The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [176]
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