The Marriage Pact (1) (16 page)

On the Road – June 2004

The
cell phone vibrated on the seat next to Marci.
Doug again
. She ignored
it and focused on the U-Haul in front of her, the back painted with a mural
designed to make it look like the door was actually half-open and someone’s
neatly stacked boxes and lamp were in danger of falling out onto US-79 any
moment. Marci knew that her belongings were not so neatly packed as the
painting, given that she’d had only one day to get everything into boxes before
Jake arrived with the truck. Still, the precarious-looking illustration made
her even more anxious than she was already feeling.

The
side of the truck was no better, depicting a meteor crashing into the earth
somewhere in Iowa and creating a vast crater with the explosion. Small print
provided some information about the significance of this—“Adventure Across
America!”—but she had not read it when she and Jake were loading the truck
early this morning.

She’d
spent the day before negotiating to end her lease with the apartment complex,
and packing furiously with her friend Wanda, who had gladly accepted pizza and
a listening ear as payment. Wanda was the biggest gossip Marci had ever known.
They’d worked together a few years ago on a temp assignment with adjoining
desks, and had become intimate friends by the sheer force of Wanda’s constant
stream of self-disclosure, narration of everything she knew about the office
where they were working, and, when the former two yielded nothing of interest,
her opinion about everything she’d read in that week’s
People
.

As
they had stowed Marci’s life haphazardly into boxes, Wanda had figured out
after an hour of probing that Marci had no intention of explaining either the
sudden move or her obvious tears. Giving up, Wanda had deluged her for the next
five hours with gossip from the large company where she was now working as a
receptionist. It apparently did not matter that Marci knew no one at the
company and could not keep the various names straight. Wanda still gave her an
exhaustive list of who was sleeping with whom, who was likely to get promoted,
and even who she suspected was stealing the coffee creamer.

Marci
did not listen, exactly, but she was grateful for a companion who could keep
herself entertained while taping boxes and wrapping glasses, and she was doubly
glad not to be alone. Wanda had stayed until nearly 10:00 p.m., leaving amid
many hugs and promises to stay in touch after Marci was in Atlanta. With her
sheets packed away and pictures off the walls, Marci had fallen on the couch
after the last box was sealed at 2:00 a.m. She slept with the TV on all night
for company.

Jake
had arrived at her door around 9:00 that morning, as promised. Apparently, he’d
taken the first flight in from Atlanta and a cab straight to the U-Haul place.
How he had organized everything so quickly the day before and how much all of
this was costing him, Marci had no clue. She couldn’t ask. They had loaded the
truck in near-silence, talking only enough for Jake to ask her questions about
the few items she had not packed: some were riding in her car with her and
others were going to Goodwill.

Now
it was nearly noon, and they had yet to stop for gas or food. The June morning
was especially cool and clear. They had chosen the back way to I-20, avoiding
the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and instead taking a greener, more peaceful route to
Shreveport. It was how she always drove home to Atlanta. She loved the East
Texas backcountry; the trees and hills and lakes were not the desert that most
people imagined when they thought of Texas landscapes. Today Jake was sharing
her path, navigating the awkward orange and white box in front of her, leading
her home.

As
she expected, her phone buzzed as they neared Shreveport, Jake this time, and
they agreed that it was time to gas up and eat, and that she would follow his
lead. He chose a clean looking truck stop off the second exit they encountered.
From somewhere he produced a lock for the U-Haul’s back gate—another detail
taken care of for her. She felt more gratitude for Jake than she could say.

They
ate a greasy lunch in a discolored pink Formica booth, surrounded by souvenirs
and supplies for truckers. The restaurant smelled like stale cigarettes and
fried chicken. Marci could only get through about half her burger before losing
her appetite. Jake did not ask questions, nor did he attempt to make small
talk. This was something she had always loved about him: he did not feel the
need to fill silence. Her phone buzzed once while they ate, and Jake looked at
it for a minute but said nothing. As soon as it was done ringing, she flipped
it open and turned it off.

They
gassed up the truck and looked at the map after lunch. Jake guessed they could
be home by 11:00 p.m. Georgia time if they only made one more quick stop around
Meridian, Mississippi. “That’s about halfway home,” he said, “and we’ll cross
the river about halfway there.”

Back
in the car, she put in her favorite Old 97’s CD, turning the volume up
impossibly loud. She sang along, almost yelling in self-pity, letting the tears
flow freely.

Valentine
the destroyer
Valentine you belong
in the stars
 where you are
Always rollin’ on
Cried, I’ve cried
Till I couldn’t carry on
It’s a lonely, lonely feeling
When your Valentine was wrong...

By
the time they neared the Mississippi a couple of hours later, she had listened
to the whole CD twice, and made a decision. She called Jake and told him she
needed a quick pit stop, but not to wait for her. “I’ll catch up to you before
Meridian,” she said, and he agreed reluctantly. She slowed until the U-Haul was
out of sight, leaving the horizon just minutes before the enormous span of
bridge that went over the river.

She
had to cross the river before exiting, and then spiral down to the frontage
road to head north on Highway 61. She worried briefly that she wouldn’t be able
to access the river quickly, and thought about scrapping the idea altogether to
catch up with Jake. But before she could find a good place to turn around, she
saw a sign for Riverfront Park on the left, pulled in and parked her little
Corolla.

The
necklace was in her glove box, where it had been since Doug made his
announcement a few nights before. Had it really been less than a week since
that horrible night in his office? It took a couple of minutes to cross the
grassy area and make her way down to the river. As she got closer, the earth
became squishy beneath her sandals and her feet stuck in the mud when she
stepped. Two elderly black men in wading boots with fishing poles watched her
with momentary concern as she sucked and squished her way down.

They
seemed to be watching to make sure she didn’t plan to get
in
the river,
and when she stopped about six feet from the water’s edge, they went back to
watching their bobs. Even though it was often referred to as a geographic
dividing line for the country, and she’d read books about how big the Mighty
Mississippi was, Marci was still amazed by its sheer enormity in person. She
could easily imagine being swept away by the current. Looking left, she
wondered morbidly how often people jumped from the I-20 bridge.

She
fished the necklace out of her pocket and studied it. This moment called for
dramatic finality, some sort of catharsis. Poetry, even. She wished she could
remember a beautiful Irish funeral dirge from her British literature class, or
an appropriate Bible verse. Even the lyrics from an 80s power ballad would do.
Nothing came to her. In the end she settled on, “So long, fuckwad,” and
launched the necklace as far into the river as she could manage.

It
made a not-very-satisfying plunk as it hit the water, barely audible above the
sound of the river and the cars speeding along the interstate downstream.
Within seconds of it hitting the water, she could no longer see it, and had no
idea whether it had sunk to the bottom or floated toward the Louisiana delta. As
she squished back up the bank, she imagined that some poor little girl
downstream would find the necklace playing by the riverbank one day and Marci’s
heartache would be someone else’s greatest treasure.

It
turned out that climbing back up the bank was not as easy as squishing down to
the water. Her feet sank deeper under the effort of propelling her body weight
uphill.
Had it been this steep on the way down?
She groped for clumps of
grass to pull herself up as her left sandal was suctioned completely off her
foot by the mud. As she turned to reclaim it with her toes, she slipped.

There
are times in a girl’s life when falling face-first into the mud might be fun. A
soggy touch football game with friends. Making mud pies with the kids. Maybe
even a wild day at the spa. But halfway through a thousand-mile trip, with
everything she owned packed away in boxes?

Marci
pushed herself up to her knees and crawled the rest of the way up the bank to
more solid ground. She stood awkwardly and waved off the two fishermen, who had
turned toward her in stances of reluctant concern. Brownish-red mud stuck to
her palms and knees, and a large smear of it coated one side of her shorts and
t-shirt. Her feet were more or less covered, and she was nearly an inch taller
where it caked to the bottom of her sandals.

She
attempted a dignified smile at a picnicking family as she skated over the
grassy bank, wiping her feet as best she could as she went. The little park had
a water fountain with a low spigot for dogs’ bowls, which she used to wash her
feet and now-ruined sandals. When she got to the car, she realized that
throwing her suitcase of clothes in the back of the U-Haul had been a
miscalculation. She had no spare clothes in the Corolla.

Fortunately,
she had wrapped some fragile items in beach towels to pack them. Marci
unwrapped a tacky but beloved garage sale lamp, which featured a porcelain
mermaid she lovingly referred to as Zelda, and used the towel to dry her feet
and wipe most of the solid mud off her skin and clothes. She unwrapped another
towel from her framed college diploma and laid it across the driver’s seat. She
set the diploma and the lamp on the floorboard. “Sorry, Zelda,” she said, and
set out to catch up to Jake and the U-Haul.

It
took only twenty minutes to regain her position behind Jake, who had obviously
slowed a bit waiting for her, despite her instructions to the contrary. She
flashed her lights as she approached the U-Haul from behind, and Jake sped up
again to their previous pace. She dreaded the next time they would stop, when
she would have to explain her mud-covered state.

In
the meantime, the red light on her phone blinked incessantly at her, so she
listened to the first two seconds of several voicemails from Doug, deleting
them as she went. They all started the same way: “Hey, Marce –” and then the
sound of her finger on the delete button. In her fervor, she nearly erased a
message from her mom, who had apparently called while the phone was off.

Knowing
that Elaine was likely pacing around the kitchen with the phone in her hand, as
was her habit any time either of her daughters was on the road, Marci returned
the call immediately. She tried to sound as upbeat as possible as she updated
her mother on where they were and how far they had left.

“Are
you sure you don’t want to come here, honey?” her mom asked for the thirtieth
time in the last two days. “Won’t you be putting poor Suzanne out?”

“No,
Mom. Thanks, but I think it’s better if I stay with her for now.” Suzanne knew
most of what had happened with Doug and was already preparing for when Marci
arrived that evening. She had even taken the day off the next day so they could
do whatever Marci needed. There was no way she could begin to tell her mother
what happened, and no way she could be around her in this weepy emotional state
without arousing suspicion. Suzanne’s was the safest place by far.

“Well,
don’t you be a bother,” her mother chided, as though Marci were eight years old
and going next door to visit Mrs. Williamson, who had an old-fashioned
typewriter she always let Marci play with, not to mention an endless bowl of
Andes mints on her coffee table.

“Don’t
worry; if Suzanne gets tired of me, I’m sure she’ll call you to come pick me up.”

Her
mother pretended not to hear this. “How’s Jake?”

Even
though Marci had been with Jake all day, she realized she had no idea how he
was doing. They’d barely talked, and it had all been about getting Marci home.
“He’s fine,” she said shortly, hoping to avoid follow-up questions.

“Well,
it sure is nice of him to go to all this trouble to help you out
.” As though
Marci didn’t know this already
. “You’re lucky to have such a good friend in
your life. Your father and I were just saying how wonderful it is that you two
have managed to stay in touch all these years.”

“It
is,” Marci agreed.

“We
were also wondering how you can be just friends with such a nice guy. Jake’s
cute, don’t you think, honey?” 
Oh, God. Not this. Not now.

Before
Marci could answer, however, she thought she heard her father’s muffled voice
in the background. “Hold on, honey. What, Arthur?” Her mother sighed after a
slight pause. “Daddy says we shouldn’t be talking to you while you’re driving.
It’s dangerous. Keep your hands at ten and two, sweetheart! Call us when you
get to Suzanne’s, okay? No matter how late!”