “No, no, no. This is just—”

  “I know, a bad night. I was really looking forward to it, but now— I’m not.”

  Before he could stop her, she jumped out of the bus. Leaving the door hanging open, she narrowed her eyes against the stinging snow and ran up the alley behind the bookstore, where the bus couldn’t follow her. She could only hope that she was disappointing him as much as he’d disappointed he
r. She’d felt so certain of how their date was going to go: a delicious resumption of their kissing, followed by testimonials of amazement that they’d found their way to each other, followed by lengthier kissing, followed by her triumphal entry into the church with him. Now even the snow was unromantic, a painful hindrance. Everything had gone to shit.

  She could feel wetness creeping into her only decent boots, which she was probably damaging irreparably, as she trudged the long blocks home in slanting snow. It was getting too dark to see well, and the physical effort of not slipping and falling kept her tears at bay until she reached the parsonage. She’d held out hope that Tanner might be waiting in his bus there, waiting to apologize and beg her to come to the concert with him, the consequences be damned. But except for a forlorn distant scraping of a shovel and a pair of unrecent tire tracks, nearly refilled with snow, her block of Highland Street was desolate. The only light in the parsonage was in Perry and Judson’s room.

  Inside, there was no sign of her mother. Was she still not back from her exercise class? Becky now felt ashamed of having been so unforthcoming with her, so certain she knew better how to handle Tanner. Her mother seemed to her the one person with whom she might safely share her disappointment. She brushed snow out of her hair and hurried upstairs, past the closed door of her brothers’ room. At the sight of her bed, where just a few hours earlier she’d innocently dreamed of going to the concert, her disappointment came bursting out.

  As she lay on the bed and wallowed in her conviction that Tanner was still in love with Laura, that he cared more about Laura’s feelings than he did about hers, she thought she was crying not too loudly. But after some minutes there came a gentle knocking on her door. She went rigid.

  “Becky?” Perry said.

  “Go away.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Leave me alone.”

  “You sure?”

  She wasn’t all right. An anguished sound came out of her, the disappointment erupting again. It must have been audible to Perry, because he entered her room and shut the door behind him. Her irritation stopped her tears.