The Marriage Pact

by Pullen, M. J.

  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.

  They would talk about Marci’s dreams of being a writer and Doug would give her ideas. He helped her put together a portfolio to send out to agencies and freelance jobs. Writing, however, had never been his passion. Ever since T, D, L & S had been founded in the back of a bar nearly fifteen years earlier, Doug had been the gregarious salesman with relationship skills and an eye for the big picture. Jack Lane and Scott Teague drove the creative production, while Frank Dodgen had the sharp business acumen. Still, Doug knew far more than the typical person about making money by writing and encouraged Marci to the point that she sometimes felt he was almost pushy. Even though he had read her writing and based his opinion on that, she always felt sure that their affair fueled his good opinion.

  Occasionally he shared his agonizing feelings about his marriage, how he’d been with Cathy since middle school and genuinely loved her. He told Marci he’d never thought it possible to feel so deeply for two people, and so differently. Cathy was everything he had ever wanted. Their families were close. She knew and loved things about him that even he himself had forgotten. But their relationship had changed over the years and he now described her as distant, even businesslike. Marci thought of the conversation she’d overheard and the impressions she’d had of Cathy in the office, so perfectly put together, but missing something. Doug never mentioned a desire for children or whether Cathy was resistant to the idea.

  But one thing was clear from very early on: he was totally unprepared to leave his wife.

  He often talked with sadness about the day that Marci would end things for real, the day she would realize, fully and finally, that he was wasting her time. He joked with a touch of pain in his voice about the guy she would ultimately end up with: “He’ll be funny, obviously,” he would say, tapping her nose lightly with affection, “like you. And he’ll be good-looking, I’m sure, and probably an all-around great guy. Better than me.”

  She would squirm uncomfortably, rejecting his self-deprecation. “Doug, stop, let’s not talk about it.”

  But he never wanted to stop. He needed to suffer. “You know it’s true. You deserve better than me. But in my eyes, no one will ever deserve you.”

  No matter how often he said them, these words were a knife to her heart. She was the other woman; she was putting someone’s marriage in danger. Who was to say what she deserved?

  At the end of these woeful conversations, she always felt as though she’d had to experience all the theoretical pain of breaking up with Doug without the actual relief of moving on. The ball was in her court. Doug clearly cared for her and seemed willing to continue their relationship indefinitely. It would be her responsibility to someday choose the high road and make a better life for herself.

  She sometimes wondered whether she would ever find the strength to do that. Her relationship with Doug was the only one she’d had in two years, and more intense on every level than anything before it. How could she walk away from that for some tepid date with Jeremy, or being fixed up with someone’s single friend?

  She had recently started exploring internet dating, but it was difficult to be fully present in the small talk and getting-to-know-you, when she knew Doug had arranged to be at her place for several hours the next weekend. It was unfair that Doug expected her to be the one to cut the strings, especially when she couldn’t help but notice that he made an extra effort to be present in her life when she mentioned having a date.

  So they limped along in a relationship netherworld—not together, not apart, each day full of the twin possibilities of limitless passion or goodbye forever. With stacks of invoices and mindless tasks in front of her each day, Marci had entirely too much time to contemplate both ends of the spectrum.

  Today was no different, except for the fact that she was officially no longer wasting her late twenties in a hopeless relationship. Thirty had arrived, and a new decade was waiting. And there was an e-mail from Jake.

  Chapter 2

  At 5:15, she was dawdling nervously at her desk when an e-mail popped up from the internal server. “Go to the happy hour. I’ll meet you there in forty-five minutes.”

  An hour and a half later, she was sucking down the last of her second margarita, which had been surprisingly strong. She sat on the cool patio of Maudie’s Mexican restaurant with Jeremy, of course; Cristina, the new receptionist who clearly had a big crush on him; Elena, Candice, and a couple of guys from the design department. Several others, especially those with kids, had come and gone already. The liquor was now flowing and the talk was turning to office gossip. When Doug appeared, Elena and Candice both expressed surprise.

  The executive team members were all married and usually exhausted, so while they liked to pretend they were just typical workers like everyone else, it was rare for them to actually attend social functions with the staff. By way of explanation, Doug kissed Candice and Elena both lightly on the cheek and said, “Cathy’s in Beaumont with some girlfriends tonight, so I thought I’d come see whether you two were plotting to take over the company.” They both blushed noticeably.

  “Hi, Marci,” he said directly to her and let his gaze linger momentarily. She felt her cheeks burn a bit, too.

  “You remembered my name,” she said. Everyone had been drinking and no one seemed to notice.

  He grinned and turned to the rest of the table. “What’s up, Jeremy, Dave, Chuck? And, hi there, you must be Cristina. I’m Doug. I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to introduce myself. Welcome to the team.” He grasped the new receptionist’s hand, a friendly gesture with just a touch of flirtation. Cristina turned pink, too, like the other women.

  At one point, this type of flirty behavior had bothered Marci, and made her wonder whether Doug was really telling the truth about never having strayed from his marriage before her. But over time she had concluded that this kind of thing was what made him a great salesman, and probably kept the company in business. When you were with Doug, he made you feel like the world revolved around you, and that’s exactly what clients want to feel.

  It also provided a nice cover for them. It meant he could get away with winking or teasing her in public, and if anyone noticed, most people would readily dismiss it. She had to admit, too, looking at three beautiful professional women around her turned to jelly beneath his smiling gaze, she was pretty proud that Doug would be in her arms a few hours later. And no one knew. She shivered, but not from the cold drink or the chilly evening.

  By 7:30, Elena, Candice, Dave, and Chuck had all excused themselves and headed
home. Marci slurped down the last of one more margarita, buzzing with alcohol and excitement. She couldn’t wait to get away from the restaurant. If Cathy was in Beaumont for the evening, it meant Doug could spend the night. It had only happened twice before because it was so risky and hard to arrange, but waking cradled in his bare arms had been an unforgettable sensation, sustaining her for weeks of contrived situations and covert messages.

  Jeremy, however, seemed in no hurry to leave. He had ordered another beer moments before, and seemed to be trying to steer the conversation toward topics that could take all night to discuss. She could see that he was lingering to spend time with her. Meanwhile, Cristina was hanging on his every word and clearly hoping to get him alone, but by all appearances she would’ve had better luck with the waiter, who had finally just brought them a check in exasperation. With Doug and Marci unable to leave at the same time and hoping the other two would go first, they were stuck with forced conversation and tortilla chip crumbs. In her drunken state, Marci snickered as she realized it was literally a Mexican Restaurant Standoff.

  “This could go on for years,” Doug muttered in Marci’s ear while Jeremy asked the waiter whether he could split the check among the four of them. “Don’t bother; I’ll get it,” he said louder to Jeremy, handing a credit card to the waiter.

  “Doug, there’s no need,” Jeremy started. Was it Marci’s imagination, or did he seem resentful? Could he sense that something was going on with her and Doug? Silly, paranoid...she thought. Hoped.

  “No, really,” Doug interrupted, “it’s my pleasure. Not often I get to spring for drinks for some of our best support staff.”

  “Oh, thanks! That is so sweet,” Christina purred. Marci giggled. She wasn’t sure why.

  “It really is sweet, actually. You guys are a bunch of lushes,” Doug commented as he looked at the lengthy bill. He stood abruptly. “Now, does everyone have a ride home? You guys have been drinking all afternoon, at least according to my credit card.”