The Marriage Plot

  “It’s bad enough the way you insist on nursing Richard in public. But to use that contraption—”

  “It’s a breast pump, Mummy. Everybody has them. You didn’t because your generation put all the babies on formula.”

  “You two seem to have turned out all right.”

  When Alwyn had become pregnant, a little over a year ago, Phyllida had been thrilled. She’d gone up to Beverly to help decorate the nursery. She and Alwyn had gone shopping together for baby clothes, and Phyllida had shipped Alwyn and Maddy’s old candlestick crib up from Prettybrook. Their mother-daughter solidarity lasted until the birth. Once Richard arrived in the world, Alwyn suddenly became an expert on infant care and didn’t like anything their mother did. When Phyllida brought home a pacifier one day, Alwyn acted as if she’d suggested feeding the baby ground glass. She said that the brand of baby wipes Phyllida bought were “toxic.” And she jumped down Phyllida’s throat when Phyllida had referred to breast-feeding as a “fad.” Why Alwyn insisted on breast-feeding Richard as long as she had was a mystery to Phyllida. When she’d been a young mother, the only person she knew who insisted on breast-feeding her children was Katja Fridliefsdottir, their neighbor from Iceland. The entire process of having a baby had become incredibly complicated, in Phyllida’s opinion. Why did Alwyn have to read so many baby books? Why did she need a breast-feeding “coach”? If breast-feeding was so “natural,” as Alwyn was always claiming it was, why was a coach necessary? Did Ally need a breathing coach, or a sleeping coach?

  “This must be your graduation present,” Phyllida said as they came to the car.

  “This is it. I love it. Thank you so much, Mummy.”

  Alwyn climbed into the backseat with her bags. “I never got a car from you and Daddy,” she said.

  “You didn’t graduate,” Phyllida said. “But we helped you with the down payment on your house.”

  As Madeleine started the engine, Phyllida continued, “I wish I could persuade your father to buy a new car. He’s still driving that awful Thunderbird of his. Can you imagine? I was reading in the newspaper about an artist who had himself buried in his car. I tore it out for Alton.”

  “Daddy probably liked that idea,” Madeleine said.

  “No, he didn’t. He’s gotten very solemn on the subject of death. Ever since he turned sixty. He’s been doing all kinds of calisthenics in the basement.”

  Alwyn unzipped one of her bags and took out the breast pump and an empty bottle. She began unbuttoning her shirt. “How far is it to your place?” she asked Madeleine.

  “About five minutes.”

  Phyllida glanced back to see what Alwyn was doing. “Can you put up the roof, please, Madeleine?” she said.

  “Don’t worry, Mummy,” Alwyn said. “We’re in P-town. All the men are gay. No one’s interested.”

  Following orders, Madeleine put the top up. When the roof had finished moving and clicked in place, she drove out of the airport parking lot onto Race Point Road. The road led through protected dunes, white against the blue sky. Around the next curve, a few isolated contemporary houses popped up, with sundecks and sliding doors, and then they were entering the hedged lanes of Provincetown.

  “Since you’re feeling so overwhelmed, Ally,” Phyllida said, “maybe now would be a good time to wean Richard the Lionhearted.”

  “They say it takes at least six months for a baby to develop the full antibodies,” Alwyn said, pumping.

  “I wonder if that’s scientific.”

  “All the studies say at least six months. I’m going to do a year.”

  “Well,” Phyllida said, with a sly look at Madeleine, “then you’d better get back home to your child.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Alwyn said.

  “All right. Let’s talk about something else. Madeleine, how are you liking it up here?”

  “I love it. Except that I feel stupid sometimes. Everybody here got an eight hundred on their math SAT. But it’s beautiful, and the food’s amazing.”

  “And is Leonard enjoying it?”

  “He likes it,” Madeleine lied.

  “And do you have enough to do?”

  “Me? Tons. I’m rewriting my thesis to submit it to The Janeite Review.”

  “You’re going to be published? Marvelous! How can I subscribe?”

  “The article’s not accepted yet,” Madeleine said, “but the editor wants to see it, so I’m hoping.”

  “If you want to have a career,” Alwyn said, “my advice is don’t get married. You think things have changed and there’s some kind of gender equality now, that men are different, but I’ve got news for you. They’re not. They’re just as shitty and selfish as Daddy was. Is.”

  “Ally, I don’t like to hear you talk that way about your father.”

  “Jawohl,” Alwyn said, and went quiet.

  The quaint village, with its weathered houses, small, sandy yards, and feisty rosebushes, had been steadily emptying since Labor Day, the vacationing crowds along Commercial Street thinning to a population of townies and year-round transplants. As they passed the Pilgrim Monument, Madeleine idled the car so that Phyllida and Alwyn could see it. The only tourists around were a family of four who were staring up at the stone pillar.

  “You can’t climb it?” one of the kids said.

  “It’s just to look at,” the mother said.

  Madeleine started driving again. Soon they reached the other end of town.

  “Doesn’t Norman Mailer live here?” Phyllida inquired.

  “He has a house on the water,” Madeleine said.

  “Your father and I met him once. He was very drunk.”

  In another few minutes, Madeleine made the turn into the Pilgrim Lake Laboratory gate and came down the long drive to the parking lot near the dining hall. She and Phyllida got out, but Alwyn remained seated with the pump. “Just let me finish this side,” she said. “I’ll do the other side later.”

  They waited in the bright autumn sunshine. It was midday, in the middle of the week. The only person visible outside was a guy with a baseball cap making a delivery of seafood to the kitchen. Dr. Malkiel’s vintage Jaguar was parked a few spaces away.

  Alwyn finished and began screwing the lid onto the baby bottle. Her mother’s milk looked weirdly green. Unzipping the other bag, which turned out to be insulated and to contain a freezer pack, she placed the bottle inside and got out of the car.

  Madeleine gave her mother and sister a quick tour of the compound. She showed them the Richard Serra, the beachfront, and the dining hall before taking them along the boardwalk back toward her building.

  As they passed the genetics lab, Madeleine pointed it out. “That’s where Leonard works.”

  “Let’s go in and say hello,” Phyllida suggested.

  “I need to go to Maddy’s apartment first,” Alwyn said.

  “That can wait. We’re here already.”

  Madeleine wondered if Phyllida was trying to punish Alwyn by this, to make her suffer for her sins. Since she didn’t want to stay in the lab long, anyway, this suited her fine, and she took them inside. She had some difficulty finding her way. She’d only been in the lab a few times and the corridors all looked the same. Finally, she saw the handwritten sign that read “Kilimnik Lab.”

  The lab was a brightly lit space of organized disorder. Cardboard boxes were stacked on shelves and in the corners of the room. Test tubes and beakers filled the wall cabinets and stood in formations on the lab tables. A spray bottle of disinfectant had been left next to a nearby sink, along with a box of something called KimWipes.

  Vikram Jaitly, wearing a fat Cosby sweater, was sitting at his desk. He looked up, in case it was Kilimnik coming in, but, seeing Madeleine, he relaxed. She asked him where Leonard was.

  “He’s in the thirty-degrees room,” Vikram said, pointing across the lab. “Go on in.”

  A refrigerator with a padlock stood next to the door. Madeleine peered in the window to see Leonard, his b
ack turned, standing in front of a machine that was vibrating. He was wearing a bandanna, shorts, and a T-shirt, which wasn’t exactly what she’d been hoping for. But there was no time to get him to change now, so she opened the door and they all went in.

  Vikram had meant centigrade. The room was warm. It smelled like a bakery.

  “Hi,” Madeleine said, “we’re here.”

  Leonard turned. He hadn’t shaved, and his face was expressionless. The machine behind him was making a rattling noise.

  “Leonard!” Phyllida said. “So nice to meet you at last.”

  This snapped Leonard out of his daze. “Hi there,” he said. He came forward and held out his hand. Phyllida looked momentarily startled, but then shook Leonard’s hand and said, “I hope we’re not interrupting you.”

  “No, I was just doing some grunt work. I apologize for the smell in here. Some people don’t like it.”

  “All in the name of science,” Phyllida said. She introduced Alwyn.

  If Phyllida was surprised by Leonard’s appearance, she didn’t show it. She immediately started talking about Dr. MacGregor’s jumping genes, recounting everything she’d learned from her dinner conversation. Then she asked Leonard to explain his work.

  “Well,” Leonard said, “we’re working with yeast, and this is where we grow the yeast. This contraption here is called a shaker table. We put the yeast in there to aerate it.” He opened the lid and removed a flask filled with yellow liquid. “Let me show you.”

  He led them outside to the main room and set the flask on the table. “The experiment we’re running has to do with the mating of yeast.”

  Phyllida raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know yeast were so interesting. Dare I ask the details?”

  As Leonard began to explain the research he was involved in, Madeleine relaxed. This was the kind of thing Phyllida liked: to be informed by experts in the field, any field.

  Leonard had taken a glass straw from a drawer and inserted it into the flask. “What I’m doing now is I’m pipetting some yeast onto a slide, so we can take a look at it.”

  “God, pipette!” Alwyn said. “I haven’t heard that word since high school.”

  “There are two kinds of yeast cells, haploid cells and diploid cells. Haploid cells are the only type that mate. They come in two types: a cells and alpha cells. In mating, the a cells go for the alpha cells and the alpha cells go for the a cells.” He put the slide into the microscope. “Take a look.”

  Phyllida stepped forward and bent her face to the lens.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “You have to focus it here.” When Leonard raised his hand to show her, it shook slightly, and he took hold of the edge of the table.

  “Oh, there they are,” Phyllida said, focusing by herself.

  “See them? Those are yeast cells. If you look close, you’ll notice that some are bigger than the others.”

  “Yes!”

  “The big ones are the diploid cells. The haploids are smaller. Focus on the smaller ones, the haploids. Some should be elongating. That’s what they do prior to mating.”

  “I see one that has a … protuberance on one end.”

  “That’s called a shmoo. That’s a haploid getting ready to mate.”

  “A shmoo?” Alwyn said.

  “It’s from Li’l Abner,” Leonard explained. “The comic strip.”

  “How old do I look to you?” Alwyn said.

  “I remember Li’l Abner,” Phyllida said, still gazing into the microscope. “He was the country bumpkin. Not very amusing, as I recall.”

  “Tell them about the pheromones,” Madeleine said.

  Leonard nodded. “Yeast cells send out pheromones, which are sort of like a chemical perfume. A cells send out an a pheromone and alpha cells send out an alpha pheromone. That’s how they attract each other.”

  Phyllida stared into the microscope for another minute, giving little reports on what she was seeing. Finally she lifted her head. “Well, I’ll never think of yeast in quite the same way. Do you want to take a look, Ally?”

  “No thanks. I’m finished with mating,” Alwyn said sourly.

  Ignoring this, Phyllida said, “Leonard, I understand about the haploids and the diploids. But tell me what you’re trying to learn about them.”

  “We’re trying to figure out why the progeny of a given cell division can acquire different developmental fates.”

  “Oh, dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s not that complicated. Remember the two types of haploid cells, a type and alpha type?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, of each of those haploids, there are two types as well. We call them mother cells and daughter cells. Mother cells can bud and create new cells. Daughter cells can’t. Mother cells can also switch their sex—go from being an a to an alpha—in order to mate. We’re trying to figure out why the mother cells can do that but their children can’t.”

  “I know why,” Phyllida said. “Because Mother knows best.”

  “There are a million possible reasons for this asymmetry,” Leonard went on. “We’re testing one possibility, which has to do with the HO gene. It’s complicated, but basically what we’re doing is cutting out the HO gene and putting it in backward so that it can be read from the other DNA strand in the other direction. If this affects the daughter cell’s ability to switch, then that means the HO is what’s controlling the asymmetry.”

  “I’m afraid you lost me.”

  This was the first time Madeleine had heard Leonard open up about his work. Up until now, all he’d done was complain. He didn’t like Bob Kilimnik, who treated him like hired help. He said that the actual lab work was about as interesting as combing out head lice. But now Leonard seemed genuinely interested in what he was doing. His face was animated as he spoke. Madeleine’s happiness at seeing him coming alive again made her forget the fact that he was overweight, and wearing a bandanna, in front of her mother, and made her listen to what he was saying.

  “The reason we study yeast cells is because they’re fundamentally like human cells, only a lot simpler. Haploids resemble gametes, our sex cells. The hope is, what we figure out about yeast cells might apply to human cells. So if we can figure out how and why they bud, we might learn something about arresting that process. There’s some evidence that budding yeast is analogous to the budding of cancer cells.”

  “So you’re finding a cure for cancer?” Phyllida said with excitement.

  “Not in this study,” Leonard said. “I was just talking in general. What we’re doing here is testing one hypothesis. If Bob is right, this will have big implications. If not, at least we’ve ruled out one possibility. And we can move on from there.” He lowered his voice. “In my opinion, the hypothesis for this study is sort of way out there. But nobody asked my opinion.”

  “Leonard, when did you know you wanted to be a scientist?” Phyllida asked.

  “In high school. I had this great biology teacher.”

  “Do you come from a long line of scientists?”

  “Not at all.”

  “What do your parents do?”

  “My father used to have an antiques store.”

  “Really. Where?”

  “In Portland. Oregon.”

  “And do your parents still live there?”

  “My mom does. My father lives in Europe now. They’re divorced.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Here Madeleine said, “Mummy, we should go.”

  “What?”

  “Leonard needs to get back to work.”

  “Oh, of course. Well. It’s been so nice meeting you. I’m sorry we have so little time today. We just flew in on a mad whim.”

  “Stay longer next time.”

  “I’d love to. Maybe I can come back for a visit with Madeleine’s father.”

  “That would be great. I’m sorry I’m so busy today.”

  “No need to apologize. The march of progress!”

&nb
sp; “More like creep,” Leonard said.

  As soon as they were outside, Alwyn demanded to be taken to Madeleine’s apartment. “I’m going to start leaking all over the front of my dress.”

  “Does that happen?” Madeleine said, wincing.

  “Yes. It’s like being a cow.”

  Madeleine laughed. She was so relieved the meeting was over that she almost didn’t mind dealing with the family emergency now. She led Alwyn and Phyllida across the parking lot to her building. Alwyn began unbuttoning her blouse before she was even in the door. Once inside, she plopped down on the sofa and took her breast pump out of its bag again. She unfastened the left side of her nursing bra and attached the suction cup to her breast.

  “Very low ceilings,” Phyllida said, determinedly looking away.

  “I know,” Madeleine said. “Leonard has to hunch.”

  “But the view’s lovely.”

  “Oh my God,” Alwyn said, sighing with pleasure. “This is such a relief. Supposedly some women have orgasms from breast-feeding.”

  “I do love an ocean view.”

  “See what you missed from not breast-feeding us, Mummy?”

  Closing her eyes, Phyllida said in a commanding tone, “Will you please do that somewhere else?”

  “We’re family,” Alwyn said.

  “You are in front of a large picture window,” Phyllida said. “Anyone walking by can see right in.”

  “Okay. God. I’ll use the bathroom. I’ve got to pee, anyway.” She got up, holding the pump and the rapidly filling baby bottle, and went into the bathroom. She closed the door.

  Phyllida smoothed the skirt of her suit and sat down. She lifted her eyes to Madeleine’s, smiling with forbearance. “It’s never easy on a marriage when a baby comes along. It’s a wonderful event. But it puts a strain on the relationship. That’s why it’s so important to find the right kind of person to raise a family with.”

  Madeleine was determined to ignore any subtext. She was going to be all text. “Blake’s great,” she said.

  “He’s wonderful,” Phyllida agreed. “And Ally’s wonderful. And Richard the Lionhearted is divine! But the situation at home is dreadful.”

  “Are you talking about me?” Alwyn said from the bathroom. “Stop talking about me.”