“Can I tell you a story?” Orla asks.
I have a feeling she’s about to give me some version of the narrative I heard that first day, when Vivian showed up at our house with the contracts we so na?vely signed, the contracts that sucked us into this nightmare. I remind myself that, despite her warm hospitality and the seemingly instant rapport, this frail, silver-haired woman is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or more accurately, a wolf in fine linen.
“My parents were poor,” Orla says. “My father worked in a coal mine in Newcastle; my mother was a seamstress. While they provided a supportive home for my sister and me, they never gave us any advice. They had opinions, but their opinions were without conviction or clarity. When it came to the big things—religion, politics, work—I had to find my own way. I don’t blame them. Our world is growing at such a rapid pace, how can any of us be equipped with the right tools to pass on to the next generation? The world today is not the same one my parents grew up in—it’s not even the same world in which I grew up.
“I’ve become concerned that the modern world is evolving in a way that might leave marriage behind. This has a great deal to do with globalization and the sharing economy.”
“What does globalization have to do with the death of marriage? What does any of it have to do with this brutal system you’ve created?”
She sits back, eyebrows raised, apparently surprised by the anger in my tone. “Marriage is inefficient!” she proclaims. “The whole construct is a model of wasted resources. The wife often stays home to care for the children, or even a single child, abandoning the career she worked so hard for, losing years of creative output. Beyond the wasting of talent, think of the physical waste. For every home, there are so many redundancies. How many toasters do you think there are in the world?”
“I have no idea.”
“Seriously, just guess.”
“Ten million?” I say impatiently.
“More than two hundred million! And how often do you think the average household uses its toaster?” Once again, she doesn’t wait for my answer. “Just 2.6 hours per year. Two hundred million toasters are sitting unused, statistically speaking, more than 99.97 percent of their active lives.”
She sips the last of her wine, rises, and goes into the kitchen, returning with the bottle. She pours more for me without asking, then for herself. “The world wants to conserve resources, Jake. People are waking up to the fact that we don’t need all of these toasters; we don’t need the small family units and their selfish, self-contained homes. Evolution always rewards efficiency. Modern marriage and the single-family unit are simply not efficient.”
There is something slightly mad about her passion for the subject. Of course there is. Without madness, how could The Pact exist?
“So you’re saying we should move away from marriage?” I’m stunned. How can I reason with someone who so blatantly contradicts herself?
“Not at all! I am not an economist, Jake—thank God! This is what I believe: Efficiency is not always good. What is easy, what is even good, for that matter, is not always good. Why do I believe in marriage?” She stands in front of me. “Because it is not easy. Because it challenges us. It challenges me to bend my ways, to consider other points of view, to get beyond my own selfish desires.”
“Let me get this straight. You believe in marriage because it’s difficult?”
“Maybe it is difficult, but that’s beside the point. What matters is that marriage creates a platform for understanding. It enables you to put yourself inside the thoughts and needs of your partner, to truly explore the essence of another person.”
Orla is moving around the room now. “This understanding is an empowering point of departure for creativity and thought beyond what is available to the single, self-interested being. Humans too often drift toward repetition, toward doing what is safe and easy over and over. Marriage challenges that tendency. The Pact, as you know, grew out of the failure of my first marriage. I saw what marriage could be, but I knew that most marriages, like mine, were powerless to achieve it. I wanted strict rules that would strip away the selfishness.”
“It all sounds noble in theory. But what I’ve witnessed, Orla, is far from noble.”
She seems agitated at the mention of her name. She turns. “You are here to ask me to allow you and your wife to leave The Pact. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
She stares at me, saying nothing.
“You must know, the very fact that I have to ask is absurd.” I stand to face her, lowering my voice to a near whisper so she has to come closer to hear me. “You believe your mission is noble, that The Pact is pure—yet you run the organization like the cruelest kind of cult.”
She takes an audible breath. “Do you not want a successful marriage, Friend? Do you not want a life together with Alice? Do you not want to challenge yourself?”
“Of course I want all of those things! Why the hell do you think I’ve come all this way? I want Alice back—the way she was before we started living in fear. I want our life back. We were so happy before you waltzed in and turned everything to shit.”
“Were you?” Orla smiles. She seems to be enjoying herself. I want to wrap my hands around this woman’s neck and squeeze.
“Yes, Orla. We were. I love Alice. I would do anything for her. Anything.”
It occurs to me that I have never said this to anyone. And in an instant, I wonder if it only became true at this moment, when I uttered it aloud. Yes, I wanted Alice for my own, but maybe I did not love her enough.
“Then why are you giving up?”
“I’m not giving up on my marriage! I’m giving up on The Pact. You’re clearly a very intelligent woman. I refuse to believe that you don’t understand the difference. Please explain to me how surveillance, threats, and interrogation lead to any of the grand goals you’ve described. You speak like a barrister, but you rule like a tyrant!”
A phone rings somewhere deep in the house. Orla glances over at the clock. “Sorry,” she says. “Have to keep the lights on, you know.” She walks away and disappears into the back of the house. I pace for ten minutes, fifteen, expecting her to come back. She doesn’t.
What to make of Orla? I was certain she’d be charismatic, unbending, a leader in the mold of Jim Jones or David Koresh. But she isn’t like that at all. In fact, she seems thoughtful and almost gentle. She seems open to new information, willing to assimilate new ideas and actively seek opinions contrary to her own. If I could bottle this thing she has, I would give it to all of my patients, but first I’d save some for myself.