Freedom

Patty, with a frozen smile, sat looking at the glamorous and plutocratic parties at other tables in the restaurant’s lovely discreet light. There was, of course, nowhere better in the world to be than New York City. This fact was the foundation of her family’s satisfaction with itself, the platform from which all else could be ridiculed, the collateral of adult sophistication that bought them the right to behave like children. To be Patty and sitting in that SoHo restaurant was to confront a force she had not the slightest chance of competing with. Her family had claimed New York and was never going to budge. Simply never coming here again—just forgetting that restaurant scenes like this even existed—was her only option.

“You’re not a wine drinker,” Ray said to Walter.

“I’m sure I could become one if I wanted,” Walter said.

“This is a very nice amarone, if you want to try a little.”

“No, thank you.”

“You sure?” Ray waved the bottle at Walter.

“Yes he’s sure!” Patty cried. “He’s only said it every night for the last four nights! Hello? Ray? Not everybody wants to be drunk and disgusting and rude. Some people actually enjoy having an adult conversation instead of making sex jokes for two hours.”

Ray grinned as if she’d been amusing. Joyce unfolded her half-glasses to examine the dessert menu while Walter blushed and Abigail, with a spastic neck-twist and a sour frown, said, “ ‘Ray’? ‘Ray’? We call him ‘Ray’ now?”

The next morning, Joyce quaveringly told Patty: “Walter is much more—I don’t know if the right word is conservative, or what, I guess not exactly conservative, although, actually, from the standpoint of democratic process, and power flowing upward from the people, and prosperity for all, not exactly autocratic, but, in a way, yes, almost conservative—than I’d expected.”

Ray, two months later, at Patty’s graduation, with a poorly suppressed snicker, said to Patty: “Walter got so red in the face about that growth stuff, my God, I thought he was going to have a stroke.”

And Abigail, six months after that, at the only Thanksgiving that Patty and Walter were ever foolish enough to celebrate in Westchester, said to Patty: “How are things going with the Club of Rome? Have you guys joined the Club of Rome yet? Have you learned the passwords? Have you sat in the leather chairs?”

Patty, at LaGuardia Airport, sobbing, said to Walter: “I hate my family!”

And Walter valiantly replied: “We’ll make our own family!”

Poor Walter. First he’d set aside his acting and filmmaking dreams out of a sense of financial obligation to his parents, and then no sooner had his dad set him free by dying than he teamed up with Patty and set aside his planet-saving aspirations and went to work for 3M, so that Patty could have her excellent old house and stay home with the babies. The whole thing happened almost without discussion. He got excited about the plans that excited her, he threw himself into renovating the house and defending her against her family. It wasn’t until years later—after Patty had begun to Disappoint him—that he became more forgiving of the other Emersons and insisted that she was the lucky one, the only Emerson to escape the shipwreck and survive to tell the tale. He said that Abigail, who’d been left stranded to scavenge emotional meals on an island of great scarcity (Manhattan Island!), should be forgiven for monopolizing conversations in her attempt to feed herself. He said that Patty should pity her siblings, not blame them, for not having had the strength or the luck to get away: for being so hungry. But this all came much later. In the early years, he was so fired up about Patty, she could do no wrong. And very nice years they were.

Walter’s own competitiveness wasn’t family-oriented. By the time she met him, he’d already won that game. At the poker table of being a Berglund, he’d been dealt every ace except maybe looks and ease with women. (His older brother—who is currently on his third young wife, who is working hard to support him—got that particular ace.) Walter not only knew about the Club of Rome and read difficult novels and appreciated Igor Stravinsky, he could also sweat a copper pipe joint and do finish carpentry and identify birds by their songs and take good care of a problematic woman. He was so much his family’s winner that he could afford to make regular voyages back to help the others.

“I guess now you’re going to have to see where I grew up,” he’d said to Patty outside the Hibbing bus station, after she’d aborted the road trip with Richard. They were in his dad’s Crown Victoria, which they’d fogged up with their hot and heavy breathing.

“I want to see your room,” Patty said. “I want to see everything. I think you’re a wonderful person!”

Hearing this, he had to kiss her for another long while before resuming his anxiety. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I’m still embarrassed to take you home.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. You should see my home. It’s a freak show.”