The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [27]
“Where do they live?”
“They’re divorced. My mother still lives in Portland, where I’m from. My dad’s in Europe. He lives in Antwerp. Last time I heard.”
This interchange was encouraging, in a way. Leonard was sharing personal information. On the other hand, the information indicated that he had a troubled relationship with his parents, who were themselves troubled, and Madeleine made a point of going out only with guys who liked their parents.
“What does your father do?” Leonard asked.
Caught off guard, Madeleine hesitated. “He used to work at a college,” she said. “He’s retired.”
“What was he? Professor?”
“He was the president.”
Leonard’s face twitched. “Oh.”
“It’s just a small college. In New Jersey. It’s called Baxter.”
Abby came in to get some glasses. Leonard helped her get them off the top shelf. When she was gone, he turned back to Madeleine and said, as if in pain, “There’s a Fellini film playing at the Cable Car this weekend. Amarcord.”
Madeleine gazed encouragingly up at him. There were all kinds of outmoded, novelistic words to describe how she was feeling, words like aflutter. But she had her rules. One rule was that the guy had to ask her out, not the other way around.
“I think it’s playing on Saturday,” Leonard said.
“This Saturday?”
“Do you like Fellini?”
To reply to this question did not, in Madeleine’s view, compromise her rule. “You want to know something embarrassing?” she said. “I’ve never seen a Fellini film.”
“You should see one,” Leonard said. “I’ll call you.”
“All right.”
“Do I have your number? Oh, right, I have it. It’s the same as Abby’s number.”
“Do you want me to write it down?” Madeleine asked.
“No,” Leonard said. “I have it.”
And he rose, brontosaurus-like, to his place among the treetops.
For the rest of the week, Madeleine stayed in every night, waiting for Leonard to call. When she came back from classes in the afternoon she interrogated her roommates to find out if he had called while she was out.
“Some guy called yesterday,” Olivia said, on Thursday. “When I was in the shower.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Sorry, I forgot.”
“Who was it?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Did it sound like Leonard?”
“I didn’t notice. I was dripping wet.”
“Thanks for taking a message!”
“Sorree,” Olivia said. “God. It was just a two-second call. He said he’d call back later.”
And so now it was Friday night—Friday night!—and Madeleine had declined to go out with Abby and Olivia in order to stay in and wait by the phone. She was reading A Lover’s Discourse and marveling at its relevance to her life.
Waiting
attente / waiting
Tumult of anxiety provoked by waiting for the loved being, subject to trivial delays (rendezvous, letters, telephone calls, returns).
… Waiting is an enchantment: I have received orders not to move. Waiting for a telephone is thereby woven out of tiny, unavowable interdictions to infinity: I forbid myself to leave the room, to go to the toilet, even to telephone (to keep the line from being busy) …
She could hear the television going in the apartment below. Madeleine’s bedroom faced the State Capitol dome, brightly lit against the dark sky. The heat, which they couldn’t control, was still on, the radiator wastefully knocking and hissing.
The more she thought about it, the more Madeleine understood that extreme solitude didn’t just describe the way she was feeling about Leonard. It explained how she’d always felt when she was in love. It explained what love was like and, just maybe, what was wrong with it.
The telephone rang.
Madeleine sat up in bed. She dog-eared the page she was reading. She waited as long as she could (three rings) before answering.
“Hello?”
“Maddy?”
It was Alton, calling from Prettybrook.
“Oh. Hi, Daddy.”
“Don’t sound so excited.”
“I’m studying.”
In his usual way, without niceties, he got to the matter at hand. “Your mother and I were just discussing graduation plans.”
For a moment, Madeleine thought