The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [194]
She was trying to proceed carefully, but it wasn’t easy. Madeleine had brought Leonard to New York to avoid the danger of leaving him home unsupervised. But now that he was in the city, there was the danger that he might have a panic attack. She’d had the choice between leaving him in Prettybrook, and worrying, and bringing him to New York with her, and worrying. In general, she worried less if she could keep an eye on him.
She was the thing that stood between Leonard and death. That was how it felt to her. Because Madeleine now knew the warning signs, she was constantly alert to their appearance. Worse, she was alert to any change in Leonard’s mood that might be a precursor of one of the warning signs. She was alert to warnings of the warning signs. And this got confusing. For instance, she didn’t know if Leonard’s being up early constituted a new change in his sleeping pattern, was part of the former change in his sleeping pattern, or indicated a beneficial development. She didn’t know if his perfectionism canceled out his loss of ambition, or if they were two sides of the same coin. When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep. When Leonard stayed up, watching late-night TV, Madeleine kept tabs on him from her bed. She could never really fall asleep until he came upstairs and climbed in beside her. She listened for the sounds he made downstairs. It was as if her own heart had been surgically removed from her body and was being kept at a remote location, still connected to her and pumping blood through her veins, but exposed to dangers she couldn’t see: her heart in a box somewhere, in the open air, unprotected.
They came up Eighth Avenue, veering onto Broadway at Columbus Circle. Leonard pulled his head back inside the car as if to retest the temperature, then leaned out the window again.
The driver made a left at Seventy-second Street. A few minutes later they were rolling up Riverside Drive. Kelly was waiting on the sidewalk outside the building.
“Sorry!” Madeleine said, getting out of the taxi. “The train was late.”
“You always say that,” Kelly said.
“It’s always true.”
They hugged, and Kelly asked, “So are you coming to the party?”
“We’ll see.”
“You have to! I can’t go alone.”
All this time, the cab was idling at the curb. Finally Leonard climbed out. With heavy steps he made it out of the sunlight to the shade of the awning.
Kelly, who was a pretty good actress, smiled at Leonard as though she hadn’t heard anything about his illness and he looked just fine. “Hi, Leonard. How you doing?”
As usual, Leonard treated this like a real question. He sighed, and said, “I’m exhausted.”
“You’re exhausted?” Kelly said. “Think about me! I’ve shown Maddy like fifteen apartments. This is it. If you guys don’t take this one, I’m firing you.”
“You can’t fire us,” Madeleine said. “We’re your clients.”
“Then I quit.” She led them into the cool, paneled lobby. “Seriously, Maddy. I’ve got one other listing, closer to Columbia, if you want to see it. But I doubt it’s as nice as this.”
After signing in with the doorman, they took the elevator up to the twelfth floor. Outside the apartment, Kelly hunted in her bag for the right keys, which took a while, but finally she got the door open and ushered them in.
Up until now, Kelly had shown Madeleine apartments that looked onto air shafts, or adjoined SROs, or were tiny and roach-infested, or smelled like cat pee. Even if Madeleine hadn’t been desperate to move out of her parents’ house, the one-bedroom she now walked into would have dazzled her. It was a classic, with freshly painted white walls, crown moldings, and parquet floors. The bedroom was big enough for a queen bed, the galley kitchen updated, the office usable, the living room under-size but graced by a nonworking fireplace. There was even a dining room. The chief selling point, however, was the views. In rapture, Madeleine opened the living room window and leaned out over the sill. The sun, still a couple of hours from setting,