No one said anything. Marci couldn’t believe that Rebecca had so much of her life planned already, never mind the fact that poor Roger was her consolation prize if she didn’t meet Señor Right on a beach in Barcelona. Marci could barely plan from one week to the next, much less think about what her late 20s would hold. Thirty was so far away; how could anyone decide now what they would want then? Apparently, Jake and Suzanne were equally caught off guard by these declarations, because they both stared pensively at the center of the table.
Rebecca took the last sip of her amaretto sour and slid off her barstool. “Well, I need to go. I have an early class in the morning and a rush meeting tomorrow night to get ready for. Kiss, kiss!” Suzanne rolled her eyes at this affectation as Rebecca strolled out of the bar without paying her part of the tab.
As annoyed as Marci had felt with Rebecca that evening, her absence left a tension lingering over the table. She wondered whether Jake knew that Suzanne knew what had happened between them. After a few minutes of silent sipping, Suzanne was the first to speak. “It’s actually not a bad idea.”
“What?” Jake and Marci said in unison.
“The whole backup guy thing. I think I’ve actually heard of that, people choosing someone who they like and respect who they’ll marry if they don’t meet someone else by a certain age. Like thirty or forty or whatever.”
Marci was shocked to hear this, particularly from Suzanne, who had no interest in marriage. “Who would do that? I mean, if you like someone enough to marry them ten years from now, why not just marry them now?”
“You mean like Beth and Ray?” Suzanne argued. “I thought you felt it was too early to get into a serious relationship.”
“I do, but...” Marci stuttered.
“I get it,” Jake said softly. He did not meet Marci’s eye.
“You guys should do it!” Suzanne said abruptly, as though she were suggesting they all run next door to The Grill for a burger.
“What? No. That’s stupid.” Marci squirmed in her seat, careful to look directly at Suzanne and not across the table. She was angry with Jake now ,why would she want to marry him in the future?
“No, it’s not,” Suzanne said, quite seriously. “I mean, you never know what’s going to happen in the next ten years, do you? Maybe you’ll both be happily married to other people, but if not, you can marry someone you already love and respect. By thirty, your biological clock will be ticking!” This last was directed at Marci, because for some reason, guys did not have biological clocks.
“What about you? You have a biological clock, too. Why don’t you two do it?” Marci sputtered defensively. Of course all three of them knew the answer to this. Suzanne and Jake had never connected, while just a few weeks ago, she and Jake had certainly demonstrated that they at least had the potential to be more than friends.
“What about Truck?” she added weakly. She hadn’t actually talked to Travis in nearly a week, but Jake didn’t need to know that. He seemed sulky after she said this, which pleased her.
Suzanne scowled. “Oh, come on, like you’re really going to marry that Neanderthal! And anyway, if you do, certainly you’ll decide that before you turn thirty, won’t you?”
Marci took a long gulp of beer from her glass. Only she had objected to Suzanne’s suggestion; Jake had not weighed in at all. Was she being petty?
As if sensing a chink in Marci’s armor, Suzanne renewed her assault. “Jake, you’d marry Marci if you were still single in ten years, wouldn’t you?”
He looked at Marci for the first time, expression inscrutable. “Yeah, I think I would.”
Suzanne stopped a passing waitress and asked for a pen. “Let’s go ahead and make it official, then. Come on, Marce, what do you have to lose? It’s not like this will hold up in court or anything.”
“Fine,” Marci said. Whatever they wanted. It’s not like this was meaningful or anything. Just a joke. Jake would be married in ten years anyway, to some blonde heiress his parents had chosen for him, and she’d be...she had absolutely no idea. “Fine. But I need another shot of tequila first.”
Chapter 13
On the Road – June 2004
The cell phone vibrated on the seat next to Marci. Doug again. She ignored it and focused on the U-Haul in front of her, the back painted with a mural designed to make it look like the door was actually half-open and someone’s neatly stacked boxes and lamp were in danger of falling out onto US-79 any moment. Marci knew that her belongings were not so neatly packed as the painting, given that she’d had only one day to get everything into boxes before Jake arrived with the truck. Still, the precarious-looking illustration made her even more anxious than she was already feeling.
The side of the truck was no better, depicting a meteor crashing into the earth somewhere in Iowa and creating a vast crater with the explosion. Small print provided some information about the significance of this—“Adventure Across America!”—but she had not read it when she and Jake were loading the truck early this morning.
She’d spent the day before negotiating to end her lease with the apartment complex, and packing furiously with her friend Wanda, who had gladly accepted pizza and a listening ear as payment. Wanda was the biggest gossip Marci had ever known. They’d worked together a few years ago on a temp assignment with adjoining desks, and had become intimate friends by the sheer force of Wanda’s constant stream of self-disclosure, narration of everything she knew about the office where they were working, and, when the former two yielded nothing of interest, her opinion about everything she’d read in that week’s People.
As they had stowed Marci’s life haphazardly into boxes, Wanda had figured out after an hour of probing that Marci had no intention of explaining either the sudden move or her obvious tears. Giving up, Wanda had deluged her for the next five hours with gossip from the large company where she was now working as a receptionist. It apparently did not matter that Marci knew no one at the company and could not keep the various names straight. Wanda still gave her an exhaustive list of who was sleeping with whom, who was likely to get promoted, and even who she suspected was stealing the coffee creamer.
Marci did not listen, exactly, but she was grateful for a companion who could keep herself entertained while taping boxes and wrapping glasses, and she was doubly glad not to be alone. Wanda had stayed until nearly 10:00 p.m., leaving amid many hugs and promises to stay in touch after Marci was in Atlanta. With her sheets packed away and pictures off the walls, Marci had fallen on the couch after the last box was sealed at 2:00 a.m. She slept with the TV on all night for company.
Jake had arrived at her door around 9:00 that morning, as promised. Apparently, he’d taken the first flight in from Atlanta and a cab straight to the U-Haul place. How he had organized everything so quickly the day before and how much all of this was costing him, Marci had no clue. She couldn’t ask. They had loaded the truck in near-silence, talking only enough for Jake to ask her questions about the few items she had not packed: some were riding in her car with her and others were going to Goodwill.
Now it was nearly noon, and they had yet to stop for gas or food. The June morning was especially cool and clear. They had chosen the back way to I-20, avoiding the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and instead taking a greener, more peaceful route to Shreveport. It was how she always drove home to Atlanta. She loved the East Texas backcountry; the trees and hills and lakes were not the desert that most people imagined when they thought of Texas landscapes. Today Jake was sharing her path, navigating the awkward orange and white box in front of her, leading her home.
As she expected, her phone buzzed as they neared Shreveport, Jake this time, and they agreed that it was time to gas up and eat, and that she would follow his lead. He chose a clean looking truck stop off the second exit they encountered. From somewhere he produced a lock for the U-Haul’s back gate—another detail taken care of for her. She felt more gratitude for Jake than she could say.
They ate a greasy lunch in a discolored
pink Formica booth, surrounded by souvenirs and supplies for truckers. The restaurant smelled like stale cigarettes and fried chicken. Marci could only get through about half her burger before losing her appetite. Jake did not ask questions, nor did he attempt to make small talk. This was something she had always loved about him: he did not feel the need to fill silence. Her phone buzzed once while they ate, and Jake looked at it for a minute but said nothing. As soon as it was done ringing, she flipped it open and turned it off.
They gassed up the truck and looked at the map after lunch. Jake guessed they could be home by 11:00 p.m. Georgia time if they only made one more quick stop around Meridian, Mississippi. “That’s about halfway home,” he said, “and we’ll cross the river about halfway there.”
Back in the car, she put in her favorite Old 97’s CD, turning the volume up impossibly loud. She sang along, almost yelling in self-pity, letting the tears flow freely.
Valentine the destroyer
Valentine you belong
in the stars
where you are
Always rollin’ on
Cried, I’ve cried
Till I couldn’t carry on
It’s a lonely, lonely feeling
When your Valentine was wrong...
By the time they neared the Mississippi a couple of hours later, she had listened to the whole CD twice, and made a decision. She called Jake and told him she needed a quick pit stop, but not to wait for her. “I’ll catch up to you before Meridian,” she said, and he agreed reluctantly. She slowed until the U-Haul was out of sight, leaving the horizon just minutes before the enormous span of bridge that went over the river.
She had to cross the river before exiting, and then spiral down to the frontage road to head north on Highway 61. She worried briefly that she wouldn’t be able to access the river quickly, and thought about scrapping the idea altogether to catch up with Jake. But before she could find a good place to turn around, she saw a sign for Riverfront Park on the left, pulled in and parked her little Corolla.
The necklace was in her glove box, where it had been since Doug made his announcement a few nights before. Had it really been less than a week since that horrible night in his office? It took a couple of minutes to cross the grassy area and make her way down to the river. As she got closer, the earth became squishy beneath her sandals and her feet stuck in the mud when she stepped. Two elderly black men in wading boots with fishing poles watched her with momentary concern as she sucked and squished her way down.
They seemed to be watching to make sure she didn’t plan to get in the river, and when she stopped about six feet from the water’s edge, they went back to watching their bobs. Even though it was often referred to as a geographic dividing line for the country, and she’d read books about how big the Mighty Mississippi was, Marci was still amazed by its sheer enormity in person. She could easily imagine being swept away by the current. Looking left, she wondered morbidly how often people jumped from the I-20 bridge.
She fished the necklace out of her pocket and studied it. This moment called for dramatic finality, some sort of catharsis. Poetry, even. She wished she could remember a beautiful Irish funeral dirge from her British literature class, or an appropriate Bible verse. Even the lyrics from an 80s power ballad would do. Nothing came to her. In the end she settled on, “So long, fuckwad,” and launched the necklace as far into the river as she could manage.
It made a not-very-satisfying plunk as it hit the water, barely audible above the sound of the river and the cars speeding along the interstate downstream. Within seconds of it hitting the water, she could no longer see it, and had no idea whether it had sunk to the bottom or floated toward the Louisiana delta. As she squished back up the bank, she imagined that some poor little girl downstream would find the necklace playing by the riverbank one day and Marci’s heartache would be someone else’s greatest treasure.
It turned out that climbing back up the bank was not as easy as squishing down to the water. Her feet sank deeper under the effort of propelling her body weight uphill. Had it been this steep on the way down? She groped for clumps of grass to pull herself up as her left sandal was suctioned completely off her foot by the mud. As she turned to reclaim it with her toes, she slipped.
There are times in a girl’s life when falling face-first into the mud might be fun. A soggy touch football game with friends. Making mud pies with the kids. Maybe even a wild day at the spa. But halfway through a thousand-mile trip, with everything she owned packed away in boxes?
Marci pushed herself up to her knees and crawled the rest of the way up the bank to more solid ground. She stood awkwardly and waved off the two fishermen, who had turned toward her in stances of reluctant concern. Brownish-red mud stuck to her palms and knees, and a large smear of it coated one side of her shorts and t-shirt. Her feet were more or less covered, and she was nearly an inch taller where it caked to the bottom of her sandals.
She attempted a dignified smile at a picnicking family as she skated over the grassy bank, wiping her feet as best she could as she went. The little park had a water fountain with a low spigot for dogs’ bowls, which she used to wash her feet and now-ruined sandals. When she got to the car, she realized that throwing her suitcase of clothes in the back of the U-Haul had been a miscalculation. She had no spare clothes in the Corolla.
Fortunately, she had wrapped some fragile items in beach towels to pack them. Marci unwrapped a tacky but beloved garage sale lamp, which featured a porcelain mermaid she lovingly referred to as Zelda, and used the towel to dry her feet and wipe most of the solid mud off her skin and clothes. She unwrapped another towel from her framed college diploma and laid it across the driver’s seat. She set the diploma and the lamp on the floorboard. “Sorry, Zelda,” she said, and set out to catch up to Jake and the U-Haul.
It took only twenty minutes to regain her position behind Jake, who had obviously slowed a bit waiting for her, despite her instructions to the contrary. She flashed her lights as she approached the U-Haul from behind, and Jake sped up again to their previous pace. She dreaded the next time they would stop, when she would have to explain her mud-covered state.
In the meantime, the red light on her phone blinked incessantly at her, so she listened to the first two seconds of several voicemails from Doug, deleting them as she went. They all started the same way: “Hey, Marce –” and then the sound of her finger on the delete button. In her fervor, she nearly erased a message from her mom, who had apparently called while the phone was off.
Knowing that Elaine was likely pacing around the kitchen with the phone in her hand, as was her habit any time either of her daughters was on the road, Marci returned the call immediately. She tried to sound as upbeat as possible as she updated her mother on where they were and how far they had left.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come here, honey?” her mom asked for the thirtieth time in the last two days. “Won’t you be putting poor Suzanne out?”
“No, Mom. Thanks, but I think it’s better if I stay with her for now.” Suzanne knew most of what had happened with Doug and was already preparing for when Marci arrived that evening. She had even taken the day off the next day so they could do whatever Marci needed. There was no way she could begin to tell her mother what happened, and no way she could be around her in this weepy emotional state without arousing suspicion. Suzanne’s was the safest place by far.
“Well, don’t you be a bother,” her mother chided, as though Marci were eight years old and going next door to visit Mrs. Williamson, who had an old-fashioned typewriter she always let Marci play with, not to mention an endless bowl of Andes mints on her coffee table.
“Don’t worry; if Suzanne gets tired of me, I’m sure she’ll call you to come pick me up.”
Her mother pretended not to hear this. “How’s Jake?”
Even though Marci had been with Jake all day, she realized she had no idea how he was doing. They’d barely talked, and it had all been about getting Marci
home. “He’s fine,” she said shortly, hoping to avoid follow-up questions.
“Well, it sure is nice of him to go to all this trouble to help you out.” As though Marci didn’t know this already. “You’re lucky to have such a good friend in your life. Your father and I were just saying how wonderful it is that you two have managed to stay in touch all these years.”
“It is,” Marci agreed.
“We were also wondering how you can be just friends with such a nice guy. Jake’s cute, don’t you think, honey?” Oh, God. Not this. Not now.
Before Marci could answer, however, she thought she heard her father’s muffled voice in the background. “Hold on, honey. What, Arthur?” Her mother sighed after a slight pause. “Daddy says we shouldn’t be talking to you while you’re driving. It’s dangerous. Keep your hands at ten and two, sweetheart! Call us when you get to Suzanne’s, okay? No matter how late!”
She hung up, grateful for her father’s interference as usual. Ahead, she could see the outline of Jake’s face in the truck’s side mirror, and noticed he was singing along to the radio. It was the first time all day that she smiled. It felt good.
Chapter 14
A week after they had signed their “contract,” Jake had received a late acceptance letter to film school at NYU, where he had been waitlisted since the middle of freshman year. He had come to Marci and Suzanne’s apartment in person to tell them he was leaving before the start of the fall quarter.
He’d be missing football season at Georgia for the next two years, which his parents thought a most tragic compromise, but they had agreed to support him in New York anyway. In return, he’d promised to come home for Thanksgiving and go to the Georgia-Georgia Tech game with his father. He was also planning to be home for the longer, if slightly less religious, break at Christmas.
As he broke the news to the girls, Marci saw that he was making an effort to control his excitement out of consideration for those who would be left behind. He was going right into the documentary film program, because he had already completed most of his core classes. The admissions lady mentioned that the committee had been particularly impressed with his sample submission—a film he’d made last year about an Athens musician and former heroin addict who was living with AIDS.
The Marriage Pact Page 14
