The Marriage Pact (1) (2 page)

“I
overheard you mention it on the phone yesterday. Sorry if that was
eavesdropping. I’m not a creep, I promise.” His tone was eager and solicitous,
as always. Marci opened the box and found a rich-looking chocolate layer cake
with some sort of raspberry sauce drizzled over the top. “I know how much you
love chocolate,” he said proudly.

Jeremy
reminded Marci of a golden retriever who had just dropped a treasured chew toy
at her feet and wanted a pat on the head. She thanked him for the cake and gave
him a quick hug. She really was grateful, because Victoria had just come back
to the office with the rest of the team, and Marci’s stomach growled
menacingly.

The
afternoon passed at a snail’s pace. Marci didn’t know at any point whether Doug
was back in the office or still out at Motorola. Sometimes she helped with
filing or other tasks that brought her to the production side of the office, which
she always enjoyed. Not only did those days put her in a position to interact
with Doug, but that side of the office had a wall of windows with a spectacular
view of Town Lake.

But
more than that, it brought her into the midst of the writers and designers, who
did the work she was desperate to do herself. Nine months earlier,
that
had been her initial incentive for taking this assignment; the staffing agency
had insisted it would be a great way to get her foot in the door as a
copywriter. She had jumped at the chance, even though this job paid two dollars
less per hour than any other temp job. Marci knew that the more often she could
show her face on the production side, the more likely they would be to think of
her for entry-level opportunities.

But
no such luck today. None of the other departments had requested her help, so
she plodded along entering invoices into the accounts receivable database. Her
mind drifted to Doug frequently, and her excitement that he would be free
tonight. She wondered what was pulling Cathy away.

Since
the unexpected start of their relationship five months earlier, Marci had tried
hard to block thoughts of Cathy from her mind. Primarily because they made her
feel like a horrible person, somewhere beneath pond scum and dog feces. But
lately a kind of morbid curiosity had begun to overtake her when she and Doug
were together. Perhaps it was a self-preservation instinct, but she couldn’t
help but question whether Cathy really believed the explanations for Doug’s
frequent absences and whether his excuses were really as believable as he
seemed to think. Also, she had met Cathy now, and that had certainly made a
difference.

About
six or seven weeks before, Marci had been asked to fill in for the flu-ridden
secretary to two of the account managers. This put her at one of the fancy
wooden cubicles in the more public part of the office, and just a few offices
away from Doug and the rest of the vice presidents. She liked working for Elena
and Tracy, the account managers, and actually enjoyed spending time interacting
with customers and taking messages. And it was nice to be able to see the
office running, with people back and forth all the time, discussing creative
choices and arguing about visual impact.

When
Cathy had initially walked in, Marci had not recognized her. Pictures from
their wedding fifteen years ago were on Doug’s desk, and a couple of other
occasions early in their life together, but the few times Marci had been in his
office she had resisted the urge to study those pictures. Cathy had also
evolved, apparently, from her natural nutmeg-colored, frizzy hair to a
slick-straight light brown with blonde highlights. Marci supposed the more
polished look was a perk of being married to one of the most successful
advertising executives in Austin.

She
had walked into the office around midday, laden with bags and packages, in
fashionable skin-tight jeans tucked into knee-length boots and a long thin
sweater. She had a perfect body, perfect hair, and a lovely tan face accented
with subtle pearl earrings. On seeing her, Tracy had nearly run from behind
Marci to help with the packages. “Hi, Cathy, what a nice surprise! Doug didn’t
tell us you were coming by today.”

At
the name, Marci had frozen in the act of pushing back her chair to offer to
help with the packages. Fortunately no one seemed to notice her at all, much
less to expect her assistance. Tracy had escorted Cathy halfway to Doug’s
office before Marci could get to her shocked feet. “Oh, he didn’t know,
sweetie,” she heard Cathy saying to Tracy casually. “I was down at the League
and needed a place to stash some of these auction items for the Valentine’s
Gala. We just don’t have any more room in our garage.”

Marci
cringed at the mention of “our garage” and immediately pictured Doug in faded
jeans and a sweatshirt, working on an old car surrounded by boxes and,
apparently, decorations and auction items for the Junior League of Austin’s
annual gala. Her stomach churned and she felt light-headed.

Her
heart ached for the domestic scene Cathy’s offhand statement had called to
mind: the simple moments she could never have with Doug. Saturdays tinkering in
the garage, reading the paper together on Sunday morning over coffee. To
Marci’s utter surprise, her eyes began to sting with tears and she hurried from
her desk toward the restroom, pretending not to hear Elena calling behind her.

Once
she had composed herself and returned to her desk, Cathy was gone. Elena and
Tracy, however, were talking in undertones in Tracy’s office. Marci mindlessly
typed a memo while she strained to listen.

“I
don’t know why everyone says she’s such a
bitch,
” Tracy was saying, with
the final word whispered so softly Marci could only assume that was the word
used. ”I think she’s nice.”

“Well,
she can be,” Elena said. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “She’s
just the typical Junior League, trophy-wife type.”

“What
do you mean? I have friends in the Junior League and they actually do a lot of
good charity work.” Tracy sounded defensive. Tracy was the youngest account
manager, and Marci knew from Doug that she sort of idolized him professionally.
Clearly, she felt similar admiration for Cathy. Elena, on the other hand, had
been around for a while.

“Yeah,
I know. I probably shouldn’t say anything,” Elena conceded. A brief silence
ensued and for a second Marci thought the conversation was over. But then Elena
continued, softly, “I’ve just always had the impression that she was kind
of...well, kind of hard on Doug. Like when they started the company after
college, Victoria told me she was always pressuring Doug to quit and go work
for her dad in Beaumont instead. Then when the company started getting
successful, she suddenly changed her tune and started broadcasting to everyone
who would listen that her husband was Doug Stanton. And she made him buy this
huge expensive house off Thirty-fifth even though he really wanted to keep his
mom’s ranch...”

This
last part Marci knew to be at least somewhat true, because Doug had mentioned
it. Elena’s voice got even lower then, and despite straining hard to hear,
Marci could only make out the tail end “...Doug really wants kids. He’d be a
great dad.”

“I’m
just saying,” Tracy was talking now, “you can’t tell what a marriage is really
like from the outside, and she has always seemed like a nice person to me.”

“Yes,
that’s true,” Elena replied with a sigh. “You never know.”

But
it was clear to Marci, maybe because it was what she wanted to hear, Elena was
only conceding the point out of fear. Gossip about one of the vice presidents
and his wife might come back to haunt her. Elena had been at the company for
nearly eight years—just more than half the time it had been in existence—and
was in line for a promotion. She was too smart to jeopardize that by
badmouthing a powerful woman like Cathy Stanton. The conversation ended there,
and Marci had never mentioned any of it to Doug, not even that she had been in
the office when Cathy came by.

Since
that day, her musings about Cathy and Doug and their marriage had increased
tenfold. In their stolen moments alone together, she found herself asking more
and more often about Doug’s life and marriage, trying to understand his
feelings and, maybe, trying to venerate her own behavior. It was as though she
were hoping to hear something terrible enough about Cathy that it would somehow
justify what she and Doug were doing. Deep down, though, she feared nothing
could ever make it feel right. She would never have the garage and the old car
and weekend mornings. Because they weren’t rightfully hers.

When
she caught herself amid these painful realizations, she felt more alone than
ever. If there had been anyone she could talk to about it, she would’ve told
them that having an illicit affair was a full-time job: organizing time to be
together, planning each moment as though it were a spy mission—only to have it
yanked away at the last minute by some unforeseen commitment or change of
plans.

She
always felt on guard, even in the privacy of her tiny apartment—obsessing about
whether Doug’s car was parked far enough away, his alibi watertight,
contingency stories ready if someone discovered he was not where he said he
would be. Marci was often disguised as golf with clients or buddies on the
weekends or going out to watch whatever sport was in season.

Once,
Cathy had called his bluff by inviting herself along to watch a UT basketball
game at a local bar. As a result, Marci not only had to spend the evening at
home alone and waste a perfectly good pair of steaks, she had also had to
endure the ridiculous humiliation of Doug calling her every few minutes,
pretending to be annoyed and yelling at his friend who had not shown up at the
bar as planned. From then on, he seldom used that excuse and began stopping by
for an hour or two after work once a week or picking her up a few blocks from
the office at lunchtime.

Marci
also had to create excuses for dodging her own friends. In the past few months,
she had pretended to be taking a pottery class, volunteering at a soup kitchen,
going to church (she couldn’t imagine what special place in Hell awaited her
for that one), and once, to avoid a blind date, stricken with walking
pneumonia.

In
the long lonely stretches away from Doug, all this sounded perfectly absurd to
her. She knew, for instance, what Suzanne or her mom would say if they knew. It
was not just that she was helping violate the sanctity of marriage (Mom), but
that she was allowing herself to be exploited, and putting her life on hold for
a man who could not—
would
not
—do the same for her (Suzanne).

In
her mind, she had ended it a thousand times. She would spend hours rehearsing
three versions of the parting speech:

Rational
:

 “Doug,
I can’t do this anymore. Neither of us intended this to happen, but it has to
stop. I love you [
should she say that?
], but I can’t be responsible for
breaking up a marriage, however unhappy it might be. I deserve better than
this. I need someone free to make a life with me, and you are not. I know in my
heart that part of you still loves Cathy, and I think you should return to her
and really invest in your marriage.”

Magnanimous
and melodramatic
:

“Listen,
Doug. This has been wonderful; it really has. But it’s wrong and it’s been
wrong from the start. It’s tearing me apart. I am not an adulteress; I deserve
to be more than ‘the other woman.’ I can’t live with myself for another day
this way, and I can’t let you do it, either. Go back to your wife, your home,
the life that you chose all those years ago. I will treasure our time together
and you have my word that I will never tell anyone about us.”

Jealous
and generally pissed off
:

“Doug,
your little weekend getaway with your wife gave me time to get clarity and
realize that I am better than this situation, and better than you. If you loved
me, you would no longer be married. If you loved your wife, you would not be
with me. You act like this is torture for you, but really you’re just a typical
cheating sleazebag who wants to have his cake and eat it, too. I want you out
of my life forever. If you try to speak to me again, I will call Cathy and tell
her everything. Get out.”

This
last version was the most emotionally satisfying. She would march into work
armed with these words, confident, resolute and ready to take back her life.

 Until
she saw him. She’d find a sticky note on her keyboard: “It was awful. I missed
you.” Or he would pick her up at lunch, and instead of going back to her place,
they would drive to the top of Mount Bonnell and look over the Texas hill
country and talk. She would feebly threaten to end it, crying pathetically and
remembering none of her kickass speeches.

Still,
sometimes they would manage to split up for a day or two, both feeling torn and
morose. In fact, Doug had disappeared for a week after their first kiss, one
late night in his office. He pleaded a family emergency to his colleagues, but
confessed to Marci later that he spent the week working on an old car, trying
to sort out his feelings and hoping he could pretend nothing happened.

But
then, as always seemed to happen with them, something inexplicable drew them
back together. She would be unable to resist sending him an e-mail from her
cubicle—after battling another frightening fantasy about getting caught by the IT
guy—or he would show up on her doorstep after work, his face tortured and
apologetic and sleep-deprived. She would fall into him as a black hole, lost in
a tangle of conflicting feelings and wonderful sensations, until they emerged
an hour or more later, naked and clinging to each other on her living room
floor.