Freedom

Thankfully Abigail, who was a high-end restaurant hound and insisted on turning several of the dinners into awkward fivesomes, was in peak disagreeable form. Unable to imagine people gathering for some reason besides listening to her, she prattled about the world of New York theater (by definition an unfair world since she had made no progress in it since her understudy breakthrough); about the “sleazy slimeball” Yale professor with whom she’d had insuperable Creative differences; about some friend of hers named Tammy who’d self-financed a production of Hedda Gabler in which she (Tammy) had brilliantly starred; about hangovers and rent control and disturbing third-party sexual incidents that Ray, refilling and refilling his own wineglass, demanded every prurient detail of. Midway through the final dinner, in SoHo, Patty got so fed up with Abigail’s shanghaiing of the attention that ought to have been lavished on Walter (who had politely attended to every word of Abigail’s) that she flat-out told her sister to shut up and let other people talk. There ensued a bad interval of silent manipulation of tableware. Then Patty, making comical gestures of drawing water from a well, got Walter talking about himself. Which was a mistake, in hindsight, because Walter was passionate about public policy and, not knowing what real politicians are like, believed that a state assemblywoman would be interested in hearing his ideas.

He asked Joyce if she was familiar with the Club of Rome. Joyce confessed that she was not. Walter explained that the Club of Rome (one of whose members he’d invited to Macalester for a lecture two years earlier) was devoted to exploring the limits of growth. Mainstream economic theory, both Marxist and free-market, Walter said, took for granted that economic growth was always a positive thing. A GDP growth rate of one or two percent was considered modest, and a population growth rate of one percent was considered desirable, and yet, he said, if you compounded these rates over a hundred years, the numbers were terrible: a world population of eighteen billion and world energy consumption ten times greater than today’s. And if you went another hundred years, with steady growth, well, the numbers were simply impossible. So the Club of Rome was seeking more rational and humane ways of putting the brakes on growth than simply destroying the planet and letting everybody starve to death or kill each other.

“The Club of Rome,” Abigail said. “Is that like an Italian Playboy Club?”

“No,” Walter said quietly. “It’s a group of people who are challenging our preoccupation with growth. I mean, everybody is so obsessed with growth, but when you think about it, for a mature organism, a growth is basically a cancer, right? If you have a growth in your mouth, or a growth in your colon, it’s bad news, right? So there’s this small group of intellectuals and philanthropists who are trying to step outside our tunnel vision and influence government policy at the highest levels, both in Europe and the Western Hemisphere.”

“The Bunnies of Rome,” Abigail said.

“Nor-fock-a Virginia!” Ray said in a grotesque Italian accent.

Joyce loudly cleared her throat. En famille, when Ray became silly and dirty because of wine, she could simply retreat into her private Joycean reveries, but in her future son-in-law’s presence she had no choice but to be embarrassed. “Walter is talking about an interesting idea,” she said. “I’m not particularly familiar with this idea, or with this . . . club. But it’s certainly a very provocative perspective on our world situation.”

Walter, not seeing the little neck-slicing gesture that Patty was making, pressed on. “The whole reason we need something like the Club of Rome,” he said, “is that a rational conversation about growth is going to have to begin outside the ordinary political process. Obviously you know this yourself, Joyce. If you’re trying to get elected, you can’t even talk about slowing the growth rate, let alone reversing it. It’s total political poison.”

“Safe to say,” Joyce said with a dry laugh.

“But somebody has to talk about it, and try to influence policy, because otherwise we’re going to kill the planet. We’re going to choke on our own multiplication.”

“Speaking of choking, Daddy,” Abigail said, “is that your private bottle there, or can we have some, too?”

“We’ll get another,” Ray said.

“I don’t think we need another,” Joyce said.

Ray raised his Joyce-stilling hand. “Joyce—just—just—calm down. We’re fine here.”