Purity by Jonathan Franzen

most shameful word in the language, because it was her given name. It made her ashamed of her own driver’s license, the PURITY TYLER beside her sullen head shot, and made filling out any application a small torture. The name had accomplished the opposite of what her mother had intended by giving it to her. As if to escape the weight of it, she’d made herself a dirty girl in high school, and she was still a dirty girl, desiring someone’s husband … She kept drinking beer until she felt dulled enough to excuse herself and take some pizza to Ramón.
    â€œI’m not hungry,” he said, his face to the wall.
    â€œSweetie, you have to eat something.”
    â€œI’m not hungry. Where’s Stephen?”
    â€œHe has friends over. He’ll be up soon.”
    â€œI wanna stay here with you an’ Stephen an’ Drayfuss.”
    Pip bit her lip and went back down to the kitchen.
    â€œYou guys need to go now,” she said to Garth and Erik. “Stephen needs to talk to Ramón.”
    â€œI’ll go up soon,” he said.
    The plain fear in his face made her angry. “He’s your son ,” she said. “He’s not going to eat until you talk to him.”
    â€œAll right,” he said with a little-boy irritation that he normally directed at Marie.
    Pip watched him go and wondered if she and he were going to skip right over the bliss part to the bitchy-relationship part. Having broken up the party, she sat and finished off the beer. She could feel an outburst coming on, and she knew she ought to go to bed, but her heart was beating too hard. Eventually her desire and anger and jealousy and distrust coalesced into a single beery grievance: Stephen had forgotten that he’d promised to have a private talk with her tonight. He stayed in touch with Annagret but he abandoned Pip. She heard his bedroom door close upstairs, and while she waited to hear it open again she silently repeated her grievance, rewording and rewording it, trying to strengthen it to bear the weight of her feeling of abandonment; but it couldn’t bear the weight. She went upstairs anyway and knocked on Stephen’s door.
    He was sitting on the marital bed reading a book with a red title, something political.
    â€œYou’re reading a book ?” she said.
    â€œIt’s better than thinking about things I have no control over.”
    She shut the door and sat down on a corner of the bed. “A person wouldn’t have guessed anything unusual had even happened today, the way you were talking with Garth and Erik.”
    â€œWhat are they going to do about it? I still have my work. I still have my friends.”
    â€œAnd me. You still have me.”
    Stephen looked aside nervously. “Yeah.”
    â€œDid you forget you’d said you’d talk to me?”
    â€œYeah, I did. I’m sorry.”
    She tried to deepen and slow her breathing.
    â€œWhat?” he said.
    â€œYou know what.”
    â€œNo, I don’t know what.”
    â€œYou promised you were going to talk to me.”
    â€œI’m sorry. I forgot.”
    Her grievance was as puny and useless as she’d feared. There was no point in airing it a third time.
    â€œWhat’s going to happen to us?” she said.
    â€œYou and me?” He closed his book. “Nothing. We’ll find a couple of new housemates, preferably female, so you don’t have to be the only one.”
    â€œSo nothing changes. Everything the same.”
    â€œWhy would anything change?”
    She paused, listening to her heart. “You know, a year ago, when we were having those coffees, I had the impression that you liked me.”
    â€œI do like you. A lot.”
    â€œBut you made it sound like you were hardly even married.”
    He smiled. “Yeah, well, it turns out I was right about that.”
    â€œNo, but back then ,” she said. “ Back then you made it sound that way. Why did you