Treasure Box

5. Bliss

Was it possible that his parents liked Madeleine too much? Quentin expected them to be delighted that he had a fiancée at all and that he had brought her home to meet them, and he expected her to charm them because she was, after all, charming. But within hours they seemed to have lost all sense of proportion. Everything she said, they laughed or oohed or tsk-tsked or whatever the appropriate response was. Their attention toward her never flagged. They offered her drinks, food, their own bed—it was way beyond hospitality.

They were obsequious. It was as if they were servants and Madeleine was the mistress of the house. It embarrassed him, but he couldn't seem to get either of his parents alone to tell them to lay off a little; nor could he seem to find a moment alone with Mad to explain that they didn't always act like this, that they must be compensating for all those years that they had given up on the idea of his marrying.

Poor Mad must be going crazy with them fawning on her all the time, but she was a trouper, she didn't show a sign of irritation. Just acted as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Quentin tried to take her out to dinner.

"The four of us?" asked Mad.

"Nonsense," said Dad. "The two of you just go."

"The lovebirds need some time for tête-à-tête," said Mom, smiling.

"But you must come," said Mad. "How often will we be together like this? We have to make memories together."

"And I'll bet the crockpot chicken I was making will be just as good tomorrow," said Mom.

"Oh, that's right, Tin," said Madeleine. "I forgot that I helped her pound the chicken this morning."

"But it doesn't matter, if Quen wants to take you out."

"I wouldn't dream of missing out on the chance to taste your crockpot chicken when it's just so."

Quentin wanted to scream. It wasn't just his parents gushing over her, she was also gushing over them. If everybody would just stop trying so hard, maybe they could have a civilized visit. But that apparently wasn't going to happen without some kind of intervention.

"Listen," said Quentin, "I don't really care if we eat in or out. I don't care if we have chicken or Big Macs. I brought my fiancée here to meet my parents. And the way it looks right now, we're going to leave here without ever having done that."

They all looked at him as if he were insane.

"Quen," said Dad, "here we are. There she is. We've met."

"That's my point. My parents have a personality. They have habits and customs. They have a life. I wanted to bring Madeleine into the life. So she could see who you are, the family we are together. But you two are being so completely, insanely accommodating that—it's like your own personalities have been completely erased."

Tears filled Mom's eyes. "We've just tried to be nice."

Madeleine looked desperately embarrassed. "Tin, I thought it was all going really well."

"We only want you two to be happy," said Dad. He put his arm around Mom.

"Look, I'm sorry, I didn't want to make a scene," said Quentin. "Tell you what, you three stay here and have the crockpot chicken and tell each other how perfect it is and then spend the rest of the night insisting that the other person choose what TV show to watch or game to play. I'm going to the movies."

He turned and headed for the front door. He had his hand on the knob when he heard something that stopped him cold.

Laughter. Warm, throaty laughter. Lizzy's laugh.

He caught his breath. He turned. It was Madeleine. But now the laughter had changed. Still low, still warm, but no longer Lizzy's voice. Mad didn't look at him.

"Well, shucks," said Mad, speaking to no one in particular. "Maybe there is such a thing as getting along too well." She looked at Dad and winked. "Let's have a fight, Mr. Fears. It'll make Tin feel so much better."

Dad smiled and nodded. "Well, maybe not a fight. Maybe just a tiff."

"I know we're all joking and we're embarrassed and all," said Mom, "but there is just the one thing, just the tiniest thing—I know you have a right to call him by whatever pet nickname you want, but... calling him 'Tin'..."

Mad put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, I should have known. I should have realized."

"How could you have known that our Lizzy called him..."

"But he did tell me that," said Mad. "It just never crossed my mind, after all these years, that it would—but of course, it was this very house where she—it did seem all right with Tin—with Quentin—and so I just—please forgive me."

"No, no," said Mom. "Now I feel just awful for mentioning it. Because it is all right. I just—I just thought that—"

"Acknowledging her," said Dad. "That's all that was needed, maybe. To acknowledge her. That she called him that. And then it's OK."

"Yes," said Mom. "You can call him that, really. It won't bother me now, because I've, because I've spoken of her."

"But you should have spoken of it before," said Mad. "Two days I've been driving you bonkers with—"

"No, no, nothing like that," said Mom, "I just—every time you said it, you called him that, I wanted to speak, to say, 'That's what Lizzy called him,' and it wasn't even going to be a complaint, just a comment, just to say, I don't know, that she still has a place in our home, in our memories. But when I thought of saying it, I just, it just felt like something clamped down inside me and I couldn't speak."

"Well," said Dad, "you're speaking now."

"See?" said Mom. "Quentin was right to just bring things out in the open. We were being on our best behavior a bit too much, weren't we? Why, I'm—I'm almost exhausted with politeness. And yet I really do like you, Madeleine, dear. I just wanted so much to make a good impression, I suppose."

"The main thing," said Dad, "is this: Dinner in or dinner out?"

It was dinner in and now, at last, it was as if his parents had come out of hiding. There was chatter and banter and some catty gossip about neighbors and other church members, and the laughter was genuine and Mad actually got to see what life in his home was like.

And when, about ten that night, he suggested that he and Mad might take a walk around the old neighborhood, Dad yawned and said, "About time we got rid of you for a few minutes, you two. Let these old bones go to bed." And that was that. Mad and Quentin would be alone together.

They held hands walking from streetlight to streetlight. "They used to just be mounted to the telephone poles," said Quentin. "Then when they were building the expressway over the old creekbed behind the house, they buried all the phone lines and put up these aluminum poles. Shame, too. Because Lizzy and I had scratched graffiti into all the old poles. Like marking our territory. No good trying to mark anything on these things." He slapped the pole and it rang metallically.

"It's her shadow in the house that made everything so tense, wasn't it?" said Madeleine.

"Not her shadow. Her memory isn't a shadow," said Quentin.

"Losing her was a shadow," said Mad. "That's what I meant."

"I don't think it had to do with her," said Quentin. "My parents—I've just never seen them act like that. Like complete strangers."

"I wouldn't know," said Madeleine. "I've never known a normal family."

"What, your parents have eight legs each?"

"Life in the Family Arachnid," she said, laughing. "No, my parents were fine. But... well, to be honest, they acted like your parents were acting, all the time. When I actually saw them, of course. Just always sort of—what—on, I guess."

"On what? Cocaine?"

"More like on stage." She jabbed him. "They weren't that hyper."

"I didn't mean to make a scene like that," said Quentin. "But I couldn't seem to get you alone. Or them either."

"I was so afraid that I wasn't doing it right," said Mad.

"Well, it wasn't you, anyway. They were the ones acting strange. You were a hero about it all."

They walked on to the corner. "That way was where I used to ride my bike to junior high. The elementary school was back that way, through an orchard. Now it's a park. The orchard. The school is gone. My Scout Troop once took on the job of distributing flyers for a supermarket through the whole neighborhood. I had two hundred of them to tuck into people's screen doors. I did about twenty and then dumped the rest in a culvert, right down there."

"There's no culvert there."

"That used to be a bridge over a creek. Everything's changed. I wish I could show you the place I actually lived in. You're lucky that way—didn't you tell me your family had lived in their house forever?"

"Not forever. We're all descended from immigrants."

"It must be nice, though, to go back and have nothing changed."

She laughed but it was nasty. "Oh, yes, it's so nice."

"Is there really some major problem between you and your family?" said Quentin.

"It's not a feud or anything," said Mad. "There was a rift for a while, but I've had it under control for years now."

"But you still won't take me to meet them."

"Oh, in good time." She turned and faced him. "After we're married."

"What, you think they'll come between us if we're merely affianced?"

"I want to be part of your family before I take you into the bosom of mine."

"Do I hear the sound of somebody moving up the date of our wedding?"

"We haven't set a date yet."

"I meant from 'let's talk about it sometime' to 'let's get married pretty soon.' "

"Sooner than that."

"How soon?"

"I suppose tonight wouldn't be practical."

Quentin kissed her. "There's the matter of a license."

"As soon as possible. Here, in this town. At your family's church. Surrounded by your parents' friends."

"Nothing would make them happier."

"And you? Would that make you happy, Tin?"

He nodded.

"And yet you still look sad."

He shook his head, smiling. "Not sad at all. Very happy. The sooner the better—you know that's how I feel. Short engagement, yes, but then I've been waiting twenty years for you."

"Do you love me as much as her?" asked Mad.

Quentin made a show of looking over his shoulder. "Who?"

"As Lizzy. Your sister."

"Let's put it this way—I never would have married my sister."

"No, I was wrong even to bring it up. But I've felt it—I've felt it almost from the start. Another woman. And yet you kept insisting that there was no other woman, there had never been another woman, only every time you had a memory of childhood Lizzy was in it. She's the other woman, the one in your past. And because she's... dead... I can never measure up to her."

Quentin kissed her, long and thoroughly. "You're not being measured against Lizzy. She's my childhood, my memory, my past. But you're my future."

"It's selfish of me, isn't it? But you have to love me. More than anyone, you have to love me, or I can't... can't anything. Can't be happy."

"Mad, you're already off the scale. I love you more than life."

She clung to him under the streetlight.

But as he stroked her hair he wondered—was it true? Did he love her more than Lizzy? Was there still some crazy part of him that clung to Lizzy and wouldn't let her go? After all, he had never hallucinated seeing Madeleine.

He shook off the thought. It was Madeleine who had opened up his life and given it meaning. He was excited for the future now. That was something that his memory of Lizzy had never been able to do. Hallucinations, but no dreams.

It took longer than they thought, because a proper church wedding required some lead time—invitations, if nothing else, took a week. But by the end of August they were married, full church wedding and all, the bride like a goddess in white, the groom grinning like an idiot, or so Dad assured him just before the ceremony.

The honeymoon was Hawaii, of course, because neither of them had ever been there and from the bay area, that was the only place you could go with a more pleasant climate. They made love for the first time on their second morning in the Turtle Bay Hilton, after recovering from jet lag and post-wedding exhaustion. They were both shy and awkward but it worked pretty well. "After all," said Madeleine, "if it was really hard, stupid people wouldn't have so many children."

They snorkeled, they visited Japanese Buddhist temples, they flew to Maui and the big island, they ate fresh pineapples and shopped in the open-air mall in Honolulu and stood at the pass where hundreds of warriors plunged to their deaths in an ancient Hawaiian story. They watched the show at the Polynesian Cultural Center and tried out some of the dances back in their room, minus the costumes, of course. Quentin noticed during the week that he actually had something of a knack for having fun.

But there was still a shadow between them, and it wasn't Lizzy, because the shadow wasn't in Quentin, he was sure of that. It was in Mad. They would make love and he would hold her in his arms and she would smile at him and he would say, Yes, it was wonderful, it was sweet, I love you. And she would assure him, too, only he knew, though he wasn't sure how, he knew that he was telling the truth and she was lying. It wasn't good for her. Something was wrong with this part of their marriage and she wouldn't tell him what. He couldn't even ask her, because she really wasn't giving any outward sign of dissatisfaction. It was more as if there were some inner pain that she couldn't shake off, that nothing he did could ease. A pain that became most painful in those moments after sex when she should have been happiest, should have felt most loved, most worshiped by her husband. Something was stealing joy from them, something in her past.

Something in her family. Something in that mansion on the Hudson that she was determined not to let him visit.

Was she molested as a child? Beaten? Emotionally starved? If she didn't want to tell him, how could he find out? This was certainly one case where it wouldn't help for him to get his lawyer working on finding the answers. Besides, Wayne would have such a smirk. Married a week, and already you're having me investigate her family? Maybe if you had let me investigate them before the wedding...

No, he wanted her to tell him. When she trusted him enough. And so he would make sure she never had cause to doubt his love and loyalty, his strength and honor. When she knew that nothing she told him could shake his bond with her, then she would speak.

At the end of the week, she was the one who brought up the future. "Our week is almost up," she said. "And it occurs to me we haven't said anything about what happens next."

"We could stay another week. Another month, if you want. I made kind of an open-ended reservation."

"This was a wonderful week, but the best part of it was you, Tin, and I get to keep you wherever we go. Have we even decided where we're going to live?"

"I have connections in most cities in North America. But don't feel limited by that—I'm sure that we could find a way to get along in England. Or France. Paris? Provence?"

"I don't think I'm cool enough for Provence."

"But you have the body for the beaches of the Riviera."

"Nobody would even notice me there."

"I wouldn't be able to keep the Frenchmen's hands off you."

"Really, Tin, where will we live? Your stuff is in Virginia, and mine is still packed, my family can ship it wherever we decide to live. Have you finished your business there? Are you ready to move on?"

"I don't know," said Quentin. "I mean, that wasn't exactly a career. It was more of a pastime. I was marking time till I met you. So now... I don't know."

"It was a wonderful pastime," said Mad. "Making other people's dreams come true."

"Helping them make their own dreams come true, you mean."

"What I mean is, Tin, why stop?"

"Well, for one thing, too many of them have succeeded."

"What does that mean?"

"When I talked to my lawyer about revising my will to include you, he had me get my accountant to provide me with a complete inventory of my assets. Some of my partnerships are now worth more than the fortune I started with. My point is that I'm now rich on a whole different scale. Maybe it's time to help somebody with a truly extravagant dream."

"Who?"

"You."

She looked at him as if he were crazy. "You're my dream, and here you are."

"No, that's not what you told me. There in the garden. Under the cherry tree."

"En château de la grande dame."

"Remember? You coveted power, you said. To pick your candidates and help them get started. What you didn't have was money."

"But what do you care about politics?"

"That's why it's a partnership. You pick the candidates, I fund them."

"It doesn't work that way. There are election laws. Limitations on contributions, that sort of thing."

"We'll form PACs. Foundations. We'll contribute to local party organizations and encourage them to support the candidates we favor. Mad, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that when you have enough money the law is a reed that will always bend your way."

"You make it sound possible."

"Not only possible, but completely legal. And if we can't contribute directly, so much the better. The goal wasn't to have candidates beholden to us, was it? The idea was they should be independent and wise and sane and—telegenic, wasn't that part of it?"

"Do you mean it?" she said.

"As I said, I have connections in every city that matters. Let's make the grand tour. Attending the parties that I've avoided for all these years. You'll dazzle them, and I'll talk turkey with the local politicos. We'll pick our candidates and start the ball rolling. Isn't there an election next year? Is it too late to find candidates for Congress?"

"If only it weren't too late to choose a candidate for president."

"President schmesident," said Quentin. "We could probably make more difference if we concentrated on state legislatures."

"You're right, Tin. What I care about is finding good people and getting them started. And it might very well be state legislatures. County commissions! City councils! School boards!"

"We have our work cut out for us."

They fell back on the bed, laughing. "We sound like a silly old movie," said Quentin. "Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. 'We can put on our own election.' "

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Madeleine.

"You've never seen an Andy Hardy movie?" asked Quentin. "You can't be serious. You're—you're not even an American!"

"No, I'm just not an elderly American. You really did grow up in a time warp!"

It was only later, as she slept beside him on the plane, that it occurred to him that Wayne Read had accused him of living in a time warp, and he had never told her about that conversation. Had he?

He must say a lot of things without realizing what he was saying. Because he had never told her that "Tin" was Lizzy's nickname for him. He wasn't stupid—when she first called him that it was in the garden, under the cherry tree, and the last thing he had wanted at that moment was to get prickly and say, Don't call me that, it was my dead sister's nickname for me. And later, he didn't want her to change, it felt right having her call him that, so why would he have told her that Lizzy used that name for him? When would he ever have told her? And yet she knew. Before Mom explained, she knew.

Maybe she just put things together. Picked up clues, reached a conclusion, and then thought he had said it outright. So she was observant. He couldn't hide things from her. It was a good thing he intended to be a faithful husband.

Their new political career wasn't as easy as they had thought. Oh, their initial plan worked very well. A man of Quentin's wealth and a woman of Madeleine's beauty and grace had no trouble at all being admitted to the highest circles of political activity in either party, in any city. The trouble was that in those circles they never met anyone that fit Mad's criteria for a good candidate. That was the basic contradiction of their plan: If the ruling cliques already knew a person, he or she was already too "inside" to qualify.

They needed to find people who weren't politically aware, or at least not politically self-aware. So through the autumn of 1995 they widened their net. They established their credentials with the insiders, yes, but they also went to service organizations, to activist groups, to charities and churches; they took newspaper reporters and city bureaucrats to dinner and asked them who really made a difference in the community, the men and women they actually admired. And slowly but surely they began to find people. Not in every city, but now and then one face, one name would come to the fore.

It was exhilarating work, and Quentin could see why Mad loved it, even though it wasn't something he would ever have chosen to do on his own. And watching her do it, that was almost miraculous. His money opened political doors and made campaigns possible, yes, but she was the one who persuaded these reluctant candidates, who kindled the ambition that had lain dormant within them, or had been turned outward to some cause. You can make a difference. If you don't run, who will? Instead of fighting city hall, you can be city hall—and you won't be beholden to anyone. You'll have the courage and strength that come from not caring—because you don't care whether you get reelected, do you? So you won't always have your eye on the polls—you'll be free to follow your heart and mind. And if you lose—well, you tried, didn't you, and you'll only have made more connections to help you in the work you're already doing.

They bought it. They absolutely bought into her dream and made it their own and after a while the only thing that continued to surprise Quentin was how little it cost. National politics might cost millions, but local politics could still be paid for out of pocket change, as long as you had willing volunteers—and Madeleine had the knack of finding people who really could inspire others to spend hundreds of hours stuffing envelopes or knocking on doors or manning booths or phoning people. And once the candidate began to emerge, other financial supporters gathered.

"Mad," Quentin said to her, as they drove from the airport to his parents' house for Christmas. "Mad, this politics thing isn't working."

"Are you kidding?" she said. "I think it's going great!"

"Oh, sure, for you it's going great. But it was supposed to help me get rid of all this money, and we're just not spending it fast enough."

"That's because you're in the wrong country," said Mad. "America isn't corrupt enough yet. There are some Latin American countries where you have to compete with drug lords when you want to buy an election, and you can soak through a hundred million in no time."

"Well, I'm going to have to start another hobby. Something really expensive. Donating to universities, for instance—I hear that's a bottomless hole."

"A Fears Building of Something on every campus, is that it?"

"Or a Cryer Building," he said. "They don't have to be named for me."

"Not that name," she said. "I don't want my name on anything."

"Too late. I've got it on a marriage certificate."

"You tricked me! Just to get my autograph!"

Christmas was wonderful, even though Mad complained a little about the green lawns and the lack of snow.

"We can't all live in the perfect climate of the Hudson Valley," said Dad.

"Californians are climate-deprived," said Mom. "The things that do go wrong aren't seasonal. There's no earthquake season, for instance."

"There's a mudslide season," suggested Dad.

"But not every year."

"Next year," said Dad, "Madeleine should invite us all to Christmas with her family. So we can tramp around on snowshoes. Do you have any nieces or nephews, Madeleine? Or—heavens, you're young enough—you might still have younger brothers and sisters at home!"

"No believers in Santa Claus, if that's what you mean," said Mad, laughing.

Quentin watched her, waited for her to sidestep the issue. But she didn't.

"Maybe I will have you all come out."

"No," said Dad immediately. "I was just joking. We don't go inviting ourselves to other people's Christmases!"

"Not Christmas Day, maybe," said Mad. "We don't do much for Christmas anyway, I think you'd be disappointed. But the week after. Don't you think, Quentin? Wouldn't that be a good holiday next year?"

"Sure," he said. "Sounds great."

But it bothered him. She wouldn't take him home to meet her family, after all these hints. And yet she'd invite Dad and Mom to come along with them. Of course, she was inviting them a year in advance—she might find a thousand excuses for canceling before then. Or maybe whatever she dreaded there might be easier if his parents came along with them. Or maybe she had simply overcome those fears, right now, today, in this conversation.

"You don't sound very enthusiastic," said Mom. "Are you afraid we'll use the wrong fork, Quen?"

"Oh, it's just that Mad has told me such terrible things about her family. Visitors have been known to arrive and... disappear."

Mad looked at him in consternation. "No such thing."

"That's why she's never taken me there. And her house is haunted. And it was built over an old chemical sludge factory. People get cancer just flying over, the airlines have to route around it."

"There were no factories making chemical sludge when the family manse was built," said Madeleine. "All the rest is true, though."

"Don't forget the Indian burial mound, Mad," said Quentin. "Her family bulldozed a whole burial mound because it blocked their view of the river. But on the spot where the mound was... nothing grows."

"That's not true," said Madeleine. "It's always a jungle of briars and poison ivy."

"Which your mother harvests and uses to make those unforgettable prickly salads."

"All right," said Madeleine, laughing. "I'll take you home first, to meet my folks."

Mom and Dad were appalled.

"Quentin hasn't even met your parents?" Dad asked. "How does he know idiocy doesn't run in your family?" He was trying to make a joke out of it.

Mom's reaction was sympathetic—but not to Madeleine and Quentin. "Oh, but your mother must be so hurt that you married without telling her!"

"Oh, don't worry. I told her. I just didn't invite her."

"Oh, worse and worse!" cried Mom.

"My family's very odd," said Madeleine. "You have to understand—they would have thought it presumptuous of me to expect them to come. You simply have to understand that... I mean, when I came here—did you people pose for Norman Rockwell or what?"

"That depends," said Dad. "Do you like Norman Rockwell paintings?"

"I dreamed of Norman Rockwell paintings when I was a child," said Mad. "I thought they were a wonderful fantasyland. Or heaven—if I died, that's where I'd go, to a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving or Christmas. Like the one we just had."

"Well, what does your family do, beat the servants and burn down the neighbors' house?" said Dad, carrying the joke too far, as usual.

Madeleine smiled wanly. "Servants always used to quit before we had time to beat them," she said. "They finally gave up hiring them."

Mom was outraged at Dad, though of course she put a jesting face on it. "I can't believe he's teasing about your family, Madeleine, dear, he just has no sense of tact, he never has." She playfully punched her husband on the arm; but Quentin could see that it hurt, and Dad didn't like it. It was a pattern already familiar from his childhood—Dad always got a small, painful bruise when he went too far. And yet it didn't stop him from going that far. As if painful jabs were the medium of exchange in the economy of their quarreling. Would he and Madeleine evolve ways of hurting each other and then ignoring it and going on?

"Oh, please," said Madeleine. "Let's just take it as a given that my family is weird. I'm simply the normal-looking one who can go around in public. But I'll tell you what. Quentin has been dying of curiosity and I think he's sort of hurt that I've never taken him, so this is it. Next week. After New Year's. We'll drive up the Hudson Valley and I'll take him into Château Cryer and when he comes back here he can tell you all the weird things he saw. Believe me, you can't stay there for three hours without having a dozen very bizarre tales to tell."

"Tell us some now," said Quentin.

"You see?" said Madeleine. "Now that I've actually agreed to take him, he's afraid and he wants me to prepare him in case he wants to back out. Well, I'm not going to tell him a thing. He'll just have to come with an open mind."

"I'm sure your family is perfectly wonderful," said Mom, "and that's what Quentin will tell us."

"Maybe," said Madeleine with a knowing smile. "And maybe not. But I'll tell you this. Nobody in my family makes a banana cream pie like yours, Mother Fears. And the half-pie in your fridge is moaning my name."

"The pie doesn't know your name," said Quentin. "That was me you were hearing. But we'll settle for the pie for now."

"Quentin," said Mom reprovingly. "You're not such a newlywed anymore that we should have to put up with your innuendos."

"Innuendo?" said Quentin. "Why, whatever do you mean, Mother dear?"

After the pie, as Mom cleaned up in the kitchen and Dad signed on to America Online to send after-Christmas e-mail to his brothers, Quentin gave Madeleine a chance to back out of her invitation.

"But I don't want to back out. I'd already decided it was time for you to meet them. I would have told you privately but then the conversation just went that way and—you don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all. In fact I'm relieved. That you trust me enough to take me home."

"It wasn't a matter of trusting you, Tin, my pet, my poo. I know you can handle it. They just have a way of getting under my skin. With you to hold on to as an island of sanity, I think I can get through a day with my family. Just a day, mind you."

"And then a night at the Holiday Inn?"

"Well, of course we have to stay overnight, but you know what I mean. Twenty-four hours and then we go, no matter how my family pleads with you to stay, do you understand me? Because even if I'm wearing a plastic smile on my face and saying, 'Oh, yes, Quentin, let's do stay,' trust me, I do not want to stay, I want you to get me out of there before we reach the witching hour."

"Which is?"

"If we arrive at noon, then by the next noon we must be gone or I will turn into a puddle of mucus on the floor."

"That's an attractive image. If I kiss it, does it turn back into a princess?"

"No, it just turns into a cold." She kissed him. "Your kiss has already turned me into a princess."