The Marriage Plot

  At the corner of Benefit and Waterman, they crossed behind the white steeple of First Baptist Church. In preparation for the ceremony, loudspeakers had been set up on the lawn. A man wearing a bow tie, a dean-of-students-looking person, was tensely smoking a cigarette and inspecting a raft of balloons tied to the churchyard fence.

  By now Phyllida had caught up to Madeleine, taking her arm to negotiate the uneven slate, which was pushed up by the roots of gnarled plane trees that lined the curb. As a little girl, Madeleine had thought her mother pretty, but that was a long time ago. Phyllida’s face had gotten heavier over the years; her cheeks were beginning to sag like those of a camel. The conservative clothes she wore—the clothes of a philanthropist or lady ambassador—had a tendency to conceal her figure. Phyllida’s hair was where her power resided. It was expensively set into a smooth dome, like a band shell for the presentation of that long-running act, her face. For as long as Madeleine could remember, Phyllida had never been at a loss for words or shy about a point of etiquette. Among her friends Madeleine liked to make fun of her mother’s formality, but she often found herself comparing other people’s manners unfavorably with Phyllida’s.

  And right now Phyllida was looking at Madeleine with the proper expression for this moment: thrilled by the pomp and ceremony, eager to put intelligent questions to any of Madeleine’s professors she happened to meet, or to trade pleasantries with fellow parents of graduating seniors. In short, she was available to everyone and everything and in step with the social and academic pageantry, all of which exacerbated Madeleine’s feeling of being out of step, for this day and the rest of her life.

  She plunged on, however, across Waterman Street, and up the steps of Carr House, seeking refuge and coffee.

  The café had just opened. The guy behind the counter, who was wearing Elvis Costello glasses, was rinsing out the espresso machine. At a table against the wall, a girl with stiff pink hair was smoking a clove cigarette and reading Invisible Cities. “Tainted Love” played from the stereo on top of the refrigerator.

  Phyllida, holding her handbag protectively against her chest, had paused to peruse the student art on the walls: six paintings of small, skin-diseased dogs wearing bleach-bottle collars.

  “Isn’t this fun?” she said tolerantly.

  “La Bohème,” Alton said.

  Madeleine installed her parents at a table near the bay window, as far away from the pink-haired girl as possible, and went up to the counter. The guy took his time coming over. She ordered three coffees—a large for her—and bagels. While the bagels were being toasted, she brought the coffees over to her parents.

  Alton, who couldn’t sit at the breakfast table without reading, had taken a discarded Village Voice from a nearby table and was perusing it. Phyllida was staring overtly at the girl with pink hair.

  “Do you think that’s comfortable?” she inquired in a low voice.

  Madeleine turned to see that the girl’s ragged black jeans were held together by a few hundred safety pins.

  “I don’t know, Mummy. Why don’t you go ask her?”

  “I’m afraid of getting poked.”

  “According to this article,” Alton said, reading the Voice, “homosexuality didn’t exist until the nineteenth century. It was invented. In Germany.”

  The coffee was hot, and lifesavingly good. Sipping it, Madeleine began to feel slightly less awful.

  After a few minutes, she went up to get the bagels. They were a little burned, but she didn’t want to wait for new ones, and so brought them back to the table. After examining his with a sour expression, Alton began scraping it punitively with a plastic knife.

  Phyllida asked, “So, are we going to meet Leonard today?”

  “I’m not sure,” Madeleine said.

  “Anything you want us to know about?”

  “No.”

  “Are you two still planning to live together this summer?”

  By this time Madeleine had taken a bite of her bagel. And since the answer to her mother’s question was complicated—strictly speaking, Madeleine and Leonard weren’t planning on living together, because they’d broken up three weeks ago; despite this fact, however, Madeleine hadn’t given up hope of a reconciliation, and seeing as she’d spent so much effort getting her parents used to the idea of her living with a guy, and didn’t want to jeopardize that by admitting that the plan was off—she was relieved to be able to point at her full mouth, which prevented her from replying.

  “Well, you’re an adult now,” Phyllida said. “You can do what you like. Though, for the record, I have to say that I don’t approve.”

  “You’ve already gone on record about that,” Alton broke in.

  “Because it’s still a bad idea!” Phyllida cried. “I don’t mean the propriety of it. I’m talking about the practical problems. If you move in with Leonard—or any young man—and he’s the one with the job, then you begin at a disadvantage. What happens if you two don’t get along? Where are you then? You won’t have any place to live. Or anything to do.”

  That her mother was correct in her analysis, that the predicament Phyllida warned Madeleine about was exactly the predicament she was already in, didn’t motivate Madeleine to register agreement.

  “You quit your job when you met me,” Alton said to Phyllida.

  “That’s why I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Can we change the subject?” Madeleine said at last, having swallowed her food.

  “Of course we can, sweetheart. That’s the last I’ll say about it. If your plans change, you can always come home. Your father and I would love to have you.”

  “Not me,” Alton said. “I don’t want her. Moving back home is always a bad idea. Stay away.”

  “Don’t worry,” Madeleine said. “I will.”

  “The choice is yours,” Phyllida said. “But if you do come home, you could have the loft. That way you can come and go as you like.”

  To her surprise, Madeleine found herself contemplating this proposal. Why not tell her parents everything, curl up in the backseat of the car, and let them take her home? She could move into her old bedroom, with the sleigh bed and the Madeline wallpaper. She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

  Phyllida brought her out of this reverie.

  “Maddy?” she said. “Isn’t that your friend Mitchell?”

  Madeleine wheeled in her seat. “Where?”

  “I think that’s Mitchell. Across the street.”

  In the churchyard, sitting Indian-style in the freshly mown grass, Madeleine’s “friend” Mitchell Grammaticus was indeed there. His lips were moving, as if he was talking to himself.

  “Why don’t you invite him to join us?” Phyllida said.

  “Now?”

  “Why not? I’d love to see Mitchell.”

  “He’s probably waiting for his parents,” Madeleine said.

  Phyllida waved, despite the fact that Mitchell was too far away to notice.

  “What’s he doing sitting on the ground?” Alton asked.

  The three Hannas stared across the street at Mitchell in his half-lotus.

  “Well, if you’re not going to ask him, I will,” Phyllida finally said.

  “O.K.,” Madeleine said. “Fine. I’ll go ask him.”

  The day was getting warmer, but not by much. Black clouds were massing in the distance as Madeleine came down the steps of Carr House and crossed the street into the churchyard. Someone inside the church was testing the loudspeakers, fussily repeating, “Sussex, Essex, and Kent. Sussex, Essex, and Kent.” A banner draped over the church entrance read “Class of 1982.” Beneath the banner, in the grass, was Mitchell. His lips were still moving silently, but when he noticed Madeleine approaching they abruptly stopped.

  Madeleine remained a few feet away.

  “My parents are here,” she informed him.

  “It’s graduation,” Mitchell replied evenly. “Everyo
ne’s parents are here.”

  “They want to say hello to you.”

  At this Mitchell smiled faintly. “They probably don’t realize you’re not speaking to me.”

  “No, they don’t,” Madeleine said. “And, anyway, I am. Now. Speaking to you.”

  “Under duress or as a change of policy?”

  Madeleine shifted her weight, wrinkling her face unhappily. “Look. I’m really hungover. I barely slept last night. My parents have been here about ten minutes and they’re already driving me crazy. So if you could just come over and say hello, that would be great.”

  Mitchell’s large emotional eyes blinked twice. He was wearing a vintage gabardine shirt, dark wool pants, and beat-up wingtips. Madeleine had never seen him in shorts or tennis shoes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “About what happened.”

  “Fine,” Madeleine said, looking away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I was just being my usual vile self.”

  “So was I.”

  They were quiet a moment. Madeleine felt Mitchell’s eyes on her, and she crossed her arms over her chest.

  What had happened was this: one night the previous December, in a state of anxiety about her romantic life, Madeleine had run into Mitchell on campus and brought him back to her apartment. She’d needed male attention and had flirted with him, without entirely admitting it to herself. In her bedroom, Mitchell had picked up a jar of deep-heating gel on her desk, asking what it was for. Madeleine had explained that people who were athletic sometimes got sore muscles. She understood that Mitchell might not have experienced this phenomenon, seeing as all he did was sit in the library, but he should take her word for it. At that point, Mitchell had come up behind her and wiped a gob of heating gel behind her ear. Madeleine jumped up, shouting at Mitchell, and wiped the gunk off with a T-shirt. Though she was within her rights to be angry, Madeleine also knew (even at the time) that she was using the incident as a pretext for getting Mitchell out of her bedroom and for covering up the fact that she’d been flirting with him in the first place. The worst part of the incident was how stricken Mitchell had looked, as if he’d been about to cry. He kept saying he was sorry, he was just joking around, but she ordered him to leave. In the following days, replaying the incident in her mind, Madeleine had felt worse and worse about it. She’d been on the verge of calling Mitchell to apologize when she’d received a letter from him, a highly detailed, cogently argued, psychologically astute, quietly hostile four-page letter, in which he called her a “cocktease” and claimed that her behavior that night had been “the erotic equivalent of bread and circus, with just the circus.” The next time they’d run into each other, Madeleine had acted as if she didn’t know him, and they hadn’t spoken since.

  Now, in the churchyard of First Baptist, Mitchell looked up at her and said, “O.K. Let’s go say hello to your parents.”

  Phyllida was waving as they came up the steps. In the flirtatious voice she reserved for her favorite of Madeleine’s friends, she called out, “I thought that was you on the ground. You looked like a swami!”

  “Congratulations, Mitchell!” Alton said, heartily shaking Mitchell’s hand. “Big day today. One of the milestones. A new generation takes the reins.”

  They invited Mitchell to sit down and asked him if he wanted anything to eat. Madeleine went back to the counter to get more coffee, glad to have Mitchell keeping her parents occupied. As she watched him, in his old man’s clothes, engaging Alton and Phyllida in conversation, Madeleine thought to herself, as she’d thought many times before, that Mitchell was the kind of smart, sane, parent-pleasing boy she should fall in love with and marry. That she would never fall in love with Mitchell and marry him, precisely because of this eligibility, was yet another indication, in a morning teeming with them, of just how screwed up she was in matters of the heart.

  When she returned to the table, no one acknowledged her.

  “So, Mitchell,” Phyllida was asking, “what are your plans after graduation?”

  “My father’s been asking me the same question,” Mitchell answered. “For some reason he thinks Religious Studies isn’t a marketable degree.”

  Madeleine smiled for the first time all day. “See? Mitchell doesn’t have a job lined up, either.”

  “Well, I sort of do,” Mitchell said.

  “You do not,” Madeleine challenged him.

  “I’m serious. I do.” He explained that he and his roommate, Larry Pleshette, had come up with a plan to fight the recession. As liberal-arts degree holders matriculating into the job market at a time when unemployment was at 9.5 percent, they had decided, after much consideration, to leave the country and stay away as long as possible. At the end of the summer, after they’d saved up enough money, they were going to backpack through Europe. After they’d seen everything in Europe there was to see, they were going to fly to India and stay there as long as their money held out. The whole trip would take eight or nine months, maybe as long as a year.

  “You’re going to India?” Madeleine said. “That’s not a job.”

  “We’re going to be research assistants,” Mitchell said. “For Prof. Hughes.”

  “Prof. Hughes in the theater department?”

  “I saw a program about India recently,” Phyllida said. “It was terribly depressing. The poverty!”

  “That’s a plus for me, Mrs. Hanna,” Mitchell said. “I thrive in squalor.”

  Phyllida, who couldn’t resist this sort of mischief, gave up her solemnity, rippling with amusement. “Then you’re going to the right place!”

  “Maybe I’ll take a trip, too,” Madeleine said in a threatening tone.

  No one reacted. Instead Alton asked Mitchell, “What sort of immunizations do you need for India?”

  “Cholera and typhus. Gamma globulin’s optional.”

  Phyllida shook her head. “Your mother must be worried sick.”

  “When I was in the service,” Alton said, “they shot us up with a million things. Didn’t even tell us what the shots were for.”

  “I think I’ll move to Paris,” Madeleine said in a louder voice. “Instead of getting a job.”

  “Mitchell,” Phyllida continued, “with your interest in religious studies, I’d think India would be a perfect fit. They’ve got everything. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Jains, Buddhists. It’s like Baskin and Robbins! I’ve always been fascinated by religion. Unlike my doubting-Thomas husband.”

  Alton winked. “I doubt that doubting Thomas existed.”

  “Do you know Paul Moore, Bishop Moore, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine?” Phyllida said, keeping Mitchell’s attention. “He’s a great friend. You might find it interesting to meet him. We’d be happy to introduce you. When we’re in the city, I always go to services at the cathedral. Have you ever been there? Oh. Well. How can I describe it? It’s simply—well, simply divine!”

  Phyllida held a hand to her throat with the pleasure of this bon mot, while Mitchell obligingly, even convincingly, laughed.

  “Speaking of religious dignitaries,” Alton cut in, “did I ever tell you about the time we met the Dalai Lama? It was at this fund-raiser at the Waldorf. We were in the receiving line. Must have been three hundred people at least. Anyway, when we finally got up to the Dalai Lama, I asked him, ‘Are you any relation to Dolly Parton?’”

  “I was mortified!” Phyllida cried. “Absolutely mortified.”

  “Daddy,” Madeleine said, “you’re going to be late.”

  “What?”

  “You should get going if you want to get a good spot.”

  Alton looked at his watch. “We’ve still got an hour.”

  “It gets really crowded,” Madeleine emphasized. “You should go now.”

  Alton and Phyllida looked at Mitchell, as if they trusted him to advise them. Under the table, Madeleine kicked him, and he alertly responded, “It does get pretty crowded.”

  “Where’s the best place to stand?” Alton asked, again
addressing Mitchell.

  “By the Van Wickle Gates. At the top of College Street. That’s where we’ll come through.”

  Alton stood up from the table. After shaking Mitchell’s hand, he bent to kiss Madeleine on the cheek. “We’ll see you later. Miss Baccalaureate, 1982.”

  “Congratulations, Mitchell,” Phyllida said. “So nice to see you. And remember, when you’re on your Grand Tour, be sure to send your mother loads of letters. Otherwise, she’ll be frantic.”

  To Madeleine, she said, “You might change that dress before the march. It has a visible stain.”

  With that, Alton and Phyllida, in their glaring parental actuality, all seersucker and handbag, cuff links and pearls, crossed the beige-and-brick space of Carr House and went out the door.

  As though to signal their departure, a new song came on: Joe Jackson’s high-pitched voice swooping above a synthesized drumbeat. The guy behind the counter cranked up the volume.

  Madeleine laid her head on the table, her hair covering her face.

  “I’m never drinking again,” she said.

  “Famous last words.”

  “You have no idea what’s been going on with me.”

  “How could I? You haven’t been speaking to me.”

  Without lifting her cheek from the table, Madeleine said in a pitiful voice, “I’m homeless. I’m graduating from college and I’m a homeless person.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I am!” Madeleine insisted. “First I was supposed to move to New York with Abby and Olivia. Then it looked like I was moving to the Cape, though, so I told them to get another roommate. And now I’m not moving to the Cape and I have nowhere to go. My mother wants me to move back home but I’d rather kill myself.”

  “I’m moving back home for the summer,” Mitchell said. “To Detroit. At least you’re near New York.”

  “I haven’t heard back from grad school yet and it’s June,” Madeleine continued. “I was supposed to find out over a month ago! I could call the admissions department, but I don’t because I’m scared to find out that I’ve been rejected. As long as I don’t know, I still have hope.”

  There was a moment before Mitchell spoke again. “You can come to India with me,” he said.