Still, I finally understood how my patients felt, the teenagers who told me they’d been waiting for their parents to confront them with the news of their impending divorce. I went through each day fighting off anxiety, looking for JoAnne at Draeger’s, waiting for bad news from The Pact. We figured that the most likely scenario would be a call from Vivian, an invitation—or a veiled order—to meet for lunch. Then she would hit us with something from out of the blue—some rule we’d violated, some order that had come down from above.
As the days went on with no call, I told myself that this fear of The Pact was absurd. Why were we so afraid of a thing that had done nothing more than invite us to a great party and provide my wife with a temporary piece of jewelry and four weeks of free counseling that, except for the final week, was fairly wise and reasonable? Just as often, though, I’d succumb to paranoia. I would walk home from work, and as I turned the corner at Balboa onto our block, I would scan the street for anything unusual. One night, I saw a guy sitting in a black Chevy Suburban across the street from our house. Instead of going up our steps, I walked around the block and up the other side of the street, noting his license plate, trying to get a glance through the blacked-out windows. When a door of one of the houses opened and an elderly Chinese lady walked toward the Chevy and got in, I felt like an idiot.
After a few days had gone by with no word, Alice finally started to relax. But she didn’t entirely go back to her old self. She still made it home for dinner every night, but she seemed distracted and wasn’t in the mood for sex. The stress pimple beside her left dimple would vanish, then reappear. There were smudges under her eyes, and I knew that she was tossing and turning at night, getting up earlier and earlier to work on cases before she left for the office. “My hair is falling out,” she said one morning, sounding more resigned than alarmed. “Nonsense,” I said, but I could see evidence in the shower and the bathroom sink, tangled strands of it on her clothes. I went back to Draeger’s, still with no luck. I started to have all kinds of weird thoughts. Why hadn’t JoAnne shown up? I wondered. Was she in trouble? I didn’t like the way The Pact was making me feel, and I didn’t like the way it had turned into a black cloud over Alice.
On Tuesday, I called Vivian and asked if we could meet for coffee. She immediately suggested Java Beach in the Sunset district. “See you in half an hour,” she said. I hadn’t really expected her to pick up, nor had I expected her to suggest we meet so soon. More important, I hadn’t really thought out exactly what I wanted to say.
Yes, I wanted out of The Pact, but how best to broach the topic? In my work over the years, I’ve found that people often react less to what you say than to how you say it. Everyone expects good and bad news—that is the contract of life, after all. The good and the bad are unavoidable, and at some point they strike us all. The news is the news. But the delivery of the news, the gestures, the words, the empathy and understanding—that’s the gray area where the messenger has the power to make things a little easier or a lot more difficult.
On the drive over to Java Beach, I kept revising and editing the thing I had to say to Vivian. I wanted to get it right. I wanted to be clear but not confrontational, casual but considered. I wanted it to come out as part question—in order to deflect any anger she might feel—but mostly as a direct statement. Alice and I needed to leave The Pact, I would tell her. It was causing us stress and anxiety, and it was putting a strain on our marriage—the very institution that The Pact was designed to protect. It would be best for us and the wonderful people of The Pact to part ways, I would say. I would thank Vivian for her kindness and apologize for our change of heart. I would make the discussion short, but my meaning unmistakable. And then it would all be over. This weird fog of doom that had been shadowing Alice and me would disappear.
I found a parking spot a block and a half from Java Beach. As I walked toward the café, I could see that Vivian was already there, at a table on the patio. She had two cups in front of her. How had she gotten there so quickly? Her purple dress looked casual but expensive, her handbag simply expensive. She was wearing large sunglasses despite the fog, drinking her coffee, gazing off toward the ocean. She was exactly as Alice described her: perfectly ordinary at first glance but, upon closer inspection, not ordinary at all.
While others around her fidgeted incessantly, Vivian was relaxed, her face serene, not a cellphone or computer in sight. She was, it occurred to me, supremely at ease in her own skin.
“Friend,” she said, standing. She pulled me in tight and held me for a second longer than I’d expected. She smelled nice, like the ocean breeze.
“Hot chocolate, right?” She motioned to the mug waiting in front of my seat and removed her sunglasses.
“Exactly.” I took a sip, mentally rehearsing my speech.
“Jake. I’ll save us a moment of awkwardness. I know why you’re here. I understand.”
“You do?”
She put her hand on mine. Her fingers were warm, her nails perfectly manicured. “The Pact can be frightening. It even scares me to this very day. But a little fear, when used for a noble purpose, can be a positive thing, an appropriate motivator.”
“Actually,” I said, slowly pulling my hand back, trying to regain control of the conversation, “about the fear tactics—” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. Wrong tone. Too aggressive. I started again. “The reason I called is twofold. First, I want to thank you for your kindness.” I tried to make it light. “Alice felt terrible that she never sent you a proper card.”
“Oh, but she did!” Vivian exclaimed.
“What?”
“After our last lunch. Please tell her the yellow tulips were gorgeous.”
Weird. Alice hadn’t mentioned sending flowers.
“I will,” I said, bracing to forge on.
Vivian reached across the table to put her hand back on mine. “Jake, Friend, please, I know why you’re here. You and Alice want out.”
I nodded, surprised at how easy this was turning out to be. “We love everyone we’ve met in the group. It’s nothing personal. It just isn’t right for us.”
Vivian smiled, and I relaxed a bit. “Jake, I hear what you’re saying. But sometimes, Friend, what we want and what is best for us are not exactly the same things.”
“Ah, but sometimes they are.”