Free The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides Page B

lover’s discourse is today of an extreme solitude.

    Outside, the temperature, which had remained cold through March, had shot up into the fifties. The resulting thaw was alarming in its suddenness, drainpipes and gutters dripping, sidewalks puddling, streets flooded, a constant sound of water rushing downhill.
    Madeleine had her windows open on the liquid darkness. She sucked the spoon and read on:
What we have been able to say below about waiting, anxiety, memory is no more than a modest supplement offered to the reader to be made free with, to be added to, subtracted from, and passed on to others: around the figure, the players pass the handkerchief which sometimes, by a final parenthesis, is held a second longer before handing it on. (Ideally, the book would be a cooperative: “To the United Readers and Lovers.”)

    It wasn’t only that this writing seemed beautiful to Madeleine. It wasn’t only that these opening sentences of Barthes’ made immediate sense. It wasn’t only the relief at recognizing that here, finally, was a book she might write her final paper on. What made Madeleine sit up in bed was something closer to the reason she read books in the first place and had always loved them. Here was a sign that she wasn’t alone. Here was an articulation of what she had been so far mutely feeling. In bed on a Friday night, wearing sweatpants, her hair tied back, her glasses smudged, and eating peanut butter from the jar, Madeleine was in a state of extreme solitude.
    It had to do with Leonard. With how she felt about him and how she couldn’t tell anyone. With how much she liked him and how little she knew about him. With how desperately she wanted to see him and how hard it was to do so.
    In recent days, from her solitude, Madeleine had sent out feelers. She talked about Semiotics 211 with her roommates, mentioning Thurston, Cassandra, and Leonard. It turned out that Abby knew Leonard from her freshman year.
    “What was he like?” Madeleine asked.
    “Sort of intense. Really smart, but intense. He used to call me all the time. Like every day.”
    “Did he like you?”
    “No, he just wanted to talk. He’d keep me on the phone for an hour.”
    “What did you guys talk about?”
    “Everything! His relationship. My relationship. His parents, my parents. Jimmy Carter getting attacked by that swamp rabbit, which he was obsessed about. He’d go on and on.”
    “Who was he going out with?”
    “Some girl named Mindy. But then they broke up. That’s when he really started calling me. He’d call like six times a day. He was always going on about how good Mindy smelled. She had this smell that was supposedly perfectly compatible to Leonard, chemically . He was worried no girl would ever smell right to him again. I told him it was probably her moisturizer. He said no, it was her skin . It was chemically perfect . That’s what he’s like.” She paused and gave Madeleine a searching look. “Why are you asking? Do you like him?”
    “I just know him from class,” Madeleine said.
    “Do you want me to invite him for dinner?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “I’ll invite him to dinner,” Abby said.
    The dinner had been on Tuesday night, three days ago. Leonard had come politely bearing a gift, a set of dish towels. He’d dressed up, wearing a white shirt with a skinny necktie, his long hair gathered in a masculine ponytail like a Scottish warrior. He was touchingly sincere, saying hello to Abby, handing her the wrapped gift and thanking her for the invitation.
    Madeleine tried not to seem overeager. At dinner, she paid attention to Brian Weeger, whose breath had a dog-food smell. A couple of times, when she looked over at Leonard, he stared back, fixedly, appearing almost upset. Later, when Madeleine was in the kitchen, rinsing dishes, Leonard came in. She turned to find him inspecting a bump on the wall.
    “This must be an old gas main,” he said.
    Madeleine looked at the bump, which had been painted