The Last Resort

by Marissa Stapley

  “Well, sometimes Ruth does use a timer,” Miles interjected, and Shell saw that Ruth was back on the terrace off to the side, her cheeks turning pink in the high beam of Miles’s grin.

  “Put the stopwatch away,” Grace said, and now Ruth was frowning. “This really isn’t a big deal. Just a fun way for all of us to get to know one another. It’ll be fun. And learning how to better react to the mistakes we and others make is part of what you’ll learn here over the next two weeks, so don’t sweat any of it.” This sounded familiar. Shell was sure she’d heard it on a podcast.

  A brown-haired woman sitting closer to the middle raised her hand and Grace nodded at her, but Miles shook his head. “No more questions,” he said. “You have twenty minutes to chat, starting now.” He tapped his Rolex.

  Grace padded back to her stool, but he stayed where he was, a sentry among them. Birdsong and silence, until voices began to rise. “Hi, I’m...”

  “We’re from...”

  “It’s nice to meet you...”

  “We were in the van together, right?” the husband across from Shell said. “I’m Ben.” He turned to Colin. “Heard you on your phone. Tough to leave the office behind, I guess?”

  Colin just stared at him. “Yes,” he finally said.

  “What sort of work do you do?”

  “I’m in the mining industry.”

  Dead air. Ben said, “Come on, that’s all? We’re meant to be getting to know each other here.” He smiled, but it was a fake smile, too big, belying irritation. That’s my department, Shell thought. I’m the one that hates all of you.

  She turned to the wife. “I’m Shell,” she said.

  “Johanna,” the woman said faintly.

  Forget all of this, Shell longed to say. Let’s run off and find a beach bar. Let’s get a cocktail. These two were young; they’d probably have interesting things to say, outside of the confines of this painful exercise. She sighed. “My husband is the director of operations at a mining company.”

  “What kind of mine?”

  “A gold mine.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Is it?” Shell said, and she saw the hurt look on Colin’s face. For once, she wasn’t angry at him, though. Her anger was rooted in the fact that she hadn’t been able to think of a single interesting thing to say about herself by way of introduction. I was working, too. We were working together. But then I had a child, and I took some time off. And now—

  Johanna brought the cool cloth over her eyes.

  “And what do you do?” Ben asked Shell.

  “I’m a stay-at-home—”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “How many kids?” he asked.

  Silence.

  “One daughter,” Colin said, and Shell released the breath she’d been holding and thought of the word in the email they had received on the way to the resort. Solidarity. It slipped away, fast.

  “You?” Shell managed to ask.

  “No, we don’t have kids,” Ben said. “Not yet. But we hope to.”

  The voices at the other tables were growing louder. Shell heard laughter, heard a man shout, “No way, I went to college there, too! Bobcats forever!” She gripped her water glass and thought about the crystal tumbler she had thrown at her husband several weeks before, the nasty bruise on his forehead, his bitter words: You could have killed me! Was that what you were trying to do? Look at yourself! There was still glass on the floor when she came to in the morning to find Colin gone. Later, he’d told her he’d left because he felt unsafe and she’d laughed at him, cruel and harsh.

  “How did you two meet?” Shell asked, chasing away the ugly memories with words.

  Ben smiled and visibly relaxed. Shell realized he was one of those people most comfortable when talking about himself. “I’m a district attorney and Jo is a social worker. We met in court. She was there with one of her clients, and I was trying to put her client in jail for driving the getaway car during her boyfriend’s burglary attempt. For a second time.” He turned to his wife, as if hoping she would pick up the thread of the story, but Johanna didn’t speak. He continued. “Jo got up and spoke about this woman with such passion and faith, when I hadn’t been able to see her as anything but a screwup. She believed in her so fully that it reminded me of why people do the kind of jobs we do—because we believe in something. In people. Plus, I thought she was totally gorgeous. I mean, look at my beautiful wife, right?”

  Johanna lowered the cloth from her eyes and smiled weakly. Shell felt sorry for her and disliked her at the same time.

  “Four minutes left,” Miles’s voice boomed over the microphone.

  “Anyway,” Ben said. “I ended up asking for community service for her client, but a lot of it. Afterward, Johanna came up to me on the courthouse stairs and she was mad.” He turned to his wife again. “What was it you said to me? Come on, honey.”

  Johanna closed her eyes again. “I believe I said, ‘You’re an asshole.’” Now she opened her eyes and put her hand on her husband’s arm. “You gave my client so much community service she lost her job, remember?” She ducked her head to murmur in his ear. “Ben, it’s getting really bad. I think I need to—”

  “Not now, Johanna,” Ben said in a low voice. “We have to do this, you know it’s required.” Then he smiled at Shell and Colin. “Sorry. She’s, ah, a bit tired from the trip. So, yeah, she called me an asshole. It was the first thing she ever said to me. How could I not fall in love with her, right? We went to lunch, dinner, then a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway. We stayed in a hotel room for the rest of the weekend. They left food at the door. We didn’t come out.” He grinned. Their story was done, Shell realized. Perhaps she and Colin were meant to imagine the rest, imagine these two nubile young strangers ripping each other’s clothes off in some hotel room in Santa Monica. Shell kept a smile pasted on her face.

  “Lovely,” she said.

  “How did you meet?” Ben asked.

  Shell was silent. “We met at school,” Colin said. “We were both studying geology, in British Columbia. Shell was—she was known for her opinions. Voted most likely to succeed.”

  “There were never any votes,” Shell said, embarrassed.

  “And I remember thinking, now, that is a strong woman. A capable woman. A woman who knows what she wants.” He stopped talking. Shell thought he was just pausing. But no, he was done. She looked down at the table and blinked several times. It had felt like the most natural thing in the world, for the two of them to pair up. Similar backgrounds, equal in the looks department, same height, same major, both from Toronto. And they had fallen in love—only now she found it impossible to remember exactly what that had felt like.

  “It’s been twenty years,” she said, as if that made things clear.

  “Wow. That’s a lifetime. Jo and I have only known each other for three.”

  Shell kept her eyes downcast. She thought about what Ben had just said about his wife: that it had been love at first sight. A modern fairy tale in a motel room by the sea. But did it make sense for these two people who barely knew one another to be in counseling? Three years? Three years was nothing.

  “Shell?” Ben was saying.

  “I’m sorry—pardon me?”

  “Did you have anything to add?”

  “Um. No. It was a long time ago, that’s all.”

  The golden-orange sun was hanging just above the horizon like God had it on the end of a fishing line. And then, just like that, it sank below the surface and was gone. Johanna’s eyes met Shell’s.

  “Time’s up,” Miles called out, and Johanna’s expression changed. She stood, suddenly, and said, “I really can’t do this. Ben, it hurts too much. I have to go.” And she lurched away without saying anything more.

  “I’m so sorry.” Ben’s expression, which had been momentarily smug—beautifu
l wife, meet-cute story clearly superior to theirs—was mortified. “She—she gets migraines. I should go after her. It was nice to meet you. Guess we’ll be washing dishes this week.” He shrugged but Shell knew he wasn’t as philosophical as he was trying to appear. What would happen in their bungalow behind closed doors that night? What would happen behind all these closed doors?

  “Unbelievable,” Shell said, when they were both gone. There was still a clamor of voices around them and at first she wasn’t sure what Colin was saying. But then he stood, too.

  “Come on,” he said. “Before they get started.”

  “What?”

  “I hung up on a safety board meeting when that Ruth woman dragged me off the bus.”

  “So?”

  “So, I need to find out what’s happening. It’s really important.”

  “No way. We can’t just walk out.”

  “It’s pointless. This is a pointless exercise. If you keep your voice down we can get out of here unnoticed.”

  “I’m not going!”

  “Damn it, Shell. We’re adults. This isn’t summer camp. They don’t get to dictate our every move.”

  “Do you know what dictates your every move? Your job.” She was shouting now. All the other voices lowered and people stared. “It was your idea to come here!”

  “You promised you would come here and try.” He lowered his voice. “It was either this or—”

  “How is leaving—”

  “Come on. We can talk in our counseling sessions. Not here.” The terrace was silent. Shell considered her options: stand and follow her husband meekly off the terrace or hold her ground. Who exactly did she want to be?

  “I’m not leaving,” she said.

  He did. Shell lifted her chin and stared straight ahead. People were going to have to stop looking at her, eventually—weren’t they? Miles and Grace approached her table. “I’m sorry,” she said, her bravado dissolving and her cheeks tingling with shame.

  “Don’t be,” Miles said. “Some couples are in therapy for months, even years, before they have a breakthrough—if they ever have a breakthrough at all. Most just give up, eventually, and go back to their lives of quiet desperation, or they separate, they end things, they tear their lives apart.” He was speaking into his mic, but to her, only. Then he turned to his audience. “What Shell has so adeptly made us realize in just our first moments here is that layers must be peeled away quickly. And that’s going to hurt. There’s going to be conflict. But that’s what we’re after, especially at first. You did great, Shell. You were honest, raw and real. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Look around you, Shell,” Grace said. “You’re among friends. We’re all going to feel vulnerable this week, we’re all going to feel exposed. But the important thing to understand is that we’re all in this together.”

  Silence. Miles sat down at her table, taking the spot her husband had vacated. “I’ll introduce you,” he said. “I know who you are.”

  Day Two

  Many of the couples we see in our practice have simply stopped talking to one another about anything except the bare necessities (“Who is picking the kids up from school?” “Is there any milk left in the fridge?” Sound familiar?). They’ve grown used to this lack of communication; it feels normal to them. But it’s not! You must begin your journey with a commitment to the process of relearning communication with your partner. You must make talking to one another the norm.

  But tread carefully.

  After so much has been left unsaid, the truth can bubble to the surface, causing arguments that are counterproductive to your renewed commitment. Lay groundwork first. What is your husband’s favorite meal? When Grace has something important she wants to discuss with Miles, she often has the chef at Treehouse prepare his favorite dish (chicken mole, in case you’re wondering). Does your wife like flowers? Order some! (Grace has a soft spot for orchids, which, blessedly, are plentiful in Mexico.)

  Marriage is not simply about taking. You must give to your partner before you can expect to receive. And you must do so when you are least inspired.

  —from the New York Times bestseller

  Revering Your Marriage and Renewing Your Love,

  by Drs. Miles and Grace Markell

  Her: But where do I start? Do I focus on Miles, on how he was trying to push me away, and how I wasn’t about to let him? It upset me at first, yes, but I got stronger. Or, do I focus on Johanna and Ben, her fragility, her headaches—how beautiful she was, how infatuated he was and how hopeless the entire thing was, what was really going on beneath the surface? Or on Shell Williams and the bottles of vodka and strong sleeping pills I found in her luggage—and confiscated, of course. Or her husband, who had not one but two spare phones hidden away? But Miles decided to let him keep those.

  Him: Wait. You went through their things?

  Her: Their luggage was always searched. Miles’s idea. We had the porters do it while the guests went upstairs for the opening exercise. They’d leave any potential contraband out for me to deal with. It was in every contract, but none of them ever read the contracts, no matter how many times we asked them to. Johanna had something, too. A prescription that wasn’t hers. I almost forgot about that, actually.

  Him: That seems...extreme. You never mentioned that before, that their luggage was searched.

  Her: The entire thing was extreme. That was the point. [Pause.] But maybe I should start with Miles and me. The love we shared—because we did love each other. As sick and twisted as our relationship was, as sick and twisted as he became, I did love my husband. And he loved me, once. When we first met. There’s always love at the beginning. The problem is, I think I loved him too much. I made him think he could do anything.

  The morning sun in the restaurant filtered through palm fronds, casting shadow and light across Johanna and Ben’s table. Huevos rancheros, yogurt and green juices. “And a side of bacon,” the server said, setting it beside Johanna’s plate. Her stomach pitched and rolled. “That’s for him, not me,” she said, sliding it across the table and wiping her hand with her napkin.

  “You act like touching meat is going to contaminate you,” Ben said.

  She didn’t reply. What was the point? She put down the napkin and looked around. The restaurant was called Treehouse. Two flights of wooden stairs led to the wide nook made of wooden beams and planks with a peaked palm frond roof and a circular view of the ocean, beach and resort grounds. There was a buzz in the air. Johanna noticed couples waving and greeting one another, stopping at each other’s tables. The night before, while she was pinned to their bed in a blur of pain, Ben begged her repeatedly to return to the opening exercise. She had finally faked sleep, praying he would leave her alone long enough for her to take one of her pills, hidden in her bag. But, when she had crept out of bed to find them, the only pills that had ever worked for the blinding pain of her migraines, the ones that were so much more than just pills to her, they were gone. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her then. About Cleo, smiling, Cleo, crying, Cleo, dead beside her car. A nightmare, all of it. Eventually, just before dawn, the pain had retreated and she’d slept a little. Now she felt unsteady. Exhausted and wired at the same time.

  In the restaurant, the only proper tables were in the center of the suspended room. The rest of the seating options were up on platforms: cushioned lounge chairs that looked more like beds with small tables in their centers. Johanna and Ben were sitting at a regular table. Hammocks also ringed the room.

  “It seems inappropriate,” Johanna murmured.

  “What does?”

  “The hammocks, the weird bed tables. This is a restaurant.”

  “It’s a couples’ resort. A place designed for people to get close again. I think those hammocks and bed tables look fun. I hope we use one, later in the week.” He inclined his head in the direction of a hammock suspend
ed just outside the restaurant, perched on a ledge, the rocks and ocean and a set of stairs carved into the cliff below it. As he spoke, a gust of sea breeze caused one of the pillows to tumble and fall out of sight into the sea.

  “I wonder how many of those they lose in a day,” Johanna said. “That doesn’t look very safe.”

  “Since when have you been concerned with safety?” He was smiling. He reached across the table for her hand, but she clenched it. She was so sick of holding hands.

  He dropped her hand. “Can’t you at least try?”

  “I am trying,” she said. Then she sensed a shift in the room, a sudden hum of energy. Miles and Grace were moving among the tables. Ruth walked behind them. It was as if they were larger than everyone, larger than life. They were now standing at the bar, speaking with the bartender, a young woman clad in black, dark hair to her waist. She handed them coffee cups brimming with froth.

  “They wake before dawn, go for a run, eat breakfast and prepare for the day,” Ben said. “They don’t eat breakfast with the couples, only dinner.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “From reading their books.”

  “Morning, guys.” Johanna was startled to find Ruth at their table. “Feeling better today, Johanna?” Something in her tone and in the arch of her eyebrow made Johanna feel guilty, like the liar she was. Suddenly, Johanna was certain she hadn’t forgotten her migraine pills, the ones Cleo had given her, the ones she shouldn’t have. She felt certain they had been taken out of her luggage—and she felt a chill.

  “Yes. Much better, thank you.”

  “Great,” she said. “Miles and Grace are about to make a presentation. I hope you’ll manage to stay for the entire thing.”

  Shame flooded through her as Ruth walked away. It was so familiar.

  “The Williams couple isn’t here,” Miles said, disapproval in his voice, and something else, too, something so rare in him it was almost alarming: nervousness. He liked things to go a certain way.