“Just oppose every prediction,” Frank advised. “Anything anybody’s for, be against it. Anything anybody’s against, be for it. You get on a plane and it doesn’t crash, that means you got on the right plane,” Frank said. “And that’s all it means.”
Frank, in other words, went “off.” After Mother and Egg went away, Frank went ever farther away—somewhere—he went into a religion more vastly lacking in seriousness than even the established religions; he joined a kind of anti-everything sect.
“Or maybe Frank founded it,” Lilly said, once. Meaning nihilism, meaning anarchy, meaning trivial silliness and happiness in the face of gloom, meaning depression descending as regularly as night over the most mindless and joyful of days. Frank believed in zap! He believed in surprises. He was in constant attack and retreat, and he was equally, constantly, wide-eyed and goofily stumbling about in the sudden sunlight—tripping across the wasteland littered with bodies from the darkness of just a moment ago.
“He just went crazy,” Lilly said. And Lilly should know.
Lilly went crazy, too. She seemed to take Mother’s and Egg’s deaths as a personal punishment for some failure deep within herself, and so she resolved she would change. She resolved, among other things, to grow.
“At least a little,” she said, grimly determined. Franny and I were worried about her. Growth seemed unlikely for Lilly, and her strenuousness with which we imagined Lilly pursuing her own “growth” was frightening to Franny and me.
“I want to change, too,” I said to Franny. “But Lilly—I don’t know. Lilly is just Lilly.”
“Everyone knows that,” Franny said.
“Everyone except Lilly,” I said.
“Precisely,” Franny said. “So how are you going to change? You know something better than growing?”
“No. Not better,” I said. I was just a realist in a family of dreamers, large and small. I knew I couldn’t grow. I knew I would never really grow up; I knew my childhood would never leave me, and I would never be quite adult enough—quite responsible enough—for the world. The goddamn Welt, as Frank would say. I couldn’t change enough, and I knew it. All I could do was something that would have pleased Mother. I could give up swearing. I could clean up my language—which had upset Mother so. And so I did.
“You mean you’re not going to say ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ or ‘cock-sucker’ or even ‘up yours’ or ‘in the ear’ or anything, anymore?” Franny asked me.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Not even ‘asshole’?” Franny asked.
“Right,” I said.
“You asshole,” Franny said.
“It makes as much sense as anything else,” Frank reasoned.
“You dumb prick,” Franny baited me.
“I think it’s rather noble,” Lilly said. “Small, but noble.”
“He lives in a second-rate whorehouse with people who want to start the world over and he wants to clean up his language,” Franny said. “Cunthead,” she told me. “You wretched fart,” Franny said. “Beat your meat all night and dream of tits, but you want to sound nice, is that it?” she asked.
“Come on, Franny,” Lilly said.
“You little turd, Lilly,” Franny said. Lilly started to cry.
“We’ve got to stick together, Franny,” Frank said. “This sort of abuse is not helpful.”
“You’re as queer as a cat fart, Frank,” she told him.
“And what are you, honey?” Susie the bear asked Franny. “What makes you think you’re so tough?”
“I’m not so tough,” Franny said. “You dumb bear. You’re just an unattractive girl, with zits—with zit scars : you’re scarred by zits—and you’d rather be a dumb bear than a human being. You think that’s tough? It’s fucking easier to be a bear, isn’t it?” Franny asked Susie. “And to work for an old blind man who thinks you’re smart—and beautiful, too, probably,” Franny said. “I’m not so tough,” Franny said. “But I am smart. I can get by. I can more than get by,” she said. “I can get what I want—when I know what it is,” she added. “I can see how things are,” Franny said. “And you,” she said, speaking to us all—even poor Miss Miscarriage—“you keep waiting for things to become something else. You think Father doesn’t?” Franny asked me, suddenly.
“He lives in the future,” Lilly said, still sniffling.
“He’s as blind as Freud,” Franny said, “or he soon will be. So you know what I’m going to do?” she asked us. “I’m not going to clean up my language. I’m going to aim my language wherever I want,” she told me. “It’s the one weapon I’ve got. And I’m only going to grow when I’m ready to, or when it’s time,” she told Lilly. “And I’m not ever going to be like you, Frank. No one else will ever be like you,” she added, affectionately. “And I’m not going to be a bear,” she told Susie. “You sweat like a pig in that stupid costume, you get your rocks off making people uneasy, but that’s because you’re uneasy just being you. Well, I’m easy being me,” Franny said.
“Lucky you,” Frank said.
“Yes, lucky you, Franny,” Lilly said.
“So what if you’re beautiful?” said Susie. “You’re also a bitch.”
“From now on, I’m mainly a mother,” Franny said. “I’m going to take care of you fuckers—you, you, and you,” Franny said, pointing to Frank and Lilly and me. “Because Mother’s not here to do it—and Iowa Bob is gone. The shit detectors are gone,” Franny said, “so I’m left to detect it. I point out the shit that’s my role. Father doesn’t know what’s going on,” Franny said, and we nodded—Frank, Lilly, and I; even Susie the bear nodded. We knew this was true: Father was blind, or he soon would be.
“Even so, I don’t need you to mother me,” Frank said to Franny, but he didn’t look so sure.
Lilly went and put her head in Franny’s lap; she cried there—comfortably, I thought. Franny, of course, knew that I loved her—hopelessly, and too much—and so I didn’t have to make a gesture or say anything to her.
“Well, I don’t need a sixteen-year-old straightening me out,” said Susie the bear, but her bear’s head was off; she held it in her big paws. Her ravaged complexion, her hurt eyes, her too-small mouth betrayed her. She put her bear’s head back on; that was her only authority.
The student, Miss Miscarriage, serious and well intentioned, seemed at a loss for words. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“Say it in German,” Frank encouraged her.
“Just spit it out any way you can,” Franny said.
“Well,” Fehlgeburt said. “That passage. That lovely passage, that ending—to The Great Gatsby—that’s what I mean,” she said.
“Get to it, Fehlgeburt,” Franny said. “Spit it out.”
“Well,” Fehlgeburt said. “I don’t know, but—somehow—it makes me want to go to the United States. I mean, it’s against my politics—your country—I know that. But that ending, all of it—somehow—is just so beautiful. It makes me want to be there. I mean, there’s no sense to it, but I would just like to be in the United States.”
“So you think you’d like to be there?” Franny said. “Well, I wish we’d never left.”
“Can we go back, Franny?” Lilly asked.
“We’ll have to ask Father,” Frank said.
“Oh boy,” Franny said. And I could see her imagining that moment, waltzing a little reality into Father’s dreams.
“Your country, if you’ll forgive me,” said one of the other radicals-the one they called simply Arbeiter (Arbeiter means “worker” in German), “your country is really a criminal place,” Arbeiter said. “If you’ll forgive me,” he added, “your country is the ultimate triumph of corporate creativity, which means it is a country controlled by the group –thinking of corporations. These corporations are without humanity because there is no one personally responsible for their use of power; a corporation is like a computer with profit as its source of energy—and profit as its necessary fuel. The United States is—you’ll forgive me—quite the worst country in the world for a humanist to live in, I think.”
“Fuck what you think,” Franny said. “You raving asshole,” she said. “You sound like a computer.”
“You think like a transmission,” Frank told Arbeiter. “Four forward gears—at predetermined speeds. One speed for reverse.”
Arbeiter stared. His English was a little plodding—his mind, it would occur to me, later, was about as versatile as a lawn mower.