The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [207]
Here he stopped. The crickets seemed to get louder and, over the dark backyard, as if this were a lovely summer evening, lightning bugs began magically to flash.
The silence was broken by the sound of Madeleine’s wineglass smashing against the deck. She jumped to her feet. “I’m going inside!”
“Maddy, we need to discuss this.”
“All you know how to do whenever there’s a problem is talk to your lawyer!”
“Well, I’m glad I called Roger about that prenuptial agreement you didn’t want to sign,” Alton said, unwisely.
“Right!” Madeleine said. “Thank God I didn’t lose any money! My whole life is ruined but at least I didn’t lose any of my capital! This isn’t a board meeting, Daddy. This is my life!” And with that, she fled to her bedroom.
For the next three days, Madeleine refused to eat with her parents. She seldom came downstairs. This put Mitchell in an awkward position. As the only impartial person in the house, it was up to him to maintain communication among the parties. He felt like Philip Habib, the special Middle East envoy, whom he saw every night on the evening news. Keeping Alton company during the cocktail hour, Mitchell watched Habib meeting with Yassir Arafat, or Hafez al-Assad, or Ariel Sharon, going back and forth, bringing messages, cajoling, goading, threatening, flattering, and trying to keep full-scale war from breaking out. After his second gin and tonic Mitchell was inspired to draw comparisons. Barricaded in her bedroom, Madeleine was like a PLO faction hiding out in Beirut, emerging every so often to lob a bomb down the stairs. Alton and Phyllida, occupying the rest of the house, were like the Israelis, unrelenting and better armed, seeking to extend a protectorate over Lebanon and make Madeleine’s decisions for her. On his shuttle missions to Madeleine’s lair, Mitchell listened to her complaints. She said that Alton and Phyllida had never liked Leonard. They hadn’t wanted her to marry him. True, they’d treated him well after his breakdown, and hadn’t so much as mentioned the word divorce until Leonard had said it first. But now Madeleine felt that her parents were secretly happy that Leonard was gone, and for this she wanted to punish them. After gathering as much information about Madeleine’s feelings as possible, Mitchell returned downstairs to confer with Alton and Phyllida. He found them to be far more sympathetic to Madeleine’s plight than Madeleine gave them credit for. Phyllida admired her loyalty to Leonard, but thought it was a losing proposition. “Madeleine thinks she can save Leonard,” she said. “But the truth is that he either can’t be saved or doesn’t want to be.” Alton put on a stern front, saying that Madeleine had “to cut her losses,” but it was clear from his frequent silences, and from the stiff drinks he sipped while Habib limped in plaid slacks across yet another stretch of desert tarmac on TV, how much he was suffering on Madeleine’s account.
Following diplomatic example, Mitchell played out his string, letting everyone vent until they finally asked for advice.
“What do you think I should do?” Madeleine asked him, three days after her blowup with Alton. Before Schneider’s party, Mitchell’s answer would have been easy. He would have said, “Divorce Bankhead and marry me.” Even now, given that Bankhead showed no desire to remain married, and had disappeared into the wilds of Oregon, there didn’t seem much hope for reconciliation. How could you stay married to someone who didn’t want to stay married to you? But Mitchell’s feeling about Bankhead had undergone a significant change since talking to him and he was beset now, troublingly, with something resembling empathy and even affection for his onetime rival.
The subject of their long dialogue in Schneider’s bedroom had been, surprisingly enough, religion. Even more surprisingly, Bankhead was the one who had initiated the discussion. He’d begun by mentioning the religious studies course they