The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [130]
As a consequence of his physical and mental malfunctioning, there was another problem he was dealing with: the power had shifted in his relationship with Madeleine. Early on, Madeleine had been the needy one. She got jealous when Leonard talked to other girls at parties. She flashed warning signs of insecurity. Finally, she’d thrown in the towel completely and told him, “I love you.” In response, Leonard had acted cool and cerebral, figuring that by keeping Madeleine in doubt he could bind her to him more closely. But Madeleine surprised him. She broke up with him on the spot. Once Madeleine was gone, Leonard regretted the Roland Barthes incident. He castigated himself for being such a douche. He spent multiple sessions with Bryce examining his motivations. And though Bryce’s analysis of the situation—that Leonard was frightened of intimacy and so had self-protectively made fun of Madeleine’s avowal—was pretty much on the mark, that didn’t bring Madeleine back. Leonard missed her. He got depressed. Stupidly, he stopped taking his lithium, hoping to feel better. But all he felt was anxious. Anxious and depressed. He wore out the ear of every friend he had, talking incessantly about how much he missed Madeleine, how he wanted her back, and how he’d messed up the best relationship he’d ever had. Knowing that his friends were getting tired of hearing this, Leonard modulated his monologues, partly out of a storyteller’s instinct to vary a narrative and partly because, by then, his anxieties were multiplying. So he told his friends about his money worries and his health worries until he finally lost track of what he was saying and to whom he was saying it. Around this time Ken Auerbach had shown up, with two guys from security, and taken him to Health Services. And the really crazy thing was that, when he was transferred to the hospital the next day, Leonard was pissed. He was pissed at being admitted to the psych ward without enjoying the prior benefit of a total manic blowout. He should have been up for three nights running. He should have fucked eight chicks and snorted blow and done jelly shots off the stomach of a stripper named Moonstar. Instead, all Leonard had done was sit in his apartment, abusing his Rolodex, wearing out his telephonic welcome, and spiraling down until he ended in medical lockup with the other head cases.
By the time he got out, three weeks later, the power dynamics had completely reversed. Now he was the needy one. True, he had Madeleine back, which was a wonderful thing. But Leonard’s happiness was compromised by the constant fear of losing her again. His unsightliness threw Madeleine’s beauty into relief. Next to her in bed, he felt like a pudgy eunuch. Every hair on his thighs sprouted from an inflamed follicle. Sometimes, when Madeleine was asleep, Leonard would gently pull the covers off her to stare at her glowing, rosy skin. What was interesting about being the needy one was how much in love you felt. It was almost worth it. This dependency was what Leonard had guarded himself against feeling all his life, but he couldn’t do it anymore. He’d lost the ability to be an asshole. Now he was smitten, and it felt both tremendous and scary.
Madeleine had tried to brighten up his studio while he was in the hospital. She’d put new sheets on the bed and had hung curtains in the windows and a pink shower curtain. She’d scrubbed the floors and counters. She professed to be glad to be living with him and to be rid of Olivia and Abby. But during the long, hot summer, Leonard began to see why Madeleine might eventually tire of slumming it with her nearly penniless boyfriend. Whenever a roach scurried out of the toaster, she looked as though she was going to be sick. She wore sandals in the shower to protect herself from the mildew. The first week after Leonard was back, Madeleine stayed