The Marriage Pact (1) (12 page)

She
could not go home, not now, so she went to the Speakeasy instead. She paid the
exorbitant fee to park on Fourth Street and climbed the long narrow stairs to
the rooftop portion of the bar. It was nearly deserted, but the bartender was
already setting up for a long, fair evening outside. In a few hours, Austin’s
young professionals would pay $10 each to crowd this patio and look out over
the city and the river to the south.

For
now, she sat alone in the glaring sunlight with a dirty vodka martini and
laughed sourly at her life. How had she gotten here? Painfully, she looked back
at all the moments when she could have turned around, saved herself some of
this pain and heartache. Each time the opportunity had arisen, she had plowed
forward to her own doom.

Like
the first kiss. She remembered it with crystal clear precision: they were
standing behind his desk, going through piles of paper together late one
evening while he tried to reorganize his files to make room for a new credenza
with less filing space.
Brought together by furniture
, she thought
bitterly, and pointed at her glass to signal the Speakeasy bartender for
another martini.

Her
memory brought up the smell of vinegar, the odor lingering in Doug’s office
from the sub sandwiches he ordered for the two of them and Elena while they
worked. Elena had gone home over an hour before, but being a temp who had no
life and craved overtime, Marci had agreed to stay with him until everything
was done.

While
they worked, she and Doug talked about books, and Southern culture versus Texas
culture. They had both noticed that everyone north of the Mason-Dixon seemed to
lump Texas in with the rest of the South, or even the Southwest, but the
reality was that—culturally, ethnically, artistically, and even
geographically—Texas really was a world of its own. He explained his impression
of Georgia as a place full of barefoot rednecks with Confederate flags, or
aging debutants living in mossy mansions. She laughed at both stereotypes, and
told him anytime he wanted to see the
real
South, she’d be happy to give
him a personal tour. It wasn’t like her to be so flirty—that was more like
Suzanne—but there was something about him.

In
the instant he had leaned toward her over a pile of papers, she had known. In
slow motion, his face gravitated tentatively toward hers, and a little voice
had warned her that this was wrong. She knew in that moment she was becoming
someone she had never wanted to be, the girl everyone was rooting against in
all the movies and soap operas. Ironically, it was the fear in his eyes, the
battle she could see in his face, which drew her inextricably closer. She had
leaned into his kiss, closing the door on resistance.

That
stupid kiss would’ve been the time to turn around, she mused, playing with the
speared olives in her drink. Just pull back, appear shocked, let him apologize,
and walk out of the office. But there had been other moments, too: times when
he had neglected her for days and she had almost gathered the resolve she
needed to end it. One rainy night in his car she
had
ended it, but found
him standing on her porch an hour later, soaked to the skin and pacing back and
forth, his curls matted down over his forehead pathetically.

If
I had been a little stronger, any of those moments, if I could have listened to
my own judgment, I would not be here now. My suffering could have been my
choice, and perhaps even healing now, instead of this.

She
thought about Frank Dodgen and the job offer: everything she’d been hoping for,
the entire reason she had been wasting away in that particular cubicle for the
past nine months. Yet, it tasted bitter to her now. Why had the job suddenly
appeared
now
, when Doug knew how long she’d wanted it? It occurred to
her that perhaps he would have been able to get this job for her months ago,
but of course it was safer for him when she was on the other side of the office
and he could pretend he thought her name was Megan. All this time, reading her
writing, giving her praise and encouragement while they holed up alone in her
little apartment.

Her
phone vibrated on the table. Doug’s cell. Calling, perhaps, to announce
gleefully that he was having twins? Or that her new job would be directly
underneath him, and that they could work side by side every day, she the doting
young protégé and he the patient teacher? Perhaps the next offer would include
overtime pay for serving as a babysitter for Doug and Cathy.

She
took another swig of the drink and signaled the bartender, whose name she had
overheard as Randy. He glanced at the clock, hesitating for a split second
before mixing her another drink. She remembered Jake tending bar for a year
after college and telling stories about the precarious situations when someone
was clearly taking in too much too fast, but of course not wanting to put a big
tip in jeopardy by turning down a customer. When he brought her the drink Randy
said, “Can I get you something to eat?”

“Yeah.
I’ll have two extra olives.”

A
concerned look crossed his face but he said nothing else. Clearly, Randy was
choosing his battles. Marci had already resolved to take a cab home, and at
this moment she wanted to think as little as possible.

In
addition to her intense pain, what she wanted most to avoid was the choice in
front of her, if you could call it that. Deep down she knew that the martinis
would only take her so far, and she would have to decide what to do on Monday.
Take the job and do her best to ignore the overwhelming heartache? Continue her
temp assignment for another week, month, year? Start over at another
assignment, trying to explain to Stella that she had to leave because they
offered her a promotion? None of it seemed acceptable.

Ten
weeks, ten weeks, ten weeks
.
It kept running through her mind and she imagined with horror a sonogram pinned
to the bulletin board in Doug’s office. She remembered when Beth had her first
child a few years back that Beth’s name was always printed at the top left
corner of the squiggly black and white image. Marci had always thought this was
strange because the picture was of the baby, not Beth. She could not keep out
the image that flashed into her head: a blurry little ghost on black filmy
paper and the words “Cathy Stanton” in neat little white letters.

How
big were babies at ten weeks? She knew Beth had told her at each stage how big
the baby was, but she could remember none of it. She did remember that ten
weeks wasn’t really ten weeks, somehow, that pregnancy age was weird. Was it more
or less?

Randy
dropped off a basket of bread. “It’s on the house.”

“Thanks,”
she said. “Do you know what the deal is with pregnancy and weeks?”

“What?”

“You
know, it’s so many weeks, but that’s not really how many weeks. It’s some kind
of thing...” She was surprised at how incoherent she sounded to herself. She
didn’t
feel
that drunk.

“Oh,
you mean the age of the baby versus the gestation age,” Randy said,
understanding her somehow. Marci looked closely at him for the first time. “I’m
a medical student,” he explained.

“They
measure the weeks from the woman’s last menstrual period, but the baby itself
is a couple of weeks younger than that. You know, because of the time between
the period and ovulation.”

Marci
nodded as though she understood this completely. He continued, maybe happy to
be discussing something other than sports or failed relationships. “So if
you’re twelve weeks along —”

He
stopped, suddenly pale and looked at her empty glass. “You’re
not
, are you?”

“Not
me. My...a friend.”

“Oh.
So, anyway, if your friend is twelve weeks pregnant, the baby is actually ten
weeks old, so she actually conceived ten weeks ago, not twelve.” He waited a
minute to see whether she were going to ask him something else and when she
didn’t, went back to the bar.

So
if twelve weeks was ten weeks, then ten weeks was eight weeks...

Her
heart lurched. She pulled out her cell phone, ignoring the voicemail icon, and
brought up the tiny calendar, unable to stop from counting backward. Eight
weeks ago would have been just after her birthday. Doug had given her the
necklace, told her he loved her, and sometime in the next few days, he had
gotten his wife pregnant. Her stomach churned ominously. She reached for the
bread, but it felt dry and chewy in her mouth. She could not swallow.

In
seconds, she was up and stumbling toward the dark entry to the narrow
stairwell, grasping the railing to avoid falling. A group of young guys were
making their way up to the roof, talking animatedly. At first, they did not
step aside for her and for a split second she thought she would fall into them
and they would all go careening down the stairs together. But the second in
line noticed her face and tugged frantically on the sleeve of the friend in front
of him. “Move, move,
move
!”

They
all plastered themselves against the wall to make way for her, looking
horrified, and she could not stop to express gratitude. The pallid old
restrooms were almost halfway down the long stairwell. Had they been even three
steps farther down, she would not have made it. She had no time to lock the
stall door or even wipe down the toilet seat before she fell to her knees,
wretched and vomited clear liquid, which burned her throat and elicited
sympathetic whispers from a couple of waitresses primping in front of the
mirror. “Been there, honey,” one said.

Never
in her life had Marci felt so alone. When the heaving stopped, she went to the
sink and splashed water on her face, pulled herself back up the stairs, and
asked Randy numbly for a Coke to wash the bile taste out of her mouth.

“Closing
out?” he asked. She nodded.

“I’ll
call you a cab.” It was not an offer, and it did not occur to Marci to object.
She took the plastic cup full of soda and walked to the opposite side of the
patio, where twilight painted the busy little city in sort of a soft trance.
She floated above herself and downtown Austin as she looked over the railing at
the traffic below.

As
she stared down at people coming and going from work to home and back out to
the clubs and restaurants downtown, her body began to lean forward. Somewhere
in the back of her brain floated a simple but dangerous message.
It would be
so easy. This could all be over.

A
car horn blew and she snapped back to herself. Her heart pounded. She hurried
back to the bar, signed the credit card slip and followed a hostess, whom Randy
had apparently recruited, downstairs to where the cab waited for her.

It
took forever for the cab to weave its way off Fourth Street, but once it did
she seemed to arrive at her apartment stairs just seconds later. She staggered
up, stood mindlessly in the kitchen for a few minutes, deciding whether to eat
something, and then just fell into bed without even removing her shoes.

Marci
awoke at 1:15, sweating and stiff from sleeping in her work clothes. When she
sat up, her head swam dangerously and the room spun around her. She used her
hand to steady herself against the mattress. The phone was not difficult to
find, lying in the middle of her bedroom floor, where she had apparently thrown
it as she fell into bed. It told her there were now three voicemail messages,
but she did not check them. None was from the person she had to call now.

It
was 2:15 in Georgia, she realized as it rang. Too late to hang up now.

“Hello?”
Jake’s voice was rough and sleepy.

“Hey,”
she whispered, almost inaudibly. “It’s Marci.”

“Hey,
sweetheart...You okay? It’s late.”

“I
know, I’m sorry. Jake, I have to get out of here. I...” She teetered on the
edge of it and then courage failed her. “I lost my job,” she finished feebly.
Her cowardice was ridiculous. Jake was one of her closest friends. She didn’t
owe Doug anything anymore, least of all discretion.

“What?
Marce, you’re not making sense. Have you been drinking? Are you safe?”

“I’m
fine,” she said, failing to convince even herself. From nowhere, sobs engulfed
her throat and she could barely speak. When she managed to get it out, it was
barely a whisper. “I just—I just need to come home.”

Thirty
seconds of silence stretched out; she cried helplessly and half-wondered
whether Jake had hung up, or perhaps decided this was too absurd to be reality
and fallen back asleep. But when he did speak again his voice was controlled
and coherent. “Can you pack tomorrow? Do you have someone to help you?”

She
nodded, and then realizing this was a phone call, squeaked, “Yes. I’ll ask
someone.”

“Okay,”
said the voice that had reassured and supported her for more than a decade.
“I’ll rent the truck and see you Sunday morning.”

Athens,
Georgia – June 1994

The
summer before her junior year of college, Marci sat at an iron patio table
outside Blue Sky Coffee on College Avenue, smoking a cigarette and pretending
to read
Anna Karenina
. This charade was hardly necessary, both because
she had read the book three times in the past year, and because anyone who
might care what she was reading had either gone home until September or was at
the beach, soaking up the last days of a break before the summer quarter
started.

These
weeks were a quiet time in Athens, when the population of the city shrank by
two-thirds and the only residents remaining were the townies, university
support staff, and graduate students too busy, or too poor, to leave. For the
last two weeks Marci had been living alone in a four-bedroom apartment off
Riverbend Parkway, one of only two people occupying the entire building until
Sunday, when a few more of the residents would grudgingly return to take up
their summer studies.

Her
solitude for the last two weeks had been primarily self-inflicted. She had, of
course, the option of going home to her parents’ between quarters, or taking
the summer off entirely before her junior year, but something pulled her to
stay. Theoretically, she was prepping for an intense summer of three full
classes, or at least this was the reason she gave her dad to explain that she
was not making the hour-long drive to their suburban Atlanta home during the
break.

But
the reality was harder to explain: having something to do with the relaxed,
chatty demeanor of normally surly downtown vendors, and the absolute quiet in
the grey dusk of the oversized apartment. This was a college town’s twilight
time, and Marci felt more at home here now than she did during the crowded
football Saturdays or the commotion of the semester.

She
couldn’t deny that the wedding invitation tucked into the back flap of her book
had something to do with her avoidance of home, too. Wedding chatter and forced
squeals of excitement were not high on Marci’s priority list just now.

She
pulled out the invitation and read it again:

Mr. and Mrs. James
Lionel Walker

request the honor of
your presence

as they celebrate the
marriage of their daughter,

Elizabeth Lynn

to

William Raymond
Sewell, Jr.

Saturday, August 25
^th
,
1994

Four o’clock in the
afternoon

First Baptist Church,
Marietta.

Reception to follow.

Leave it to Beth to
make sure her wedding invitations were in the mail two and a half months early.
Now mid-June, Marci had done nothing about getting the bridesmaid dress Beth
had instructed her to buy. She supposed that now the invitations were in the
mail, there was probably no getting out of purchasing and wearing the forest
green taffeta explosion Beth had so proudly shown her in the bridal magazine
over spring break.

It
was all so surreal, this idea of the wedding, even though it was far from a
surprise. Beth and Ray had been dating since their sophomore year in high
school, and pretty much “engaged-to-be-engaged” since the senior prom.

When
Suzanne and Marci had begun preparations to move to Athens for college, Beth
had opted to stay home and attend the local community college so she could be
with Ray while he worked at his dad’s auto repair shop. When Ray had officially
proposed by tying an engagement ring to an ornament shaped like a wrench last
December, absolutely no one was surprised, and both families seemed to be
celebrating the union without reservation.

“Huge
mistake,” Marci said, and tossed the invitation aside.

Only
Suzanne knew that Marci felt this way, and privately, they talked about how odd
it was to be committing the rest of your life to someone before you were
legally old enough to drink. Suzanne, however, always had a knack for taking a
live and let live approach to friendship, while Marci felt more emotional about
the whole thing.

Ever
since the three of them had met in the sixth-grade cafeteria nearly a decade
before, Marci had admired Beth’s combination of intelligence and practicality.
She was the most centered and confident person Marci had ever met; she seemed
removed somehow from all the awkwardness and struggles with identity that came
with puberty. Marci had imagined Beth could do anything. She was gifted in math
and science, and teachers always mentioned careers like astronaut, engineer,
chemist, and doctor when Beth was around.

And
then came Ray. He and Beth were partners in their sophomore biology lab,
through which she naturally carried him. He was sweet and handsome and
well-liked. He held the door for Beth whenever they walked together, no matter
how crowded the hallway. When he brought her a cluster of daisies and a
romantic mix tape after passing the biology final, Marci and Suzanne (and
nearly every other fifteen-year-old girl within earshot) were overcome with
jealousy. The two had been inseparable ever since.

Marci
lit another cigarette and closed the book on the invitation. She sat back in
the chair and watched the bikes and cars go back and forth in front of her. She
knew she should be happy for Beth, but she couldn’t deny the thought that maybe
someone with the potential to be an astronaut-engineer-chemist-doctor was
wasting herself going to community college and becoming a mechanic’s wife.

She
had sunken into a listless reverie, warmed by the sun and dangling the
cigarette over the side of the chair, when someone sat abruptly in the chair
across from hers. She looked up, shading her eyes. “Don’t let me wake you,”
Jake said, propping his feet on the third chair at their table, pulling out a
newspaper.

“Hey,
stranger,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until next week.”

“Came
back early for Frisbee practice,” he said.

 “I
thought the season was over?” She remembered going to a particularly raucous
party at the team captain’s house after the last game, where there had been a
keg of beer in every room, and she, Rebecca, and Suzanne been hit on by at
least five guys apiece over the course of the evening.

“Yeah,
but there are enough of us around this summer we decided to just play
informally. We’re going to Auburn in a few weeks to scrimmage with those guys,
so we wanted to at least get a couple of practices in first.”

She
nodded and Jake picked up the paper, so she did the same with
Anna Karenina
.
They read for a while in companionable silence, until he tossed the paper aside
and downed the last of his iced coffee. He looked at her matter-of-factly. “Did
you take the bus?” She had. “You want to come to practice with me? I can drop
you at home after.”

Marci
started to refuse, having promised herself she would get in a long walk this
afternoon to counteract the cigarettes. The idea of returning to solitude,
however, after just a few minutes of human contact in two weeks was not
appealing. “Sure. What the hell?” She stood and tried to pull her shorts over
the waffle pattern the iron chair had created on the back of her thighs.

Jake
was in his Jeep, a rickety old navy blue contraption that seemed barely street
legal to Marci, but that he loved and refused to give up despite his parents’
frequent offers to buy him the new car of his choice. They drove through campus
and out to the intramural fields at breakneck speed. Marci was slightly afraid
she would be tossed from the passenger seat at any moment, but also invigorated
by the wind whipping through her hair and the perfect sunny day around them.

She
sat on a little hill that rose next to the practice field where Jake and his
team were tossing the Frisbee at incredible speeds and racing to outdo one
another. For the first half hour, she kept up the pretense of reading her book,
but in reality she found it nearly impossible to do anything but watch what was
happening on the field. In part, this was a self-preservation measure, because
she did have to duck more than once to avoid decapitation by spinning plastic.

There
were also the minor dramas playing out in front of her that drew her attention.
Two of the guys—who everyone called “Nads” and “Truck”— took every possible
opportunity to argue about the rules of the game, throwing and catching
techniques, strategy, and anything else they could think of. Both seemed to
play leadership roles on the team and neither seemed satisfied with anything
the other said or did.

Meanwhile,
a few of the guys, like Jake, used the skirmishes as opportunities to make
jokes and small talk at the opposite end of the field. Some seemed aware of
Marci’s presence. She couldn’t help but notice that when the Frisbee came to
the area of the field closest to her, there was a good deal more grunting,
jumping, and tumbling to reach it. And lots of additional loud cussing when
someone missed it.

Once
she saw a couple of guys hanging around Jake at the far end of the field.
Though she could not hear what was said, she thought they might be looking at
her as they exchanged some sort of commentary and laughter. She felt
self-conscious, and flashed back to being teased for her weight on the
elementary school playground. She straightened her legs to hide her bare
thighs, blushing furiously. But as they dispersed to follow the action
downfield, Jake gave her a wave and goofy grin that set her mind at ease.

He
had unpretentious good looks—kind of a rough-hewn boy next door, his hair
streaked with blonde from a week at the beach with his family and a whole
spring of driving the Jeep every sunny day. This was not the first time she had
noticed how cute he was, of course. That was something you noticed about Jake
the moment you met him. But there was something about the way his crisp t-shirt
clung to him as he ran, his tanned skin in the late afternoon sun. A Frisbee
skittered to a stop just inches from her. Marci commanded herself to snap out
of it before she got hit in the head.

#

After
practice, a few guys wandered off to their cars, but most collected in a loose
huddle near the metal bench littered with gym bags and water bottles. Some of
them changed out of sweaty shirts and shorts right there, without regard to
Marci’s presence nearby, while others relived the practice with excited hand
gestures and playful punches aimed at one another. She noticed that Nads and
Truck stood at opposite ends of the group.

Jake
approached her, smiling. “Exciting stuff, huh?”

“Not
bad, actually,” she said honestly. “I’m glad I came.”

“Good,”
he said. “So some of the guys are going for pizza and beer, just down the road.
No pressure or anything, but you’re more than welcome to join us.”

“Oh,
I don’t know.” She was wearing the baggy shorts with the hole in the butt and
paint splatters on the legs, and a tank top that she feared exposed every inch
of arm fat.

“Don’t
let him lie to you,” said Truck, approaching them and slapping Jake on the
back. “There’s all kinds of pressure. We need a woman to keep us under control.
You’d be saving us from ourselves. You have to come.”

Jake
raised an eyebrow in her direction. “Well?”

“Okay,
fine,” she said. “But you have to take me home so I can change.”

“Deal,”
said Jake.

He
waited patiently in the shared living room while she changed, obsessing over
the right combination of cute and flattering, but without looking as if she was
trying too hard. She settled on a denim skirt and scoop-neck t-shirt with
athletic sandals. Small necklace, no earrings.

“Why
does your apartment smell so nice?” Jake asked as she emerged.

Marci
laughed. “Well, maybe because there are four girls living together and we have
actually
cleaned
it since our lease started, or maybe because two of
those girls are really into that kind of crap.” She pointed at a hideous
porcelain dish right behind him that was four little naked cherubs dancing
around a bowl of apple-scented potpourri. Their roommate Noelle had initially
tried to put angels and ballerinas in every corner of the apartment until the
other three insisted that she confine most of it to her own bedroom. The dancing
potpourri dish had been one of their collective concessions to her taste.

“Ugh,”
Jake said reflexively. “I mean, unless you like it, in which case...no, I’m
sorry. It’s just ugh.”

“You
can say that again,” she agreed. “Ready?”

The
Ultimate Frisbee guys had already made it halfway through their first pitchers
when Jake and Marci arrived. They were seated at a long, sticky picnic table on
the patio, watching baseball on the big screen TVs and arguing loudly about
something.

Truck
and Nads (who Marci later learned were actually Travis and Aaron) were at the
other end of the table from them, arm wrestling. Obscenities flew around the
table in favor of one competitor or the other, and grew louder as Travis
twisted Aaron’s arm down to the table.

“Fucking
cheater!” Aaron cried, jumping from the table in outrage.