Jake was right. Marnie was driving back to have time to think, but she wasn’t sorting out her feelings about him. She wanted the time—and space—to convince herself that going back to Paul was the right thing to do, that he’d meant what he said in the letter. Several times, in the loneliness of another night on the road, she thought about calling Paul, to hear his voice, to say she was on the way. But she didn’t. She wanted her return to be a test. If she walked in on some orgy, she would leave again. Maybe with Jake, maybe not. But she knew her marriage was at a turning point and what happened now would decide it for them.
This tiptoeing around had not always been their way. Their early months together had been blissful and romantic, a true meeting of minds and souls, they told each other, laughing about the cliché. They had met on a bus in San Francisco one sunny spring Saturday. Marnie had been giving ESL lessons to elderly Chinese immigrants, Paul had been painting in Golden Gate Park. He had struggled onto the bus with an easel, a toolbox of paints, and a big canvas covered in cloth. The bus wasn’t crowded, but he could barely manage all he was carrying and Marnie gave him a hand. In return, he offered her a glass of wine if she would help him off the bus with it all.
“I’ll see you home afterwards,” he said, giving her his most charming grin.
“Well, we’ll see.” That was all she would promise. Then she said yes to the glass of wine—“in a public place.” Paul nodded and bowed.
Paul lived in North Beach, in a ramshackle apartment built onto the roof of an old square building. The paint was peeling off the rickety stairs that led up from the alley and the inside wasn’t much either. But he had a splendid view of the Bay Bridge and wonderful light. She could see how a painter would want to live there.
She wandered around while he put his work away. It was surprisingly neat and clean. That pleased her. Some of the other men she’d dated lived like teenage boys—filthy kitchens, clothes and pizza boxes strewn everywhere.
On a bulletin board, there were art postcards and pictures of San Francisco and a photo of Paul, his arm around the shoulders of a lanky fellow with light-brown hair and a no-longer-fashionable mustache. Paul was grinning, but the other man looked shy and serious, almost uncomfortable. She took it down to study. “Who’s this?” she said, when Paul came into the room. “Is this your boyfriend?”
“Nah, that’s my buddy Jake. He’s a painter too. I don’t go in for boys. I’m a woman’s man all the way. I love women,” and he grinned at her. She couldn’t help but grin back.
They went back down to the street then and on to a little bar near his apartment. They had a glass of wine. Then he insisted on buying her dinner, although she suspected he couldn’t afford it. They told each other the stories that people do when they meet—the longed-for pony at 8 that didn’t materialize (Paul), winning the science fair at 12 with a volcano (Marnie), church camp for her as a teen, one week at Scout camp for him. They discovered they had both been in Portland the same summer when she was 20 and he was 24; they were sorry their paths had not crossed. She talked about her itinerant childhood. His life had been more stable—18 years in a paper-mill town in southern Washington that he could hardly wait to leave. She didn’t tell him of the heartbreaks in her past; he didn’t tell her that he had a wife he hadn’t seen in 4 years, that he’d never gotten around to divorcing her.
As the evening wore on, the chemistry, the electricity between them grew.
“More wine or dessert or both?” Paul said as the waiter cleared the table.
Marnie smiled, biting her lower lip. She’d had a couple of glasses already and she didn’t want to do anything foolish. She liked Paul and knew already that she wanted to see him again, that she wanted something to happen between them. She liked his broad shoulders, his handsome strong jaw, and the soft look of his lips. His eyes smiled often and he radiated health and energy. What’s more, he was witty and at ease with himself, and she felt the draw of that confidence.
“Coffee,” she said at last, “and a scoop of vanilla ice cream to go in it.”
The waiter nodded and Paul chuckled. His voice was deep and low and the laugh came from his chest, not his throat. Marnie added that to the list of things she liked about him. “Coffee for me too, and a brandy.”
The waiter took away the dishes and their order and Paul turned back to her. “Can I tell you now how beautiful you are?” he said. “You have wonderful eyes and a mouth I want to kiss.”
Marnie’s blush took over her whole body. She knew she was attractive; other men had told her so and some women too. But she found Paul’s attention different somehow, more intense, more seductive. It was unnerving. She looked up to see that he was waiting for a reply. She felt saved by the waiter who put the drinks and ice cream down between them.
When he’d gone, Paul smiled at her. “This is the place where you tell me how handsome I am and how much you want to kiss me.”
Marnie blushed again. “Well, I don’t think I’d mind.” Then she realized that sounded stupid or coy and she laughed and said so. And he laughed in an easy way that made her feel more relaxed and something magical happened. The restaurant seemed to disappear and there was only the two of them there looking at each other. Something deep inside her let go.
She didn’t remember now what they talked about then. His work maybe, or her teaching. The air was charged and the table vibrated. She did remember that. Finally she had pulled on her jacket. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“Another guy?” he grinned. “There’d better not be.”
“There isn’t,” she said, “but there are two hungry cats waiting for me.”
He laughed at that.
He walked her up into her neighborhood west of Columbus, neither of them eager to part. He kissed her several times on the steps and wanted to come in, but she said no, another time. And she wrote her phone number on his palm and said goodnight.
From that point on, Marnie was sucked into the warmth of Paul’s charm and the chemistry between them. The careful wariness she had brought to dating in the past several years evaporated under the heat of his courtship. Within a month they were sleeping together, and by September Marnie was spending most of her nights in the rooftop apartment. By Christmas, Paul pulled together his divorce and they said their own vows to each other in Golden Gate Park on a cold, foggy morning, with Jake as best man and Tamara standing up for Marnie. Paul had no family he wanted there with them, and Marnie’s parents were on a long-saved-for cruise in the Mediterranean. He convinced her not to wait for their return. It was as if he was afraid he would lose her somehow. At the time, she saw that eagerness as proof of his love for her.
Paul was close to his mother and that also endeared him to Marnie. He and his mother spoke on the phone once a week on Friday mornings after Marnie had gone to teach. When she was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer, he drove up to Washington to spend a few weeks with her while she went through chemo. When he came back, his face was haggard. “She doesn’t have long to live,” he said. “Maybe I should go back to Kelso.”
But he couldn’t stand to be in the same house with his father. So in the end, he stayed in San Francisco and spoke to his mother every few hours, as if to see if she was still there. The call came late one night about two weeks after his return. They weren’t asleep; neither of them was sleeping much. Paul groaned at the sound and said, “I can’t get that.”
So Marnie got up and went to answer the phone. Her hello was met with a gruff “Who’s this?”
“Marnie,” she said simply.
The man coughed, a long smoker’s cough, and then said, “Well, whoever you are, tell Paul his mother has passed.” And he hung up.
She went back to the bedroom and sat on Paul’s side next to him. “I think that was your father. Your mother’s gone.” Paul looked at her and took a deep sobbing breath. Then he pushed back the covers and went out into the kitchen where he stayed a long time. When he came back, he carried a tall glass of water, but the whiskey was strong on his breath. Tears rolled down his face. They got into bed then and she held him as he wept through the night.
The next morning his eyes were red and his face was lined with sorrow. Marnie was worried that the grief was making him ill. “Do you want to go to the funeral?” she asked him over coffee. “I think we can swing the money for you to fly. Or we could rent a car and drive. I’d go with you.”
Paul shook his head. “There’s no one there I want to see. It’ll just be the old man and he’ll be drunk. You can count on it.”
“Don’t you want to see her again? Be there for your brothers and sister?”
“They won’t come. He’s turned us all away.”
“I’m sorry I never got a chance to meet her.” Marnie put her hand on Paul’s.
He looked up at her after a long moment. “Marnie, I need to tell you something.”
A spasm of fear moved through her. She wasn’t sure why.
“I never told my parents that I married you. I guess I didn’t want to listen to my father badmouth you.”
“Why would he…”
“Because I’m happy with you. He doesn’t want me to be happy.”
Marnie had frowned. How could a father not want his child to be happy? But she let it go. No family was perfect. Now she wondered if she could understand Paul better if she had met his dad or known his mom. She thought again about Melissa in their bed. She thought about the women who had called when they were first married. Paul claimed they were old girlfriends, women he had dated before she came into his life. “I didn’t call them all when I met you, sweetheart, to say I was taken,” he told her. “I just didn’t call them anymore. If it’s a problem for you, just take a number and I’ll call them back and set them straight.” At first, she did that, but then she began saying she was his wife, even before it was true, and the women would back off and hang up, most with a quick apology.
It wasn’t until they moved for Paul’s first university teaching job that real doubt crept in. Late one morning in their second year in Houston, she was sitting outside Paul’s faculty office waiting to take him to lunch. Two girls stopped to read the New Yorker cartoons he’d pasted on his door. They were pretty young women with identical manes of long curls, short skirts, and tank tops for the early spring heat.
“Callahan’s so hot,” one of them said with a big sigh.
Marnie smiled to herself.
The other girl said nothing, just nodded her head.
“Oh my god,” the first girl said. “Are you one of Callahan’s girls?”
“I wish,” said the second. “I’ve heard he’s dividing his afternoons between Gwennie Roe and Mary Margaret Andersen.”
“I knew about Gwennie,” the first girl responded and they turned to go. “But Mary Margaret?” She shook her head. “Why her?” and their voices faded as they turned the corner.
Marnie sat pinned to the bench. There were no thoughts in her head, only feelings, awful feelings in her gut. She knew it was true. Not the names of the girls. She didn’t know those girls. But she knew that there were girls. Too many evenings Paul showered when he came home even though he’d showered in the morning. Too many nights he came home late, too many phone numbers on bar napkins in his jackets. Marnie felt a wretchedness that crept up into her chest and throat. She jumped up from the bench and headed down the hall until she found a restroom. She was relieved to find it empty. She thought she would be sick but once she was in the stall, nothing came up. She forced herself to take several deep breaths, to rinse her face with cold water, to pretend things were okay. She returned to Paul’s office.
The sick feeling stayed with her even after Paul appeared and gave her a lusty kiss in the hall in front of several passing students, calling her “my beloved wife.” It stayed with her as they walked across campus and Paul talked with excitement about an upcoming trip to New York to meet with a gallery owner about carrying his work. He didn’t seem to notice her silence.
Finally over lunch she asked the only question she could get the courage to ask. “Who’s Gwennie Roe?”
Paul stopped chewing and looked at her. Then he finished the bite of turkey sandwich he’d taken and put the rest down. “She’s a student of mine.” His face was as expressionless as his tone. “Why do you ask?”
“And Mary Margaret Andersen?”
“She’s also in one of my classes. What is this, Marnie?”
“I heard two students, two girls, talking about you and these girls, Gwennie and the other one. How you were sleeping with them both.”
“They said that? That I was sleeping with these students?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“So they didn’t say that I was sleeping with them?”
“No, I guess not.” Marnie felt sheepish and looked down at her chowder. What exactly had the girls said?
“Marnie, I’m not sleeping with both these girls. It’s unethical. I do see these two students, in my office and in my studio. They’re both art majors. That’s my job, to spend time talking to and advising and encouraging students. And I’ll admit some of them are very attractive. But I am not sleeping with both of them.”
Marnie said nothing. He reached over and touched her hand.
“Trust me on this, Marnie,” and he looked at her and didn’t look away.
She nodded, and they went on to talk about something else. She felt relief that the crisis had passed, she hated it when Paul was unhappy with her, and yet the anxiety lingered in the pit of her stomach.
But Paul became attentive again after that and tender the way he had been at the beginning, and Marnie let the memory fade and they had a second honeymoon that lasted most of three years.
Then the drinking escalated.
It had always been there. The bottle of wine over dinner, the too-many cocktails at faculty parties. He would go through a 6-pack of beer on a weekend afternoon with Jake although Jake drank only soda or iced tea. But then something shifted. Paul seemed to drink more and more often, sometimes night after night. When Marnie would ask him to slow down or remind him that he had class in the morning, he’d snap at her, tell her he was okay, to mind her own business. She was putting on weight, wasn’t she? That stung her into an uneasy silence.
The move to Virginia seemed a fresh start. The small teachers college was a step down in prestige from the university in Houston, but Paul would be head of the art department, a step up. He promised he would stop drinking and for a couple of months, he touched very little. Then it all started in again and then there was Melissa in their bed. After that, she couldn’t pretend anymore.
So why was she coming back? Why indeed?
Because she loved Paul. Because she had promised to be with him for better or worse, in sickness and in health. Those words from their vows kept coming back to her. This was the “worse.” You didn’t leave when things got rough. You worked it out. Her parents had done it several times and she was proud of them for it. She didn’t want to be someone who saw divorce as the easy way out.
And Paul had touched something deep within her when they met. Other men had made her feel attractive, but Paul made her feel adorable, beautiful, sensual. And of the men she had known, Paul was the most romantic. Rather than a dozen roses, he gave her lilacs out of season or a single dinner-plate dahlia. He left her love notes and lines of poetry. She’d find them tucked into her briefcase, wrapped with her sandwich, nestled in her underwear. He liked to dance cheek to cheek in the living room, make love in front of the fire or on the beach. On her last birthday, he’d made waffles and bacon and served them with champagne in bed.
Now he was sick. He needed her to stand by him. If she could get him off the alcohol, maybe she could get the old Paul back, the funny, charming artist, the true companion she had believed him to be. She was counting on that being the man she would find in Virginia.