The Marriage Plot (29 page)

She could see her mother and sister descending the staircase from the plane, Phyllida holding the banister, Alwyn’s Janis Joplin mane, the one vestige of her former hippie self, whipping in the breeze. As they advanced over the tarmac Phyllida called out brightly, “We’re from the Swedish Academy! Here to see Diane MacGregor.”

“Isn’t it amazing that she won?” Madeleine said.

“It must have been thrilling to be here.”

They hugged, and Phyllida said, “We had dinner the other night with the Snyders. Professor Snyder is retired from Baxter, in biology, and I had him explain Dr. MacGregor’s work to me. So I’m fully up to date! ‘Jumping genes.’ I’m looking forward to talking to Leonard all about it.”

“He’s pretty busy today,” Madeleine said, trying to sound casual. “We didn’t know you were coming until last night and he has to work.”

“Of course, we don’t want to take up his time. We’ll just say hello for a minute.”

Alwyn was carrying two little bags, one over each shoulder. She’d put on weight and her face looked more freckled than ever. She allowed herself to be hugged for a moment before pulling away.

“What did Mummy tell you?” she asked. “Did she tell you I
left
Blake?”

“She said you guys were having trouble.”

“No. I left him. I’ve had it. The marriage is over.”

“Don’t be dramatic, dear,” Phyllida said.

“I’m not being dramatic, Mummy,” Alwyn said. She glared at Phyllida but, perhaps scared to confront her directly, turned to deliver her argument to Madeleine. “Blake works all week long. Then on weekends he plays golf. He’s like a fifties dad. And we have hardly any babysitting. I wanted a live-in nanny but Blake said he didn’t want someone in the house all the time. So I told him, ‘You’re never in the house! You try taking care of Richard full-time. I’m out of here.’” Alwyn grimaced. “The problem now is my boobs are going to burst.”

Out in the open, within view of other people, she took hold of her engorged breasts with both hands.

“Ally, please,” Phyllida said.

“Please, what? You wouldn’t let me express any milk on the plane. What do you expect?”

“It was hardly private. And the flight was so short.”

“Mummy was worried the men in the next row would get their rocks off,” Alwyn said.

“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 back 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.