The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [66]
She settled on “What did the doctor say?”
“She doesn’t want to discharge me yet,” Leonard said equably, bearing up to the news. “She doesn’t want to talk about discharging me yet.”
“Just go along with her. Just stay here and rest. I bet you could finish your incompletes in here.”
Leonard looked from side to side, speaking softly so that no one would overhear. “That’s about all I can do. Like I said, this is a state hospital.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning it’s mostly just throwing medicine at people.”
“Are you taking anything?”
He hesitated before answering. “Lithium, mostly. Which I’ve been on awhile. They’re recalibrating my dose.”
“Is it helping?”
“Some side effects, but yeah. Essentially the answer is yes.”
It was hard to tell if this was indeed so, or if Leonard wanted it to be. He seemed to be concentrating intensely on Madeleine’s face, as though it would provide him crucial information.
Abruptly he turned and regarded his reflection in the window, rubbing his cheeks.
“They only let us shave once a week,” he said. “An orderly has to be there while we do it.”
“Why?”
“Razor blades. That’s why I look like this.”
Madeleine glanced around the room to see if anyone was touching. No one was.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she asked.
“We broke up.”
“Leonard! If I knew you were depressed, that wouldn’t have mattered.”
“The breakup was why I was depressed,” Leonard said.
This was news. This was, in an inappropriate but real way, good news.
“I sabotaged you and me,” Leonard said. “I see that now. I’m able to think a little more clearly now. Part of growing up in the kind of family I come from, a family of alcoholics, is that you begin to normalize disease and dysfunctionality. Disease and dysfunctionality are normal for me. What’s not normal is feeling …” He broke off. He inclined his head, his dark eyes focusing on the linoleum, as he continued: “Remember that day you said you loved me? Remember that? See, you could do that because you’re basically a sane person, who grew up in a loving, sane family. You could take a risk like that. But in my family we didn’t go around saying we loved each other. We went around screaming at each other. So what do I do, when you say you love me? I go and undermine it. I go and reject it by throwing Roland Barthes in your face.”
Depression didn’t necessarily ruin a person’s looks. Only the way Leonard was moving his lips, sucking them and biting them occasionally, indicated that he was on any drugs.
“And so you left,” he continued. “You walked out. And you were right to do that, Madeleine.” Leonard looked at her now, his face full of sorrow. “I’m damaged goods,” he said.
“You are not.”
“After you left that day, I lay down on my bed and didn’t get up for a week. I just lay there thinking how I’d sabotaged the best chance I ever had to be happy in life. The best chance I ever had to be with someone smart, beautiful, and sane. The kind of person I could be a team with.” He leaned forward and gazed with intensity into Madeleine’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for being the kind of person who would do a thing like that.”
“Don’t worry about that now,” Madeleine said. “You have to concentrate on feeling better.”
Leonard blinked three times in quick succession. “I’m going to be in here for at least another week,” he said. “I’m missing graduation.”
“You wouldn’t have gone, anyway.”
Here, for the first time, Leonard smiled. “You’re probably right. How was it?”
“I don’t know,” Madeleine said. “It’s going on right now.”
“Right now?” Leonard looked out the window, as if he could check. “You’re missing it?”
Madeleine nodded. “I wasn’t in the mood.”
The woman in the bathrobe who’d been lazily circling the room now zeroed in on them. Under his breath Leonard said, “Watch out for this one. She can turn on you in a second.”
The woman shuffled closer and stopped. Bending at the knees, she appraised Madeleine closely.
“What are you?” she said.
“What am I?”
“Where are your people from?