The Marriage Plot

by Jeffrey Eugenides

  Mitchell liked to sit in the rear set of benches, behind a pillar. He felt less conspicuous there. Depending on the Meeting (there were two First Day Meetings, one at seven a.m., the other at eleven), anywhere from a handful to three dozen Friends took their seats in the cozy, cabin-like room. Most of the time the only sound was the distant hum of Route 1. An entire hour might pass without anyone saying a word. On other days, responding to inner promptings, people spoke up. One morning Clyde Pettengill, who used a cane, stood up to lament the recent accident at the Embalse nuclear plant in Argentina, where there had been a total loss of coolant. His wife, Mildred, felt compelled to speak next. Not getting up as her husband had, but remaining seated with her eyes closed, she spoke in a clear voice, her pretty old-woman’s face lifted in smiling remembrance. “Maybe because it’s summer—I don’t know—but I’m put in mind today of going to Meetings when I was a little girl. Summer always seemed like the hardest time to sit still and be quiet. So my grandmother developed a strategy. Before the Meeting began, she used to take a piece of butterscotch candy out of her purse. She’d make sure I saw it. But she wouldn’t give it to me. She’d hold it in her hand. And if I was good, and behaved like a proper young lady, my grandmother would give me the candy after forty-five minutes or so. Now I’m eighty-two, almost eighty-three, and do you know what? I feel exactly the same as I did then. I’m still waiting for that piece of butterscotch candy to be placed in my hand. It’s not candy that I’m waiting for anymore. It’s just a sunny summer day like this, with the sun like a great big butterscotch candy in the sky. I see I’m waxing poetic now. That means I had better stop.”

  As for Mitchell, he didn’t say anything at the Meetings. The Spirit didn’t move him to speak. He sat on the bench, enjoying the stillness of the morning and the musty scent of the Meeting House. But he didn’t feel entitled to illumination.

  The shame he felt for running away from Kalighat hadn’t gone away, even with the passage of six months. After leaving Calcutta, Mitchell had traveled around the country with no fixed plan, like a fugitive. In Benares, he’d stayed at the Yogi Lodge, going down to the funeral ghats every morning to see bodies being cremated. He hired a boatman to take him out on the Ganges. After five days, he took the train back to Calcutta, heading south. He went to Madras, to the former French outpost of Pondicherry (home to Sri Aurobindo), and to Madurai. He stayed a single night in Trivandrum, at the southern end of the Malabar Coast, and then began traveling up the western shore. In Kerala the literacy rate soared and Mitchell ate his meals off jungle leaves instead of plates. He kept in touch with Larry, writing him at AmEx in Athens, and, in mid-February, they were reunited in Goa.

  Instead of flying to Calcutta, as his ticket originally stipulated, Larry changed his stop to Bombay, and traveled down to Goa by bus. They had arranged to meet at the bus station at noon, but Larry’s bus was late. Mitchell came and went three times, scanning the passengers disembarking from different multicolored buses before Larry finally climbed off of one around four in the afternoon. Mitchell was so happy to see him that he couldn’t stop smiling and patting Larry on the back.

  “My man!” he said. “You made it!”

  “What happened, Mitchell?” Larry said. “Get your head caught in a lawn mower?”

  For the next week they rented a hut on the beach. It had a tropical-seeming thatch roof and a disagreeably utilitarian concrete floor. The other huts were full of Europeans, most of whom went around without clothes. On the terraced hillside, Goan men clustered amid the palm trees to ogle the immodest Western women below. As for Mitchell, he felt too translucently white to expose himself, and stayed in the shade, but Larry braved sunburn, spending a good portion of each day on the beach with his silk scarf wrapped around his head.

  During the serene, zephyr-filled days and coolish nights, they shared stories about their time apart. Larry was impressed by Mitchell’s experience at Kalighat. He didn’t seem to think that three weeks of volunteering were of no consequence.

  “I think it’s great you did it,” he said. “You worked for Mother Teresa! Not that I would want to do something like that. But for you, Mitchell, that’s right up your alley.”

  Things with Iannis hadn’t turned out so well. Almost immediately, he’d begun asking Larry how much money his family had. On learning that Larry’s father was a lawyer, Iannis asked if he could help him get a green card. He acted possessive or distant, depending on the circumstances. If they went to a gay bar, Iannis became insanely jealous if Larry so much as looked at another guy. The rest of the time he wouldn’t let Larry touch him for fear people would learn their secret. He started calling Larry a “faggot,” acting as if he, Iannis, were straight and only experimenting. This got tiresome, as did hanging around Athens for days on end while Iannis went back home to the Peloponnese. And so finally Larry had gone to the travel agent and rebooked his ticket.

  It was comforting to learn that homosexual relationships were just as screwed up as straight ones, but Mitchell made no comment. Over the next three months, as they traveled over the subcontinent, Iannis wasn’t mentioned again. They visited Mysore, Cochin, Mahabalipuram, staying no more than a night or two in any place, heading back north, reaching Agra in March and making their way to Varanasi (they sometimes used Hindi names now) and back to Calcutta to meet Professor Hughes and begin their job as research assistants. With Hughes they ended up in remote villages without plumbing. They defecated side by side, squatting in open fields. They had adventures, saw holy men walk across hot coals, filmed interviews with great choreographers of masked Indian dance, and met an actual maharaja, who had a palace but no money and used a tattered “brolly” as a parasol. By April, the weather was turning hot. The monsoons were still months away, but Mitchell could already feel the climate growing inhospitable. By the end of May, oppressed by increasing temperatures and feelings of aimlessness, he decided that it was time to go home. Larry wanted to see Nepal, and stayed on a few more weeks.

  From Calcutta, Mitchell flew back to Paris, staying a few days in a decent hotel and availing himself of his credit card for the last time. (He wouldn’t be able to justify it once he returned to the States.) Just as he was adjusting to the European time zone, he took a charter flight back to JFK. And so he was alone, in New York, when he learned that Madeleine had married Leonard Bankhead.

  Mitchell’s strategy of waiting out the recession hadn’t worked. The unemployment rate was 10.1 percent the month he returned. From the window of his shuttle bus into Manhattan, Mitchell saw shuttered businesses, their windows soaped over. There were more people living on the street, plus a new term for them: the homeless. His own money pouch contained only $270 worth of traveler’s checks and a twenty-rupee note he’d kept as a souvenir. Not wanting to shell out for a hotel in New York, he’d called Dan Schneider from Grand Central, asking if he could crash at his place for a few days, and Schneider said yes.

  Mitchell took the shuttle to Times Square, then hopped on the 1 train to Seventy-ninth Street. Schneider buzzed him in and was waiting in his doorway when Mitchell reached his floor. They hugged briefly, and Schneider said, “Whoa, Grammaticus. You’re a little ripe.”

  Mitchell averred that he’d stopped using deodorant in India.

  “Yeah, well, this is America,” Schneider said. “And it’s summertime. Get yourself some Old Spice, man.”

  Schneider dressed all in black to match his beard and cowboy boots. His apartment was fussily nice, with built-in bookcases and a collection of iridescent ceramics made by an artist he “collected.” He had a decent job grant-writing at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and was happy to buy Mitchell drinks at Dublin House, the bar close to his building. Over pints of Guinness, Schneider filled Mitchell in on all the Brown-related gossip he’d missed while in India. Lollie Ames had moved to Rome and was dating a forty-year-old. Tony Perotti, the campus anarchist, had wimped out and gone to law school. Thurston Meems had made a tape of his own faux-naïf music on which he accompanied hi
mself on a Casio. All this was fairly amusing until Schneider suddenly said, “Oh, shit! I forgot. Your girl Madeleine got married! Sorry, man.”

  Mitchell made no reaction. The news was so devastating that the only way he could survive it was to pretend that he wasn’t surprised. “I knew that was going to happen,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, Bankhead’s lucky. She’s sexy. I don’t know what she sees in that guy, though. He’s like Lurch.” Schneider went on complaining about Bankhead, and guys like Bankhead, tall guys with lots of hair, while Mitchell sucked bitter-tasting foam off the top of his stout.

  This simulated numbness got him through the next few minutes. And since it worked so well, Mitchell kept it going the next day, until the wages of all this unprocessed emotion woke him up, the next night, at four a.m. with the force of a stab wound. He lay on Schneider’s shabby-chic couch, his eyes wide open. Three different car alarms were going off, each seemingly centered in his chest.

  The following days were among the most painful in Mitchell’s life. He wandered the baking streets, sweating, fighting off a childish urge to bawl. He felt like a great big boot had come down from the sky and ground him under its heel like the cigarette butts on the pavement. He kept thinking, “I lost. I’m dead. He killed me.” It felt almost pleasurable to denigrate himself in this fashion, and so he kept it up. “I’m just a piece of shit. I never had a chance. It’s laughable. Look at me. Just look. Ugly baldheaded crazy religious stupid PIECE OF SHIT!”

  He despised himself. He decided that his believing that Madeleine would marry him stemmed from the same credulity that had led him to think he could live a saintly life, tending the sick and dying in Calcutta. It was the same credulity that had made him recite the Jesus Prayer, and wear a cross, and think that he could stop Madeleine from marrying Bankhead by sending her a letter. His dreaminess, his swooning—his intelligent stupidity—were responsible for everything that was idiotic about him, for his fantasy of marrying Madeleine and for the self-renunciations that hedged against the fantasy’s not coming true.

  Two nights later, Schneider threw a party, and everything changed. Mitchell, who hadn’t been feeling very festive, had gone out as the party was getting under way. After walking around the block about five or six times, he’d gone back to Schneider’s to find the place even more crowded. Ducking into the bedroom, intending to mope, he’d come face to face with his nemesis, Bankhead, who was sitting on the bed, smoking. To Mitchell’s further surprise, Bankhead and he had gotten into a serious discussion. Mitchell had been aware, of course, that Bankhead’s being at the party meant that Madeleine must be there too. One reason he’d kept talking to Bankhead was that he was too scared to leave the bedroom and run into her. But then Madeleine had appeared on her own. At first, Mitchell pretended not to notice, but finally he’d turned—and it was like it always was. Madeleine’s sheer physical presence hit Mitchell with full concussive force. He felt like the guy in the Maxell cassette commercial with his hair blown straight back, even though he didn’t have any hair. Things happened quickly after that. Bankhead chased Madeleine away, for some reason. A little while later, he left the party. Mitchell managed to talk to Madeleine before she left too. But twenty-five minutes later, she came back, clearly upset, looking for Kelly. Seeing Mitchell instead, she’d come straight up to him, pressed her face into his chest, and begun to shake.

  He and Kelly took Madeleine into the bedroom and closed the door. While the party swirled outside, Madeleine told them what had happened. Later on, after Madeleine had calmed down a little, she called her parents. Together they decided that the best thing to do, for the moment, was for Madeleine to take a car service back to Prettybrook. Since she didn’t want to be alone, Mitchell had volunteered to ride with her.

  He’d been staying at the Hannas’ ever since, for almost a month. They’d put him in the attic bedroom where he’d stayed during Thanksgiving break sophomore year. The room was air-conditioned, but Mitchell had gone Third World and preferred to leave the windows open at night. He liked to smell the pine trees outside and to be awoken by the birds in the morning. He’d been getting up early, prior to anyone else in the house, and often took long walks before coming back to have breakfast with Madeleine around nine.

  It was on one of these walks that Mitchell discovered the Friends Meeting House. He’d stopped on the battlefield to read the historical marker beside its only remaining tree. Halfway through the text, Mitchell realized that the “Liberty Oak” the marker commemorated had died of blight years ago, and that the tree growing there now was a mere replacement, a variety more resistant to insect infestation but less beautiful or big. Which was a history lesson in itself. It applied to so many American things. He started walking again, finally following the gravel road into the wooded parking lot of the Quaker compound.

  Various fuel-sipping vehicles—two Honda Civics, two VW Rabbits, and a Ford Fiesta—were nosed up against the wall of the cemetery. Aside from the pristine Meeting House, which was set next to the woods, the grounds contained a scruffy playground and a long, many-winged, aluminum-sided building with an asphalt roof that housed the preschool, office, and reception rooms. The bumper stickers on the cars pictured Planet Earth next to the slogan save your mother, or simply, peace. The Prettybrook Friends had their share of crunchy, sandal-wearing members, but as Mitchell got to know them better that summer, he saw that the stereotype only went so far. There were older Quakers, like the Pettengills, who were formal in bearing and given to plain dress. There was a gray-bearded, suspenders-wearing man who resembled Burl Ives. Joe Yamamoto, a chemical engineering professor from Rutgers, and his wife, June, were faithful attendees of the eleven o’clock Meeting. Claire Ruth, a bank manager in town, had gone to Quaker schools; her daughter, Nell, worked with disabled children in Philadelphia. Bob and Eustacia Tavern were retired, Bob an amateur astronomer, Eustacia a former elementary school teacher who now penned fiery letters to the Prettybrook Packet and The Trentonian about pesticide runoff in the Delaware region water system. There were usually a few visitors, too, American-born Buddhists in town for a conference, or a student from the theological seminary.

  Even Voltaire had approved of the Quakers. Goethe counted himself as an admirer. Emerson said, “I am more of a Quaker than anything else. I believe in the still, small voice.” Sitting on the back bench, Mitchell tried to do the same. But it was difficult. His mind was too preoccupied with daydreams. The reason he hadn’t left Prettybrook yet was because Madeleine didn’t want him to. She told him she felt better when he was around. She looked up at him, furrowing her brow adorably, and said, “Don’t go. You have to save me from my parents.” They spent nearly every minute of every day together. They sat on the deck, reading, or walked into town for coffee or ice cream. With Bankhead gone and Mitchell at least physically taking his place, his chronic credulity began flaring up. In the silence of Quaker Meeting, Mitchell wondered, for instance, if Madeleine’s having gotten married to Bankhead might be all part of the plan, a plan that was more complex than he’d originally anticipated. Maybe he had arrived in New York at just the right time.

  Every week, when the elders shook hands, signaling that Meeting was over, Mitchell opened his eyes to realize that he hadn’t stilled his mind or been moved to speak. He went outside to the picnic table where Claire Ruth was setting out juice and fruit and, after chatting awhile, made his way back to the ongoing drama at the Hannas’.

  For the first few days after Leonard had taken off, they’d concentrated on trying to find him. Alton contacted the New York City police and the New York State police, only to be told both times that a husband’s abandoning his wife was considered a personal matter and didn’t meet the requirements for a missing-person investigation. Next, Alton had called Dr. Wilkins, at Penn. When he asked the psychiatrist if he’d seen Leonard, Wilkins had cited patient confidentiality and declined to answer. This infuriated Alton, who not only had referred Leonard to Wilkins in the first place but also had been pa
ying for his treatment. Nevertheless, Wilkins’s silence on the matter indicated that Leonard was in touch with him and possibly still in the area. It also suggested that Leonard was taking his medicine.

  Mitchell then began calling everyone he knew in New York to see if anyone had seen or talked to Bankhead. Within two days, he reached three different people—Jesse Kornblum, Mary Stiles, and Beth Tolliver—who claimed they had. Mary Stiles said that Bankhead was staying in DUMBO, in an unspecified person’s loft. Bankhead had phoned Jesse Kornblum at work so often that Kornblum finally had to stop taking his calls. Beth Tolliver had met Bankhead at a diner in Brooklyn Heights, and said that he seemed sad about the demise of his marriage. “I got the feeling that Maddy had dumped him,” she said. That was how things were left for over a week, until Phyllida thought to call Bankhead’s mother, in Portland, and learned from Rita that Leonard had been in Oregon for the past two days.

  Phyllida described the phone call as one of the strangest of her life. Rita acted as though the matter was of minor consequence, like a breakup between high schoolers. Her opinion was that Leonard and Madeleine had made a foolish mistake and that Rita and Phyllida, as mothers, should have seen it coming all along. Phyllida would have taken issue with this view if it weren’t so obvious that Rita had been drinking. Phyllida stayed on the line long enough to establish that, after staying with his mother for the two nights, Leonard had gone to a cabin in the woods with an old high school friend of his, Godfrey, where they planned to live for the summer.