The Marriage Pact

by Pullen, M. J.

  In the smaller waiting room, Leah accepted the bundle gratefully. She nodded her head toward Robert’s room, indicating that Jake was with him. “Go on,” she said, and settled in with her pillow.

  Marci entered the room quietly and took the seat next to Jake by his father’s bed. She was exhausted. Robert was sleeping, undisturbed by the soft beeps and clicks from the machines. Jake and Marci sat there for a long time without saying anything; she was grateful just to be next to him.

  Around 4:00 a.m. Marci awoke with her head on Jake’s chest, and a long string of drool pooling on his shirt from the corner of her mouth. She hurriedly wiped her mouth and his shirt, but it didn’t seem to bother him. As she sat up, she noticed that he had his arm around her. He shifted to give her space to sit up straight.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. There’s nothing to do right now but sit and stare at him,” Jake said morosely. “You should probably go home and get some sleep. I know you have to work tomorrow.”

  Marci looked at the clock. Four a.m. “Later today,” she murmured.

  “Go on; we’re fine here. When Leah wakes up I’m going home to shower and sleep for a few hours.”

  She stood to leave and Jake grabbed her hand. He looked at her directly with tired eyes. “Thank you for being here.”

  “Of course,” she said, and meant it.

  He held on to her hand. “Marci, about Rebecca—”

  “You don’t have to explain—”

  “There’s nothing going on with us. I mean, I know she wants something to happen, but it’s not. I just thought you should know.” He gave her a grim little smile.

  Marci leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 25

  For the next three weeks, Marci spent most of her evenings, weekends, and some lunch hours at the Stillwell’s home or the hospital. She kept a notebook of Robert’s progress, medications, and advice from the doctors and nurses. She ran errands for anyone who needed it, and sat with Robert and read to him from his favorite war histories while Leah and Jake took breaks for dinner or fresh air.

  Overall, his recovery seemed to be going well. He had been moved out of the ICU after a couple of days, and according to his treatment team, showed very positive signs for regaining some functioning on his left side. They had started him on some physical therapy in the afternoons. His speech was deeply slurred even at his best moments, but he seemed able to understand and communicate pretty well. At her mother’s suggestion, Marci had purchased him a handheld marker board so he could write more easily to let it be known what he wanted or needed.

  Marci’s parents came to the hospital frequently, too. Her dad often turned up in the mornings before his first patients of the day. Arthur shared Robert’s love of military history and took particular joy in having an excuse to spend an hour a day reading aloud from Robert’s books. Her mom liked to come in the early afternoons when she knew Kitty would be alone with Robert and need support. Each day, Kitty seemed stronger, a bit less fragile, but she was far from herself. Marci wondered a few times what would’ve become of her if Robert had not survived the stroke.

  After a few weeks, the hospital staff began preparing the family for the process of moving Robert home. He had made it very clear, using the red marker and bold letters on Marci’s board, the option of a temporary assisted living setting was not acceptable. So, he would have nursing care and in-home physical therapy, and would need a special bed on the first floor of their home. Because there was no bedroom on the ground floor of the Stillwell’s enormous manor, Kitty’s prized drawing room, which had once been featured in Classic Southern Homes, had to be appropriated for his care.

  The financial cost of the medical equipment and re-tooling the downstairs bathroom for Robert’s use was not an issue for the Stillwells, but the emotional toll on Kitty was substantial. She cried as the movers came to pack her beautiful baby grand piano into a crate for storage, and cried again when the company delivered the hospital bed for Robert.

  Suzanne, Marci and Leah spent an entire Saturday packing all of Kitty’s most precious antiques and knick knacks, and the following Saturday redecorating the room to look like a cozy bedroom and minimize the sterile look of everything. Suzanne, far more talented than Marci in this regard, even designed and hand-sewed a beautiful cover for the bed, with holes for all the buttons and switches and elastic to allow it to move when the bed was repositioned. This seemed to lift Kitty’s spirits tremendously. When she saw it, she cried again with gratitude and hugged Suzanne tightly.

  The night before Robert’s homecoming, Marci sat with him while the rest of the family was at the elementary school play in which Leah’s daughter was performing. She read to him for a while, and then showed him pictures on her phone of the re-made drawing room. “And, of course, when you’re back to your old self, we can put everything back just the way Kitty had it. I made sure to take pictures of all of it, just the way it was.”

  Robert half-chuckled and gestured for the board. “U know Kitty,” he wrote, and Marci laughed. He took the board back and wrote again. He pointed to Marci as she read it. “Good daughter.” For the first time since his stroke, Marci allowed herself to cry freely, with her head buried in Robert Stillwell’s hands.

  Though she had seen Jake frequently over the past few weeks, they had not talked about their relationship overtly, and they had not been physical at all. Marci was doing her best to be Jake’s friend and keep a respectful distance from everything else. Inside, though, she was dying to know how he felt about her, what he thought about their future together.

  She knew now that she loved him, and regretted deeply her doubts and indecision when he had wanted to build a life with her. She had begun realizing it before Doug appeared at the door, and the last few weeks had solidified everything. Maybe Nicole was right: she always wanted what she couldn’t have and Jake’s rejection had inspired her to go after him. Or maybe she really had always loved Jake, deep down. The experiences of the last few weeks had brought those feelings to a new level, opened her eyes to the man Jake was today, not just the boy she’d fallen for in college.

  Either way, Marci had a strong sense that wherever she was now, there was no going back. Every time she saw Jake, her heart jumped and hope filled her, radiating from her belly like a warm shot of vodka. She had become a master of discipline when it came to holding back these feelings. Of course, the situation with Robert, not to mention that Jake had told her explicitly to back off, made any sort of expression inappropriate.

  Yet, she could not help but wonder whether Jake was feeling some of the same things. Though he said nothing, she sometimes caught him looking at her as though he were trying to solve a puzzle. They had eaten dinner together a few times, sometimes in the hospital cafeteria, other times at the Waffle House down the street. Their conversations were kept to the state of his dad’s health and some small talk, which she let him lead. One night he observed, when her hands were resting on the empty table waiting for her omelet and hash browns, “You’re not wearing the ring.”

  His tone was completely neutral, but it was a shock to her anyway. It was as if he’d just noticed that she had new glasses or something. “No. Well, I didn’t know. After everything.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” He nodded gravely. He followed with, “Jamal is going to Georgia next year.”

  “What?” Marci was as surprised by the abrupt change of subject as she was by the news itself. “I thought he was injured?”

  “He is,” Jake said. “But he’s going on a full academic scholarship. I actually sent some film of him to the business school and they found him some money and an assistantship. It’s a really big deal for an undergraduate.”

  He was beaming. Seeing his obvious pride breaking through the cares of the past several months was wonderful. “Wow. So you got his family to come around?”

  “Yeah. I went
down there and talked with his dad for a long time. He made me go fishing with him for like four hours. They were so devastated after the accident. I think they turned their anger on me, too. I don’t blame them—a rich white kid from the city capitalizing on their son’s disappointment...”

  “But that’s not what you were doing!”

  “I know that, but you can see how they might feel that way.”

  “Yeah,” she conceded.

  “Anyway, the important thing is that Jamal gets to go to college. And they signed back on for the documentary. I think it’s going to be an interesting contrast to the players who do make it to the college teams.”

  Marci sat back and enjoyed the steady flow of Jake’s voice as he continued to update her on all aspects of his film. It seemed he had missed having someone listen to all the details of his project and she certainly had missed hearing him talk so freely. He asked her about her new job and seemed genuinely interested in her description of Lambert. They never returned to the subject of the ring or their relationship. Still, she did not sleep that night, analyzing from every angle what the conversation might mean.

  #

  Once Robert returned home and a full-time nurse was hired, things settled down for the Stillwells, and Marci was no longer needed. She began to focus again on work: the project she was leading was due in a few weeks and it had been hard to give the team her full attention lately. She found herself sinking into Suzanne’s new leather couch in her pajamas by 7:30 every night, eating whatever could be found in the freezer or ordered as takeout, watching bad television until she fell asleep.

  She thought about Jake often, and even called him a few times to check on Robert, but they did not talk for long, nor did they address what was becoming the elephant in the room between them. After a while, Marci grew so restless and desperate for information that she actually called Rebecca and invited her to lunch, hoping she would know more about what was going on in Jake’s world.

  This turned out to backfire, as tiny Rebecca spent nearly the entire lunch talking about dieting and carbs and her personal trainer. Enjoying a meal with Rebecca when she was on a dieting kick was impossible, so when Rebecca ordered a mixed green salad with grilled chicken, Marci followed suit. She could not steer the conversation to Jake in any round-about way, so she finally just blurted, “So how is Jake?” as the waiter cleared their plates and she glanced longingly at a cheeseburger on the table next to theirs.

  Obviously, Rebecca had no information and it was a sore point, because her face went scarlet when Marci asked and she looked down at the table as though fascinated by a bit of salad dressing. “I don’t really know. We,” she hesitated, “we haven’t have much time to hang out lately.” Marci tried hard not to be happy about this. But not too hard.

  #

  One rainy Tuesday afternoon, Jake called and asked whether Marci was free for dinner. She was, or, said she was and then called Suzanne to break off their plans for Tuesday Night Margaritas. For the rest of the afternoon, she sat at her desk and tried to visualize her closet, what was in it that was clean and would send the right message. She needed something that was casual but not sloppy, available but not...Rebecca.

  In the end, none of this hypothetical planning mattered because her boss pulled all the team leads into a late meeting at 4:30, which of course went on forever. She fidgeted and stared at the clock while he droned on, until he finally ended the meeting with a snide, “Apparently, Marci has somewhere more important she needs to be, so we’ll close out here.” Embarrassed, she slunk out of the conference room under astonished looks from her peers.

  Jake’s car was in front of her apartment by the time she got home, so the grey skirt and white button-up she’d worn to work would have to do. She couldn’t believe how nervous she felt, climbing her stairs. Jake had not given a reason for the dinner date, but it was getting hard to control the hope that they would finally be having the conversation about “us.”

  “You look nice,” he said as she entered the apartment. He and Suzanne were on the couch, watching the nightly news, which Marci found funny because she knew Suzanne would much rather be watching reruns of Project Runway at that time of day.

  “Thanks. Sorry I’m late; I got called into a meeting.”

  He stood and grabbed his rain jacket off the back of a barstool, tossing a, “See you later,” at Suzanne as he did. The bad news was Marci had no time to change clothes; the good news was that whatever his reasons for asking her to dinner, he didn’t seem to feel it was appropriate to include Suzanne. So that was something.

  Marci threw down her work bag as she turned to follow him, when Suzanne appeared next to her as though she’d sprung from behind a bush. “She’ll be right behind you, honey,” she called into the hallway after Jake.

  The woman could have worked for NASCAR. In less than thirty seconds, Suzanne pulled Marci’s skirt up by a good three inches and folded the waist over on itself, unbuttoned the top button of the work blouse, revealing more cleavage than Marci was comfortable with, and out of nowhere produced lipstick, blush, and powder. She attacked Marci’s cheeks, eyelids, and lips with a quick brush and critical eye, and then snatched the clip from Marci’s hair so that her hair fell to her shoulders.

  “But the rain –”

  “Go,” Suzanne said, ignoring Marci’s protests and kissing her on the cheek. “Have fun.”

  Marci trotted after Jake, tugging at her skirt just a bit. She saw Suzanne’s point, of course, but she didn’t want to look like a total hooker. She held her rain jacket over her head as she ran to his car, where he was holding the passenger door open under an umbrella.

  “You really look amazing,” he said as he pulled out of the parking space. “This career thing looks good on you.”

  She could feel herself blushing. “Thanks.”

  They went to Alfredo’s, one of their favorite Italian restaurants. The romantic setting, with low lights and dark corners, didn’t seem particularly significant because they had been there often enough with the whole group. Still, her heart pounded as the maître d’ showed them to a tiny corner table in the back. She ordered a glass of wine to calm her nerves. Jake apparently had the same idea because he chose a gin and tonic.

  Robert was doing well, Jake reported. Recovering faster than most people expected of someone his age. He was driving the nurses and physical therapists crazy, pretending to be asleep when they arrived and correcting their grammar on his little white board. Marci laughed. He had regained some muscle control on the left side and they were optimistic he might walk again. Overall, it seemed very positive.

  Jake asked her about work, and she told him the basics about the project she was working on and her upcoming deadline. It felt good to talk with him about it. Things had always seemed more manageable when she talked to Jake about them—he had an unfailing confidence in himself, his friends, and the world. Even when he simply nodded or said, “uh-huh,” as she told him about it, she felt reassured and less nervous about the evaluation that was just around the corner.

  When the drinks came, they sipped quietly. Jesus, their go-to topics had not even gotten them through the arrival of dinner. What now? She fidgeted with her wineglass and tried to think what to say next.

  Finally, Jake spoke. “I wanted to say thank you for everything you did for my family, for me, in the past few weeks. It’s been a rough time, as you know, and I don’t know how we would’ve made it through without you.”

  She smiled and looked down. “Of course. It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done for me.”

  “I know that,” he said, and took her hand. “But that doesn’t make it mean any less. No matter what happens between us. Well, just know that I will never forget it.”

  She wanted to ask, was terrified to ask, and finally decided that she had to ask. “No matter what happens?”

  Now it was his turn to stare at his glass as though at any moment it would reveal the secrets of the universe. He was still holding her hand, but
loosely, lying on the booth seat between them. Even this casual touch electrified her.

  “I know we need to talk about us,” he said. “Frankly, I’ve been putting off, because I didn’t know what to say. I’m terrified of losing your friendship, and all this stuff with Dad happened and...”

  She felt a sudden surge of panic, feeling something familiar about this speech. I’m terrified of losing your friendship. Vague memories of break-ups and brush-offs past were stirring up in her as he talked, and she felt a compulsion to run out of the room. Rewind, rewind, rewind, she thought stupidly, go back to the part where I had no idea what he was going to say.

  “Jake, we don’t have to talk about this now,” she said, trying to stop the flow. Any minute he was going to tell her that it had all been a mistake, he’d seen her true colors, and he could never imagine himself with someone like her. If she could just stop him from saying it, it wouldn’t have to be true. “Maybe you need more time to think things through. You really need to focus on your dad right now.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I can’t keep putting it off. You deserve to know something. You’ve been really patient.”

  This can’t be good.

  “The main reason I haven’t been able to talk to you about us is,” he sighed deeply and continued, “I honestly don’t know how I feel right now.”

  “That’s okay,” she stammered. “So much has happened –”

  “I know I love you,” he said, quieting her. He looked directly into her eyes. “I really do. You’re my best friend, and if this experience with Dad has taught me anything, it’s what a true friend you are. I’m lucky to have you in my life. Dad even pointed that out to me a couple of days ago.”

  So that was why he’d called out of the blue. Marci thought of Robert and smiled.