The Marriage Plot (25 page)

Fulminating like this, talking under his breath, Mitchell found himself at the Seine. He began crossing one of the bridges—the Pont Neuf. The sun had set and the streetlamps come on. Halfway out, in one of the semicircular seating areas, a group of teenagers had gathered. A guy with pouffy, Jean-Luc Ponty hair was strumming an acoustic guitar while his friends listened, smoking and passing a wine bottle around.

Mitchell watched them as he passed by. Even as a teenager he hadn’t been a teenager like that.

A little farther on, he leaned against the railing and stared down at the dark river. His anger had subsided, replaced by a general displeasure with himself.

It was probably true that he objectified women. He thought about them all the time, didn’t he? He looked at them a lot. And didn’t all this thinking and looking involve their breasts and lips and legs? Female human beings were objects of the most intense interest and scrutiny on Mitchell’s part. And yet he didn’t think that a word like
objectification
covered the way these alluring—but intelligent!—creatures made him feel. What Mitchell felt when he saw a beautiful girl was more like something from a Greek myth, like being transformed, by the sight of beauty, into a tree, rooted on the spot, forever, out of pure desire. You couldn’t feel about an object the way Mitchell felt about girls.

Excusez-moi
: women.

There was another point in Claire’s favor. All the while she’d been accusing Mitchell of objectifying women, he’d been secretly objectifying her. She had such an incredible ass! It was so round and perfect and
alive.
Every time Mitchell stole a glance at her ass he had the weird feeling that it was staring back, that Claire’s ass didn’t necessarily agree with its owner’s feminist politics but was perfectly happy to be admired, that Claire’s ass, in other words, had a mind of its own. Plus, Claire was his best friend’s girlfriend. She was off-limits. This wildly increased her appeal.

A tour boat ablaze with lights passed under the bridge.

The more Mitchell read about religions, the world religions in general and Christianity in particular, the more he realized that the mystics were all saying the same thing. Enlightenment came from the extinction of desire. Desire didn’t bring fulfillment but only temporary satiety until the next temptation came along. And
that
was only if you were lucky enough to get what you wanted. If you didn’t, you spent your life in unrequited longing.

How long had he been secretly hoping to marry Madeleine Hanna? And how much of his desire to marry Madeleine came from really and truly liking her as a person, and how much from the wish to possess her and, in so doing, gratify his ego?

It might not even be that great to marry your ideal. Probably, once you attained your ideal, you got bored and wanted another.

The troubadour was playing a Neil Young song, reproducing the lyrics down to their last twang and whine without knowing what they meant. Older, better-dressed people were promenading by toward the floodlit buildings on either bank. Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be done with it? To be done with sex and longing? Mitchell could almost imagine pulling it off, sitting on a bridge at night with the Seine flowing by. He looked up at all the lighted windows along the river’s arc. He thought of all the people going to sleep or reading or listening to music, all the lives contained by a great city like this, and, floating up in his mind, rising just above the rooftops, he tried to feel, to vibrate among, all those million tremulous souls. He was sick of craving, of wanting, of hoping, of losing.

For a long time the gods had been in close contact with humanity. Then they became disgusted, or discouraged, and they removed themselves. But maybe they would come back again, approach the stray soul who was still curious.

Returning to his hotel, Mitchell hung out in the lobby on the off chance some friendly English-speaking travelers showed up. None did. He went up to his room, got a towel, and took a tepid shower in the communal bathroom. At his present rate of expenditure, Mitchell’s money would never hold out long enough for them to get to India. He had to start living differently tomorrow.

Back in his room, he pulled down the mouse-colored bedspread and climbed naked into bed. The bedside lamp was too dim to read by, so he removed the shade.

Part of the work of the Sisters is to pick up the dying from the streets of Calcutta, and bring them into a building given to Mother Teresa for the purpose (a sometimes temple dedicated to the cult of the goddess Kali), there, as she puts it, to die within sight of a loving face. Some do die, others survive and are cared for. This Home for the Dying is dimly lit by small windows high up in the walls, and Ken was adamant that filming was quite impossible there. We had only one small light with us, and to get the place adequately lighted in the time at our disposal was quite impossible. It was decided that, nonetheless, Ken should have a go, but by way of insurance he took, as well, some film in an outside courtyard where some of the inmates were sitting in the sun. In the processed film, the part taken inside was bathed in a particularly beautiful soft light, whereas the part taken outside was rather dim and confused.

How to account for this? Ken has all along insisted that, technically speaking, the result is quite impossible. To prove the point, on his next filming expedition—to the Middle East—he used some of the same stock in a similarly poor light, with completely negative results … Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying is overflowing with love, as one senses immediately on entering it. This love is luminous, like the haloes artists have seen and made visible round the heads of the saints … I am personally persuaded that Ken recorded the first authentic photographic miracle.

Mitchell put the book down, switching off the light and stretching out in the lumpy bed. He thought about Claire, at first angrily but soon enough erotically. He imagined going to her apartment and finding her alone, and soon she was on her knees in front of him, taking him into her mouth. Mitchell felt guilty for fantasizing about his friend’s girlfriend but not guilty enough to stop. He didn’t like what this fantasy of Claire on her knees in front of him said about him, so next he imagined himself generously going down on her, making her come like she’d never come before. At this point he came himself. He turned onto his side, dripping onto the hotel carpet.

Almost immediately, the tip of his penis felt cold and he shook it one last time and fell back into bed, desolate.

The next morning, Mitchell shouldered his pack and carried it down the stairs to the lobby, where he paid for the room and left. Breakfast was a coffee and the biscuit that came with it. His plan was to try the youth hostel again or, if need be, to spend a night on Claire’s floor. When he got to her building, however, he saw Larry sitting on the steps. His backpack was next to him. He appeared to be smoking a cigarette.

“You don’t smoke,” Mitchell said, coming up to him.

“I’m starting.” Larry puffed on the cigarette a few times, experimentally.

“Why do you have your backpack?”

Larry gave Mitchell full access to his intense blue-eyed gaze. The filterless cigarette adhered to his full lower lip.

“Claire and I broke up,” he said.

“What happened?”

“She thinks she might be into women. She’s not sure. Anyway, we’re going to be apart, so.”

“She dumped you?”

Larry winced, nearly imperceptibly. “She says she doesn’t want to be ‘exclusive.’”

Mitchell looked away to save Larry embarrassment. “Figures,” he snorted. “You’re just a sacrificial victim.”

“Of what?”

“Sexist male and all that shit.”

“I think
you
were the one she thought was the sexist male, Mitchell.”

Mitchell could have objected, but he didn’t. There was no need. He had his friend back.

Now their trip could finally begin.

•

On her fourteenth birthday, in November 1974, Madeleine had received a present from her older sister, Alwyn, who was away at college. The package had arrived in the mail, wrapped in psychedelic-patterned paper and sealed with red wax bearing the impressions of crescent moons and unicorns. Somehow Madeleine had known not to open the thing in front of her parents. Once she got it up to her room and was lying on her bed, she took off the wrapping paper to find a shoebox inside, its lid marked in black ink with the words “Bachelorette’s Survival Kit.” Inside, in handwriting so infinitesimal that it seemed accomplished by an awl, was the following note:

Dear Little Sis,

Now that you’re fourteen and have started HIGH school, I thought I should let you know a few things about S-E-X so you don’t get yourself, as the Father Figure would say, “in trouble.” Actually, I’m not worried about you getting in trouble at all. I just want my little sister to have some F-U-N!!! So here’s your new, handy-dandy “Bachelorette’s Survival Kit” containing everything a modern, sensuous woman needs for total fulfillment. Boyfriend not included.

Happy Birthday,

Love, Ally

Maddy was still in her school clothes. Holding the shoebox with one hand, she took out the objects with the other. The first, a small foil package, meant nothing to her, not even when she turned it over and saw the helmeted figure on the front. Pressing her finger against the package, she could feel something slippery inside.

Then it came to her. “Oh my God!” she said. “Oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-it!”

She ran to the door and locked it. Then, thinking better, she unlocked it and ran back to the bed, where she got the foil package and the box and took them both into her bathroom, where she could lock the door without arousing suspicion. She lowered the lid of the toilet and sat down.

Madeleine had never seen a condom package before, much less held one in her hand. She ran the ball of her thumb over it. The implication of the shape inside stirred feelings in her she wasn’t quite able to describe. The lubricious medium the condom swam in was both repellent and fascinating. The circumference of the ring frankly startled her. She hadn’t given much detailed thought to the extent of the male erection. Thus far, boys’ erections were something she and her friends giggled about and mostly didn’t mention. She thought she’d felt one once, during a slow dance at summer camp, but she couldn’t be sure: it might have been the boy’s belt buckle. In her experience, erections were occult occurrences happening elsewhere, like the bulging of a bullfrog’s throat in a distant swamp, or a puffer fish inflating in a coral reef. The only erection Madeleine had seen with her own eyes belonged to her grandmother’s Labrador, Wylie, which had rawly emerged from its fur sock as the dog maniacally humped her leg. A thing like that was enough to keep you from thinking about erections forever. The distasteful nature of that image, however, didn’t blot out the sheer revelatory nature of the condom she now held in her hand. The condom was an artifact of the adult world. Beyond her life, beyond her school, there was an agreed-upon system no one talked about, whereby pharmaceutical companies made prophylactics for men to buy and roll onto their penises, legally, in the United States of America.

The next two items Madeleine took out of the box were part of a novelty set, the sort that issued from vending machines in men’s rooms, which was where Alwyn, or more likely Alwyn’s boyfriend, had probably gotten it along with the condom. The set included: a red rubber ring studded with wiggly stalks and labeled “French tickler”; a gag made of blue plastic consisting of two moving figures, a man with a hard-on and a woman on all fours, the lever of which, when Maddy moved it back and forth, caused the half-inch stud to prong the woman doggy-style; a small tube of “Prolong” cream, which she didn’t even want to open; and two hollow silver “Ben Wa” balls that came with no instructions and looked, frankly, like pinballs. At the bottom of the box was the strangest thing of all, a thin miniature breadstick with black fuzz stuck to it. The breadstick was taped to a three-by-five card. Madeleine brought it close to her face to read the handwritten label: “Dehydrated Prick. Just add water.” She looked at the tiny breadstick again, then at the fuzz, and then she dropped the card and shouted out, “Gross!”

It was a while before she picked it up again, touching the edge of the three-by-five card farthest from the fuzz. Keeping her head back, she reexamined the fuzz to confirm that it was, in fact, pubic hair. Alwyn’s, most likely, though possibly her boyfriend’s. It wouldn’t have been beyond Ally to go to that length of verisimilitude. The hair was black and curly and had been clipped and glued to the base of the breadstick. The idea that it was possibly a guy’s pubic hair revolted and excited Madeleine at the same time. But it was probably Ally’s, that weirdo. What a funny, crazy sister she had! Alwyn was completely strange and unpredictable, a nonconformist, a vegetarian, a college war protester, and since Madeleine wanted to be some of these things, too, she loved and admired her sister (while continuing to think that she was totally weird). She put the dehydrated prick back into the box and picked up the little plastic couple again. She moved the lever, watching the man’s penis enter the bent-over woman.

The memory of the Bachelorette’s Survival Kit came back to Madeleine now, in October, as she stood at the small airport in Provincetown, waiting for Phyllida and Alwyn to arrive from Boston. The night before, unexpectedly, Phyllida had telephoned with the news that Alwyn had left her husband, Blake, and that she, Phyllida, had flown up to Boston to try to intervene. She’d found Alwyn staying at the Ritz Hotel, maxing out her joint AmEx card and messengering bottles of mother’s milk to the house in Beverly where she’d left her six-month-old, Richard, in the care of his father. Having failed to persuade Alwyn to return home, Phyllida had decided to bring her to Cape Cod in the hope that Madeleine could talk some sense into her. “Ally only agreed to come for the day,” Phyllida said. “She doesn’t want us ganging up on her. We’re coming in the morning and leaving in the afternoon.”