When Madeline Was Young

by Jane Hamilton

  "Do you think," Sophia might forge ahead with some deference, "he's going to be one of those doctors who always speak in Latin, who assume that the lay person knows what the flexor pollicis longus is?"

  "He'll talk that way until one of our cousins shoots him." Louise was gratified by laughter all around.

  When Sophia announced that we were going to join the vegetarian eating co-op Louise said, "Are you kidding? Mac, a vegetarian?" Without as much as the hint of a smile she said flatly, "Hilarious." She turned to me. "I'll make sure to put a weenie in your mailbox every few days so you don't croak."

  They'd start talking about music and forget about me, but I remained happy in the glow of their initial rivalry. Sophia had the creamy skin, if English literature is reliable on the subject, of a milkmaid. There were no pores across the sweep of her faintly pink cheek. When I mentioned the miracle of her epidermis, she snorted and said it was insane to think that a subjugated worker's skin could resemble the liquid that came from a dirty cow's udder. I called her Lass or Miss Cooper, both of which she tolerated despite her feminist tendencies.

  She was dramatic and moody and very deep. In order to keep company with Sophia Cooper, I was ordered to read Jane Austen and George Eliot and Virginia Woolf and Henry James. No one should have to endure James, not even for love. She insisted that I spend my spare time in the music library, sitting before the turntable, listening to all of the Beethoven string quartets. I had no requirements of her other than that she make demands of me. I could have dropped out of Oberlin and still received a liberal-arts education merely by attending to the syllabus of Miss Cooper.

  I had a dream once that I was her violin, that I was the wood, the varnish, the cunning bridge, the pegs and their holes, the strings, the ungainly chin-rest. Sophia took me out of the crimson velvet sepulcher of the case and swooned. I woke as if from a nightmare, soaking wet, understanding that I would have gladly dissolved to a note on the page if it was the note that Sophia cherished. My sister said she had never seen me in such a state, and it's probably true that I was never in love that way, before or after. None of Buddy's advice about women served me, no comfort in the idea that there were girls around me for the taking if the one didn't work out.

  Miss Cooper made it plain that I was not the end of the line for her, that her goal was to travel the world as a member of a string quartet. The labor and intimacy of the group would consume her energy. Even if she wasn't so lucky, she had no interest in settling down, and less in being a doctor's wife, being woken at three in the morning, watching me stagger into my pants to go deliver a baby. "No thank you," she said politely. "There I'd be stuck at home raising the family, nursing along the colds and earaches with no help from the resident expert. I've seen how it goes, Mac, seen my uncle working seven days a week while my aunt, on the verge of collapse, manages the kids, the house, the relatives, the holidays, the PTA meetings." In a firmer tone she said, "No."

  I don't think I actually believed that she was as ahead of her time as she seemed, that she wouldn't come around to my idea of marriage and fulfilling domesticity. Aside from her crushing view of my wife's future, we fumbled along--joyfully, I thought--

  learning the ropes together in the college beds that kept us conglutinated, one to the other, beds designed for the students to learn intensively about sexual relations. Sophia taught me anatomy in a most thorough, satisfying, and profound way, an educational method not possible from dissection or observation--should that have been practical. I don't mean to sound clinical or unfeeling, because the experience was as far from being cold and intellectual as it could be. She had very few inhibitions, which is something I knew even then to be rare. She would demand that I put my fingers inside her so I could feel the intensity of her orgasm, so I could know where it originated, which muscles were triggered. This instruction, she said, was for the benefit of my future patients, information she was sure I could put to use in some way. She was not very practiced, if she is to be trusted, outside of one former boyfriend and her deliberate exploration of her own body, but she did have a gift for anticipating a person's need, and also no hesitation in claiming what she must have, making me think she would perish if I couldn't help.

  When we remembered, we offered up thanks that the dorm hours for women were abolished before we met. Finally, I understood the gratification Jerry Pindel had wanted Madeline to render unto Mikey O'Day. I wondered briefly and slantwise now and again, did Madeline take Mikey O'Day into her mouth? As much as I didn't dwell on the idea, it occurred to me that Mikey's capacity for rapture might have its limits, that his head might have exploded with that particular stimulation. And what of Madeline? For Sophia that service seemed to be as interesting and involving to her as it was ecstatic to me.

  I noted that she was most grateful to me in our lulls, that it was as we rested, my arms around her, that she seemed to say, Yes, I am with you. It was in those interludes that she admired my coarse thick hair, my brown eyes, that she traced my mouth, kissing the top lip before she dedicated herself to the fuller bottom lip. She would become posi-tively soppy with approbation and, even better, ownership. "My love," she said, holding me fast. This evident binding of her to me made jungle sense, the female sealing herself as best she can to the male for protection while she carries her child to term, an idea I would never have dared mention. During her devotions after the urgency, I could do little but submit as she sang my praises. In those moments I knew that she'd stay with me, that with such strength of feeling, and biology on my side, she wouldn't have the heart to break it off.

  Before our senior year, we spent two weeks at her family's cabin in New Hampshire, just the two of us in a pine forest in the White Mountains. It was a stretch of time when I had a happiness I knew couldn't last, and yet I also believed that it would, that it must, that it couldn't help itself. It rained for three days, and we stayed in bed. Beyond the pattering on the roof there was silence. When the sun shone we did mean to get up. On the occasions when we tossed aside the sheets, she practiced the violin and I studied, preparing for the fall term. Together we cooked simple meals. Veiny soft French cheeses with pears, sourdough bread that we made with starter from a long, venerable, yeasty line. Soup that she conjured out of lentils and a few vegetables. We were living on the cool mountain air and love, love! And the spindly sprigs of parsley that grew in pots on the porch. I managed to keep up my strength without so much as a morsel of animal flesh, without sneaking out of the house to get a gyros sandwich, as I used to do when we were part of the vegetarian co-op. We took walks and washed each other in the pond with biodegradable soap. She read Edith Wharton to me and sometimes let me win at Scrabble. As always, I declared my love to her before and during the peak moment, and she returned the favor afterward. There seemed to be no end to our subjects, her music, her books, my science, the Eastern gods, American politics--even if we didn't always discuss them out loud. What was on the verge of being said was understood between us as much as those things we articulated. Or so I thought. Curiously, I didn't ever tell her, not really, about Madeline. My story for her went like this: Madeline was my older sister, compromised in a sickness that occurred before I was born. I didn't explain the first marriage, the accident, Buddy's revelation at Moose Lake, Mikey O'Day, all those things that had nothing to do with Sophia Cooper or my life with her. They were omissions I later regretted.

  When we locked up the cabin to go back to school, we stopped talking. We didn't say a word until we reached the interstate, as if we were in a limbo, no longer the pair we'd been in the cabin and not yet Mac and Sophia, strangers by those names who moved through the public world. We both probably knew we'd never have another time like that again.

  On May 4, my senior year, the four students at Kent State were killed by the National Guardsmen. After that day, no one went to classes. I had been struggling with physical chemistry, but there were no more tests and no final exams. Everyone passed, the living set free. There had also been the matter of my m
odern-dance class, something Sophia thought would broaden my horizons and possibly loosen me up. I had yet to begin choreographing my solo piece, an assignment that had had the unfortunate effect of paralyzing both brain and limb. My girl said I looked extremely cute in my tights and T-shirt, a remark that did not make it any easier to think purely of movement.

  The day of the shootings, a student group took over the administration building, although, as I recall, they were always, that year, taking over Peters Hall. Later in the afternoon, there was an assembly in Finney Chapel, and it was then, by mutual agreement between the student government and the faculty, that school was declared over. I would not have to stumble around the parquet floor in my tights in front of twenty girls in the name of dance! I remember putting my head down, trying to purge my thoughts of all things that weren't dark and sad, and how Sophia put her strong hand to my back. They encouraged us to stay on campus, to take on a project that would contribute to the peace effort. I suppose they didn't say anything as overtly political as "the peace effort," but instead used the words "to further understanding in the world." We knew what they meant. For two weeks I worked in the library, researching and writing about Agent Orange.

  The night of the shootings, most of the school gathered on Tappan Square, many of us weeping from rage. There were speeches and singing and the promise of a vigil. Sophia had stayed for a respectable three hours, holding her candle, but around ten o'clock she'd blown out her little light and slunk off to practice. I leaned against a lamppost on the square, suddenly longing to be with my mother, to be comforted by whatever call to action she would suggest, to be taken up by both her energy and her calm. It was too late to call home, so I walked aimlessly trying to find Lu, and when she didn't turn up I went down the halls of the conservatory, listening in at the few practice rooms that were occupied, hoping that either she or Sophia would come forth. I knew enough not to interrupt, not to disturb the arpeggios even if F-4 and A-6 bombers were flying straight toward Ohio, even if I could see the whites of the pilots' eyes. After poking my head in at Lu's usual haunts, I found my sister in her dorm, tunneling in her dirty laundry for a sweater. She intended to go back out to the square, to be her mother's daughter and stay the night on the hard ground. We hadn't seen each other all day, and we sat on the bed, admitting that we were afraid.

  She was scared to death for me, she said. It was one thing to be worried about the draft myself, but to see my sister in tears over the dangers before me only intensified my sense of doom. I brought up the subject of our father, about how he had escaped serving in World War II because of his eyesight, and how funny it was that he broke his foot in three places in the munitions parking lot--how the officials must have thought him hopeless, how they were probably glad to give him his marching orders. "You're not as puny-chested as he is," Louise said, "but you do have the clod factor. You might be able to do something really ungraceful and hurt yourself just enough. Without trying, you could do that."

  One subject about the family led to the next, and after a while it seemed as good an opportunity as I might ever have to tell her what Buddy had mentioned to me those years before at Moose Lake. Even though outside, in Tappan Square, history was in the making, it was consoling to be with Louise, to be away from the collective anger, just to be us for an hour or two. "For a long time," I began solemnly, "I've been trying to figure out how Madeline fits into the family." I told her about Buddy, and about how I had found a box in the attic with Made-line's leftover wedding invitations. The font was medieval and severe, Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Schiller request the pleasure ofyour company. It was as if I'd been meant to find the yellowed card stock at just that point, after Buddy's revelation.

  She let me go on for a minute before she said, "But Mad You knew about Madeline." She went on to explain that we'd always known, that Julia had taken pains to show us the photographs when we were small, that there'd always been full disclosure.

  As I said, I felt ridiculous there on her bed, having held our parents' secret so carefully for so many years. It had not seemed to me a dirty secret, not something shameful to keep private, but, rather, as if I were privy to their real identities, as if, unbeknownst to everyone but me--and also Buddy--they were in the Witness Protection Program. And now to find out that there was no reason for my heroic effort, shielding Louise from the details, holding up the facade of the Macivers. I did go on to tell her that I'd spent one night at Moose Lake before my freshman year talking to Figgy until three in the morning, that it was Figgy who had told me most specifically about Madeline's history.

  "Figgy?" said Louise, screwing up her nose.

  It had been the summer of 1966, just after Buddy had enlisted. I'd ducked onto the porch around midnight, looking for a book I'd left behind in the afternoon. My aunt was sitting on the swing by herself. I wouldn't have known she was there if the ember of her cigarette hadn't given her away. "Come over here, Mac," she said, patting a place next to her. "But wait. Before you get comfortable, pour yourself a drink--see, on the table? I'm certain Buddy has taught you how."

  I felt very important drinking expensive whiskey with my aunt.

  She seemed unfocused or else sad, I couldn't tell. Maybe she was thinking about Buddy, about the possibility that he'd get killed. Or maybe it was then that she began to consider selling her Moose Lake shares. My grandmother had died in the spring, and surely Figgy felt how much the old spirit of the place was gone. Already she was weary of the arguments about upkeep and the future drain on her finances, and after all she did have Arthur's island, the cold, windy hunk of rock off the coast of Maine. After a few small sips of whiskey, with that smooth burn in my throat, I asked her if she'd been at my father and Madeline's wedding. It seemed fairly easy to ask, and it seemed like a good deed, too, a topic to distract her from her troubling thoughts.

  She began with Madeline's going to Italy, falling for the stranger, and disobeying her mother. At the time I thought it odd that for Figgy the story started there, but I realize now she was telling me everything she knew; she was providing as full an account of Madeline's life as she could, passing on the family narrative to the next generation. She told each part slowly, with a long lead to the wedding, and she drew out the day of the accident--that is, describing her own life in New York and how my father called her, and her guilt at not being at the bedside. Because it was the first occasion when she spoke to me about my parents, she was careful and generous, in spite of the whiskey. "I admire your father and your mother," she said, "for taking on the burden of Madeline with never a complaint. They're good as gold, I'm sure. I would have stuck her in the state hospital and run off to lead my life. That's the kind of woman your aunt is, kid. I wouldn't have given her a second thought." Figgy was not quite to the point of slurring her words, but she was close. "I've got one big gripe with them, though, more than a quibble. It's a beef, a bone to pick, a--"

  "What gripe?" I said.

  She took hold of the chain of the swing. "If I'd kept her," she said, "I wouldn't have pushed her back into little-girlhood. I've got to tell you, they handled that part all wrong. They made her into a freak! Madeline's a grown woman, and even if she's mentally compromised she could probably do some kind of work. She could put candies in boxes, or cotton in aspirin bottles, or water plants in a greenhouse--something!"

  Madeline a freak? Madeline with a job?

  "It was wrong," she said again.

  "She helps her friend Mikey take tickets at the movie theater," I offered weakly. "And she still likes to do art projects."

  "Oh boy," Figgy said, laughing, "art! Your mother thinks she's a prodigy--is there some kind of word for an old-lady wunderkind? Now, you, you're the real McCoy, National Merit Scholar, valedictorian, a bona fide smarty-pants, all right. You're a person every single family member can take pride in. You're going to do great things, mister. I can't hate you for being so smart because you're such a goddamn decent person, you punk, you. Don't think I haven't watched you being good to you
r, your ex-stepmother, taking her by the hand down to the lake to pick up stones, giving her boat rides, playing checkers with her.

  Don't think no one's noticed your kindness."

  "I wouldn't be here," I blurted, "if Madeline hadn't had her accident." I didn't actually realize that truth until I'd said it.

  "Yeah, well, there's that." She sat straight, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes. With that small effort at composure, she did seem to sober up. "It's funny how fate plays its tricks, how things are taken away and given. I'm in a very sentimental mood tonight, so I'm going to say this." She gripped my shoulders to make her point, and also to keep herself upright. "We all make sacrifices along the way, and you will, too. I think if Madeline could know that she'd sacrificed to make you, she'd crash into that stone wall again." Figgy put her arms fully around me and started to tremble. "She would, I know she would. You're wonderful, you're so wonderful." I was more thrilled than alarmed to be in my aunt's boozy embrace, and certainly I had no impulse to cry. "I'm going to bed now," she said, sniffing into my neck, "before I regret this evening, or morning, or whatever it is." As she pushed off from the swing she muttered, "Don't mention our chat to your mother, will you? She worries, I'm sure, that Buddy and I, my entire family, such as it is, has corrupted you." She turned to me, asking wistfully, "I haven't, have I?"

  I assured her that she had not, or if she had I was the better for it. She kissed me full on the lips before she shuffled off to bed.

  I told some of that story to Louise, omitting the last part, Figgy's pride in me and the large wet kiss. We got talking about our parents again, remembering scenes from our childhood, as if everything had happened long ago. From Lu's shelf I pulled down a cloth doll with an open face, two stitches for eyes, another for a mouth--the present Madeline had given her when she'd left home for college. Louise had been a good sister to Madeline until she was about nine, until she took up her cello to the exclusion of everything else. She didn't apologize for being remote, because there could not have been any other way for her, but she did note it. We remembered together the nights when she and Stephen played music in the living room, how Madeline lay over our mother in the wing chair. I told her how I'd sit at my desk and listen, how much I looked forward to it, something she had never realized before. "And Father used to bawl," I told her. "You probably thought he was doing nothing more than his accounts at the dining-room table, but when you played the Bach Suites he was a wreck."