The Marriage Intervention

by Hilary Dartt

  “What if I never see my partner?”

  “Write it down, Delaney,” Summer said, pointing to the notebook. “Rule One. Initiate sex with Paul at least once per week.”

  Josie thought, What if he rejects me? but she remained silent.

  “Rule Two,” Delaney said. “Date nights. Once every two weeks.”

  “How is going out to dinner and a movie any different from staying home and watching a movie while eating dinner?” Josie said.

  “Oh my God,” Summer said to Delaney. “She really is clueless.”

  “I know,” Delaney said. “She’s all practicality, no romance.”

  “That’s not true!” Josie said. “I can be romantic.”

  “Give me one example,” Summer said.

  Dozens of images flashed through Josie’s mind. Images of her and Scott together. Him feeding her grapes at the top of Granite Mountain as they both gazed over the twinkling lights of Juniper. Her surprising him on July Fourth with a home-baked apple pie and homemade ice cream. Him braiding her hair in a horribly messy braid, and both of them cracking up as he stood behind her at the bathroom mirror.

  Of course, she’d promised Scott she’d always keep their relationship a secret, so it was impossible to use these moments with him as proof of her romantic capabilities. Plus, how would it look if all of her examples came from a previous relationship? And furthermore, if she told the girls about Scott, she’d feel obligated to tell Paul. If she didn’t, he’d be the only one who didn’t know.

  She shifted her attention to Paul, searching her memory for examples of romance, but she came up dry.

  “See?” Summer said, her voice self-satisfied and cheerful.

  “Well, don’t look so smug about it.”

  “Wow, you’re a bit prickly about this, Josie,” Delaney said.

  “Come on,” Josie said. “What’s Rule Three?”

  “Rule Three,” Summer said. “Hug at least twice a day, for at least twenty seconds each time.”

  “Wait. You’re going to help me restore my marriage through hugging? I think it’s you guys who are clueless, not me.”

  “After twenty seconds of hugging, your body produces oxytocin,” Summer said. “It’s a feel-good hormone.”

  “Oh my God,” Josie said. “I cannot believe I’m letting you two take over my marriage. And secondly, where are you coming up with these statistics?”

  “FriendZoo,” Summer said, raising an eyebrow at Josie. “Aren’t all those articles accurate?”

  Josie shook her head. Delaney continued: “Rule Four. Go to marriage counseling.”

  “I will not get through this with my dignity in tact,” Josie said. “I guarantee it.”

  “Rule Five,” Summer said. “Participate in an adventure date every month.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means rock climbing or water skiing or sledding,” Delaney said. “Or something like that. Something new. An experience you and Paul can share.”

  “How about bringing Paul to our next Happy Hour?” Josie said. “That’s an experience everyone should have.”

  Delaney shook her head. “Rule Six. Enter a race.”

  “A race? Like a running race? Or, like, a political race?”

  “Yeah,” Summer said. “Like a running race.”

  “I don’t run,” Josie said. “You guys know that. I walk.”

  “I don’t run unless I’m being chased by coyotes,” Delaney said.

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “It can be, like, a five k or something,” Summer said. “Three miles. That’ll take you like a half-hour.”

  “Fine,” Josie said.

  “Fine,” Summer and Delaney echoed.

  The three of them dissolved into giggles, although Josie was thinking, Yeah, right. I’ll be lucky to get three yards.

  ***

  What would Mama say about The Marriage Intervention?

  Josie couldn’t be sure. Although their mother had always taught Josie and Juan they could support themselves, no spouse necessary, Josie also knew she often felt lonely and missed her husband, Ricardo, who left when Josie was four and Juan was two.

  “He was a dreamer,” Mama said. “He lured me away from Mexico with the promise of a new life, and I believed him. Our time together was short, but it was big. Big and bright as the full moon. But just like the moon, he couldn’t be tied down. We were living what he told me was the dream, but he was dreaming of another life, and couldn’t resist it. Mind you, I wouldn’t have gotten you two if I hadn’t followed him to the States. But I want more for you, Josie. I want you to share a long life with the man you marry.”

  Josie remembered nodding solemnly, believing with every atom of her being that she would be a dreamer, too. After all, her father was three states away in Texas, enjoying himself on some fishing boat while she and Mama worked the fields, Juan strapped to Mama’s back, all of them sweating in the heat.

  Then she’d grown up. Mama moved them to Arizona, where she got a job as a translator for the government and began attending college to get her accounting degree.

  That same year, they learned that Ricardo died in an accident just a few hours away. He’d taken yet another new job, probably following another new dream, and the train he was conducting derailed, killing him.

  As Josie began to understand how the world worked, she learned to respect her mother’s determination. She began to emulate it.

  She worked hard in her classes, joined the speech and debate team and took college courses in high school so she could start her career as soon as possible.

  Practicality paid off.

  The Marriage Intervention was practical, and Mama would love it. But was Mama right about practicality?

  She died just short of her fiftieth birthday. Yes, she was making tamales, doing something she loved. But how much of her life had she really enjoyed? How much had she worked away? And how much would she miss?

  Josie continued teaching after her mom’s death, because she loved it, because she loved the students and because it was a good, stable job. But now, seven years later, she found herself looking for adventure. And romance.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  If Paul was Scott’s opposite, Josie’s first date with Paul was equally different from her first date with Scott.

  She still felt heartbroken over the dissolution of her relationship with Scott. But in his absence, she stopped bargaining for her mom’s life. She moved beyond depression and embraced acceptance. In acceptance, she found she wanted to follow her mother’s advice and give up romance in favor of practicality.

  “I’ll pick you up at six,” Paul said when she finally managed to track down his number and call to ask him out a couple of weeks after she first saw him in Susie Lockhart’s classroom.

  (By pursuing him, Josie was following one of her mother’s best tips: “Don’t wait around for Prince Charming, mija. If you find him, snap him right up and show him where to sit. On the throne right beside you.”)

  “I’ll be ready,” she said.

  “Actually, I’ll probably be sitting in your driveway at three minutes ’til, waiting for six o’clock to roll around.”

  That Saturday she looked out her front window at five fifty-seven to see his truck parked on the street. He knocked just as the big hand on her clock reached the twelve, and they were both smiling when she opened the door.

  Josie couldn’t help herself: she compared Paul to Scott at every stage of the date.

  Scott was always a minute or two late, rushing in with some excuse designed to make him sound important or chivalrous. (“Sorry ’bout that, they really needed me at work,” or, “I stopped to help a little kid get his basketball out of the street without getting run over.”) For some reason, although Carla had taught Josie to value punctuality, she found this quirk charming.

  Paul was three minutes early every time they met, without exception.

  Despite the poetry and flowers, Scott said he was a feminist. He
believed in equal rights for women. So he never hurried to open doors for her. On the other hand, Paul opened every door they encountered, including the passenger door of his truck. This was real gallantry, she thought, not the fabricated kind. Scott avoided all the serious topics, and Paul dove right in. Scott seemed to want to skim the surface, while Paul wanted to know everything. Every why, every how, and every what. Once Scott learned his way around Juniper’s restaurant industry, he always chose the most romantic restaurants and insisted they take turns paying (another indicator of his feminism, he said). He chose tables on the outskirts of the room, so no one they knew would notice them together.

  On their first date, Paul chose a casual, cozy diner where they sat right in the middle of the room. Josie felt a higher level of intimacy with him than she had on any of her dates with Scott. The server never delivered the bill, and when they walked out, Paul revealed he’d paid it when Josie was in the bathroom.

  During that first dinner, Paul quizzed Josie on her reasons for becoming a teacher, her motivations for buying a historic house downtown rather than a new house in a subdivision, and why she hated working out.

  And when she asked him questions, he answered them thoughtfully, as if he wanted her to know him.

  He told her he decided to become a cop when he was ten, after a burglar broke into the house where he lived with his mother. One of the police officers who responded to the midnight call sat with him until morning while a team of detectives and evidence technicians scoured the house and interviewed his mom.

  “He even ran to the store to grab me some Doritos,” Paul said, laughing. “And when he found out the burglar had stolen some of the gifts my mom planned to give me for Christmas, including my first brand new bike, he got together with a bunch of the other guys and bought me another one.”

  Once they finished dinner, they went for drinks at a little Irish pub just around the corner from the diner. The Blarney Stone. It had since closed, but Josie had fond memories of sitting in the crowded room at a high top table, feeling like she and Paul were the only people there, maybe the only people in the world.

  At one point, he reached across the table and took her hand.

  “I’m having a really great time,” he said.

  “I bet you say that on all your dates,” she answered, although somehow, she knew there weren’t that many.

  “The truth is,” he said, still serious, “I don’t date very often. I put it all out there, no secrets, and I guess I’m a take-me-or-leave-me kind of guy. You either love me or you hate me.”

  Yes, this was only their first date, and she wouldn’t call it love just yet, but judging by the way she felt whenever they made eye contact—as if he’d never laid eyes on another woman and never would again—she had a really good feeling about Paul Comstock.

  And judging by the way he kissed her when he walked her to her door that evening, he had a good feeling about her, too.

  ***

  After signing The Rules document during Happy Hour Thursday night, Josie went home, heated up some leftovers for dinner and ate them while watching a rerun of Friends.

  Then she went to bed. Alone.

  She was too exhausted to think about The Marriage Intervention, The Rules, or Paul and she slept a deep, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, though, as she slipped out of bed before her alarm went off, she thought about the questions Summer and Delaney asked her the night before.

  How often did they have sex? She said once a month, but even that was generous. How often did they even have eye contact? Once a month? Maybe.

  Things hadn’t always been this way. It took several years for their relationship to evolve into its current state.

  In the early days, she felt giddy just thinking about him. She’d wait up for him to get home from work, just so she could hear about his day and tell him about hers. They’d sit at the kitchen counter, her in a robe and him in his uniform pants and an undershirt, and talk half the night.

  She survived on barely any sleep and lots and lots of sex.

  During this period of time, she missed her mother with a fierce longing. She could imagine Mama examining Josie’s face with her shrewd eyes, and saying things like, “You see, mija? You are happy. You have el pasión. Real passion. Because you married for practicality and not for romance.”

  Just after their first anniversary, Paul went undercover. That was the first curve of the downward spiral.

  His facial hair got longer, and so did his hours. He pulled all-nighters waiting for Phoenix drug dealers to make deliveries to Juniper. He contracted with sleazy informants, took calls at all hours of the day and night, and several times had to leave family functions to take someone down.

  Not that it was all his fault, Josie thought now. After drying off, she began dressing in the outfit she had hung in the bathroom the night before. She tried to be understanding. She tried to embrace Paul’s new position. He was good at it, he enjoyed it and the overtime checks were a nice bonus. She learned to appreciate her nights alone watching girly TV shows and reading cheesy romance novels.

  Over time, though, she began to resent his frequent absences. And one night, while they were making what she thought was really passionate love, he froze.

  “What’s wrong?” Josie said.

  “Nothing. Just hold on a minute.”

  He leapt out of bed, grabbed a notepad and a pen, and began scribbling away like a madman.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I just thought of something. This could be a major breakthrough. Vasquez couldn’t have seen Davis at the bowling alley. He was being questioned that same night by the guys from Phoenix Metro. It just came to me.”

  He looked up at her then, excitement shining in his eyes. “Hold on, okay, baby? Hold on just one minute. I’ve got to make a call.”

  He left her there, laying on her back on their messy bed.

  “Oh, Mama,” she said to the ceiling. “I didn’t marry for romance, but I didn’t marry for this, either.”

  That was the first time, but it wasn’t the last. Not that he interrupted their lovemaking again, but he did disconnect, emotionally, over and over. So she followed suit. She made herself the unavailable one, staying late at school, running unnecessary errands, shopping for new shoes she didn’t need.

  When they were together, she was short with him. Snippy. She picked at him for leaving his dishes in the sink rather than putting them in the dishwasher. She criticized the TV shows he watched and the amount of beer he drank. He switched to whiskey. Of course, he came back at her, his own criticisms sharp and observant. She never squeegeed the shower door. She always left her wet towel on the bathroom counter. When she got home from work she took her shoes off at the front door and left them in the walkway.

  And now here they were: adversaries living together in a constant state of discord, each of them always looking to strike before the other could get in a good hit.

  ***

  On the short drive to Juniper Elementary that morning, Josie made a decision. She decided to begin again with Paul. She decided she would repair their marriage, not because Summer and Delaney insisted, but because she wanted to. She just had to make Paul see reason. She wanted her marriage to get back to where it was before that downward spiral. Or maybe not where it was exactly, but somewhere close.

  The parking lot was still empty except for one other car. Dread, cold and clingy, crawled up the back of Josie’s neck at the thought of running into that car’s owner inside. Her classroom was on the third floor, and for the briefest moment she imagined climbing up the fire escape rather than walking in through the front entrance. She laughed to herself when she remembered Summer and Delaney doing just that a few months before, to ensure she’d go to the principal interview after they submitted her application.

  But she didn’t need to sneak around.

  Why did she still feel the need to steel herself, even after seven years? In the fresh, purple light of the
sunrise, Josie approached the wide wooden doors at the front of the century-old schoolhouse. She walked in, and he was standing in the doorway of his office. Scott Smith, as tall and handsome as ever. Scott Smith, the almost-perfect man with whom it would never, could never work.

  “Josie,” he said.

  “Scott.”

  “You look nice.”

  She probably did. Fashion was one of her strong points. Because she couldn’t remember the outfit she’d chosen the night before and she’d gotten dressed in a haze this morning, she looked down at herself: dark blue slacks that did make her legs look damned sexy, if she said so herself, and a white blouse with navy blue polka dots, tucked in neatly.

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  “It’s been a long time since we were alone together,” he said. “Why don’t you join me for a cup of coffee?”

  Over the course of the past seven years, Josie often caught Scott looking at her during meetings, standing a little too close at staff parties and laughing a little too loudly at her jokes. Even after she married Paul. Even after her flame for Scott died. Well, almost died. And most importantly, even after she discovered his secrets.

  Since her flame for him was long dead, or almost dead, what could it hurt to have coffee with him? He was leaving after this year, anyway. She already knew she’d be taking over his position. Besides, her fellow teachers would start trickling in within thirty minutes, so she had a little cushion.

  How much could happen in thirty minutes?

  ***

  “Two creams and two sugars?” Scott asked, although he was already stirring them into the Recipe For A Human: Just Add Coffee mug. She nodded, trying not to be delighted that he remembered how she took her coffee. She thanked him and he sat down behind his desk.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said.