The Marriage Pact (1) (23 page)

He
had come by the following evening to talk to her parents and present her with
his grandmother’s engagement ring—a beautiful antique with one large diamond
and a circlet of tiny sapphires in a dark silver band. “My mom said it needs to
be polished,” he said. “But I wanted you to have it right away.”

Everyone
seemed thrilled with their engagement, and Marci was surprised that no one
seemed to particularly regard it as news. Her own parents, of course, loved
Jake and were as thrilled as they could reasonably be in their post-wedding
stupor. “Just wait a year or so, okay?” her dad said in a tired voice. “We have
to regain our strength.”

Marci
was relieved that no one mentioned the expense of a second wedding. Now that
she had seen the excess of her sister’s nuptials, and that she actually had to
start thinking about wedding plans herself, she hoped her mother’s joke about
spending everything on Nicole had been just that. Not that her plans were
elaborate, but the task of planning seemed daunting enough without a strained
budget hanging over her head.

Other
than Rebecca, who referred to their decision through gritted teeth as, “a
little sudden,” all their friends were excited and, again, not terribly
surprised. Even Suzanne gave a little squeal when Marci told her and actually
offered to help with the wedding plans. “There’s a first time for everything,”
she said.

Jake’s
parents were kind and warm and welcoming to her. His older sister Leah had been
married for several years and had three children already, so the pressure on
Jake to settle down and make grandchildren was somewhat minimal, other than the
unspoken understanding that he
would
carry on the family name. But he
was over thirty now, and Marci suspected his mother had begun to wonder whether
he was in danger of becoming a confirmed bachelor.

So
even though being presented to his family as his fiancée that summer had been
intimidating, it was not the scary experience she would’ve pictured after first
meeting the Stillwells a decade earlier. Now they were all tailgating together,
and her mother was helping Kitty make snacks in the RV, just as if they were
old friends. She could hear them chit-chatting and laughing from her seat under
the tent.

She
took another swig from her can of Bud Light.
Strange: under no other
circumstances would it be socially acceptable to drink like a fish before noon
in front of her parents
and
future parents-in-law
. Across the quad,
she could see Jake’s dad, Robert, talking with some old buddies. By profession,
he was a high-end insurance salesman, which suited his personable and lively
temperament. But Marci suspected that he didn’t really need to work at all.
Several generations back, the Stillwell family had founded a successful textile
mill that had long ago been sold off, but the proceeds of which more or less
ensured that the Stillwells would be independently wealthy for generations to
come.

This
included, Jake, of course, though Marci had been absolutely floored to learn
it. Nothing about Jake—from his clunky Jeep and ragged khaki shorts to his
crazy-serious work ethic—indicated that he was from “Old Money.” He loved to talk
about his family, but rarely talked about their wealth; when he did, it was
always at a distance, as though it had no effect on him personally. Like his
dad, Jake intended to work his whole life as though the money weren’t there.
Marci liked this about him, because even the relatively small excesses of the
Stillwells’ home and lifestyle made her feel a little ill at ease sometimes.
She was glad Jake didn’t expect her to be one of Atlanta’s white-glove
socialite wives.

Robert
caught her eye across the lawn and gave a slight wave. He finished the
conversation with his buddies who, despite being all in their late 50s or
older, all looked rosy-cheeked and young on a sunny football morning. Clapping
of shoulders and pretend punching joined the calling of insults as they joked
their way out of one another’s presence.
Boys never change
, Marci
thought with a smile.

Robert
plopped down in the camp chair next to her and cracked open another beer.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” he said, gesturing at the quad crowded with people, tents,
and so much red and black clothing it was dizzying.

“It
is,” Marci agreed. She was not sure what to say next. Insurance was not exactly
a profession that lent itself to easy small talk (“So how’s business?”
“Anything new on this year’s actuarial tables?”), and her current state of
unemployment was not exactly interesting, either—at least, not in a good way.
She knew from Jake that he loved history, especially World War II era stuff,
but Marci’s knowledge in this arena was scant at best.

So,
she went with an old standby, “It’s a beautiful day.”
Urgh
. How
ridiculous that she had to resort to talking about the weather. He must think
she was about as deep as a puddle.

But
to him, this seemed as good a place to start as any. “It sure is.” He looked
straight up as though confirming it. “This is my favorite time of year. Cool,
crisp days...football, family...”

During
the short, awkward silence, Marci mentally willed her mother and Kitty to
emerge from the RV and relieve the tension, or Jake and her dad to return. But
it wasn’t long before Robert spoke up. “Marci, can you keep a secret?”

Now
this was something. “Sure.”

“You
can’t tell anyone, not even Jake or his mother.”

“Um,
okay,” she said, hesitantly. She wasn’t sure how comfortable she was with this.

“Here
it is: I hate football.”

“Sir?”

“I
have had season tickets to Georgia games since two years after Kitty and I
graduated. We’ve been to almost every home game and a few away games over the
years, because that’s what you do when you’re a Georgia alum, especially
someone in my line of work. And, of course, when Jake got old enough and we saw
how interested he was in sports, I wanted him to have this experience. And I’ve
learned to appreciate it the way you learn to appreciate ballet or opera if you
see enough. But as for the game itself, I really can’t stand it.”

“Wow,”
Marci said, dumbfounded. She had known men with various levels of knowledge and
interest in sports, but had never known a middle-aged straight man to openly
admit hating football. Jake knew every statistic there was about Georgia
football, not to mention a dozen other sports teams, and his walls were lined
with autographed balls, helmets, and jerseys. He and Robert talked for hours on
end about the game: the players, recruiting, and so on.

“Jake’s
old enough to get tickets for himself and Kitty could probably care less
whether we do this every year or not. But do you know why I keep coming out
here?”

“No,
sir.”

“Because
I love my family. This is the best time we all have together. It’s something
that connects us. Jake loves this stuff, and it’s nice to have something to
share with your son. I know so many fathers who feel totally alienated from
their kids, after years of working all the time, and kids moving to other
cities. I’m lucky that my son will still sit and talk to me about something.
You know?”

He
had the same endearing way Jake did of pausing in his little speeches to make
sure you were still listening. “Plus Leah’s husband Dave, and their kids, my
grandkids—they love it, too. I take the little ones to the zoo and the movies
and whatever they’re into at the moment, but in no other place do we get this
kind of face-time: relaxing, playing, enjoying each other, being on the same
team.”

Marci
wanted to get up and hug him. “Well, maybe it’s not all about football,” she
said.

“Exactly.
But they think it is, so this is just between us, okay?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“And
don’t call me sir. We’re family now. It’s Robert or Dad, okay?”

“Robert,”
she said, smiling at him. “Dad” just didn’t feel right. They sat in
companionable silence until Jake and her father returned a few minutes later
from their walk around campus.

“Hey,”
Jake said, kissing her lightly. “Have you seen how much campus has changed
since we were here? Every year there’s some new building, or some new
complex
of buildings. It’s crazy.”

“Welcome
to old age, kids,” her dad teased, clapping Jake on the back. “It always feels
like the world is leaving you behind. Now, Marcella, I’ll take that chair if you
don’t mind. That walk was hard on these old bones.”

Arthur
and Robert smiled at each other as Jake took Marci’s hand and helped her out of
the chair. They strolled around the North Quad, dodging beanbags, footballs,
and stumbling sorority girls as they went. Jake told her about the changes on
the campus since they’d been at school here, and particularly since Marci had
moved away. She listened distractedly, feeling oddly out of place back at her
alma mater, and even holding Jake’s hand. Still, for the rest of the
afternoon’s festivities and the game that followed, she kept Robert’s sweet
little secret tucked away in her pocket.

The
fall passed quickly. It seemed there was something every weekend to keep them
busy. Twice a month they were in Athens for football games, and many of the
other weekends, Jake was all over the state working on his recruiting
documentary. He’d managed to get a small grant from a film institute based on
some early interviews, so he was sometimes taking off weekdays to film the guys
at their high schools. Sometimes Marci would go with him for a Friday night
game and sit huddled in the stands beneath a blanket watching the action.

She’d
had half a dozen temp assignments, some of them lasting two or three weeks, some
shorter. And in one recurring nightmare, she served for three days at a time as
the secretary to a temperamental construction manager who kept driving away the
permanent candidates for the position with his expletive-filled tirades that
often ended with flying coffee cups and office supplies, and nearly always
ended with the secretary in tears. He didn’t bother Marci as much; she’d worked
for worse, but she had no interest in the permanent position.

Jake
had suggested a few times since their engagement they move in together, but the
timing never seemed right with all the work he was doing on the weekends.
Truthfully, Marci could have moved in gradually and stayed with him more than a
couple of times a week, but she was still enjoying living with Suzanne and
having a place to go home.

“So
you’re ready to be engaged, but not ready to live together?” Suzanne had asked,
after one of Jake’s stronger hints that she should move her boxes to his place.

“I
know it sounds crazy,” Marci said. “But that’s how I feel.”

“No,
that’s not crazy, honey. Neither is marrying someone because you wrote
something on a napkin ten years ago. It’s all totally sane and usual, if you
want my opinion.”

“It’s
a good thing I asked for your opinion,” Marci fired back.

“Sorry,
sorry,” Suzanne backpedaled. “You know you can stay with me as long as you
want. There’s always a bottle of wine with your name on it here.”

So
Marci would spend a night or two each week at Jake’s huge loft apartment
overlooking the city, where they’d cook dinner and watch a movie or go out to
one of the ethnic restaurants in walking distance. Typically, she forgot at
least one thing she needed to get ready for work so she would dash home early
in the morning to shower and dress. Sometimes he stayed with her and Suzanne,
though this was less frequent because he felt he was imposing on them in their
smaller space with two people and more stuff.

Marci
was faced with her first year of attending two Thanksgiving dinners. They started
at her parents’ house for a lunchtime meal where everyone wore blue jeans and
sweatshirts, and no one was exempt from helping her mother prepare the table.
Nicole and Ravi had flown down from DC and both seemed basically fat and happy.
Nicky was nearly six months along; they were having a little girl who Ravi
lovingly referred to as “Princess” whenever he touched his wife’s protruding
belly, and her thin face was starting to swell along with the pooch she carried
in front. With a little extra weight and her hair cut in a neat little bob,
Marci thought Nicole looked more like their mother than ever.

Ravi
was enjoying his new position as a producer for two of the weekly news shows.
He joked that being behind the camera meant he was free to enjoy his sympathy
pregnancy weight. They loved their new apartment, which was across the street
from a nice park in a building full of young families. Nicky babbled for half
the meal about the school districts, the commute for each of them, looking for
a nanny, and the drama of preschool waiting lists.

The
only fly in the ointment was still Ravi’s mother, who had found fresh kindling
for her anger when she learned that Nicole had been pregnant before marriage.
At his father’s urging, however, she had made one visit to their new apartment
for a dinner that Nicky obsessed over for a week. Ravi seemed to consider this
a good sign, even though she would speak to him only through his father and
only in Hindi, and did not speak to Nicole at all, other than to thank her coldly
for the invitation to her home.

“Hang
in there,” Marci’s dad told her. “She’ll come around once she gets a look at
that grandbaby.” Their mother said nothing, but stood rather suddenly to refill
everyone’s sweet tea.

Later
that evening, their second Thanksgiving at the Stillwells’ was a whole new
world for Marci. Much more formal than her family’s tradition, she found it
almost painful to pull on her nice slacks and heels with a belly already full
of turkey and sweet potatoes. Jake wore a navy blazer and tie, and drove to his
parents’ house in silence. Already nervous, the quiet in the car made Marci
fidgety. She bit her nails and changed the radio station every thirty to
forty-five seconds. On her final stretch to the radio knob as they entered the
Stillwells’ neighborhood, Jake grabbed her hand. “Relax.”

“Easy
for you to say,” she murmured. He pretended not to hear her.

They
were greeted at the door by Leah’s six-year-old daughter, Jasmine, who wore a
puffy velvet dress with ribbon trim and shiny patent-leather shoes. She threw
herself into Jake’s arms as soon as the door was open. “Gobble-gobble, Uncle
Jake!”

“Hey,
gorgeous!” Jake lifted her in his embrace and spun her around so that her shoes
flew behind her, coming dangerously close to knocking over an expensive-looking
vase of flowers in the foyer. Marci stood awkwardly in the doorway, holding a
bottle of wine, afraid to get in the way of the flying feet.

Jasmine
giggled wildly until Leah approached from the next room. “Jake! For God’s sake,
she’s hyper enough. Put her down!”

“Time
for landing,” Jake conceded. He settled Jasmine on her feet, and leaned against
a nearby washstand to recover his equilibrium. “Hey, sis.”

Leah
leaned forward to allow him to kiss her cheek, maintaining her scolding expression.
She turned to Jasmine, who was red-faced and breathing hard. “Go out to the
sunporch with your brothers and the other kids. Now. Hello, Marci. Welcome to
the House of Chaos.”

Aside
from the sound of the kids playing at the back, the house was anything but
chaos. Every piece of furniture, banister, and doorframe in the large old home
had been polished until it gleamed. Each surface was covered with a combination
of crisp white linens, flickering candles, and centerpieces made of flowers
mixed with gourds and fruit.
Kitty must have been working on this around the
clock for a month
, Marci thought.

Farther
inside, the atmosphere was more like a cocktail party than a simple family
gathering. In addition to Jake’s parents and Leah and her family, the Stillwells’
guest list included several other couples who were either old friends or
long-standing clients or both. Their enormous dining room table had to be
extended with a second to accommodate sixteen adult place settings, each of
which included three Waterford plates, a wine and water glass, and thick
floral-patterned napkins held by sterling silver rings.

Several
people Marci did not know were clustered around Kitty’s beautiful grand piano,
though no one was playing it. Others hovered in the well-appointed dining room,
waiting for the signal to take their assigned seats. A smaller table had been
set up in the kitchen for Jasmine and her twin brothers, Caleb and Carson,
along with a few other kids.

Although
the Stillwells did not have regular servants, Kitty had employed three women to
help with preparing and serving the meal. They wore simple gray dresses and
slipped in and out of the rooms with trays of food and drink while party
chatter filled the entire downstairs. Marci wished fervently that she had ironed
her shirt. Better yet, she wanted to be at home with her father in her
sweatpants, making leftover sandwiches and watching football.

Unlike
the Thompsons’ more traditional roasted turkey, Kitty’s menu included fish and
quail, with side dishes that vaguely recalled the usual feast. Green beans
almandine, sweet potato soup, oyster dressing, roasted pears, figs stuffed with
goat cheese, and tomato-onion focaccia, with pumpkin Crème brûlée for dessert.
Everything was delicious, Marci had to admit, and everyone seemed nice. She had
trouble, however, keeping up with the lively conversation going on around her.

“No,
no, annuities are
not
the way to go. If you’d set foot in my office once
in a while you’d know...”

“Can
you believe we brought back six rugs from Turkey for less than four thousand?”

“You
should all stay at our cabin in Blue Ridge next summer. The fishing is
amazing.”

“Barbara
just loves her new decorator; remind me to get her card for you...”

“Leigh
Ann doesn’t golf, but if there’s shopping involved...”

Marci
focused primarily on her food, while Jake chatted intermittently with the
couple on the other side of him. After a while, she was drawn in as the
conversation turned to their wedding.

“So
when is the big day?” a chipper blonde woman asked them both. Marci had been
introduced to her but forgotten her name entirely. “Of course, we’ll be on your
invitation list, won’t we? I couldn’t bear to miss it! Are you going to have
lots of people or keep it small?”

Fortunately,
the lady did not pause between questions to wait for answers, because the truth
was she and Jake had not even discussed the size or location of their wedding,
much less begun to prepare a guest list. Marci struggled with how to answer,
rescued as always by Jake. “We are still working on all of that. We’re not in a
rush.”

“Good
thing,” said the blonde lady’s husband, a bearded man in a UGA polo. “Enjoy
being young and single while you can.”

His
wife sent a playful smack his way. “Oh, shut up. You’d be lost without me and
you know it.”

“Yes,
dear,” he said, grinning at Jake. “I just meant it’s good to focus on your
career before marriage and babies and all that. Right, Marci?”

The
blonde woman glared at him and turned back to Marci. “So what do you do,
anyway, Marci? Jake’s never told us.”

“I’m
between assignments.”

“So
you’re a filmmaker, too?”

“No,
I’m, I guess you’d call me an independent contractor.”

“What
kind of contracting?” the bearded man pressed.

“Well,
you know, office work, phones, that sort of thing.”

“So
you’re a temp?”

“Well,
yeah. Right now I am.”

The
blonde woman looked as though she smelled something unpleasant. “So is that
just since you moved back from Texas? You probably had a real job before that,
right?”

Marci
reddened and toyed with her dessert spoon on the table. Jake put his hand on
hers. His tone was definitive and clear. “Marci’s a writer, actually. A really
good one.”

“Ah,
well,” the bearded man said, as though the matter were settled. “Excellent,
then. Great.”

The
conversation turned to football. Jake squeezed her hand as he debated with the
man the most likely outcome of Saturday’s game against Georgia Tech. The blonde
woman entered a conversation with someone on the other side of her, but Marci
thought she noticed a probing glance or two thrown back in her direction.

 “You’ll
get used to it,” Jake said as they waddled arm-in-arm out to his truck after
dinner, going back to his loft for the evening. “Once you get to know everyone
better, it will feel less intense.”

“Yeah,”
Marci said softly.

“You
okay?” he asked.

“Sure,
it’s just...I think that woman thinks I’m marrying you for your family’s
money.”

Jake
laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I
know, but...”

“And
if
she thinks that,” he continued, “it’s probably because that’s why she
married her husband, and she assumes that every woman thinks the same way.”

He
kissed her lightly on the cheek, dismissing the subject, and opened the
passenger door of the truck for her. Marci said nothing else about it, but
watched the streetlights and scattered cars passing all the way back to the
city.