Franny and Zooey (18 page)

    Franny once again pushed back her hair with one hand. She didn't say anything.

    "Flopsy? Can you think of anything Bessie may have missed? You feel like talking at all?"

    With her fingers, Franny slightly altered the position of the tiny ashtray beside her on the bed. "Well," she said, "I'm a little talked out, to be honest with you. Zooey's been at me all morning."

    "Zooey? How is he?"

    "How is he? He's fine. He's just tiptop. I could just murder him, that's all."

    "Murder him? Why? Why, sweetheart? Why could you murder our Zooey?"

    "Why? Because I just could, that's all! He's completely destructive. I've never met anyone so completely destructive in my life! It's just so unnecessary! One minute he launches this all-out attack on the Jesus Prayer--which I happen to be interested in--making you think you're some kind of neurotic nitwit for even being interested in it. And about two minutes later he starts raving to you about how Jesus is the only person in the world he's ever had any respect for --such a marvellous mind, and all that. He's just so erratic. I mean he goes around and around in such horrible circles."

    "Tell about it. Tell about the horrible circles."

    Here Franny made the mistake of giving a little exhalation of impatience--she had just inhaled cigarette smoke. She coughed. "Tell about it! It would just take me all day, that's all!" She put a hand to her throat, and waited for the wrong-passage discomfort to pass. "He's just a monster," she said. "He is! Not really a monster but--I don't know. He's so bitter about things. He's bitter about religion. He's bitter about television. He's bitter about you and Seymour-- he keeps saying you both made freaks out of us. I don't know. He jumps from one--"

    "Why freaks? I know he thinks that. Or thinks he thinks it. But did he say why? What's his definition of a freak? He say, sweetheart?"

    Just here, Franny, in apparent despair at the naivete of the question, struck her forehead with her hand. Something she very probably hadn't done in five or six years--when, for example, halfway home on the Lexington Avenue bus, she discovered she had left her scarf back at the movies. "What's his definition?" she said. "He has about forty definitions for everything! If I sound slightly unhinged, that's the reason why. One minute--like last night--he says we're freaks because we were brought up to have only one set of standards. Ten minutes later he says he's a freak because he never wants to meet anybody for a drink. The only time--"

    "Never wants to what?"

    "Meet anybody for a drink. Oh, he had to go out last night and meet this television writer for a drink downtown, in the Village and all. That's what started it. He says the only people he ever really wants to meet for a drink somewhere are all either dead or unavailable. He says he never even wants to have lunch with anybody, even, unless he thinks there's a good chance it's going to turn out to be Jesus, the person--or the Buddha, or Hui-neng, or Shankaracharya, or somebody like that. You know." Franny suddenly put out her cigarette in the tiny ashtray--with some awkwardness, not having her second hand free to brace the ashtray. "You know what else he said to me?" she said. "You know what he swore up and down to me? He told me last night he once had a glass of ginger ale with Jesus in the kitchen when he was eight years old. Are you listening?"

    "I'm listening, I'm listening . . . sweetheart." "He said he was--this is exactly what he said --he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass o£ ginger ale and eating saltines and reading 'Dombey and Son,' and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A small glass, mind you --that's exactly what he said. I mean he says things like that, and yet he thinks he's perfectly qualified to give me a lot of advice and stuff! That's what makes me so mad! I could just spit! I could I It's like being in a lunatic asylum and having another patient all dressed up as a doctor come over to you and start taking your pulse or something.... It's just awful. He talks and talks and talks. And if he isn't talking, he's smoking bis smelly cigars all over the house. I'm so sick of the smell of cigar smoke I could just roll over and die."

    "The cigars are ballast, sweetheart. Sheer ballast. If he didn't have a cigar to hold on to, his feet would leave the ground. We'd never see our Zooey again."

    There were several experienced verbal stunt pilots in the Glass family, but this last little remark perhaps Zooey alone was coordinated well enough to bring in safely over a telephone. Or so this narrator suggests. And Franny may have felt so, too. In any case, she suddenly knew that it was Zooey at the other end of the phone. She got up, slowly, from the edge of the bed. "All right, Zooey," she said, "All right."

    Not quite immediately: "Beg pardon?"

    "I said, all right, Zooey."

    "Zooey? What is this? ... Franny? You there?"

    "I'm here. Just stop it now, please. I know it's you."

    "What in the world are you talking about, sweetheart? What is this? Who's this Zooey?"

    "Zooey Glass," Franny said. "Just stop it now, please. You're not being funny. As it happens, I'm just barely getting back to feeling halfway--"

    "Grass, did you say? Zooey Grass? Norwegian chap? Sort of a heavyset, blond, ath--"

    "All right, Zooey. Just stop, please. Enough's enough. You're not funny. ... In case you're interested, I'm feeling absolutely lousy. So if there's anything special you have to say to me,

    please hurry up and say it and leave me alone." This last, emphasized word was oddly veered away from, as if the stress on it hadn't been fully intended.

    There was a peculiar silence at the other end o£ the phone. And a peculiar reaction to it from Franny. She was disturbed by it. She sat down again on the edge of her father's bed. "I'm not going to hang up on you or anything," she said. "But I'm--I don't know--I'm tired, Zooey. I'm just exhausted, frankly." She listened. But there was no response. She crossed her legs. "You can go on like this all day, but I can't," she said. "All I am is on the receiving end. It isn't terribly pleasant, you know. You think everybody's made of iron or something." She listened. She started to speak up again but stopped when she heard the sound of a voice being cleared.

    "I don't think everybody's made of iron, buddy."

    This abjectly simple sentence seemed to disturb Franny rather more than a continued silence would have. She quickly reached over and picked a cigarette out of the porcelain box, but didn't prepare to light it. "Well, you'd think you did," she said. She listened. She waited. "I mean, did you call for any special reason?" she said abruptly. "I mean, did you have any special reason for calling me?"

    "No special reason, buddy, no special reason."

    Franny waited. Then the other end spoke up again.

    "I suppose I more or less called to tell you to go on with your Jesus Prayer if you want to. I mean that's your business. That's your business. It's a goddam nice prayer, and don't let anybody tell you anything different."

    "I know," Franny said. Very nervously, she reached for the box of matches.

    "I don't think I ever really meant to try to stop you from saying it. At least, I don't think I did. I don't know. I don't know what the hell was going on in my mind. There's one thing I do know for sure, though. I have no goddam authority to be speaking up like a seer the way I have been. We've had enough goddam seers in this family. That part bothers me. That part scares me a little bit."

    Franny took advantage of the slight pause that followed to straighten her back a trifle, as though, for some reason, good posture, or better posture, might come in handy at any moment.

    "It scares me a little bit, but it doesn't petrify me. Let's get that straight. It doesn't petrify me. Because you forget one thing, buddy. When you first felt the urge, the call, to say the prayer, you didn't immediately start searching the four corners of the world for a master. You came home. You not only came home but you went into a goddam collapse. So if you look at it in a certain way, by rights you're only entitled to the low-grade spiritual counsel we're able to give you around here, and no more. At least you know there won't be any goddam ulterior motives in

    this madhouse. Whatever we are, we're not fishy, buddy."

    Franny suddenly tried with one hand alone to get a light for her cigarette. She opened the matchbox compartment successfully, but one inept scratch of a match sent the box to the floor. She bent quickly and picked up the box, and let the spilled matches lie.

    "I'll tell you one thing, Franny. One thing I know. And don't get upset. It isn't anything bad. But if it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're missing out on every single goddam religious action that's going on around this house. You don't even have sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup--which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse. So just tell me, just tell me, buddy. Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master --some guru, some holy man--to tell you how to say your Jesus Prayer properly, what good would it do you? How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose? Can you tell me that?"

    Franny was now sitting up rather abnormally straight.

    "I'm just asking you. I'm not trying to upset you. Am I upsetting you?"

    Franny answered, but her answer evidently didn't carry.

    "What? I can't hear you."

    "I said no. Where are you calling from? Where are you now?"

    "Oh, what the hell's the difference where I am? Pierre, South Dakota, for God's sake. Listen to me, Franny--I'm sorry, don't get riled. But listen to me. I have just one or two very small things more, and then I'll quit, I promise you that. But did you know, just by the way, that Buddy and I drove up to see you in stock last summer? Did you know we saw you in 'Playboy of the Western World' one night? One god-awful hot night, I can tell you that. But did you know we were there?"

    An answer seemed to be called for. Franny stood up, then immediately sat down. She placed the ashtray slightly away from her, as if it were very much in her way. "No, I didn't," she said. "Nobody said one single--No, I didn't."

    "Well, we were. We were. And I'll tell you, buddy. You were good. And when I say good, I mean good. You held that goddam mess up. Even all those sunburned lobsters in the audience knew it. And now I hear you're finished with the theatre forever--I hear things, I hear things. And I remember the spiel you came back with when the season was over. Oh, you irritate me, Franny! I'm sorry, you do. You've made the great startling goddam discovery that the acting profession's loaded with mercenaries and butchers. As I remember, you even looked like somebody who'd just been shattered because all the ushers hadn't been geniuses. What's the master with you, buddy? Where are your brains? If you've had a freakish education, at least use it, use it. You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankerings.' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line--in one damn incarnation or another, if you like--you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to-- be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to --there's nothing wrong in trying." There was a slight pause. "You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world." There was another, slighter pause. "I used to worry about that. I don't worry about it very much any more. At least I'm still in love with Yorick's skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick's skull. I want an honorable goddam skull when I'm dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddam skull like Yorick's. And so do you, Franny Glass. So do you, so do you. . . . Ah, God, what's the use of talking? You had the exact same goddam freakish upbringing I did, and if you don't know by this time what kind of skull you want when you're dead, and what you have to do to earn it--I mean if you don't at least know by this time that if you're an actress you're supposed to act, then what's the use of talking?"

    Franny was now sitting with the flat of her free hand pressed against the side of her face, like someone with an excruciating toothache.

    "One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam 'unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right--God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things, I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?"