The Corrections

by Jonathan Franzen

  “How was your trip,” Enid asked Alfred because she had to sometime.

  “Tiring.”

  “Chipper, sweetie, we’re all sitting down.”

  “I’m counting to five,” Alfred said.

  “There’s bacon, you like bacon,” Enid sang. This was a cynical, expedient fraud, one of her hundred daily conscious failures as a mother.

  “Two, three, four,” Alfred said.

  Chipper ran to take his place at the table. No point in getting spanked.

  “Blessalor this foodier use nusta thy service make asair mindful neesa others Jesus name amen,” Gary said.

  A dollop of mashed rutabaga at rest on a plate expressed a clear yellowish liquid similar to plasma or the matter in a blister. Boiled beet greens leaked something cupric, greenish. Capillary action and the thirsty crust of flour drew both liquids under the liver. When the liver was lifted, a faint suction could be heard. The sodden lower crust was unspeakable.

  Chipper considered the life of a girl. To go through life softly, to be a Meisner, to play in that house and be loved like a girl.

  “You want to see my jail I made with Popsicle sticks?” Gary said.

  “A jail, well well,” Alfred said.

  The provident young person neither ate his bacon immediately nor let it be soaked by the vegetable juices. The provident young person evacuated his bacon to the higher ground at the plate’s edge and stored it there as an incentive. The provident young person ate his bite of fried onions, which weren’t good but also weren’t bad, if he needed a preliminary treat.

  “We had a den meeting yesterday,” Enid said. “Gary, honey, we can look at your jail after dinner.”

  “He made an electric chair,” Chipper said. “To go in his jail. I helped.”

  “Ah? Well well.”

  “Mom got these huge boxes of Popsicle sticks,” Gary said.

  “It’s the Pack,” Enid said. “The Pack gets a discount.”

  Alfred didn’t think much of the Pack. A bunch of fathers taking it easy ran the Pack. Pack-sponsored activities were lightweight: contests involving airplanes of balsa, or cars of pinewood, or trains of paper whose boxcars were books read.

  (Schopenhauer: If you want a safe compass to guide you through life … you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony.)

  “Gary, say again what you are,” said Chipper, for whom Gary was the glass of fashion. “Are you a Wolf?”

  “One more Achievement and I’m a Bear.”

  “What are you now, though, a Wolf?”

  “I’m a Wolf but basically I’m a Bear. All’s I have to do now is Conversation.”

  “Conservation,” Enid corrected. “All I have to do now is Conservation.”

  “It’s not Conversation?”

  “Steve Driblett made a gillateen but it didn’t work,” Chipper said.

  “Driblett’s a Wolf.”

  “Brent Person made a plane but it busted in half.”

  “Person is a Bear.”

  “Say broke, sweetie, not busted.”

  “Gary, what’s the biggest firecracker?” Chipper said.

  “M-80. Then cherry bombs.”

  “Wouldn’t it be neat to get an M-80 and put it in your jail and blow it up?”

  “Lad,” Alfred said, “I don’t see you eating your dinner.”

  Chipper was growing emceeishly expansive; for the moment, the Dinner had no reality. “Or seven M-80s,” he said, “and you blew ‘em all at once, or one after another, wouldn’t it be neat?”

  “I’d put a charge in every corner and then put extra fuse,” Gary said. “I’d wind the fuses together and detonate them all at once. That’s the best way to do it, isn’t it, Dad. Separate the charges and put an extra fuse, isn’t it. Dad?”

  “Seven thousand hundred million M-80s,” Chipper cried. He made explosive noises to suggest the megatonnage he had in mind.

  “Chipper,” Enid said with smooth deflection, “tell Dad where we’re all going next week.”

  “The den’s going to the Museum of Transport and I get to come, too,” Chipper recited.

  “Oh Enid.” Alfred made a sour face. “What are you taking them there for?”

  “Bea says it’s very interesting and fun for kids.”

  Alfred shook his head, disgusted. “What does Bea Meisner know about transportation?”

  “It’s perfect for a den meeting,” Enid said. “There’s a real steam engine the boys can sit in.”

  “What they have,” Alfred said, “is a thirty-year-old Mohawk from the New York Central. It’s not an antique. It’s not rare. It’s a piece of junk. If the boys want to see what a real railroad is—”

  “Put a battery and two electrodes on the electric chair,” Gary said.

  “Put an M-80!”

  “Chipper, no, you run a current and the current kills the prisoner.”

  “What’s a current?”

  A current flowed when you stuck electrodes of zinc and copper in a lemon and connected them.

  What a sour world Alfred lived in. When he caught himself in mirrors it shocked him how young he still looked. The set of mouth of hemorrhoidal schoolteachers, the bitter permanent lip-pursing of arthritic men, he could taste these expressions in his own mouth sometimes, though he was physically in his prime, the souring of life.

  He did therefore enjoy a rich dessert. Pecan pie. Apple brown Betty. A little sweetness in the world.

  “They have two locomotives and a real caboose!” Enid said.

  Alfred believed that the real and the true were a minority that the world was bent on exterminating. It galled him that romantics like Enid could not distinguish the false from the authentic: a poor-quality, flimsily stocked, profit-making “museum” from a real, honest railroad—

  “You have to at least be a Fish.”

  “The boys are all excited.”

  “I could be a Fish.”

  The Mohawk that was the new museum’s pride was evidently a romantic symbol. People nowadays seemed to resent the railroads for abandoning romantic steam power in favor of diesel. People didn’t understand the first goddamned thing about running a railroad. A diesel locomotive was versatile, efficient, and low-maintenance. People thought the railroad owed them romantic favors, and then they bellyached if a train was slow. That was the way most people were—stupid.

  (Schopenhauer: Amongst the evils of a penal colony is the company of those imprisoned in it.)

  At the same time, Alfred himself hated to see the old steam engine pass into oblivion. It was a beautiful iron horse, and by putting the Mohawk on display the museum allowed the easygoing leisure-seekers of suburban St. Jude to dance on its grave. City people had no right to patronize the iron horse. They didn’t know it intimately, as Alfred did. They hadn’t fallen in love with it out in the northwest corner of Kansas where it was the only link to the greater world, as Alfred had. He despised the museum and its goers for everything they didn’t know.

  “They have a model railroad that takes up a whole room!” Enid said relentlessly.

  And the goddamned model railroaders, yes, the goddamned hobbyists. Enid knew perfectly well how he felt about these dilettantes and their pointless and implausible model layouts.

  “A whole room?” Gary said with skepticism. “How big?”

  “Wouldn’t it be neat to put some M-80s on, um, on, um, on a model railroad bridge? Ker-PERSSSCHT! P’kow, p’kow!”

  “Chipper, eat your dinner now,” Alfred said.

  “Big big big,” Enid said. “The model is much much much much much bigger than the one your father bought you.”

  “Now,” Alfred said. “Are you listening to me? Now.”

  Two sides of the square table were happy and two were not. Gary told a pointless, genial story about this kid in his class who had three rabbits while Chipper and Alfred, twin studies in bleakness, lowered their eyes to their plates. Enid visited the kitchen for more rutabaga.


  “I know who not to ask if they want seconds,” she said when she returned.

  Alfred shot her a warning look. They had agreed for the sake of the boys’ welfare never to allude to his own dislike of vegetables and certain meats.

  “I’ll take some,” Gary said.

  Chipper had a lump in his throat, a desolation so obstructive that he couldn’t have swallowed much in any case. But when he saw his brother happily devouring seconds of Revenge, he became angry and for a moment understood how his entire dinner might be scarfable in no time, his duties discharged and his freedom regained, and he actually picked up his fork and made a pass at the craggy wad of rutabaga, tangling a morsel of it in his tines and bringing it near his mouth. But the rutabaga smelled carious and was already cold—it had the texture and temperature of wet dog crap on a cool morning—and his guts convulsed in a spine-bending gag reflex.

  “I love rutabaga,” said Gary inconceivably.

  “I could live on nothing but vegetables,” Enid averred.

  “More milk,” Chipper said, breathing hard.

  “Chipper, just hold your nose if you don’t like it,” Gary said.

  Alfred put bite after bite of vile Revenge in his mouth, chewing quickly and swallowing mechanically, telling himself he had endured worse than this.

  “Chip,” he said, “take one bite of each thing. You’re not leaving this table till you do.”

  “More milk.”

  “You will eat some dinner first. Do you understand?”

  “Milk.”

  “Does it count if he holds his nose?” Gary said.

  “More milk, please.”

  “That is just about enough,” Alfred said.

  Chipper fell silent. His eyes went around and around his plate, but he had not been provident and there was nothing on the plate but woe. He raised his glass and silently urged a very small drop of warm milk down the slope to his mouth. He stretched his tongue out to welcome it.

  “Chip, put the glass down.”

  “Maybe he could hold his nose but then he has to eat two bites of things.”

  “There’s the phone. Gary, you may answer it.”

  “What’s for dessert?” Chipper said.

  “I have some nice fresh pineapple.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Enid—”

  “What?” She blinked innocently or faux-innocently.

  “You can at least give him a cookie, or an Eskimo Pie, if he eats his dinner—”

  “It’s such sweet pineapple. It melts in your mouth.”

  “Dad, it’s Mr. Meisner.”

  Alfred leaned over Chipper’s plate and in a single action of fork removed all but one bite of the rutabaga. He loved this boy, and he put the cold, poisonous mash into his own mouth and jerked it down his throat with a shudder. “Eat that last bite,” he said, “take one bite of the other, and you can have dessert.” He stood up. “I will buy the dessert if necessary.”

  As he passed Enid on his way to the kitchen, she flinched and leaned away.

  “Yes,” he said into the phone.

  Through the receiver came the humidity and household clutter, the warmth and fuzziness, of Meisnerdom.

  “Al,” Chuck said, “just looking in the paper here, you know, Erie Belt stock, uh. Five and five-eighths seems awfully low. You sure about this Midpac thing?”

  “Mr. Replogle rode the motor car with me out of Cleveland. He indicated that the Board of Managers is simply waiting for a final report on track and structures. I’m going to give them that report on Monday.”

  “Midpac’s kept this very quiet.”

  “Chuck, I can’t recommend any particular course of action, and you’re right, there are some unanswered questions here—”

  “Al, Al,” Chuck said. “You have a mighty conscience, and we all appreciate that. I’ll let you get back to your dinner.”

  Alfred hung up hating Chuck as he would have hated a girl he’d been undisciplined enough to have relations with. Chuck was a banker and a thriver. You wanted to spend your innocence on someone worthy of it, and who better than a good neighbor, but no one could be worthy of it. There was excrement all over his hands.

  “Gary: pineapple?” Enid said.

  “Yes, please!”

  The virtual disappearance of Chipper’s root vegetable had made him a tad manic. Things were i-i-i-looking up! He expertly paved one quadrant of his plate with the remaining bite of rutabaga, grading the yellow asphalt with his fork. Why dwell in the nasty reality of liver and beet greens when there was constructable a future in which your father had gobbled these up, too? Bring on the cookies! sayeth Chipper. Bring on the Eskimo Pie!

  Enid carried three empty plates into the kitchen.

  Alfred, by the phone, was studying the clock above the sink. The time was that malignant fiveishness to which the flu sufferer awakens after late-afternoon fever dreams. A time shortly after five which was a mockery of five. To the face of clocks the relief of order—two hands pointing squarely at whole numbers—came only once an hour. As every other moment failed to square, so every moment held the potential for fluish misery.

  And to suffer like this for no reason. To know there was no moral order in the flu, no justice in the juices of pain his brain produced. The world nothing but a materialization of blind, eternal Will.

  (Schopenhauer: No little part of the torment of existence is that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us catch our breath but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip.)

  “I guess you don’t want pineapple,” Enid said. “I guess you’re buying your own dessert.”

  “Enid, drop it. I wish once in your life you would let something drop.”

  Cradling the pineapple, she asked why Chuck had called.

  “We will talk about it later,” Alfred said, returning to the dining room.

  “Daddy?” Chipper began.

  “Lad, I just did you a favor. Now you do me a favor and stop playing with your food and finish your dinner. Right now. Do you understand me? You will finish it right now, or there will be no dessert and no other privileges tonight or tomorrow night, and you will sit here until you do finish it.”

  “Daddy, though, can you—?”

  “RIGHT NOW. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, OR DO YOU NEED A SPANKING?”

  Tonsils release an ammoniac mucus when serious tears gather behind them. Chipper’s mouth twisted this way and that. He saw the plate in front of him in a new light. It was as if the food were an unbearable companion whose company he had been sure that his connections higher up, the strings pullable on his behalf, would spare him. Now came the realization that he and the food were in it for the long haul.

  Now he mourned the passing of his bacon, paltry though it had been, with a deep and true grief.

  Curiously, though, he didn’t outright cry.

  Alfred retired to the basement with stamping and a slam.

  Gary sat very quietly multiplying small whole numbers in his head.

  Enid plunged a knife into the pineapple’s jaundiced belly. She decided that Chipper was exactly like his father—at once hungry and impossible to feed. He turned food into shame. To prepare a square meal and then to see it greeted with elaborate disgust, to see the boy actually gag on his breakfast oatmeal: this stuck in a mother’s craw. All Chipper wanted was milk and cookies, milk and cookies. Pediatrician said: “Don’t give in. He’ll get hungry eventually and eat something else.” So Enid tried to be patient, but Chipper sat down to lunch and declared: “This smells like vomit!” You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction—no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy’s disgust.

  Lately she had taken to feeding him grilled cheese sandwiches all day long, holding back for dinner the yellow and leafy green vegetables required for a balanced diet and letting Alfred fight her battles.

  The
re was something almost tasty and almost sexy in letting the annoying boy be punished by her husband. In standing blamelessly aside while the boy suffered for having hurt her.

  What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn’t always agreeable or attractive.

  She carried two dishes of pineapple into the dining room. Chipper’s head was bowed, but the son who loved to eat reached eagerly for his dish.

  Gary slurped and aerated, wordlessly consuming pineapple.

  The dogshit-yellow field of rutabaga; the liver warped by frying and so unable to lie flush with the plate; the ball of woody beet leaves collapsed and contorted but still entire, like a wetly compressed bird in an eggshell, or an ancient corpse folded over in a bog: the spatial relations among these foods no longer seemed to Chipper haphazard but were approaching permanence, finality.

  The foods receded, or a new melancholy shadowed them. Chipper became less immediately disgusted; he ceased even to think about eating. Deeper sources of refusal were kicking in.

  Soon the table was cleared of everything but his place mat and his plate. The light grew harsher. He heard Gary and his mother conversing on trivial topics as she washed and Gary dried. Then Gary’s footsteps on the basement stairs. Metronomic thock of Ping-Pong ball. More desolate peals of large pots being handled and submerged.

  His mother reappeared. “Chipper, just eat that up. Be a big boy now.”

  He had arrived in a place where she couldn’t touch him. He felt nearly cheerful, all head, no emotion. Even his butt was numb from pressing on the chair.

  “Dad means for you to sit there till you eat that. Finish it up now. Then your whole evening’s free.”

  If his evening had been truly free he might have spent it entirely at a window watching Cindy Meisner.

  “Noun adjective,” his mother said, “contraction possessive noun. Conjunction conjunction stressed pronoun counter-factual verb pronoun I’d just gobble that up and temporal adverb pronoun conditional auxiliary infinitive—”