The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [203]
Mitchell made no reaction. The news was so devastating that the only way he could survive it was to pretend that he wasn’t surprised. “I knew that was going to happen,” he said.
“Yeah, well, Bankhead’s lucky. She’s sexy. I don’t know what she sees in that guy, though. He’s like Lurch.” Schneider went on complaining about Bankhead, and guys like Bankhead, tall guys with lots of hair, while Mitchell sucked bitter-tasting foam off the top of his stout.
This simulated numbness got him through the next few minutes. And since it worked so well, Mitchell kept it going the next day, until the wages of all this unprocessed emotion woke him up, the next night, at four a.m. with the force of a stab wound. He lay on Schneider’s shabby-chic couch, his eyes wide open. Three different car alarms were going off, each seemingly centered in his chest.
The following days were among the most painful in Mitchell’s life. He wandered the baking streets, sweating, fighting off a childish urge to bawl. He felt like a great big boot had come down from the sky and ground him under its heel like the cigarette butts on the pavement. He kept thinking, “I lost. I’m dead. He killed me.” It felt almost pleasurable to denigrate himself in this fashion, and so he kept it up. “I’m just a piece of shit. I never had a chance. It’s laughable. Look at me. Just look. Ugly baldheaded crazy religious stupid PIECE OF SHIT!”
He despised himself. He decided that his believing that Madeleine would marry him stemmed from the same credulity that had led him to think he could live a saintly life, tending the sick and dying in Calcutta. It was the same credulity that had made him recite the Jesus Prayer, and wear a cross, and think that he could stop Madeleine from marrying Bankhead by sending her a letter. His dreaminess, his swooning—his intelligent stupidity—were responsible for everything that was idiotic about him, for his fantasy of marrying Madeleine and for the self-renunciations that hedged against the fantasy’s not coming true.
Two nights later, Schneider threw a party, and everything changed. Mitchell, who hadn’t been feeling very festive, had gone out as the party was getting under way. After walking around the block about five or six times, he’d gone back to Schneider’s to find the place even more crowded. Ducking into the bedroom, intending to mope, he’d come face to face with his nemesis, Bankhead, who was sitting on the bed, smoking. To Mitchell’s further surprise, Bankhead and he had gotten into a serious discussion. Mitchell had been aware, of course, that Bankhead’s being at the party meant that Madeleine must be there too. One reason he’d kept talking to Bankhead was that he was too scared to leave the bedroom and run into her. But then Madeleine had appeared on her own. At first, Mitchell pretended not to notice, but finally he’d turned—and it was like it always was. Madeleine’s sheer physical presence hit Mitchell with full concussive force. He felt like the guy in the Maxell cassette commercial with his hair blown straight back, even though he didn’t have any hair. Things happened quickly after that. Bankhead chased Madeleine away, for some reason. A little while later, he left the party. Mitchell managed to talk to Madeleine before she left too. But twenty-five minutes later, she came back, clearly upset, looking for Kelly. Seeing Mitchell instead, she’d come straight up to him, pressed her face into his chest, and begun to shake.
He and Kelly took Madeleine into the bedroom and closed the door. While the party swirled outside, Madeleine told them what had happened. Later on, after Madeleine had calmed down a little, she called her parents. Together they decided that the best thing to do, for the moment, was for Madeleine to take a car service back to Prettybrook. Since she didn’t want to be alone, Mitchell had volunteered to ride with her.
He’d been staying at the Hannas’ ever since, for almost a month. They’d put him in the attic bedroom where he’d stayed during Thanksgiving break sophomore year. The room was