Purity

by Jonathan Franzen

  After a long hiatus, she was back on Facebook. It was a way of letting her old friends know she was in town without actually having to see them, but her main motive was defensive. Among her Facebook friends was her mother’s neighbor Linda, who reassured her that nothing much had changed in her mother’s life, and who seemed happy to convey Pip’s substanceless greetings to her. It was Pip’s hope that Linda might show her Facebook page to her mother or at least report on what was on it—i.e., almost nothing. Pip was living in her old house in Oakland and working at Peet’s, end of story. She wanted to spare her mother the torment of imagining her still in Denver, reunited with her father. Linda was gabbiness itself and could be counted on.

  After her shift ended, and after she’d whacked the ball and showered and walked to the BART station, she couldn’t resist checking out Jason on Facebook. His capacity for enthusiasm was everywhere in evidence. But of course what she wanted to know was how pretty his girlfriend was. The news on that score was mixed. The girlfriend had a great face and a scarily hipster look and a scarily French name, Sandrine, but she appeared to be a full foot shorter than Jason; they looked awkward together. With a shudder of revulsion at herself, and at Facebook, Pip turned off her device.

  She was on her way to a Peruvian restaurant in Bernal Heights, maximally inconvenient to her, because Colleen apparently had foodie tendencies and wanted to try it. This after Colleen had twice bailed out of earlier dates at the last minute, pleading overwork. If her intention was to keep punishing Pip and make her feel small, it was working well.

  The season of gray was on Bernal Heights. Shouting techies in their twenties filled the restaurant. Colleen was at a small table awkwardly situated by a wait station; she’d left Pip the chair that was in the waiters’ way. Pip was struck by the unnecessary makeup Colleen was wearing and by the obvious priciness of her silk jacket and jewelry. She remembered that Colleen’s stated ambition was to do boring, safe things.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “It’s quite the schlep from Oakland.”

  “I ordered some small plates,” Colleen said. “I have to go back to the office later.”

  Already it was clear to Pip that Colleen had been a summer-camp friend, not a real friend, and that she shouldn’t have kept sending her emails. But she had no one else to talk to about Andreas, and so she ordered a sangria and talked. She led with the big picture—that he’d killed a man in Germany and had brought her to Los Volcanes in some insane attempt at a cover-up—so that Colleen might see that what had happened at the Hotel Cortez wasn’t personal.

  “I think he was really sick,” Pip said in conclusion. “Sicker than anybody knew.”

  “This is not exactly making me feel better about spending three years wanting him.”

  “I wanted him, too. But the side of himself he showed me was too scary.”

  “You really think he killed someone.”

  “He said so. I believed him.”

  “You know, I’ve been reading way more about him than is healthy. It’s pure masochism. But I haven’t seen anything about a murder.”

  “Even if he left a confession or something, I’m sure they covered it up. It’s hard to see Willow or Flor not protecting the brand.”

  “You should tell the world,” Colleen said. “Just to squish fucking Toni Field and all the others. ‘Your sainted hero was a psychopath.’ Would you do me that favor?”

  Pip shook her head. “Even if I wanted to go public, who’s going to believe me? I have other problems anyway. He told me who my mother is.”

  “You mean, besides being your mother?”

  “She’s a billionaire, Colleen. She has a trust fund worth, like, a billion dollars. She’s like a renegade heiress. I can’t begin to figure out how to deal with that.”

  Colleen frowned. “A billion dollars? You told me she was poor.”

  “She changed her identity. She ran away from it. Her father was president of McCaskill, the food company.”

  “That’s your mother?” Colleen gave Pip a sidelong look, as if Pip herself were a pile of money and Colleen was deciding whether to believe her eyes. “That’s what Dear Leader told you?”

  “More or less.”

  “I guess it’s obvious why he liked you.”

  “Thanks a lot. He didn’t care about money.”

  “Nobody doesn’t care about a billion dollars.”

  “Well, my mom didn’t. I’m not sure it’s even still there.”

  “You should try to find out.”

  “I just want everything to go away.”

  “You should definitely find out.” Colleen reached across the table and touched Pip’s hand. “Don’t you think?”

  By the time she got back to Dreyfuss’s house, very late, there was a long email from Colleen in her in-box. It wasn’t the email’s content that was strange. Colleen apologized to Pip for making her come all the way to Bernal Heights; the next time they met, which she hoped would be soon, Colleen would come to Oakland; so great to see Pip again; really liked the new haircut … There followed several paragraphs of vintage Colleen on the crappiness of the legal profession, the crappiness of China, and the crappiness of the techie she’d dated for two months before discovering his passion for tax avoidance. What was strange about the email was its timing. For eight months Pip had waited for a few warm words from Colleen. Only now, within two hours of her saying the word billionaire, was she getting them.

  Was Colleen aware of how obvious she was being? Pip thought not. Then again, maybe she herself was being paranoid. She remembered what Andreas had said about fame, the loneliness of it, the impossibility of trusting that people liked the famous person for himself. She suspected that being a billionaire would be even lonelier in that regard.

  The next day, Monday, brought another long email from Colleen, plus two affectionate phone messages. On Tuesday, Dreyfuss had his injunction hearing with Judge Costa, who gave him ten minutes to present his case and then issued his judgment: fifteen days to vacate the house. On Wednesday, Jason left a Facebook message for Pip, asking if she wanted to hit with him. This wasn’t a message that a boy with a serious girlfriend sent innocently to a girl he’d nearly slept with in the past. Pip might have felt glad of it, or at least flattered by it, had Colleen not suddenly become so friendly. Now all she could think was that her connection to Andreas had piqued Jason’s interest. Was this going to be her new normal? She’d already had enough trouble trusting people; now she was facing a whole lifetime of not trusting them. She wrote back to Jason: To be discussed at Peet’s. Then she did some research and made some phone calls. Early the next morning, Thursday, she flew to Wichita.

  * * *

  From the back of the cab from the airport, she saw the name McCaskill on Little League fields, on a big pavilion downtown, on a day-care center and a food-distribution depot on the city’s slummy east side, on billboards affirming that MCCASKILL CARES. The midday heat was as intense as anything she’d experienced in Bolivia. Lawns were fried nearly white, and the trees looked ready to drop their leaves three months early.

  Thanks to air-conditioning, the offices of James Navarre & Associates were chilly. Pip had barely opened her mouth when the receptionist led her back to a large, wood-paneled office where Mr. Navarre was waiting at the door. He was short and white-haired and apparently one of those men who weren’t comfortable in clothes that weren’t rumpled. “My God,” he said, staring at Pip. “You really are her daughter.”

  She shook his hand and followed him into his office. The receptionist brought her a bottle of cold water and left them alone. Mr. Navarre continued to stare at her.

  “So,” she said. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Thank you for coming here.”

  “I have pictures of my mom, if you’re interested.”

  “Of course I am. I’m also obligated to be.”

  Pip handed over her phone. She’d selected night pictures from inside her mother’s cabin, so as not to betray her locatio
n. Mr. Navarre looked at them and shook his head as if confounded. On one wall of his office were photographs, Midwestern faces in exotically unstylish clothes and settings, somebody else’s idea of America. Pip recognized David Laird, her grandfather, one of the objects of her research, on a golf cart with a rumpled and younger Mr. Navarre.

  He handed the phone back to Pip. “She’s alive?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t tell you. She doesn’t know I’m here, but she wouldn’t be happy about it. She just wants to be left alone.”

  “We’d given up looking,” Mr. Navarre said. “Her father tried to find her more than once, in the nineties. After he died, I was obligated to try again. He always thought she was still alive. Me, not so much. People die all the time. But unless I could prove that she was no longer among the living, and had left no heirs, I was barred from dissolving the trust.”

  “So it’s still there. The trust.”

  “Absolutely. Administering it has made me a very wealthy man. I have every reason to insist that you tell me where your mother is. She won’t have to do anything more than sign the receipt on a piece of registered mail. She can go on doing nothing, but she needs to know that she’s the beneficiary.”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Sandrine—”

  “That’s not my real name.”

  Mr. Navarre nodded. “I see.”

  “I don’t want anything to change. I just came by to ask you a favor.”

  “Aha. I’ll hazard a guess. You need money.”

  “Not even. I mean I do, but that’s not what I’m here for. Can I talk?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I’ve been living in Oakland, California. There’s a house there that’s in foreclosure, and the guy who owns it has to vacate it in less than two weeks. He’s a good guy, and the bank is trying to steal his equity. So I was thinking, there’s a lot of money in the trust, and you get to decide how it’s invested. My impression is that you don’t have to do much except write big checks to yourself.”

  “Well, now, in fact—”

  “The money’s mostly in McCaskill stock. You’re required to leave it there. How much work can that be? And you get, whatever, a million dollars a year for that.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  “You’ve been in touch with your mother’s ex-husband. He told you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sandrine. Work with me here.”

  “I’m the guy’s granddaughter. David’s. That makes me a Laird, and I’m asking you a small favor that doesn’t personally cost you anything. The amount of money is nothing compared to what’s in the trust. I want you to buy my friend’s house, right away, and then charge him some rent he can afford. It won’t be a lot of rent, so it won’t be a great investment. But you can invest the money any way you want, right?”

  Mr. Navarre made a tent of his fingers. “I have a fiduciary responsibility to invest the money wisely. I would need, at a minimum, your mother’s written authorization. I admit that it doesn’t seem likely she’ll be challenging my decisions any time soon, but I need to be covered for that eventuality.”

  “Does the trust say that I’m the heir?”

  “There is a per stirpes clause, yes.”

  “So let me sign.”

  “I can’t knowingly let you sign under a false name. Even if I were inclined to make this particular investment.”

  Pip frowned. She’d thought of a lot, during the two flights it had taken her to get to Wichita, but she hadn’t thought of this. “If I give you my real name, you’re going to use it to try to find my mother, even if I ask you not to.”

  “Let’s slow down here,” Mr. Navarre said. “Look at this from my side. I do believe that Anabel is alive and you’re her daughter. This is a highly unusual situation, but I believe you’re telling me the truth. But if you come to me next month and say you want another investment, for some other reason—where does it end?”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “So you say now. But if all you have to do is ask?”

  “Well, then we’ll have this discussion again. But we won’t. It’s not going to happen again.”

  Mr. Navarre increased the steepness of his tented fingers. “I don’t know what happened in that family. Your family. I never understood your mother or her father. But the decisions he made about his stake in McCaskill created a heck of a lot of ill will. Given the tax hit he took, leaving her a quarter of the estate, he had to put most of the rest in charitable trusts. I know you think I get money for nothing, but liquidating enough shares to pay the estate-tax bill wasn’t nothing. And meanwhile Anabel’s brothers only got about eighty million apiece fungible. The rest is in trusts they control but don’t much profit from. All this to make sure the daughter who hated David got her money in a lump. To say I never understood it is an understatement. And now you won’t even let me tell her the money is there?”

  That is correct, Pip thought. Everyone needs to keep conspiring to protect my mother from reality.

  “I can work on it,” she said. “But it has to be me. I don’t want her getting some registered letter from you. If I agree to work on it, will you buy this house in Oakland?”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I’m the heir and I’m asking for it!”

  “So you’re crazy, too.”

  “No.”

  “You could speak to your mother and be a billionaire, but instead you’re asking me to buy a house in foreclosure for some third party. This person wouldn’t happen to be your boyfriend?”

  “No. He’s a well-medicated schizophrenic in his forties.”

  Mr. Navarre shook his head. “You don’t want to eradicate malaria. You don’t want to send poor kids to college. You don’t want to take a private trip to outer space. You don’t even want to be a cokehead.”

  “Aren’t all the Lairds and McCaskills messed up from having too much money?”

  “About half of them, yeah.”

  “Didn’t one of my uncles try to buy an NBA team?”

  “Better than that. He wanted the David M. Laird Jr. Charitable Trust to buy it.”

  “So it sounds like my weirdness is totally within normal parameters.”

  “Listen here.” Mr. Navarre sat up straight and fixed Pip with a look. “I’m never going to have to report to you. I’m older than your mother, and I have a fondness for fatty red meats. It’s not because I owe you any courtesies that I propose the following. You’re going to tell me your real name and sign an authorization. After you leave here, you’ll go to the Laird family doctor and leave a blood sample. Six months from today, if I don’t hear from you sooner, I will hire a detective to locate your mother. In return, the trust will buy your friend’s house. I give you that, you give me your mother.”

  “You have to buy the house right away, though. Like, today or tomorrow. Monday at the latest.”

  “Do you agree to the terms? You’ll have six months to sort things out with your mother.”

  Pip was weighing her wish to help Dreyfuss against her aversion to having a conversation with her mother. She realized that even if she didn’t have the conversation, her mother wouldn’t know for sure it was her fault that Mr. Navarre had found her. Her mother could imagine it was Tom’s fault, or Andreas’s. She could sign the registered receipt, burn the letter without reading it, and go right on denying reality.

  “My legal name is Purity Tyler.”

  It was four thirty by the time she’d signed the authorization, been phlebotomized at the doctor’s office, and taken another cab to the airport. Jets on the tarmac shimmered in fumes and unabated sun, but something was happening to the sky, some premonition that its depthless blue would soon be a more local gray. Her connecting flight, to Denver, was showing a delay of forty-five minutes. She had to be at work the following afternoon, but it occurred to her that she could miss her connection in Denver and reb
ook for the morning. She’d boldly asked Mr. Navarre to reimburse her for her flights and cabs; the trip so far had cost her nothing.

  She couldn’t see Tom without admitting that she’d read his memoir, and although she felt a craving for Leila’s forgiveness she worried that Leila still considered her a threat and wouldn’t be happy to see her. With her phone, she searched instead for Cynthia Aberant and found her listed as an associate professor in a community-studies program. The only impeccably kind and well-behaved person in Tom’s entire memoir was his sister. Pip dialed her office number and got her.

  “This is Pip Tyler,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I’m sorry. Say your name again?”

  “Pip Tyler. Purity Tyler.”

  There was a dead cellular silence. Then Cynthia said, “You’re my brother’s daughter.”

  “Right. So, I was hoping I could talk to you?”

  “You should talk to Tom, not me.”

  “I’m on my way to Denver right now. If you had, like, even just an hour tonight. You’re the only person I can talk to.”

  After another silence, Cynthia assented.

  The flight, in a too-small jet, dodging thunderstorms, cured Pip of any desire for future air travel. She expected death the whole way. What was interesting was how quickly she then forgot about it, like a dog to whom death was literally unimaginable, while she rode in a cab to Cynthia’s. Dogs again had it right. They didn’t trouble themselves with mysteries that could never be solved anyway.

  Cynthia’s house was in the same neighborhood as Leila’s husband’s. She came to the front door holding a glass of red wine. She was a plus-size woman with long gray-blond hair and a pleasant face. “I needed a head start,” she said, raising the glass. “Do you drink?”