The Marriage Plot (51 page)

“Leonard’s the same,” she said finally.

“Well, you should come up and see this apartment,” Kelly said. “Come at six and then we can go to this party. Just come for an hour. It’ll cheer you up.”

“I’ll see. I’ll call you later.”

In the bathroom, a fresh-mown-grass smell drifted through the screens as she brushed her teeth. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin was dry, and slightly purplish under her eyes. Nothing much in the way of deterioration—she was still only twenty-three—but different even from a year ago. There were shadows on her face from which Madeleine could extrapolate what her older face would look like.

Downstairs, she found Phyllida arranging flowers at the laundry room sink. The sliding glass doors to the deck were open, a yellow butterfly fluttering above the bushes.

“Good morning,” Phyllida said. “How did you sleep?”

“Badly.”

“There are English muffins by the toaster.”

Madeleine padded sleepily across the kitchen. She took a muffin from the package and began trying to split it with her fingers.

“Use a fork, dear,” Phyllida said.

But it was too late: the muffin top ripped off unevenly. Madeleine dropped the uneven sides into the toaster and pressed down the lever.

While the muffin toasted, she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table. Suitably roused, she said, “Mummy, I have to go into the city tonight to see an apartment.”

“Tonight?”

Madeleine nodded.

“Your father and I have a cocktail party tonight.” Phyllida meant that they wouldn’t be able to stay with Leonard.

The muffin popped up. “But Mummy?” Madeleine persisted. “This apartment sounds perfect. It’s on Riverside Drive. With a view.”

“I’m sorry, dear, but I’ve had this party in my book for three months.”

“Kelly says it won’t last. I have to come today.” She felt bad for pressing. Phyllida and Alton had been so good about everything, so helpful to Leonard in his distress, that Madeleine didn’t want to burden them further. On the other hand, if she didn’t find an apartment, she and Leonard couldn’t move out.

“Maybe Leonard will go with you,” Phyllida suggested.

Madeleine fished the bigger half of her muffin out of the toaster, saying nothing. She had taken Leonard to the city just last week, and it hadn’t gone well. In the crowds at Penn Station he’d begun to hyperventilate and they’d had to take the next train back to Prettybrook.

“Maybe I won’t go,” she said finally.

“You might as well ask Leonard if he’d like to go,” Phyllida said.

“I will when he gets up.”

“He
is
up. He’s been up for a while. He’s out on the deck.”

This surprised Madeleine. Leonard had been sleeping late into the mornings. Standing up, she took her coffee and muffin out to the sunny deck.

Leonard was on the lower level, in the shade, sitting in the Adirondack chair where he’d been spending most of his days. He looked large and shaggy, like a Sendak creature. He had on a black T-shirt and baggy black shorts. His feet, clad in old basketball sneakers, were propped up on the porch railing. Plumes of smoke were rising from the area in front of his face.

“Hi,” Madeleine said, coming up beside his chair.

Leonard croaked out a greeting and continued smoking.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m exhausted. Couldn’t sleep so I took a sleeping pill around two. Then I woke up about five and came out here.”

“Did you get some breakfast?”

Leonard held up his pack of cigarettes.

A lawn mower started up in an adjoining yard. Madeleine sat down on the wide arm of the chair. “Kelly called,” she said. “What do you think about coming into the city with me tonight? Around four-thirty?”

“Not a good idea,” Leonard said again in his croaking voice.

“There’s a one-bedroom on Riverside Drive.”

“You go.”

“I want you to come with me.”

“Not a good idea,” he repeated.

The sound of the lawn mower was getting closer. It came right up to the other side of the fence before moving away again.

“Mummy’s going to a cocktail party,” Madeleine said.

“You can leave me alone, Madeleine.”

“I know.”

“If I wanted to kill myself, I could do it at night, when you’re sleeping. I could drown myself in the swimming pool. I could have done that this morning.”

“You’re not making me feel better about going into the city,” Madeleine said.

“Look. Mad. I’m not feeling too good. I’m exhausted and my nerves are all jangled. I don’t think I can handle another trip into New York. But I’m O.K. here on the porch. You can leave me.”

Madeleine squeezed her eyes shut. “How are we going to live in New York if you won’t even go look at an apartment?”

“That is a paradox,” Leonard said. He stubbed out his cigarette, flicked the butt into the bushes, and lit another. “I’m self-monitoring, Madeleine. That’s all I can do. I’ve gotten better at self-monitoring lately. And I’m not ready to go cram into a subway with a bunch of hot, sweaty New Yorkers—”

“We’ll take a cab.”

“—Or ride around in a hot cab, in the heat. What I
can
do, though, is take care of myself perfectly fine here. I don’t need a babysitter. I’ve been telling you that. My doctor’s been telling you that.”

She waited for him to finish before bringing the conversation back to the topic at hand. “The thing is, if this place is good, we’re going to have to decide right away. I could call you from a pay phone after I see it.”

“You can decide without me. It’s
your
apartment.”

“It’s both of ours.”

“You’re the one paying for it,” Leonard said. “You’re the one who needs a place in New York.”

“You want a place in New York too.”

“Not anymore.”

“You
said
you did.”

Leonard turned and looked at her for the first time. These moments, oddly enough, were the ones she dreaded: when he looked at her. Leonard’s eyes had an emptiness to them. It was like looking into a deep, dry well.

“Why don’t you just divorce me?” he said.

“Stop.”

“I wouldn’t blame you. I’d understand completely.” His expression softened and became thoughtful. “Do you know what they do in Islam when they want a divorce? The husband repeats three times, ‘I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.’ And that’s it. Men marry prostitutes and divorce them right afterwards. To avoid committing adultery.”

“Are you trying to make me sad?” Madeleine said.

“Sorry,” Leonard said. He reached out and took her hand. “Sorry, sorry.”

It was almost eleven by the time Madeleine went back inside. She told Phyllida that she’d decided not to go into the city. Back in Alton’s office, she called Kelly, thinking that maybe Kelly could go see the apartment and describe it to her over the phone, and that she could decide based on that. Kelly was out with another client, however, so Madeleine left a message. While she was waiting for Kelly to call back, Leonard came up the back stairs, calling her name. She went out to find him standing in the hall, holding on to the stair railing with both hands.

“I changed my mind,” he said. “I’ll go.”

Madeleine had married Leonard in the grip of a force much like mania. From the day when Leonard began experimenting with his lithium dosages, to the moment, in December, when he stormed into the apartment with his wild proposal, Madeleine had ridden a similarly cascading wave of emotion. She, too, had been insanely happy. She, too, had been hyper-sexual. She’d been feeling grandiose, invincible, and unafraid of risk. Hearing a beautiful music in her head, she hadn’t listened to anything anyone else was saying.

In fact, the comparison extended even further because, before becoming manic, Madeleine had been nearly as depressed as Leonard. The things she liked about Pilgrim Lake when they first arrived—the landscape, the exclusive atmosphere—didn’t compensate for the unpleasantness of the social environment. As the months passed, she didn’t really make any friends. The few women scientists at the lab either were much older than Madeleine or treated her with the same condescension as the male scientists did. The only bedfellow Madeleine got along with was Vikram Jaitly’s girlfriend, Alicia, but she came up only one or two weekends per month. Leonard’s obsession with keeping his condition secret wasn’t conducive to having much of a social life, anyway. He didn’t like being around people. He ate dinner as quickly as possible and never wanted to hang out in the bar afterward. Sometimes he insisted on eating pasta at home, even though the lab employed a professional chef. Whenever Madeleine went to the bar without Leonard, or played tennis with Greta Malkiel, she couldn’t relax. She got paranoid if anybody asked about Leonard, particularly if they asked how he was “feeling.” She couldn’t be herself, and always left early, returning to the apartment and closing the door, drawing the shades. It turned out that Madeleine had a madwoman in the attic: it was her six-foot-three boyfriend.

And then, in October, Alwyn found Leonard’s lithium and things became even more complicated. After Phyllida flew back to Boston, and from Boston back to New Jersey, Madeleine waited for the inevitable phone call. A week later, in early November, it came.

“I’m so glad I had a chance to visit the famous Pilgrim Lake Laboratory! It was terribly impressive.”

It was the excessive cheer in Phyllida’s voice that was worrisome. Madeleine braced herself.

“And it was so nice of Leonard to take time out of his schedule to show us around his lab. I’ve been giving a little tutorial down here to all my friends. I call it ‘Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Yeast but Were Afraid to Ask.’” Phyllida tittered with pleasure. Then, clearing her throat, she changed the topic. “I thought you might want to be apprised of developments chez Higgins.”

“I don’t.”

“Things are much better, I’m happy to report. Ally has moved
out
of the Ritz and back home with Blake. Thanks to the new nanny—which your father and I are paying for—there has been a cessation of hostilities.”

“I said I don’t care,” Madeleine said.

“Oh, Maddy,” Phyllida lightly scolded.

“Well, I don’t. Ally can get divorced for all I care.”

“I know you’re angry with your sister. And you have every right to be.”

“Ally and Blake don’t even like each other.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Phyllida said. “They have their differences, like any married couple. But they’re from the same background, fundamentally, and they understand each other. Ally’s lucky to have Blake. He’s a very stable person.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just that.”

“It’s an interesting choice of words, though.”

Phyllida sighed over the line. “We need to have this talk but I don’t know if now is the right time.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s a serious discussion.”

“This is only happening because Ally’s a snoop. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know anything.”

“That’s true. But the fact is I
do
know.”

“Didn’t you like Leonard? Wasn’t he nice?”

“He was very nice.”

“Did he seem like there was something wrong with him?”

“Not exactly, no. But I’ve been learning a lot about manic-depressive illness in the past week. You know the Turners’ daughter, Lily?”

“Lily Turner is a druggie.”

“Well, she’s certainly on drugs now. And will be for the rest of her life.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that manic depression is a
chronic
condition. People have it their
entire
lives. There’s no cure. People go in and out of the hospital, they have breakdowns, they can’t hold a job. And their families go along for the ride. Sweetheart? Madeleine? Are you there?”

“Yes,” Madeleine said.

“I know you know all this. But I want you to think about what it would mean to marry a person with a … with a mental illness. Not to mention raise a family with him.”

“Who says I’m going to marry Leonard?”

“Well, I don’t know. But I’m just saying, if you are.”

“Say Leonard had another disease, Mummy. Say he had diabetes or something. Would you be acting the same way about that?”

“Diabetes is a dreadful disease!” Phyllida cried.

“But you wouldn’t
care
if my boyfriend needed insulin to stay healthy. That would be O.K., right? It wouldn’t seem like some kind of
moral failing
.”

“I didn’t say anything about morality.”

“You didn’t have to!”

“I know you think I’m being unfair. But I’m just trying to protect you. It’s a very difficult thing to spend your life with someone unstable like that. I read an article by a woman who was married to a manic-depressive, and it literally curled my hair. I’m going to send it to you.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m going to!”

“I’ll throw it away!”

“Which amounts to sticking your head in the sand.”

“Is this why you’re calling?” Madeleine said. “To lecture me?”

“No,” Phyllida said. “Actually, I was calling about Thanksgiving. I was wondering what your plans were.”

“I don’t know,” Madeleine said, tight-lipped with anger.

“Ally and Blake are coming here with Richard the Lionhearted. We’d love to have you and Leonard too. It won’t be a big do this year. Alice has the weekend off and I can’t seem to manage the oven the way she does. It’s really getting to be an antique. But of course your father thinks it works just fine. He who never cooks so much as oatmeal.”

“You don’t cook much either.”

“Well, I try. Or I did when you were young.”

“You never cooked,” Madeleine said, trying to be mean.

Phyllida remained unprovoked. “I think I can still manage a turkey,” she said. “So, if you and Leonard would like to come, we’d love to have you.”

“I don’t know,” Madeleine said.

“Don’t be angry with me, Maddy.”

“I’m not. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

She didn’t call her mother for a week. Whenever the phone rang at a Phyllida-like time, she didn’t answer. The following Monday, however, a letter from Phyllida arrived in the mail. Inside was an article titled “Married to Manic Depression.”