The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [205]
Mitchell then began calling everyone he knew in New York to see if anyone had seen or talked to Bankhead. Within two days, he reached three different people—Jesse Kornblum, Mary Stiles, and Beth Tolliver—who claimed they had. Mary Stiles said that Bankhead was staying in DUMBO, in an unspecified person’s loft. Bankhead had phoned Jesse Kornblum at work so often that Kornblum finally had to stop taking his calls. Beth Tolliver had met Bankhead at a diner in Brooklyn Heights, and said that he seemed sad about the demise of his marriage. “I got the feeling that Maddy had dumped him,” she said. That was how things were left for over a week, until Phyllida thought to call Bankhead’s mother, in Portland, and learned from Rita that Leonard had been in Oregon for the past two days.
Phyllida described the phone call as one of the strangest of her life. Rita acted as though the matter was of minor consequence, like a breakup between high schoolers. Her opinion was that Leonard and Madeleine had made a foolish mistake and that Rita and Phyllida, as mothers, should have seen it coming all along. Phyllida would have taken issue with this view if it weren’t so obvious that Rita had been drinking. Phyllida stayed on the line long enough to establish that, after staying with his mother for the two nights, Leonard had gone to a cabin in the woods with an old high school friend of his, Godfrey, where they planned to live for the summer.
At that point Phyllida lost her composure. “Mrs. Bankhead,” she said, “well, I’m I’m—I just don’t know what to say! Madeleine and Leonard are still married. Leonard is my daughter’s husband, my son-in-law, and now you tell me he’s going off to live in the woods!”
“You asked where he was. I told you.”
“Did it occur to you that Madeleine might want to know that information? Did it occur to you that we might be worried about Leonard?”
“He only left yesterday.”
“And just when were you going to let us know that?”
“I’m not sure I like your tone.”
“My tone is beside the point. The point is that Leonard has told Madeleine that he wants a divorce, after two months of being married. Now, what Madeleine’s father and I are trying to ascertain is whether Leonard is serious about this, and in his right mind, or if this is another aspect of his illness.”
“What illness?”
“His manic depression!”
Rita laughed slowly, with rich gurgling in the throat. “Leonard’s always been theatrical. He should have been an actor.”
“Do you have a telephone number for Leonard?”
“I don’t think they have a telephone at that cabin. It’s pretty rustic.”
“Do you think you’ll be hearing from Leonard in the near future?”
“It’s hard to say with him. I didn’t hear much from him since the wedding until all of a sudden he showed up at my front door.”
“Well, if you do, could you please ask him to call Madeleine, who is still his legal wife? This situation has to be clarified one way or another.”
“I agree with you there,” Rita said.
Once they knew that Bankhead wasn’t in immediate danger, and especially that he’d put a continent between himself and his bride and in-laws, Alton and Phyllida began to take a different line. Mitchell saw them talking together in the teahouse, as though they didn’t want Madeleine to hear. Once, returning from a morning walk, he surprised them both sitting in the car in the garage. He didn’t hear what they were saying, but he had an idea. Then one night, when they had all gone out to the deck for an after-dinner drink, Alton broached the subject that was on their minds.
It was just after