The Marriage Pact

by Michelle Richmond

  “It all sounds noble in theory. But what I’ve witnessed, Orla, is far from noble.”

  She seems agitated at the mention of her name. She turns. “You are here to ask me to allow you and your wife to leave The Pact. Is this correct?”

  “Yes.”

  She stares at me, saying nothing.

  “You must know, the very fact that I have to ask is absurd.” I stand to face her, lowering my voice to a near whisper so she has to come closer to hear me. “You believe your mission is noble, that The Pact is pure—yet you run the organization like the cruelest kind of cult.”

  She takes an audible breath. “Do you not want a successful marriage, Friend? Do you not want a life together with Alice? Do you not want to challenge yourself?”

  “Of course I want all of those things! Why the hell do you think I’ve come all this way? I want Alice back—the way she was before we started living in fear. I want our life back. We were so happy before you waltzed in and turned everything to shit.”

  “Were you?” Orla smiles. She seems to be enjoying herself. I want to wrap my hands around this woman’s neck and squeeze.

  “Yes, Orla. We were. I love Alice. I would do anything for her. Anything.”

  It occurs to me that I have never said this to anyone. And in an instant, I wonder if it only became true at this moment, when I uttered it aloud. Yes, I wanted Alice for my own, but maybe I did not love her enough.

  “Then why are you giving up?”

  “I’m not giving up on my marriage! I’m giving up on The Pact. You’re clearly a very intelligent woman. I refuse to believe that you don’t understand the difference. Please explain to me how surveillance, threats, and interrogation lead to any of the grand goals you’ve described. You speak like a barrister, but you rule like a tyrant!”

  A phone rings somewhere deep in the house. Orla glances over at the clock. “Sorry,” she says. “Have to keep the lights on, you know.” She walks away and disappears into the back of the house. I pace for ten minutes, fifteen, expecting her to come back. She doesn’t.

  What to make of Orla? I was certain she’d be charismatic, unbending, a leader in the mold of Jim Jones or David Koresh. But she isn’t like that at all. In fact, she seems thoughtful and almost gentle. She seems open to new information, willing to assimilate new ideas and actively seek opinions contrary to her own. If I could bottle this thing she has, I would give it to all of my patients, but first I’d save some for myself.

  Of course, this is probably just an act. Is it a coincidence that her phone rang at precisely the moment I challenged her on The Pact’s ruthless tactics?

  I find myself staring at a picture above the mantel. Orla and her husband stand between two other couples—Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan with their respective long-term spouses. Do all of these famous people really consider her to be a friend? I wonder. Or have they too been caught in a web from which they can’t escape? How many interrogations have been recorded? What secrets would escape if they dared break free?

  A tall man walks into the room, a Scottish terrier at his heels. The man looks tired, his sleeves rolled up, his boots scuffed. All this time, I thought Orla and I were alone. Where did he come from?

  “Hello, Jake,” he says, extending his hand. “I’m Richard. This is Shoki.” Richard is ten or fifteen years older than Orla, shaggy, good looking in a tweedy, rumpled way. The dog remains alert by Richard’s side, staring at me.

  “Orla is eager to continue your conversation, but it will have to wait.”

  “Listen, I’ve been waiting long enough. I just want my wife back—”

  “Unfortunately,” Richard interrupts, “that’s something you’ll have to discuss with our fearless leader.” He gives me a wink, as if we’re in on this together. “I’m sure she’ll be with you again very soon. In the meantime, Altshire is a guesthouse we have at the south end of the property. You’ll be quite comfortable there. Follow the path south for six hundred meters, turn right at the lone tree, and continue until you see it.”

  “Look, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing here—”

  The Scottish terrier growls. Richard, close behind me, reaches over my shoulder to unlatch the lock and places a hand firmly on my back. “She’s sick, you know.”

  My first thought is of my wife, and I panic. “Alice?”

  He steps back. “No, not Alice. Orla.”

  The relief makes me dizzy. “I…I didn’t know,” I stammer.

  He gives me a quick, sad look, though his hand on my back continues to motion me out the door. “I’m glad I got the chance to meet you, Jake. Orla has spoken of you and Alice with great admiration.”

  The door closes behind me and a gust of cold ocean wind blows straight through my coat. I can hear Shoki barking inside the warm house.

  The air is wet and the fog is thick. I can’t see a cottage in the distance. Is this another trap? Is this some code in The Pact, shorthand for dealing with a problem? “I haven’t seen Jerry,” one member might say; another would respond, “They sent him to Altshire”; and both would know that the individual had been tossed from the cliffs of Rathlin, his body smashed upon the rocks and swept into the sea, floating north past the Faroe Islands, off into oblivion.

  91

  Buried in the fog and built into the side of a grassy hill, Altshire is a smaller version of Orla’s house. The door requires a full lunge with my shoulder to jar it open. The place is spartan. One bedroom, one bath, a sitting room, a tiny kitchen. It’s freezing and a little musty. When I turn on the faucet, the water comes out brown and grainy. There’s no food in the cabinets, only bottled water in the refrigerator. I open the windows, shake out the sheets.

  In a metal shed outside the cottage, I find a half rack of wood and an ax. I haul some of the wood into the yard and go at it with a vengeance, chopping until my arms are on fire and my back is aching. Dazed and spent, I stare at the pile of chopped wood. Eventually, I go inside, close the windows, and start up a fire in the woodstove. What now?

  How long does Orla intend to keep me here? Is this hospitality or another prison? Did Eliot and Aileen also stay at Altshire before they disappeared?

  I keep hoping to hear Orla at the door, but she doesn’t arrive. I make the long walk back to the boardinghouse to retrieve my things. At the grocery store, I purchase the essentials, cram them into my backpack, and quickly return along the path to Altshire, racing the sunset, dreading being lost in the darkness, in the foggy cold. I keep looking at my cellphone, waiting for service to kick in.

  In the cottage, I turn on the lights and make myself a sandwich, but I have no appetite. Orla never arrives.

  Around midnight, I scavenge blankets from the closets, go back outside to fetch the ax, stash it beneath the bed. Lying awake on the hard mattress, watching the shadows on the ceiling, I think of my great-great-grandfather, the one who killed a woman in Belfast before fleeing for America. Each one of us becomes so used to the person we think we are. In our minds, we carry a vision of ourselves, naïvely certain of our own moral boundaries, what we would and would not do.

  92

  In the morning light, the place looks different. The fog has lifted and I can see the ocean through the picture windows. I start up the fire again, the warmth quickly filling the cottage, and bathe as well as I can in the tiny lukewarm shower.

  A guest book lies beside the sofa. I flip to the beginning. November 22, 2001, Erin and Burl enjoyed their tenth anniversary in the cabin. I flip ahead. April 2, 2008, Jay and Julia were in town for a book signing. They saw three foxes and it rained nonstop for a week.

  October 4, no year: I recorded three songs while my beautiful wife cooked the longest, most complicated dinner on record. Feeling whole again, ready to write a new album. Finally met the young lawyer from the copyright case. Spoke again with Orla. We all agreed she will be perfect. Finnegan.

  Perfect for what? I shudder. Finnegan. The source of all this turmoil. If only Alice had never met Finnega
n. Rereading the words, I feel as if I am traveling back in time. I briefly entertain the magical notion that I could simply rip out the page, toss it into the fire, and undo the damage of the past few months. I try to imagine what it would look like—a marriage without The Pact. And it occurs to me that, of course, I have no idea. Alice and I have known marriage only as it exists inside the confines of The Pact. The intensity of our love, the passion of those nights with the bracelet, the Focus Collar, my fierce need to protect my wife—all of these things exist within The Pact.

  I remember those first days, when I worried that marriage would not be exciting enough for Alice. I cannot deny that The Pact has challenged us. It has brought us uncertainty and, yes, excitement. In battling a mutual enemy, Alice and I grew incredibly close. But it has also nearly broken us.

  In the bedroom, I notice a small television and a neatly arranged library of DVDs. I put in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Two hours later, I’m antsy, filled with nervous energy, but I don’t leave the cottage for fear of missing Orla. I fill the kitchen sink with soap and warm water and dump all the clothes I’m not wearing into the sink to soak, then hang them around the woodstove to dry. All day I pace and wait.

  I read the guest book back to front. More entries from Finnegan, cryptic thank-you notes from several of the couples whose photographs grace Orla’s shelves.

  In the afternoon, I hear a knock at the door. Orla is standing there in her rain gear and tennis shoes. I motion for her to come in, but she takes a step back. She seems to be reassessing me.

  “Walk?” she says.

  I grab my windbreaker and head outside to find that she’s already a hundred yards up the path. She certainly doesn’t seem ill. As I come up beside her, she doesn’t say a word. We walk for a long way, not speaking, and turn in the direction of her house only when the rain starts blowing sideways.

  Inside, she gives me a towel to dry my hair and leaves the room. When she returns in fresh clothes, she’s holding a glass of wine for herself and hot chocolate for me.

  “Perhaps I should ask what’s in it,” I say, waving away the proffered mug.

  She ignores my sarcasm. “Have a seat.”

  She settles into the leather chair. There is no mention of the time that has passed since our discussion. Time seems oddly elastic in her world. I sense that there is something else going on in her life—the illness Richard mentioned?—but when she speaks she seems completely focused.

  “I really do like you, Friend.”

  “Is that supposed to make me trust you?”

  She waves her hand in the air, as if this is a matter of little importance. “Not yet, but you will. You’ve had time to think?”

  “Yes,” I say, suddenly understanding the time alone at Altshire, the long wait at the rooming house. Nothing has been left to chance.

  “And you still believe The Pact is not the appropriate avenue to a successful marriage for you and Alice?” She says this bluntly but without judgment.

  “You told me a story. May I tell you one?”

  She nods.

  “As a child, I had a vague, idealized sense of what marriage should be. It was some goofy amalgamation I’d handpicked from my parents’ marriage, what I read in books, what I saw on TV or in the movies. It wasn’t realistic, and even if it was, it would have been the architecture of a marriage for a different time. As I got older, this unrealistic notion became a barrier, blocking me from moving forward in relationships. I simply couldn’t picture any of the women I’d dated in the context of this idealized marriage.”

  “Go on,” she says, listening closely.

  “When I met Alice, though, something clicked. All at once, this idealized notion began to fade away, and with it the burden of having to get everything just right. I knew that if I wanted to keep her, I would have to abandon my preconceived notions of marriage, to let it develop naturally. When she accepted my proposal, Alice and I made the unspoken decision to move forward blindly, feeling our way, trying to discover what worked for us. Then, when The Pact intervened, I guess we were both relieved to have some direction. Maybe it was laziness on our part. It was as if you were offering us a clear road map at a time when we were standing lost in some vast, uncharted territory.”

  Orla says nothing.

  “The Pact has many good ideas—Alice and I will give gifts to each other forever, thanks to you, and we’ll always take trips together. I also love the idea of surrounding oneself with others who are deeply committed to marriage. And I will grant you this: There was a time, after Alice’s first visit to Fernley, when she started coming home earlier from work, paying more attention to our home life. It may surprise you to know that, despite the hell Alice and I have been through, I can see how The Pact as you originally envisioned it has a good heart. I embrace the idea that is the very foundation of The Pact ideology.”

  “And what idea is that?” Orla seems fascinated by my response.

  “Balance. The Pact is about bringing balance and fairness to a marriage. Let’s face it, at different points in a marriage one partner may need the other more than they are needed. Most of the time, isn’t one partner giving more than he or she is receiving—more love, more resources, more time? The roles may change, but the imbalance remains. I like that The Pact works hard to nudge the relationship closer to that exquisite balancing point. As a marriage counselor, I know through painful experience that most marriages fail when the balance becomes too out of whack to be made right.”

  There are voices in some other part of the house. Orla frowns.

  “Don’t worry about them,” she says. “Just operational stuff.”

  “My issue with The Pact,” I continue, measuring my words, “is the methods it uses. Your goals should be achieved with a gentle, guiding hand, not an iron fist. There is simply no justification for the things you do. The violence is barbaric. I can’t for the life of me understand why you allow it.”

  “The Pact is guided by an elegant set of ideas. The iron fist is only a small part of it.”

  “But you can’t separate the two,” I say angrily. “Threat equals fear. When you instill fear in your members, you can never know whether their marriages are truly successful or they’re just following rules because they’re afraid of the Draconian punishments.”

  Orla stands and walks to the window. “Each day, Jake, nearly all members of The Pact live productive, creative lives made richer by supportive marriages and a community of like-minded individuals. More than ninety percent of our members have never seen the inside of places like Fernley or Kettenham or Plovdiv.”

  Kettenham? Plovdiv?

  “Instead, they enjoy contented lives, close to that ideal of the perfect balance.”

  “But what about the others?”

  “Honestly? The minor inconvenience of some, or in rare instances the major debt paid by a few, is justified if it provides an effective example, a cautionary tale to help the others maintain better marriages.” Her back is to me. Outside the window, a fog bank moves swiftly over the ocean. “I know your background, Jake. I’ve read your graduate thesis. There was a time when you might have passionately defended our tactics. Can you deny it?”

  I cringe. During graduate school and the years that followed, I was fascinated by some horrifically cruel studies, like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment, as well as lesser-known experiments out of Austria and the Soviet Union. Although I chose to pursue a path of therapy defined by compassion and personal choice, I have to acknowledge the ruthless conclusion of my thesis: Individual obedience is sometimes required to serve the greater good, and fear is an extremely effective tactic to elicit obedience.

  “Call me what you will, Jake, but the statistics indicate that even among Pact members, whose marriages are far more successful than the general population, those who have spent time at our correctional facilities report even greater intimacy, greater happiness, over a longer period of time.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? Thi
s is textbook propaganda!”

  She crosses the room and sits again. Not in the chair but on the couch, right beside me, so close our thighs and arms are touching. The murmur of voices in the background has faded.

  “I’ve been closely following your progress, Jake. I know what happened to you at Fernley. I will not apologize for our use of consequences, but I will admit that your case was handled harshly. Far too harshly.”

  “Do you know they put me through an hour of electric shock? That they just sat there and watched while I writhed on the floor in excruciating pain? I honestly believed I might die at Fernley.”

  She winces. “I’m deeply sorry about that, Jake. You don’t know how sorry. The past few months, I’ve ceded too much control to a powerful few. Things slipped past my attention.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  Orla closes her eyes, takes a soft breath. I realize that in this moment, she is in physical pain. When she opens her eyes, she looks at me directly, unflinching.

  What an idiot I’ve been. The clipped hair, the sunken cheeks. Bruises traveling the length of her veins. This woman is dying. I feel so stupid for not having noticed it before.

  “The board acted reprehensibly, Jake. We are instituting new regulations to ensure that enforcement officers can refuse to comply with unjust orders. As for leadership, there will be changes—”

  “Where are they now?” I cut in. “Neil, Gordon, the members of the board? The judge who approved the interrogation techniques used against me? Whoever approved Alice’s kidnapping?”

  “They’re undergoing reeducation. After that, we’ll have to decide if there is still a role for them in The Pact. There’s a lot of work to do, Jake. I am proud of The Pact, and despite this recent spot of unpleasantness, I receive new evidence daily that convinces me of its efficacy. The Pact is about marriage, yes, but it is so much bigger. There are nearly twelve thousand Friends around the world. The best of the best. The smartest, most talented people. Every one handpicked, rigorously vetted. But there will be more, mark my word. I have no clear vision of where The Pact might go, but I want it to grow and thrive. Marriage may not last forever. But as long as possible, I want to fight for it. As you point out, Jake, all marriages need to evolve. So does The Pact.”