"Zooey? How is he?"
"How is he? He's fine. He's just tiptop. I could just murder him, tha
t'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 oPS 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 his 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 oPS 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."