The Marriage Pact (1) (10 page)

Then
it occurred to her—
he has already told Cathy he’s leaving.
It explained
everything: the tired face, the lack of communication with Marci for all that
time, the absence from work. She could only imagine the hell he must have been
through. They probably had a big fight; poor Cathy must have been devastated.
Doug was a good man: he would’ve stayed with her, comforting her, trying to
help her understand. Maybe one of them had been packing...

The
end of business seemed to come in slow motion. Jeremy dawdled at his desk,
finishing reports for the next day. Victoria came back upstairs twice after
forgetting first her keys and then her workout shoes. Marci kept trying to look
as if she was packing up so she wouldn’t get in trouble for trying to milk
extra hours on the clock. The custodian stopped to chat about his new
granddaughter, and showed her a picture. The baby was adorable, but to Marci at
that moment she could’ve been a pet rock for all she cared. Still, she smiled
and oohed and aahed and congratulated him.

When
everyone was finally gone and the office dark, Marci made her way to Doug’s
office. He was facing away from the door when she walked in, so she sat in a
chair and waited as he typed. She heard a shuffling noise down the hall and
asked softly, “Would you like me to close the door?”

He
did not turn around, but gave a terse, “No.” Then he seemed to consider for a
moment and added less coldly, “No, that’s okay. I’ll be just a second.”

The
excitement of being alone in a room with him began to leak out of her and her
knees trembled.
Jesus, what was going on?
His typing was quick and
purposeful. A few clicks of the mouse and he swiveled around. He looked awful.

“I
need to apologize,” he said abruptly, “for the other night. I got carried away,
and in the end it is going to cause both of us more pain. So, I’m sorry.”

She
could not process this. What was he talking about,
more pain
? She looked
around nervously at the source of the shuffling sound a few offices away. He
followed her gaze but said nothing else. He was waiting.

“I’m...I’m
not sure what to say,” she said. It was true. A lump in her throat threatened
to choke off her air supply.

He
looked at her directly with his tired eyes and took a deep breath. Very softly,
he said, “I have to end it. You and me. It has to end.”

Marci
could not breathe. “What?” she managed. Against her will, a whimpering sort of
sob convulsed out of her throat.

This
time he looked up at the door. She tried to choke down the sobs, which only
made it worse.

“Take
notes,” he muttered, and handed her a legal pad from the desk. She stared at it
in disbelief, thinking this must be some kind of cruel, horrible joke.

A
couple of seconds later, Doug said to the doorway over her head, “Hi, Frank.
Taking off?”

“Yeah.
What are you doing here so late, Stanton?”

“Just
going over some last-minute numbers before the meeting tomorrow. And getting
some help with that thing for Victoria.” He gestured toward Marci vaguely.

Frank
Dodgen, the ‘D’ in T, D, L & S, had never formally met Marci before, though
he had smiled politely at her as she passed in the hall, and she had done some
work for him through his secretary. She felt him shift behind her, probably to
acknowledge her presence, but she could not turn around with tears running down
her cheeks.

Doug
interrupted quickly, “Are you headed to the bar?” The partners, Marci knew, had
a standing night out once a month in the back of the Ginger Man.

“Yeah,”
Frank answered.

“Do
me a favor—pick up some good cigars this time would ya? None of those nasty
things you brought last time...”

They
debated for a moment the merits of various cigars and Frank’s apparent failure
to buy those that the rest of the group found acceptable. This gave Marci time
to wipe her eyes as covertly as possible and to take a couple of deep breaths
while pretending to look diligently down at the notepad.

“...Well,
I guess I need to ask the wife for a bigger cigar budget from now on. I’m sure
that will go over great.” Frank chuckled warmly and turned to Marci to include
her in this little joke at his wife’s expense. She managed to look up at him
and fake a smile.

“Well,
goodnight. And, Marci—”she was shocked that Frank Dodgen knew her name—“don’t
let this asshole keep you here too late, okay? We can’t afford too much overtime
this month.”

“Shut
up, Frank. I’ll see you in thirty.” Doug began rattling off some random
instructions to her, which she absurdly wrote down, while both listened for the
sound of the elevator and Frank leaving for the night.

Then
she looked up at him, appealing with her eyes for him to return to sanity and
say anything that made sense. Anything at all.

They
stared at each other for a moment, and then his cold expression softened a bit.
“Look, Marci, I really am sorry to do it like this. You,” he paused,
considering, “you deserve better than this. But then, that’s what I’ve always
told you.”

He
looked at the necklace she had worn almost daily for weeks, and her fingers
rose to her throat automatically.

“I
guess the best thing to do is just tell you the truth. I never imagined it
ending like this; I never thought that we... that what we had would end here.
But I guess this is where it started, huh?” He tried on a smile that was more
of a grimace. She could only stare at him, numb.

“There’s
only one way to say this, and you’re going to find out anyway, so it should be
from me. Cathy is pregnant.”

“She’s
what? How can she be?” Stupid questions, she knew, but they came out without
thinking.

“I’m
sorry, Marci. I always tried to be honest with you about my relationship with
my wife.”

My
wife
.

“There’s
more...She knows about us. I mean, not you specifically, but she knows that I
was unfaithful.” 
Past tense
. “She knows that I have been having an
affair with another woman. Apparently, she has suspected something for a while.
But she followed me on Friday night –”

“Followed
you? To my apartment?”

“Yeah,
but she doesn’t know who you are. She’s agreed not to try to find out, and I’ve
agreed...”

“To
end it,” she finished for him.

“Yes.”

“She’s
pregnant,” Marci said, more to the floor in front of her than to Doug.

“Yeah.
Ten weeks. No one knows yet except family.”
Was that excitement she detected
in his voice?
He had always wanted children. She realized that soon, he
would be showing pictures of a sonogram around the office and half the women in
the building would be pestering him to know everything about the baby.
The
baby
. Another person was now in their little drama.

As
if reading her thoughts he went on, “So obviously this changes things for me. A
lot. Even if I was thinking about leaving Cathy –”

“Even
if? Even
if
?” Her anger came from nowhere and surprised even Marci. “I
think we both know damn well you were doing more than thinking.”

He
looked taken aback, but maintained the icy calm veneer. “All right, fine. Even
though
I was thinking about leaving her, I can’t do that with a child in the picture.
I was a child of divorce myself. I could never abandon my child, Marci.”

“Well,
who the hell asked you to?” she spit at him, standing and tossing aside the
stupid legal pad.

How
dare he take the high road with her?
As though she had lured him to her bed single-handedly and tried to pry him
away from his family? As though she would hear the news that Cathy was pregnant
and insist that he leave her anyway? Bad enough she was ignored for days and
then dumped across a desk under fluorescent lighting, but having to watch him
paint himself the hero in the process was disgusting.

“So
this is where you have been for days? This is why you haven’t called? You’ve
been out shopping for cribs and it just now occurred to you that you might need
to mention to me that it’s over?”

“It’s
not that simple,” he said.

“Oh,
really? Well, do explain the complexities to me. Or do you think I’m too stupid
to understand?” Her bitterness was unexpected, invigorating.

“No,
Marce.” With an exasperated sigh, Doug put his elbows on the desk and his face
in his hands. He stared at the pile of papers beneath him for a while and she
wondered momentarily whether he was actually reading something. She saw traces
of silver around his temples she had never noticed before. “No way out,” he
said, almost inaudibly.

When
he lifted his head, he was again composed. The next words sounded as though
he’d been rehearsing them. “I know you’re upset. You have every right to be
hurt and angry. You can even hate me if you want to. I deserve it. But we made
a mistake.
I
made a mistake. And as much as I care about you, I have to
do the right thing by my marriage and my family. You’re a good person and I
know in time you will understand that this is the only way.”

She
wanted to throw things at him.
Didn’t he understand that his composure hurt
her more than anything?
He’d had five days to come to terms with this; she
was learning everything now. It was unfair that he was asking her to rise to
the occasion and be the bigger person. She had always known the end of their
relationship was inevitable, and she feared it might not be pretty. She had
imagined tearful goodbyes in the car on a rainy night as they came to terms
with the idea that it couldn’t go on. She had even considered a raging battle
in which Cathy stormed in on them one evening and all hell broke loose.

But
never—in any of her morbid fantasies about the end—never did Doug extract
himself like this. To be mentored through the moment in this condescending way,
as though she could not grasp his moral obligations, as though they had not
been partners in everything until now, was beyond insulting.

He
had given her permission to hate him. And right now, she did.

Marci
stood up. She had to get out of there. She needed to run and scream and cry,
but she had nowhere to go and no one to cry to. The only person she gave a shit
about in this town had just dumped her on his way to cigars with the guys.

“Doug,”
she said, not sure what to say next, only that she wanted his attention. He
looked up with raised eyebrows and it hit her. “Fuck. You.”

She
spun on her heel and walked out, grateful that her purse was somehow on her
shoulder and not back at her darkened desk. If she sat right now, she might
never get up again. Doug had made no move to follow her, but she took the
stairs rather than wait for the elevator just in case. She was unsure whether
she was really trying to escape or hoping he would follow her, but either way
there was no going back.

As
she descended all fourteen flights of stairs, the missed opportunities of the
last six months came to her in waves, as though her unlived life was flashing
before her eyes. Nights out with girlfriends she had canceled last-minute when
Doug found himself free. Three blind dates from which she’d excused herself,
and a couple of nice guys she’d met on an internet dating site who never stood
a chance after the first half hour. She remembered leaving one date alone at
the table four times during dinner to text Doug from the bathroom. He must’ve
thought she had food poisoning or something. Jeremy’s frequent and kind offers
to take her to parties with his friends or catch a movie on a rainy afternoon.
And Jake...

All
of it wasted time. She was thirty years old and exactly nowhere. She had stayed
on at a temp job for far too long on the false hopes of breaking into the
business (
yeah, right
), and waiting for a future with a man who had
chosen his future more than a decade before. Only now did she realize that this
had been her secret hope—hidden even from herself—that somehow things would
work out for them. Despite all efforts to pin herself down to reality, she had
been carried away by the fantasy anyway.
What a sappy fucking fool I have
been
.

She
looked up and realized she’d gone down a level too far; her car was back up the
stairs on P1. The stairwell now held the humidity of the Austin evening and
smelled vaguely like urine. It occurred to her for the first time that she was
alone in an almost-deserted office building at night, paying not even a little
attention to her surroundings. What’s worse, if she were mugged or kidnapped or
killed, no one would know until she didn’t show up for work tomorrow morning.
Everyone who loved her was back in Atlanta. Everyone who had reached out to her
here in Austin had been kept at a distance and trained to respect her privacy.

When
she emerged into the parking deck, clutching her purse, she saw him. He was
walking to his car with his beat-up leather briefcase and phone cradled under
his chin. He had his back turned to her and was too far away for her to hear
him, but she could guess who was on the other end of the line. She backed into
the shadows and waited for the familiar black BMW to pass her, oblivious, on
its way out. She made her way to her car, put on the seat belt, locked the
doors, and cried with her head on the steering wheel.