Colin’s voice now: “Why the hell not? No. Don’t do that. Yes, get him on the line. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Listen, guys, we have to get this right. It’s not enough to be almost sure.”
Papers had been slid under their door again, but she left them where they were. Just off the bathroom there was a deck with a saltwater hot tub. The view was of the beach and cliffs at the edge of Tulum, and a small portion of the main building. Shell had read in the property guide that there was a five-star restaurant, a spa, a gym, a yoga studio and an array of meeting rooms. We’re all in this together, Miles and Grace had assured her, after the embarrassment of the first night. She had believed that for about a minute before leaving the terrace, shamefaced. She still didn’t know how she was going to face anyone. She wanted to be anywhere but here.
Shell slipped off her robe and let it puddle on the ground. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror as she walked naked over to the doors that led to the saltwater tub; this had become her habit. She didn’t eat enough anymore, and in her twenties this would have revealed jutting clavicles and hips perfect for low-slung jeans and sexy shirts that hung from her frame as if they might fall off at any second. But she was in her forties now, and she knew her thinness just made her look older.
She lowered herself into the water and closed her eyes. Silence, brief, then her husband’s voice, rising above all else. “For fuck’s sake!” above the buzz of cicadas. “Goddamn it!” above the swooping flutter of a bird overhead. “Then call him again!” above the waves crashing in the distance.
They were due at their first counseling session in an hour. They hadn’t spoken a word to one another in over twenty-four.
* * *
The air-conditioning unit in Miles’s office was too strong. Shell wrapped her arms around herself. When she did, Miles turned to Colin and raised his eyebrows as if he were on a stage and the people at the back of the theater needed to be able to see his expression. “I wish I had a mirror,” he said. “The two of you should see yourselves. You’re behaving as if you haven’t spoken to one another in days, as though you’re both doing your best to wish the other person out of the room.”
Silence from both of them. This was one of the things Shell had read about the Markells online, that their instincts were infallible. I know who you are, Miles had said to her, two days before. And now, she was sure, he was going to come to understand who she and her husband were together. Broken. Mismatched.
Miles sighed. “You’re not giving me much to work with,” he said. Shell heard sharp edges in his voice that hadn’t been there on the first night. She thought of the other comments she had seen online, the ones she had written off because there had been only a handful compared with the hundreds of raves. “Miles Markell is a charlatan. Travel to the ‘last resort’ at your own risk. My marriage is over now, no thanks to anyone at that place.” But some marriages simply didn’t stand a chance, Shell had thought when she had read that. Everyone knew this. Shell knew hers didn’t. She wasn’t going to blame anyone else but herself and her husband, and the cruelty of life, for exactly why. We tried everything, she would be able to murmur, instead of the more painful truth.
“There’s a huge amount of animosity in this room,” Miles was saying. “Can either of you tell me why that is?”
Shell cleared her throat and tried to think of something to say to this man, the one she had met in the lobby two days before and felt she had known, the one who had marveled at her honesty, who had later so thoughtfully introduced her to the crowd as a wife and a mother who lived in the middle of a forest, beside a lake, whose husband worked at a gold mine while ignoring what he had at home. But now she couldn’t speak. So she just sat, waiting for him to figure it all out, how ruptured they were. It would be a relief to be able to talk about it.
“We had an argument yesterday morning,” Colin eventually said.
“And the other night on the terrace, in front of your peers,” Miles said. “You argued then, too. About Colin’s job, right? Did that argument continue, and now you’re not speaking?”
More silence. Shell bit down on her inner bottom lip. Let him explain it. Let him get in trouble for constantly being on his phone, when that went against the rules of the place and everything they were supposed to be doing. Colin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. A clock ticked.
“I’ll wait you out,” Miles said.
“Shell got angry with me for being on the phone,” Colin said.
“There it is,” Miles said. “Not so hard, was it? Congratulations for being less stubborn than your wife.”
Anger, sudden and fierce, no matter that this was goddamn Miles Markell. “He gets congratulated? He has a contraband device! And I’m not being stubborn. All of this is very hard to—”
Miles said, “I am an only child, and Grace and I were not blessed with children—but right at the moment, I’m getting a sense of what it must be like to have a sibling. This happens sometimes. Two people who were once in love become like roommates. They argue in an infantile way. There are a number of reasons this happens. Relationship ennui is incredibly common.”
“Relationship ennui—it’s a bit more than—”
“Listen.” Now it was Colin who interrupted Shell. “I know I’m supposed to have relinquished all devices, but something happened at work just before we left for this trip and if I disappear, a lot of things could fall apart. There are safety issues at the mine, and it’s my job to make sure they’re taken care of.”
Miles nodded. “I understand you have a high-pressure job,” he said.
“Yeah,” Colin said, relief in his voice. “And now, especially.”
“You’re a CEO...”
“Director of operations. The workers are preparing to start blasting the mine. But there are a few safety—”
“Excuse me?” Shell interjected. “Do you think about anything else, ever, aside from that damn mine?”
“You never listen to me when I talk about it anyway!” Colin said, days worth of silence and anger bubbling to the surface. “Do you think this is what I would rather be doing? No! But it’s my obligation. People’s lives depend on it!”
“Why isn’t your obligation ever to me? I need you to see me, I need—”
“I need you to stop shouting,” Miles said.
“—you to actually look me in the eye and tell me you’re hurting, too, that it’s okay, that neither of us are over this and we’re in it together—”
“You threw a glass at my head!” Colin shouted. “You turned into a drunk! I love you and I can’t stand what you’ve become. It was either this or fucking rehab—”
“What I’ve become? You’re a fucking workaholic! That’s an addiction, too!”
“All right, that’s enough,” Miles said. But she didn’t want to stop. She gathered more air, opened her mouth to speak.
“I said stop!” The sharpness of Miles’s voice startled Shell. Reflexively, she glanced toward her husband, help, but he was staring at a fixed spot ahead of him.
“We are not going to get anywhere if you just sit here and argue for two weeks,” Miles said slowly. He was holding up his hand, flat palmed. His wedding band glinted in the morning light. “And I may have learned more in these few minutes about the two of you than I would have if you’d actually attended the entire opening exercise together.”
Colin was tapping his leg. Counting down the seconds. Shell knew him. Tell him, she willed. Tell him why we’re like this, Colin.
“It’s clear that you’ve backed your husband into a corner so many times he’s shut down, and I’m here to tell you why.”
She felt her rage, still coursing through her veins, but also a strange kind of relief after the outburst. The relief she had been looking for. “You think—you really think the reason my husband can barely look at me, the reason he refuses to see me is because I attack
him? Colin.”
“I think we might need to do some one-on-one work before we can meet again as a threesome. You need help.” Miles picked up his clipboard. “We’re going to need to make some changes. I’m going to focus on working with Shell. And, Colin, you’ll be moving onto Grace’s roster. I’ll double up with you, Shell. A session each morning and each afternoon, for the next few days at least. And between that, anger management group.”
“For both of us?”
“Just for you.”
“What?” She laughed, incredulous.
“I believe you heard me,” he said without looking up from his clipboard.
“I have to go to anger management?”
“Passive aggressive,” he pronounced. He turned to Colin. “Your wife is a potential danger to herself and others right now,” he said to her husband calmly, as if Shell weren’t there. “And the drinking—you’re right about that. She brought vodka to the resort. It was found in her bags. You are not to engage with her. You are to leave that to me.”
“You searched my bags?”
“It’s in the contract—”
“But we didn’t sign that contract.”
An expression on Miles’s face she almost thought was uncertainty—and she could tell it was rare. But it passed. He shook his head as if to chase it away. “Really, Shell?” he said. “You want us to apologize for saving you from yourself?” She felt her body start to shake, involuntary.
“You can’t just search our bags.” She was embarrassed. But her anger was winning. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be.
“You don’t have to be here,” Miles said, still even-toned. “Absolutely no one is forcing you. You are free to go. And we will, as is also included in the agreement you signed—or were supposed to sign—provide you with a full refund. Our satisfaction guarantee is one hundred percent.”
Silence. Shell lifted her chin and waited for Colin to look at her but there was nothing, of course. Not a glance in her direction.
“How do I not engage with my own wife?” Colin asked, as if the previous exchange had not happened at all—and as if he didn’t know exactly how it was possible to withdraw completely from the person you were married to.
“So, you’re staying?” Miles said.
Colin nodded. “Of course.”
“And what about you?” He looked at Shell. She struggled to recall what she thought she had seen in him, two days earlier. How comforted Miles had made her feel.
“Yes,” Shell said quietly, but only because she couldn’t imagine going home to their hollowed-out house.
“Okay. So let’s move on. We’re separating you for now. We do this in certain cases—rare, but it happens. Sometimes, facing the reality of a separation in a controlled setting helps couples understand what they stand to lose.”
“So, what do we do?”
“Colin, go pack. A bellhop will be at your room within the hour for your bags. You’ll be relocated to your own private villa.”
She would be alone. She didn’t hate this idea. Alone here was better than alone anywhere else. These beds held no memories. She had not tickled toes on any of the beds in any of the villas, had not attempted and mastered a complicated swaddle atop any of these sheets while her handsome, loving husband stood by and cheered her on.
Miles put down his clipboard and picked up the receiver of the telephone on his desk. “Shell, your anger management group starts in five minutes in the basement of the main villa, meeting room B. I’m going to send someone to pack up for you because you’re moving to a new villa, too.” This made her feel uncomfortable but she didn’t speak. He wrote something down quickly on a notepad, then ripped off the sheet and handed it to her. “See you tomorrow.”
There was a brown-and-white cowhide rug on the floor of the waiting area. It turned Johanna’s stomach so she looked at the bookshelves—except there weren’t any books. The shelves were bare. She thought of her tiny cube of an office at work, the clutter everywhere, at her desk and everyone else’s. Despite the stale microwave cooking smells in the air, the builder-beige walls, the constant noise—phones ringing, people talking too loud—she had loved that place. There was no greater punishment than staying far away from it.
She ran her finger along an empty shelf, then looked down. Her finger had encountered a rock a little smaller than her fist. She picked it up and examined it. It was heavy in her hand, rough textured. White, gray, brown, dotted with black.
“That’s lava from Popocatépetl,” said a familiar voice behind her, like a deejay’s voice—a deejay on the night shift, running a show she knew might be listened to by only one desperate soul. In the moment before she turned around, she felt Grace come to stand beside her. She smelled shampoo and perfume, delicate spice. She turned. Grace’s hair was smooth and shiny, flowing in soft waves down her shoulders. Her skin glowed with good health and likely good concealer, her lips shone, her smile revealed perfect teeth, snow-white. Johanna wished she had showered, at least, instead of tumbling out of bed late, pulling on the first clothes she found spilling out of the top of her still unpacked suitcase and shoving her hair into a ponytail. And she wished she didn’t already know that the sheen on Grace was just a veneer. She closed her eyes for a moment. You shouldn’t have been there at the cenote in the first place. It was none of your business. But it had kept her up the night before, all the questions she now had about Grace Markell. Now Grace was smiling at her, expectant. It made her even more nervous. “Why are there no books?” Johanna said, her voice rushed and unnatural. “These are really nice built-ins. Look at the details. My dad was a cabinetmaker. He would have—” She forced herself to stop the anxious chatter.
“Your father is gone?” Grace said.
“Shouldn’t we be in your office for this?”
“Fair enough. But to address your first question, books are so subjective. I thought, what if someone sees a book they really hate and it gets things off on the wrong foot? So I decided I would collect things to put on the shelves. And then I thought about it too much. There are very few perfect items in this world.” Her tone was thoughtful. “That lava rock—it’s supposed to make anyone who touches it stronger. That’s the legend. I love that there are so many legends in Mexico. And I liked that one in particular. I thought my clients might like that, too. But you’re the only one who has ever touched it.”
Johanna looked down at the rock in her hands, then back up into Grace’s gray eyes. She took in her entire face. Her heart was pounding too hard. She knew her next breath would be a gasping one if she didn’t calm down. Was it really you I saw swimming yesterday? Do you have any idea how seeing you like that made me feel? And who was he? Was that your lover coming down the path to meet you? But, of course, she couldn’t say that. She clamped her mouth shut.
“Why don’t you come on in,” Grace said, and turned away while Johanna took in air as quietly as she could, then followed, still carrying the rock.
They walked down a short hall and into an office that had windows curving along a wall that faced the ocean. Grace indicated a heather-purple leather couch, then sat across from her in a matching swivel chair. There was a painting of a seahorse on one wall, all swirling strokes of paint, a prism of color. Her degrees were on the other wall: Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. Texas Longhorns, Johanna remembered. She saw herself hanging a hat carefully on a bush, her own shaking hand and the water below.
Her eyes roamed the room again but there were no other personal effects, nothing except a pristine desk, all the drawers closed, their facings dotted with locks, and a box of tissues—the box was a blue argyle pattern—on the low table between them.
“Is it okay that I took it in here with me? The rock?” Johanna said, only just realizing she was still clutching it.
“Of course. I assumed you would,” Grace said, smiling.
“But it
’s your one perfect thing.”
“During your sessions, it can be your one perfect thing.”
The rock had tiny craters in it, like the surface of the moon. Johanna imagined the heat of the fire that would have created the rock. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’re a social worker at a family services center in Santa Monica,” Grace said.
“Was.”
“Your intake file says you’re on temporary leave.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“About it being temporary?”
“Right.”
“Do you miss your job?”
“I miss it a lot,” Johanna admitted.
“What was it like?”
She remembered the longing she had felt for her old job in the waiting area when she had been looking at those empty shelves. “Chaos.”
“Could you elaborate on that? What was chaotic about it?”
“It was messy and crowded there. The phones rang constantly, the waiting room was always full. Someone was always crying in the bathroom and pretending they weren’t.”
“Why not just talk to someone, if you were upset? Why pretend?”
Johanna ignored that question. “There was always junk in the lunchroom, donuts and cookies that everyone said they were not going to eat, but no one ever had time for lunch, so all of it always disappeared. And then, if someone took the last donut or cookie or whatever, someone would always leave an angry note. And we all thought it was hilarious.” Johanna thought for a moment. It made her happy, to be able to talk about her work. Happy, and afraid. “Joking was a big part of it. Terrible jokes. It’s hard to explain. You can’t dwell on it too long, the way people hurt each other and themselves, and not be ruined by that. We were the helpers.” Her throat ached when she said that. She fell silent and realized she had said too much without meaning to. She put the rock down on the table between them.
The Last Resort Page 6