The Last Resort

by Marissa Stapley

  “I don’t think we can delay it any longer,” Grace said, glancing down at her watch. She was nervous, too. Sundays had to go like clockwork.

  “You so rarely concern yourself with the details,” he said, and she felt the needle of his words. But they were in public. He couldn’t continue. “Very well.” He put down his coffee and stepped to the front of the restaurant. “Good morning, everyone. How did y’all sleep? Enjoy your dinner last night? We’ve got the finest chef this side of the equator, haven’t we?”

  A smattering of applause. A breeze from the sea behind them lifted wisps of Grace’s hair from her face, which was tilted attentively toward her husband.

  “And I’m sure everyone is feeling much more relaxed than they were last night,” he said. “In fact, I can feel it in the air. And it’s a beautiful thing. I just want to take a moment to thank you, and to thank you on Grace’s behalf, for bearing with us last night. For baring your souls—because that was kinda what it felt like, yes? I know it was harder on some of you than on others. And we are truly, truly grateful.”

  She looked out at the couples, who were sitting with breakfasts now forgotten. Miles was so good at this part, at drawing them in and earning their trust. Meanwhile, she liked to recede into the background, watch and wait. From afar, she could anticipate the secrets she would uncover, and how she could tend to or dispose of them.

  She walked among the tables in silence as her husband spoke and tried to feel as certain and confident as she knew he did. These couples would argue over laundry and cooking and the mundane details of daily life, at first. Or they would argue about larger things, about the big event that had severed them. People didn’t come here without secrets, wrapped up and hidden even from their own view.

  She couldn’t hear Miles’s words anymore, just the rich thrum of his voice. Grace stood behind the blonde woman who had asked, the night before, if she and her husband had to speak publicly. There was a reason these two didn’t like to talk, and it wasn’t shyness. She glanced down at her clipboard and confirmed they were on her list of clients: Annabel and Max Robinson from Abingdon, Virginia. High school sweethearts. Grace would listen to them talk and as she did, she would smell the mint in their garden and the season’s apple butter simmering on the stove. She would hear their children clattering their way inside the house. She would become them, just for a little while. It would feel so good to leave herself behind, but they would have no way of knowing how much they were helping her just by being there. “Grace Markell is the kindest, most skilled, most compassionate therapist in the world. She changed my life,” one online comment she had recently viewed had said. “She took the time to understand what was really going on in our lives. She saved us.”

  “Don’t read those!” Miles had snapped when he walked up behind her. “Why do you waste your time on that nonsense?” No mention of the fact that it was only she who was expected to cut herself off from the world, not Miles. A few days later, her laptop disappeared. Her tablet and phone, too. This was a problem she had yet to solve. There was information on her laptop she needed desperately. “Handwritten notes, what more do you need?” Miles had asked her. What more, indeed?

  Right now, the clients were nodding their heads along to Miles’s words as if they were music. Grace knew most of their names, but preferred to label them by instinct. The man with the soul patch was Anger Issues, Possibly Verbally Abusive; his wife, Chief Enabler, sat nervously beside him, occasionally chewing on her hair, maybe without knowing she was doing it. The woman with the lank bob was the Criticizer; beside her, with his weak jaw and a fade haircut, was Mr. Resentful/Anxious. A man with blond hair that had deteriorated into a crown of hopeful peach fuzz reaching over and squeezing his more attractive, taller wife’s hand while she looked down and seemed to wonder how his hand had gotten there was the Great Disappointment and she, the wife, was the Irrevocably Disappointed. There might be no hope for them. A good-looking man with ruffled, sun-streaked hair and dark earnest eyes was leaning in, listening hard. He was Mr. Fix It. He wanted everything to be simple, to go according to plan. His wife was the one who had left the terrace, the striking red-haired woman who had departed on account of a migraine. Grace looked down at her name, then back up at her. She had to pull her gaze away, hard. Johanna Haines—Mrs. Most-Likely-To-Be-Wishing-Herself-Somewhere-Else. Mrs. Painfully Beautiful.

  Those were always the tough ones, the ones who didn’t want to do the work. Ruth had said something about pills found and confiscated in Johanna’s bag, during the luggage inspection. A prescription not in her name. And was it vodka that had been discovered in their bungalow, as well? No. That was Shell Williams, the one with the husband who had stormed off the terrace the night before. Vodka and sleeping pills, strong ones. Grace remembered Miles, sitting down in front of Shell and staring deep into her eyes. He had known exactly what to do.

  She watched her husband’s lips and hands move as he spoke. When he was at his best, he made you feel as if whatever he said was what you’d always been waiting to hear. When he was at his worst, he made you want to die.

  Miles saw her and smiled. She smiled back. We are always on duty, he often said. We’re supposed to make them want what we have.

  “I invite you all, and I invite you on Grace’s behalf, as well—” Grace took the cue and walked toward him “—to commit to this work. This is your last chance.” He had her hand now, they were standing before the guests, at the moment when the sun rose over the restaurant and lit them up. “Angel,” he whispered in her ear, and maybe he meant it that time. Maybe the devil inside him was gone. She wanted to believe this, had believed it many times. But it never turned out to be true.

  “The Williams couple, they still aren’t here,” he said into her ear, in a low, agitated voice. “And they didn’t sign their contract yesterday, either.”

  “We can have the contracts sent to their bungalow. Don’t worry.”

  “It’s not how it’s done.”

  “You’re such a perfectionist. Relax. Darling.”

  He gritted his teeth into a smile back at her. “Did I mention how ravishing you look this morning?” His voice was too loud, or maybe just loud enough. Then he turned back to the crowd. “All right now, ready? I want you to declare yourselves. I want you to tell me, and Grace, and everyone here, that you will commit to working on your marriages, to healing what’s broken, to doing absolutely everything that is asked of you here, in the name of a greater good. Yes? All at once, I want you to say it.” He nodded his head, raised his arms like he was a conductor. “Will you do everything it takes to fix what has been broken? I will. Come on, say it: I will.” Miles was grinning now, as the couples did his bidding. “One more time. Yes! I will! Perfect.” He lowered his arms slowly. “Now, as a reward for your good work, it’s the question and answer period. Ask us anything. This is your chance.”

  Grace hated this part, but Miles insisted. How many times do I have to tell you this isn’t a clinic? he would say to her. We need to establish a connection, quickly. You’ll never see these people again, so who cares if they know something private? Ruth was the moderator, standing at the front of the room and pointing.

  “Why didn’t you choose to have children?” the blond-streaked woman in front asked. Ruth’s eyes met Grace’s for a moment, and Grace wasn’t sure what they shared. Ruth looked away first. “Is not having kids the secret to your happiness?” Grace found herself struggling for air; her breath had snagged on the past.

  But Miles stepped in and spoke with ease. “We would have loved to have had children. The Lord didn’t choose to bless us with them. And in some ways, we have come to see that as a blessing.” “The guy is a little churchy,” one of the online comments had read. “But it seemed to work on my wife. We’re still together.” “We wouldn’t be able to do what we do with children,” he continued. “We wouldn’t be able to help people in the way we do. It’s not the secret to o
ur happiness at all, though. In fact, overcoming the disappointment was one of our greatest challenges.”

  Grace shoved her hands inside the pockets of her long skirt and clenched her fists the way she had when she was in labor. Exquisite pain. Truly.

  “What is our secret, you might wonder? It’s that we don’t have any secrets from each other. Not a single one.” This was the naked truth and a blatant lie all at once. And the Lord didn’t choose to bless us was the ugliest lie of all. But they were not the ones under the microscope. They were the ones in the spotlight. And a spotlight is full of light—yet it often reveals nothing.

  After the question period was over, Ben and Johanna sat in silence. Finally, Johanna spoke. “When he had his arms raised up like that, like he was an evangelist...” She trailed off, unsure of how to finish the sentence.

  “He’s maybe a tiny bit crazy,” Ben allowed. “But we need to do this. We need to be here.”

  “We do.” She made herself sound certain, even though she’d had to fight not to turn that short sentence into a question.

  He reached for her hand. This time she let him and she kept right on smiling until her molars started to hurt. Then she said, “You know what? Why don’t we just—” and she stood and picked up both their plates. The question and answer session had unsettled her, and it wasn’t just because of Miles. She was sure Grace Markell had looked afraid, for just a moment, and she had felt afraid for her. Imagine standing in front of a group of strangers and saying, Ask me anything. It turned her insides to liquid just to consider it. “Let’s be a little crazy ourselves. Go sit on the damn ledge hammock. Come on.”

  “Are you—serious?” He was incredulous, then delighted, he was scrambling to his feet, grinning back at her, and the couples surrounding them were looking up from their meals.

  Johanna felt lighter; the pain in her head receded. Everyone falls in love for a reason, and she knew exactly why Ben had wanted her in the first place. She’s unpredictable. She makes my life fun. She makes me do things I would never do. She could say the same of him, but didn’t because no one would understand. He’s my rock, she would usually say, and people would nod because that was the type of guy Ben was: solid and steady. Also: rigid and obtuse, but only if you lived with him or if you were on the wrong side of a court case. Like Cleo had been, always, every time.

  On the hammock, to make up for the fact that she had just thought about Cleo, she fed Ben a piece of bacon. He spilled egg on his shirt and she dabbed it lovingly with her napkin. Everyone was watching. Even Miles and Grace Markell.

  Johanna kissed her husband.

  It was so much easier to say the right lines, to master the correct performance, when you had an audience.

  * * *

  Colin and Shell, their partner couple from the terrace the night before, were on the path in front of them as Johanna and Ben headed back toward their villa. “Oh, hell,” Ben said. “This is so embarrassing. Maybe you should apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “We just left them there.”

  “I wasn’t feeling well! There was nothing I could have done.”

  “I think they’re arguing.”

  It was true; she could hear raised voices on the breeze, first Shell, “We missed it! I can’t believe you...” Then him: “Well, I told you...”

  “Told me what? You were on your damn phone!”

  They had perfect hair and perfect clothes. Johanna always got the same feeling when she saw people so flawless: a combination of envy, awe and a sneaking suspicion. Not all is as it seems when the surface is so shiny. Sometimes the surface is just a reflection of what you wished you could have for yourself.

  They stopped walking and were unlocking the door of the villa beside Johanna and Ben’s. “Oh, great,” Ben said. “We’re neighbors.” The arguing went on.

  Ben was rubbing the base of his palm against his jaw the way he did when he was upset.

  “I’m sure they’ll stop,” Johanna ventured.

  Ben shook his head but didn’t say anything, just swiped their key card in front of the door. They entered their villa and were greeted by its strong scent of orange, lemon and cedar.

  “What do you want to do for the rest of this morning?” he asked, sitting on the bed and taking off his shoes.

  “I was thinking...there’s an artisanal market I wanted to visit, just a few villages over. Want to come?” It was so fast, the twist of his lips, as if he had eaten something sour. She let it pass. “I read about it online last month. It’s in the middle of the jungle. And there’s a cenote in the back of it, one of those natural swimming holes. We can spend a few hours and be back in time for lunch.”

  “You want to leave the resort? We’re supposed to stay here together,” he said. “After last night, I don’t think we should be breaking any more rules.” The closeness she had felt to him at breakfast was a puddle in sunlight, evaporated. She turned away from him, meaning to search for the small cross-body bag she carried when they traveled but also because she didn’t want to look at him just then.

  “So, you’re just going to go?”

  “Do I not have your permission?” She turned back toward him.

  “I’d been thinking we might just stay in our room and make use of this king-sized bed,” he said. “At breakfast just now, you were so...”

  Her stomach plummeted. Her hand went to the red leather bag again, her eye went to the door. She slid sunscreen inside the bag, found her black bikini and went into the bathroom to change into it. Silence in the other room. She came out, pulling a T-shirt over her head.

  “I say I want to make love and you leave and change in another room,” he said as she buttoned her shorts. “How are we ever going to get back our intimacy if you don’t even try?”

  “Stop telling me I’m not trying. I am trying. But intimacy isn’t something you can get back just like that.” She snapped her fingers; it felt like an absurd thing to do. She glanced at the door again, counted how many steps it would take her to get out of the room. This nervous habit had started after the incident at work. She hoped it would fade eventually. She grabbed a handful of pesos and shoved them in her bag. “I’m going to the market. That’s all, just a market, and you’re acting like I’ve just murdered someone!”

  He stood and walked toward her. She knew it didn’t make sense, this was Ben, but she still felt afraid. He had his arms around her now. The way he was holding her meant her neck was bent at an unnatural angle and she had to stand still, unmoving, until he released her. “I’ll be gone only a few hours,” she said. “Maybe I’ll find a new painting for the dining room, to go with the walls that I will actually finish painting when we get back.” She tried to smile.

  A shadow across his face again. And a sadness in her heart at the idea of going back and fixing the walls she had impulsively started to paint one weekday when she should have been at work but couldn’t be, when she was supposed to be at a therapist’s office but had canceled, again. She had decided to go for a walk; it had been the first time she’d left the house in weeks. When she’d passed the paint store a sign in the window had caught her eye: “Brighten your life with a fresh coat of color!” She had returned with a gallon of the brightest shade she could find: Mango Punch. But the gallon had been only enough to do half the room and Ben hadn’t been pleased when he arrived home from work. “I’m glad you’re up and about,” he had said, standing on a drop sheet in front of the strokes of lurid orange on their demure gray walls. “But I really wish we could make decisions like this together.”

  He released her now. “I think I’ll read for a bit and then go for a walk on the beach. You have fun at your market. Meet for lunch around one?”

  “Perfect.” As she took a water bottle from the minifridge, he reclined on the bed and opened a book—one written by the Markells. He picked up a pen and underlined something. When she said goo
dbye, he nodded in her direction but didn’t look up.

  Grace spread out the newspaper. To do so, she had to move the vase of orchids aside. The bouquet was larger this week than it was the week before. Miles kept looking up from his tablet, where he was reading news on websites that often seemed to have no bearing on reality, then back down again. Like he was waiting. She flipped a page of her newspaper, even though she wasn’t registering any of the words at this point. Twenty minutes later, she said, “I should be going.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” he said, as he always did.

  “I won’t be long. I never am.”

  “But we should stay here. We should be here.” His voice was like a boy’s, petulant, rising. “We should go for a walk on the beach, visit the library—have lunch together. I hate it when you go.” His voice had flattened now. It was an old argument; he was delivering these lines by rote.

  “I’ll be back in time for lunch. Rita’s making your favorite.” She lifted a hand to the nearest orchid and touched the pale purple flower. Orchids weren’t her favorite. She preferred dahlias; she liked their layers. Orchids were too obvious. “And I need to go to Akumal and get more ointment for my skin condition. You know it’s the only thing that has ever helped. They have to grind it from the chaka bark and leaves right there, or it doesn’t work.”

  He looked up. “Yes, I know all that. You’ve told me many times. You go to a little holistic pharmacy in Akumal. Maybe if you didn’t scratch at it, it wouldn’t be so raw. Look, your ankle is bleeding. I don’t want you to end up with scars. You need to go to a doctor.”

  As if you don’t know better than anyone how fierce an itch becomes if you stop scratching it for a while. “I talked to the nurse,” she said, a lie so small he didn’t seem to notice it, but so big it took over the room. “She’s never been able to find anything that worked.”