The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [55]
Up ahead, the river appeared, green and unmoving. A few years ago, it had caught on fire. For weeks the fire department had tried to put out the conflagration without success. Which invited the question of how, exactly, did you douse a burning river? What could you do, when the retardant was also the accelerant?
The lovelorn English major contemplated the symbolism of this.
In a thin little park she’d never noticed before, Madeleine sat on a bench. Natural opiates were flooding her system and, after a few minutes, she started to feel a bit better. She dried her eyes. From now on, she wouldn’t have to see Mitchell ever again, if she didn’t want. Or Leonard, either. Though at this moment she felt abused, abandoned, and ashamed of herself, Madeleine knew that she was still young, that she had her whole life ahead of her—a life in which, if she persevered, she might do something special—and that part of persevering meant getting past moments just like this one, when people made you feel small, unlovable, and took away your confidence.
She left the park, climbing a small cobblestone lane back to Benefit Street.
At the Narragansett, she let herself into the lobby and took the elevator up to her floor. She felt tired, dehydrated, and still in need of a shower.
As she was putting her key in the door, Abby opened it from inside. Her hair was stuffed into the graduation cap. “Hi! We thought we were going to have to leave without you.”
“Sorry,” Madeleine said, “my parents take forever. Can you wait for me? I’ll be really fast.”
In the living room, Olivia was painting her toenails, her feet up on the coffee table. The telephone began to ring, and Abby went to get it.
“Pookie said you left with Thurston Meems,” Olivia said, applying polish. “But I told her that couldn’t possibly be true.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Madeleine said.
“Fine. I don’t even care,” Olivia said. “But Pookie and I just want to know one thing.”
“I’m going to take a quick shower.”
“It’s for you,” Abby said, holding out the phone.
Madeleine had no desire to talk to anybody. But it was better than fending off more questions.
She took the receiver and said hello.
“Madeleine?” It was a guy’s voice, unfamiliar.
“Yes.”
“This is Ken. Auerbach.” When Madeleine didn’t respond, the caller said, “I’m a friend of Leonard’s.”
“Oh,” Madeleine said. “Hi.”
“I’m sorry to call on graduation. But I’m leaving today and I thought I should call you before I go.” There was a pause during which Madeleine tried to catch up to the reality of the moment, and before she did, Auerbach said, “Leonard’s in the hospital.”
No sooner had he delivered this news than he added, “Don’t worry. He’s not hurt. But he’s in the hospital and I thought you should know. If you didn’t already. Maybe you knew.”
“No, I didn’t,” Madeleine replied in what sounded to her like a calm tone. Keeping it that way, she added, “Can you hold on a minute?” Pressing the receiver against her chest, she picked up the base of the phone, which was on an extralong cord, and carried it out of the living room and back to her bedroom, where it just barely reached. She closed the door and lifted the handset to her ear. She was worried her voice might break when she spoke again.
“What’s the matter? Is he O.K.?”
“He’s fine,” Auerbach assured her. “Physically he’s fine. I was worried I might freak you out if I called but—yeah, no—he’s not injured or anything like that.”
“Then what is he?”
“Well, at first he was a little manic. But now he’s really depressed. Like, clinically.”
For the next several minutes, while rain clouds passed over the capitol dome framed by her window, Auerbach told Madeleine what had happened.
It had started with Leonard not being able to sleep. He came to class complaining of exhaustion. At first, no one paid much attention. Being exhausted was in large measure what being Leonard was all about. Previously, Leonard’s exhaustion had had to do with the inherent demands of the day, with getting up, getting dressed, making it to campus. It wasn’t that he hadn’t slept;