The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [121]
That was a fun parlor game to play: from which side of the family had his mental instability descended. There were so many possible sources, so much spoiled fruit on the family trees of the Bankhead and Richardson clans. Alcoholics populated both sides. Rita’s sister, Ruth, had led a wild life, sexually and financially. She’d been arrested a few times and had attempted suicide at least once that he knew. Then there were Leonard’s grandparents, whose rectitude had something desperate about it, as though it was holding back a tide of riotous impulse. Despite his father’s buttoned-up appearance, Leonard knew him to be depressive as well as misanthropic, prone, when drunk, to ranting about “the vulgus” and to fits of grandiosity, where he talked about moving to Europe and living in high style.
The house appealed to Frank’s conception of himself. It was a much nicer, bigger house than he could otherwise afford, with detailed woodwork in the parlor, a tiled fireplace, and four bedrooms. One afternoon, coming home from the shop early, he took Rita and Leonard to see it. When they arrived at the house, Rita refused to get out of the car. So Frank took Leonard, only seven at the time, in alone. They toured the house with the real estate agent, Frank pointing out where Leonard’s new bedroom would be on the first floor, and the backyard where, if he wanted, he could build a tree house.
He brought Leonard back to the car, where Rita was sitting.
“Leonard has something to tell you,” Frank said.
“What?” Leonard said.
“Don’t be smart. You know perfectly well what.”
“There aren’t any bloodstains, Mom,” Leonard said.
“And?” Frank coaxed.
“The whole floor’s brand-new. In the front. It’s new tiles.”
Rita remained straight-backed in the front seat. She was wearing sunglasses, as she always did when she went out, even in winter. Finally, she took a long sip from her “water” glass—it went everywhere with her, ice cubes jingling—and got out of the car.
“Hold my hand,” she said to Leonard. Together, without Frank, they went up the front steps and across the porch into the house. They looked at all the rooms together.
“What do you think?” Rita asked when they were finished.
“It’s a nice house, I guess.”
“It wouldn’t bother you living here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about your sister?”
“She wants to move here. Dad told her what it’s like. He said she could pick out her own carpet.”
Before giving her answer, Rita demanded that Frank take her to Bryant’s for dinner. Leonard wanted to go home and play baseball but they made him come along. At Bryant’s, Frank and Rita ordered martinis, quite a few of them. Before long they were laughing and kissing, and pooh-poohing Leonard’s reluctance to eat the oysters they ordered. Rita had suddenly decided that the murder was an attraction. It gave the house a “history.” In Europe, people were used to living in houses where other people had been murdered or poisoned.
“I don’t know why you’re so scared to live there,” she chided Leonard.
“I’m not scared,” he said.
“I’ve never seen such a fuss, have you?” she asked Frank.
“No, never,” Frank said.
“I didn’t make a fuss,” Leonard said, growing frustrated. “You did. I don’t care where we live.”
“Oh, well, maybe we won’t bring you with us, if you keep up that attitude!”
They kept laughing and drinking, while Leonard stormed away from the table and stared into the jukebox, flipping the selections again and again.
A month later, the family moved into 133 Linden, acquiring, along with the new house, one more thing for Frank and Rita to fight about.
All of this, as Leonard later learned from his therapists, amounted to emotional abuse. Not to be made to live in a house where a murder had taken place but to be the go-between in his parents