The Marriage Pact

The kid seemed caught off guard. He paused, stared at her, and finally said, “Yeah, that sounds real good.”

I can’t explain why, but I instantly knew that in those ten seconds, in that simple offer of a Dr Pepper, JoAnne had somehow talked the boy out of killing himself. I was pretty good at my job, at working with people, but in that moment I realized I was years away from understanding people the way JoAnne understood that kid. A few months later, I switched my major to behavioral psychology. Ever since then, whenever I see a can of Dr Pepper in a vending machine, I always hear JoAnne say, “A Dr Pepper for you too?”

In college, JoAnne was plain, her long hair streaked with shades of gold and brown. Standing across from me now, lit by the torches, she looks different. Every hair on her head seems to be following the strict orders of some stern, dictatorial hairstylist from a fancy salon in Union Square. It isn’t that her look is bad. It’s just surprising. When did she learn about makeup?

“It’s good to see you, Jake,” JoAnne says.

“So you two know each other.” There’s a false cheerfulness in Vivian’s voice. “How perfectly random. I’m surprised I wasn’t told.”

“We worked together in college,” JoAnne explains. “A hundred years ago.”

“Ah,” Vivian says. “Outside the range of our current background policy.”

Then JoAnne gives me a long hug, whispering in my ear, “Hello, old friend.”

A man walks up—tan, wiry, average height, wearing a very expensive suit. “I’m Neil,” he says, gripping my hand too tightly. “JoAnne’s husband.”

“I hope JoAnne doesn’t mind me saying this,” I say, “but I watched her save a boy’s life one night.”

Neil rocks back on his heels. He looks from me to JoAnne. I’ve seen that look before. He’s appraising me, appraising his wife’s reaction to me, deciding if I’m a threat. “She’s a woman of many talents,” he says.

“Oh,” JoAnne protests quietly, “it wasn’t like that at all.”

Before we have time to talk, Vivian pulls me away. “We have more people to meet,” she insists, guiding me over to where our host Kate is standing. Next to her, on the lawn, a plastic tarp is nailed down with stakes. Kate is toeing the tarp with her shoe, seemingly troubled by it.

“Do you need help?” I ask.

“No, no,” she replies, “stupid mushrooms. Just when I had the yard looking so perfect, they popped up today. It’s quite the blemish.”

“Nonsense,” Vivian says. “Everything looks marvelous.”

Kate’s still frowning. “I was about to pull them up and toss them into the compost this afternoon when Roger came running out of the house to stop me. Apparently, they’re a rare, poisonous type. Could’ve killed me. Roger would know; he was a botanist before he went into banking. Anyway, we just threw a tarp over it. The guy’s coming on Thursday.”

“At our farm in Wisconsin when I was a child,” Vivian says, “we had a nine-hundred-pound mushroom. It had grown underground to the size of a truck before we even realized it was there.”

Vivian doesn’t strike me as a farm girl from Wisconsin. That’s the thing about Silicon Valley. Give anyone a couple of decades here, and the rough edges and distinguishing characteristics of their native states give way to a telltale Northern California glow. “Healthy with a side of stock options,” Alice calls it.

Kate excuses herself to finish preparing the food, and Vivian ushers me into another group. Roger walks up with a bottle of wine and a fresh glass. “Thirsty?”

“Yes, please.” I nod. He fills my glass halfway before the bottle runs out. “Hold on,” he says, grabbing an identical bottle from the makeshift bar on the patio table. From his back pocket he pulls out an oval-shaped stainless-steel object, and with a flick of his wrist it is transformed from a strange piece of modern art into a plain corkscrew. “I’ve had this for nearly twenty years,” he says. “Kate and I brought it home from our honeymoon in Hungary.”

“Adventurous,” Vivian remarks. “Jeremy and I just went to Hawaii.”

“We were the only tourists around for miles,” Roger says. “I’d taken a month off work, and we rented a car to drive around the country. We were living in New York City then, and Hungary was the least New York thing we could think of. Anyway, we were driving our Lancia outside the town of Eger when we threw a piston and the whole thing froze up. We pushed the car to the side of the road and started to walk. There was a light on in a small house. We knocked on the door. The owner invited us in. Long story short, we spent the next few days in his guesthouse. He had a side business making corkscrews, and he gave us this one as a parting gift.

“It’s just a simple object,” Roger says, “but I love it. It reminds me of the best time of my life.” I’ve never heard a man talking so wistfully about his honeymoon. It makes me think that maybe this Pact thing is something special.

The night is a blur. The food is terrific, especially dessert, an impressively large stack of profiteroles; I’m not sure how Kate managed it all on her own. Unfortunately, I’m too nervous to really enjoy it. All night, I keep feeling as though I’m in the midst of one of those unorthodox Silicon Valley job interviews—endless odd questions disguised as small talk, though you know it’s really a well-crafted conversation designed to elicit your very soul.

On the way home, Alice and I compare notes. I worry that I talked too little and probably bored everyone. Alice worries that she talked too much. She does that when she’s nervous. It’s a dangerous habit that has gotten her into trouble at social events. Winding down the driveway, along the circuitous roads and back onto the freeway, we’re both buzzing with nervous energy. Alice is optimistic, even giddy.

“I’m looking forward to the next one,” she says.

And at that moment, I decide not to tell her about my second encounter with JoAnne. It was later in the evening, when everyone had gathered by the fire pit. It seemed to be an organized sharing time, where couples related what gifts they’d given each other and what travel they’d done since the last quarterly party. Uncomfortable and a little bored, I slipped off to the bathroom. After washing my hands and taking a few minutes to gather my wits about me, enjoying the silence after a night of small talk, I opened the door to find JoAnne standing there. At first, I thought that she too had just come upstairs to use the restroom, but then I realized she had followed me.

“Hi,” I said.

She glanced nervously down the hallway in both directions before whispering, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I asked, surprised.

“You shouldn’t be here. I didn’t see your name on the list. The email must have gone out when we were on vacation. I would’ve stopped it, Jake. I could’ve saved you. Now it’s too late. I’m sorry.” She looked up at me with those earthy brown eyes I remembered so well. “Really, I’m so sorry.”

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