The Marriage Pact

by Michelle Richmond

  KMOO is on the radio. It’s that great show Anything Is Possible. The host, Tom, is just wrapping up an interview with the creator of Sloganeering. The showrunner is outlining the direction for the new season. He brushes off their loss in court to Alice’s client as a small misunderstanding, no mention of the judicial nastiness. “Wonderful book,” he says. “We’re working with the writer, and in the end I think this will actually make the show better.” The show concludes, the news starts, and I flip the radio off. I think I can hear the ocean in the distance, though maybe it’s the wind blowing through the artichoke fields.

  I read for a while, one of Alice’s music magazines. The feature story is a long article on Noel and Liam Gallagher. Then I put the magazine down and sit in the dark. I obsessively check the clock on the dashboard: 8:43. 8:48. 8:56. I start to think they’re not going to arrive. No lights on at the airport except for a dim glow in a room at the back of the café. Did I get it wrong? Did they change their minds and decide not to release Alice? Did something happen?

  It’s 8:58. Maybe the plane never took off. Maybe she’s not coming home yet. Or worse, maybe there was bad weather in the mountains.

  And then, the clock hits 9:00 and the world comes to life. Brilliant yellow lights spark on both sides of the runway. I hear the faint hum of an engine. I look up, but I can’t see anything. Then in the distance, coming in over the trees, is the outline of a small plane. The aircraft flies low and slow, touching down smoothly. It glides to a stop at the end of the runway, not more than fifty yards from where I’m parked. The engine goes silent, leaving the night still again. I flash the headlights to signal that I am here. The plane sits motionless.

  Where’s Alice? I flash the lights again and step out of the car. And then a door on the plane pops open and the staircase descends, opening onto a rectangle of light. I recognize Alice’s ankle as it emerges from the plane and hits the first stair. My heart surges. Her legs and waist appear, her chest and face, and then she is standing on the runway. She’s wearing the same clothes she was wearing when Declan put her into the SUV days ago. She’s walking carefully, oddly upright. Something’s wrong, I think. Is she in pain? What have they done to her? Behind her, the staircase folds into the plane. As Alice walks through the fence, under the lamppost, toward the car, I see the reason for her strange posture. There is something around her neck.

  She turns her body and waves to the pilot, who flicks on his runway lights and revs his engine. As we meet, she puts her arms around me, shivering. I pull her in close as the plane lifts into the sky. My hands touch the soft mass of her hair and, beneath it, something rigid. The pilot flashes his lights one last time as he soars over the trees and out toward the ocean.

  Alice holds me close, and I can feel the stress and tension passing out of her body, but she is standing so straight, so stiff. As I lean back to look at her, I see tears on her cheeks, though she is smiling. “So,” she says, as she steps back to model the large collar around her neck. “Here it is, the Focus Mechanism.”

  The collar circles her neck, extending all the way up to her jawline, where it cups her chin, holding it firmly in place. Like the bracelet she wore on her wrist, it has a smooth, hard gray surface. A narrow ridge of black foam lines the top of the collar where it meets her chin and jawbone. The collar disappears into her shirt, extending just below her shoulders and halfway up the back of her head. She is staring at me, her eyes full of tenderness.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Yes. Just between you and me, ever since they put this monstrosity around my neck, I’ve thought of one thing, and one thing only. You.” Then she steps back and models her new look one more time. She asks brightly, “How do I look?”

  “More beautiful than ever,” I say, and mean it.

  “Please take me home.”

  41

  Early the next morning, I smell coffee, so I head down the hallway. I expect to find my wife in her usual spot, typing on her laptop, frantically catching up on work. But she’s not there. I pour myself some coffee, then wander back toward the bathroom. No Alice.

  Then I see a strip of golden light emanating from the guest bedroom. I push the door open and see Alice standing in front of the full-length mirror, naked. Alice’s chin is held up firmly, her eyes focused on her reflection. Her neck remains motionless, locked in place, but her eyes shift to meet mine in the mirror. Her gaze is so direct, I feel unsettled. There is something undeniably pure—sculptural, even—about the collar around her throat. It molds perfectly to the bends and curves of Alice’s body, seamless where it hovers a few centimeters beyond her shoulders and chest. Instead of hiding or restricting her, it seems to be framing her beauty. Here in the faint golden light, I think I understand the purpose not only of the collar’s design but of The Pact itself: My wife stands before me, more present in the moment than I have ever seen her, completely undistracted, astonishingly resolute in her focus and direction.

  I don’t know what to say. I stand between her and the mirror. Instinctively, I put my hands on the collar, moving my fingertips along the surface, then along the soft foam cupping her chin. Alice’s eyes remain trained on me. The tears from last night are gone, replaced by something else. A look of fascination? I hear Vivian’s voice in my head: “You need to make your peace with The Pact.”

  “Somehow,” I say, “it makes you more mysterious.”

  She steps forward to kiss me, but because she can’t lift her neck I have to bend at the knees to meet her mouth with my own.

  I go to the corner and sit down in the chair by the window. She doesn’t move away from the mirror, and she doesn’t attempt to hide her nakedness from me. I don’t know that Alice has made her peace, but she does seem to be in another place. As we drove home last night, she seemed energized, although maybe she was just happy to be reunited. When I asked her to give me all the details of the trip, to leave nothing out, she simply said, “I survived.” Later, she told me she was proud of herself for pushing through it.

  “The only thing that truly scares me,” she said, “the only thing that gets under my skin, is the unknown. The unknown terrifies me. Going into this, it was all completely unknown. I have this strange feeling of accomplishment, like I went into something utterly unpredictable and came out on the other end.”

  “I’m proud of you too,” I said. “I feel like you did this for us. That means so much to me.”

  “I did do it for us.”

  After dinner, she just wanted to watch an episode of Sloganeering, eat ice cream, and retreat to the bedroom. I propped three pillows under her head to make her more comfortable. I thought she would be asleep in a matter of seconds, but she wasn’t. She pulled me close, holding on to me with a drowning grip. When I asked what she was thinking, she responded, “Nothing.” Which is what she always says when I ask what she’s thinking. Sometimes, I believe her. Other times, though, I know the wheels of her mind are spinning, and that’s the feeling I had at that moment: me on the outside, looking in.

  Eventually, we had sex. I don’t know that I’d like to describe it here, though I will say it was unexpected, somewhat unusual. Alice seemed determined and, more than that—possessed. I wanted so badly to know what had happened to her in the desert. Instead I gave in to her passion, her persistence, to this uncanny iteration of Alice. My Alice, only different.

  42

  Alice takes the day off from work. Even though it’s Valentine’s Day, I’m more than a little surprised. I guess it makes sense. Her priorities have shifted. The Pact is working.

  Of course, there are the practical concerns: She can’t find a suit or even a blouse that will fit around the collar, and besides, she hasn’t figured out how to explain it. She emails her paralegal, says the food poisoning has taken a turn for the worse, and that she’ll be out of the office for a day or two or three. When I call in to cancel my appointments for the second day in a row, Huang puts Evelyn on the line.

  “Everything okay?” Evelyn wants to
know.

  “It’s fine,” I say. “Family emergency.” Evelyn doesn’t pry.

  At first Alice seems a little antsy, like she doesn’t know what to do with herself, but by ten she seems happy to be free from work, a whole day spread out in front of us.

  We take a walk down the beach. Alice wears her baggy coat and wraps a wool scarf around the collar. I bring the camera. When I go to snap a quick picture of her, she yells at me. “I don’t want a picture of me in this thing!”

  “Come on.”

  “Never!”

  “Just one?” Alice pulls off the scarf and coat, revealing the collar. She looks straight at me and sticks out her tongue.

  On the way home, she doesn’t even bother with the scarf or coat. I think she’s surprised when the people walking by don’t seem to notice or care. We stop by Safeway, and our cashier looks up as she finishes bagging our groceries. “Ouch,” she says. “Car accident?”

  “Yes,” Alice says.

  And that’s it. For the next thirty days, whenever someone comments on it, Alice simply says those two words: “Car accident.” That’s what she tells them at work, that’s what she tells our friends, that’s what she tells Ian and Evelyn and Huang when she comes by the office to fetch me for lunch—something she never made time for before. Sometimes, she’ll also add the sound of smashing cars and make a dramatic gesture with her hands. No one ever asks any follow-up questions. Except Huang. “Was it a Toyota Corolla or a Honda minivan?” he asked. “My money’s on the Corolla—worst drivers ever.”

  I’ll be honest. Every time I glimpse the collar, or just glimpse my wife—sitting or standing upright, chin straight ahead—it makes me sense how committed she really is. Each night, I help her wash beneath the collar, running a warm, soapy washcloth over her skin, threading it between the fiberglass stays. As I watch her, as I cook for her, as I make love to her, as we hold hands in front of the television, what I never say to my wife, what I never confess, is this: Our marriage was my idea, my way of keeping her, yet here we are, just a few months into it, and she has already sacrificed so much more than I have.

  43

  It’s estimated that more than 10 percent of married couples got engaged on Valentine’s Day. I’ve taken to asking my clients about the whys and whens of their engagements; interestingly, I’ve read that couples who got engaged on Valentine’s Day have weaker marriages with far less resolve. All I can figure is that a marriage with an impetuous, overly romanticized beginning is likely to end with less resistance.

  If engagements occur in February, then divorces, more often than not, occur during the month of January. Studies show that January divorces are slightly more prevalent in the cold-weather states, although January isn’t a great month for marriage in places like L.A. and Phoenix either. If I had to guess, I’d say the holiday effect has something to do with it—expectations not met, or maybe the pressure of spending too much time together under the prying eyes of disapproving family members. If close relatives are divorced, it puts even more pressure on a couple. Divorce within a family, in fact, is a strong predictor of other divorces in the same immediate family. When Al and Tipper Gore divorced after forty years of marriage, a year after their daughter Kristin’s divorce, the dominoes started to fall. Within the year, another one of their three daughters had also divorced, and by the end of the following year the final shoe dropped; the third daughter was divorced as well. There is some indication that, when people close to us end their marriages, divorce suddenly becomes a viable option.

  If divorce begets divorce, it stands to reason that belonging to a private club in which divorce is not only frowned upon but actively discouraged with a strict set of rules and regulations may make divorce far less likely. What I mean to say is: For all its questionable tactics, its weird manual and legal jargon, its secrecy, The Pact may really be onto something.

  44

  On March 10, Alice comes home early to prepare for The Pact party in Woodside. Our host, a guy named Gene, mentioned his love for pinot noir when I met him at the last party, so I stopped at a wine store to pick up a fancy bottle from a Russian River vintner. The production was small, the bottles were hard to get, and the cost was substantial. Alice and I decided the investment was appropriate and necessary.

  Ever since Alice returned home from the desert, we haven’t discussed our earlier intentions to free ourselves of The Pact. Her time there was so intense, and our relationship since then has felt on such solid ground, that all of the things we hated about The Pact seem, somehow, less onerous. Even the memory of Declan and Diane taking her away has been cast in a new light. It was necessary, Declan said as Diane fastened the cuffs around Alice’s ankles, and though I don’t believe that’s true, I do see how the experience changed her, how it changed us. How it has made us, if possible, more married. I can’t deny that we are closer now. I can’t deny that we are even more in love. If we haven’t made our peace with The Pact, we have, at least for the moment, ceased to resist it.

  When I finally get home, Alice is already dressed and ready to go. After almost thirty days in the collar, after nearly thirty days of Alice clad in turtlenecks, scarves, blouses with high bows, and baggy trench coats, it’s a shock to see her in a tiny gray strapless dress, tall sparkly shoes, and stockings. The collar almost appears to be a part of the dress. She has arranged her hair to work with it, teased up and out. Her hair and her long dark blue nails are Alice circa 2008, her dress is Alice circa now, and the collar is something else altogether.

  “So?” she asks, doing an awkward turn.

  “Gorgeous.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Still, I can’t figure out what statement she’s making. Is she thumbing her nose at the people of The Pact? Is this her way of telling them that they can’t shame her, can’t imprison her? Or is the opposite true? Is she showing them that she has accepted their punishment and she is stronger for it? Then again, maybe I’m overanalyzing things. Maybe Alice is just relieved to be going somewhere she doesn’t have to hide, doesn’t have to answer questions.

  I throw on my gray Ted Baker jacket, the one I didn’t wear to the first party. I skip the dress tie and opt for dark jeans and the funkier shoes. As I slip the shoes on, it occurs to me that Alice and I are becoming more comfortable in our role in The Pact. Humans, like all animals, have an incredible ability to adapt. Survival requires it.

  The traffic is light, so we reach the Woodside Road exit with plenty of time to spare. In town, I ask if Alice wants to grab a drink at the bar in the Village Pub. She thinks for a second, then shakes her head. She doesn’t want to be late.

  “I could use a drink, though,” she says. So I stop at Roberts Market for a six-pack of Peroni. I drive to Huddart Park, pull the car under a sprawling elm tree, and pop a beer for each of us. I can use one too. Eventually I stopped going to Draeger’s to look for JoAnne. I worry that she’ll be at the party tonight, and I worry that she won’t. Alice clinks our bottles together and says, “Bottoms up!” She has trouble bending her head to guzzle it down, but guzzle she does, with only a few drops trickling down her neck and into the top of the collar.

  Maybe we are a little nervous, after all. I know the look in her eyes as she swigs the last sip; she’s fortifying herself. I check the rearview mirror, half-expecting the police to show up soon.

  “Do we have time for another?”

  “Maybe.” I pull two more out of the bag.

  Alice snatches the bottle out of my hand and sucks it down. “Lightweight,” she says. “Don’t let me have even one more drink tonight. I can’t afford to say something I’ll regret.”

  Alice sometimes has trouble controlling herself at parties. Her residual middle school nerves make it hard for her to initiate conversation, and when she does start talking, she doesn’t always know when to stop. At the opening party for my new office, she mistook the head caterer for Ian’s partner. Of course, at parties like that, one beer too many and a few wr
ong words only lead to embarrassment and maybe an awkward apology down the road. Tonight, one wrong sentence and she might find herself in a black SUV speeding into the desert.

  “Ready?”

  “No,” Alice says, taking a deep breath.

  We turn onto Bear Gulch Road and pull up to a keypad in front of a large, intimidating gate. 665544, just like the card said. The gate rumbles to life.

  “It’s not too late,” I say. “We can turn and run, maybe head for Greece.”

  “No,” Alice says. “Greece has extradition. It would have to be Venezuela or North Korea.”

  We work our way up the mountain road, past estates and pastures. Around every turn, if you look carefully, you can see a grand house hiding in the woods. Woodside is just Hillsborough with horses. The road goes on and on. Alice doesn’t say a word, even as I identify the address and turn up the long driveway. While this place is not quite on the level of the mansion in Hillsborough, it is impressive. Gene, our host, is an architect, and it shows. Globe lights line a path up to the main structure, a tall, wide sculpture of a house. When they invented the phrase real estate porn, this is what they had in mind.

  I pull into a spot at the end and kill the engine. Alice sits there for a moment, her eyes closed. “I might need another beer.”