When Marnie’s door opened, the bearded guy from the Miata stood there. He was talking on the phone, ordering pizza and salad. He smiled pleasantly at Jake and held up his hand to say he’d be just a minute.
Jake was flooded with feelings. He didn’t know who this guy was but he could guess. Marnie too had moved on. She hadn’t been waiting for him. He felt confused, flustered, but most of all disappointed.
David closed his cell phone and smiled again at Jake. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Jake said. “Is Marnie Callahan here?”
“Marnie Andreason?”
Jake nodded. “Yes, of course. Marnie Andreason.”
“Sure,” David said. “Just a minute and I’ll get her.”
Marnie had been in the second bedroom, checking email. She looked up when David came to the doorway. “Selling the Oregonian or giving away the Watchtower?” she asked.
“Neither,” said David. “It’s a guy, asking for you. Asking for Marnie Callahan.”
Paul, Marnie thought. Paul’s dead and they’ve sent someone to tell me. She willed herself to go numb. She got up slowly from the computer and moved past David and out into the living room. Jake had let himself in and stood in the entryway. Marnie’s eyes went wide when she saw him and she smiled in relief.
“Jake,” she cried. “Jake, I don’t believe it.” And she moved quickly towards him and threw her arms around him. They hugged a moment and then Marnie pulled back, her fear revived. “You haven’t, you haven’t come to tell me something awful about Paul, have you?”
Jake frowned in confusion. “No, Marnie. I haven’t. I just heard about the accident this morning from your dad. Has Paul taken a bad turn?”
“No, no. I thought you might have come to tell me he was dead. That’s silly, I...Sorry, I just, well, I don’t know. I just thought…” and she fell silent.
David had come up and stood next to Marnie. He didn’t touch her but Jake recognized the possession in his stance and his disappointment increased. Jake put out his hand and said his name.
“Jake is one of my oldest friends, from the San Francisco days,” Marnie said in way of explanation.
David nodded and shook Jake’s hand and introduced himself. Then he reached up and touched Marnie’s hair. “I’ll go get the pizza. Jake, are you hungry? Will you eat with us?”
“Sure,” Jake said slowly. “That’d be great, but I don’t mean to intrude.”
Marnie beamed, relief and happiness radiating from her. She took Jake’s hand. “Absolutely not. I am so glad to see you, Jake,” she said. “We have so much to catch up on.” She pulled him into the living room and sat next to him on the couch.
David stood a moment looking at them, then got his coat from the closet and went out the front door, calling back over his shoulder that he wouldn’t be gone long.
“Showing up unannounced may not have been such a great idea,” Jake said. “I didn’t expect to find you…”
“With somebody else,” finished Marnie.
“Yes, I…well, I didn’t know what to expect. I just hoped to see you.”
Marnie smiled. “I’m glad you’ve come. We left things so badly, you and I. I still feel bad about that.”
“Don’t, Marnie,” Jake said. “You had every right to go back to Paul. I’m sorry for both of you that it didn’t work out.” Jake hoped he sounded more sincere than he felt. He was silent a moment, then he moved on. “Looks like you’ve settled in here,” and he gestured at the room. “It’s nice. It looks like you.”
“Thanks, it works well. Tamara lives right next door and we see each other a lot.”
“That’s nice. She was always a good friend to you.”
Silence fell then, a lull, a lapse. Neither quite knew what to do.
“Tell me about David,” Jake said at last, although he was afraid to know.
“Oh, David. He’s a guy I knew in high school. We’ve been dating for a few weeks. He wants it to be serious, but I’m not ready. Paul and I, well, we’re divorced. I told you that in an email. Did you get it?” She’d been playing with a beaded bracelet on her wrist and she looked up at him.
Jake nodded.
She began fiddling with the bracelet again. “This thing with David was probably not a good idea. But I was lonely and I was mad at Paul for wanting to divorce me so fast, and I let it happen.”
Jake didn’t say anything, just watched the face of this woman he had loved for so long. He didn’t dare acknowledge anything of what he felt, even to himself.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Marnie went on. “David’s a good man. He’s kind and he treats me well. He doesn’t drink much and that’s a big relief. But I can’t imagine it’s going anywhere.” She looked up and saw Jake’s face and his response to what she was doing, what she was saying. She felt annoyed with herself, ashamed of her selfishness. “I’m sorry, Jake. I’m not even thinking about you at all in this, am I?”
She touched his arm and an electric current went through him. There was so much he wanted to say and he didn’t know where to start. “Marnie, I’ve been…” he said but then the doorbell rang and she went to answer it. It was David, his arms full of pizza and salad boxes. With David’s return, everything shifted, and what little closeness Jake had been feeling with Marnie seemed to evaporate.
David and Marnie went into the kitchen with the food, and Jake felt awkward there on the couch, odd man out again. He could hear their voices but not their words, David’s voice tense and urgent, Marnie’s low and soothing. Jake wanted to leave but he also wanted to stay. He mostly wanted David to leave.
“Beer?” David held a dark bottle out to him.
“Uh, no thanks. Is there soda?” Jake asked.
“I suspect so,” David replied. “Let me check.” And he went back into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of sparkling water. “All there is, I’m afraid,” he said, handing it to Jake.
“That’s fine. Thanks.”
David sat down in a big armchair across the room. Jake could sense him trying to take up a lot of space. A part of him was surprised that David saw him as a rival for Marnie’s affection. Then he realized that of course he was, that he had come here to win her if he could and that David could sense that.
There was a long awkward moment and then the two men began to talk, staying always on neutral ground. Jake’s work as a painter, David’s job as a computer salesman and his photography hobby, what Portland was like as an art town.
Marnie came in after a few minutes and invited them to the table, which stood in an alcove of the big L-shaped room. She had lit candles that reflected the table set for three in the big plate glass windows.
The next two hours were a strange déjà vu for Jake. There he was with Marnie in her home, sitting around the table in a threesome, longing for her while another man was with her. But David wasn’t Paul. He didn’t have Paul’s wit or charm, and most of all, David wasn’t sure of his place with Marnie, the way Paul always had been. He kept touching her, calling her “honey” and “sweetheart,” and Marnie seemed annoyed and Jake began to think he had a chance after all.
He turned his attention on Marnie. He asked her about her teaching, her decision to move to Portland and whether that was working out well. He talked about his travels: Santa Fe, Ojai, Joshua Tree, Big Sur. He didn’t mention Eleni, just spoke of a need to experience new things. Then he began to talk about the time at the cabin and his decision to move his art in a new direction. That led the three of them into an intense conversation about pleasing the public, and for a time, they forgot who they were to each other and just enjoyed the talk.
At last everything began to wind down. The candles had burned low, the pizza was reduced to cold crusts. Marnie made tea and served ice cream and cookies and the two men demolished that as well, but the tension began to mount again. Jake saw that he and David were both waiting for a sign from Marnie. When she got up and took dishes into the kitchen, Jake excused himself and went into the bathroom. He took his time, hoping to get up his courage to ask Marnie to see him the next day.
When he came back out, it was clear that David had gone. He went into the kitchen where Marnie was washing a few last things. She looked up at him and smiled gently and said, “I asked him to go. I know we need to talk about what happened and what happens now, and that doesn’t have anything to do with him.”
Jake felt relieved, but he also felt frightened. He didn’t know how to respond, so he picked up a dish towel and dried the dishes and for a few minutes, they worked companionably in silence. When they were done in the kitchen, Marnie offered more tea but Jake just shook his head and they moved into the living room. Marnie curled up on one end of the long red couch and Jake took a spot on the other end facing her. The two cats each took a lap, and they sat again in silence for a few minutes, petting the purring animals.
“Jake, it would never have worked between us.” Marnie looked up at him and saw the sorrow on his face. Her smile was gentle again and sad this time. “Not then, and not now.”
She paused a moment and then went on, looking him in the eye. “I care about you so much, and a part of me wishes I were in love with you. You are such a good man, Jake. But I’m not in love with you.”
Jake started to speak and she reached out and touched his hand and said, “Let me finish. It isn’t David. I’m not in love with him either. He’s just a friend, and even though he may think it’s more than that, it’s not. And deep down, I think he’s smart enough to know that I’m using him.”
“The truth is,” she said after a moment, “I still love Paul. I guess you always do, but it still feels real to me, that love, not an old thing, not a done thing.” She laughed then and there was more than a hint of bitterness in it. “I know he’s married again. I know he’s moved on. I tell myself that over and over again. But I still love him, and I can’t move forward until that is over. I can’t explain it. That’s just how it is.”
“He’s in your blood.”
“Yes, he’s in my blood.” She smiled sadly and then took Jake’s hand and held it and he let her. The small speech he had been preparing all day seemed meaningless now. And he could not speak against Paul.
Finally, he said what he could. “I would be good to you, Marnie. I would take good care of you. And I would never cheat on you.”
She gave a deep sigh. “It must seem crazy to you that I would turn that down.”
Jake shrugged. He didn’t know what else to say.
“I know it’s crazy,” Marnie said, “but as I said, I can’t explain it. He still has my heart.”
Jake nodded then. It was over, and he knew it. In some place in his own heart, he had always known it. He rose then to go.
“It’s late, Jake. Won’t you stay the night? I can make up a bed for you here on the couch,” Marnie said quickly.
He shook his head. He felt close to tears.
“Can we be friends, Jake? Is there any possibility of that?” Marnie asked as she handed him his coat.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Sure. Maybe. I don’t know.” He moved towards the door.
She came after him then, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him hard. “I’m sorry, Jake. Sorry about it all.”
“Me too,” he said. Then he pulled himself free and went out into the cold night. He was most of the way to Salem before he realized that he had never found out anything about Paul’s accident.