THE PRICE OF A MARRIAGE

THE PRICE OF A MARRIAGE

Stephen M. Larson

It was at her third garage sale that Margaret decided her husband had had an affair.

Margaret spent as many as six hours every Saturday morning from April through October seeking out and visiting garage sales. Fell Park was home to a state university and the largest Savings and Loan in the Midwest, so she was certain to find at least two good sales every week during those months, despite the whimsical Central Illinois weather. Most often the sales were on the poorer south side where she often found excellent bargains on old knick-knacks and curios. But her favourite hunting grounds were the wealthier northwest neighbourhoods where she could pick up clothes and furniture and appliances and tools and electronic gadgets and decorative items at prices only the rich could afford to ask.

On this exceptionally beautiful May morning, Margaret found five sales in the Laurelwood subdivision, where the doctors and lawyers and real estate agency owners lived. Laurelwood was not the wealthiest area of town; that lay about a half-mile to the east in the Blackberry Creek area and featured houses starting at a quarter-million dollars. Laurelwood's homes were worth only about half to three-quarters as much, but their owners managed to keep up a brave front.

Margaret had been prowling the immaculately swept concrete driveways since seven that morning, and had already emerged triumphant from the bargaining wars--at her first stop, she had talked the seller down from $150 to $100 on a cream-coloured velvet sofa and chair combination not more than three years old; at her second, she picked up a blue cut-glass iced tea set for eight for which she would have gladly paid twice the marked price. With these crammed into the back of her husband's pickup, she happily rounded the corner of Bitter Ridge Way and Plum Court and pulled up behind nine other vehicles at the foot of a long, curved drive.

This was a moving sale, and it seemed that the entire contents of the house were crowding the concrete arc and the center grassy semicircle. It was the type of sale that Margaret would normally have visited first, except that this one had not been scheduled to start until 9:30. That would not be for another fifteen minutes, but already a small army had gathered for the battle of the bargains. One woman snatched a bedside lamp and tucked it victoriously under one arm just as Margaret caught sight of it; moments later, Margaret had the satisfaction of seizing a throw-pillow (that would look just darling on the new sofa) out from under the same woman's very nose. Then the owner of the house appeared, signaling a general assault on the cash box.

Margaret hung back, having claimed only the pillow so far, and having spotted a few yards away an end table that matched perfectly one she had bought last fall not two blocks away. She homed in on the table, automatically glancing about for other hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. Halfway to her objective she hesitated, and then veered sharply.

In the center of a card table jammed with decorative bric-a-brac sat a large coffee mug, emblazoned with the Lincoln State University seal. There were, of course, hundreds of thousands of LSU coffee mugs in Fell Park, but most were in the official school colours of green and white. This one, however, was light blue with a brown rim, the colours of the Sociology Department. She picked it up and looked at the back. Sure enough, there was "Department of Sociology", written in Old English script.

"What are you so smug about?"

"I am now a full professor in the Lincoln State University Sociology Department," he grinned.

She frowned. "What were you all this past month?"

He laughed and drew out a box wrapped in blue and brown tissue paper. "That was just according to University records. I am now officially a Sociology professor!"

"Ah!" She knew what it was even before she unwrapped it. Bill had long ago explained that he would not be considered one of the Exalted Fellowship of Sociologists until they had presented him with his own departmental mug. "It's beautiful!"

"See?" He turned it around in her hands. "The department crest. And here." He turned it upside down. "My initials on the bottom. Of course, Wally Eckhardt's initials are the same as mine, so we'll probably be forever mixing our mugs up. Except his is older."

She weighed the mug in her hands as she weighed its purchase in her mind.

"Have you seen my mug?" He poked around in the cupboard.

"Get out of there! What mug?"

"My department mug." He frowned, his lower lip becoming more petulant than usual. It irritated her, and she snapped, "How the hell am I supposed to know where your mug is? If you'd keep the damned thing in your office over breaks and holidays instead of bringing it here, you wouldn't've lost it. I warned you this would happen."

He glared at her. "That was ten years ago, at least. I didn't think even you would say 'I told you so' after ten years!"

"Even me?! What do you mean even me?!"

"Nothing! Never mind!" He grabbed his briefcase. "I suppose I can always get another!"

Six months had passed, and he hadn't gotten another mug. Neither of them had mentioned it since he had stormed out of the house that day, but he had taken one of their regular coffee mugs to the university with him one morning and hadn't brought it back, so she assumed he couldn't get one. Maybe they'd been discontinued. Well, she could get this one, and maybe (she turned it over) somebody would know how to change the initials on--

She froze. WJE? But those were his initials! What was his mug doing here? Unless--what was Walter Eckhardt's middle name? John, was it? She knew it wasn't Joseph, like Bill's, but was it Jeffrey? Or was it Allan, maybe, or Zachary, or McGillicuddy? No, it was a "J" name--Bill had said that all the initials were the same. All right. So maybe this was Walter's. No sociology professor could afford this kind of house, but maybe his wife worked. She did work, didn't she? What was she? Lawyer? Neurosurgeon?

She found herself standing in front of the woman who was hosting the sale. "Excuse me," Margaret blurted, "but is this your husband's?"

"Ha!" replied the woman with neither warmth nor humor. "He's the reason my husband divorced me and I have to go through all this crap." She gestured vaguely with a tall glass filled, apparently, with orange juice. Margaret backed away, murmuring a disjointed apology, remembering suddenly that Walter Eckhardt's wife was a day care teacher.

Margaret wandered among the furniture and paintings and bargain seekers, picking up and putting down an alarm clock here and a hand towel there, seeing none of it. She absently laid the throw pillow down on top of a colour console television set, where it was eagerly grabbed by the lady with the bedside lamp. But she kept a firm grip on the mug. It had become the one solid bit of a suddenly slippery world.

"Where are you going?" he mumbled, reaching for her.

"To a group sale with Sharon," she smiled, lingering as he caressed her.

"Why? I'm a full professor now; we don't need to live off garage sales. Come on back, we've got at least an hour before the kids wake up." He kissed her, gently, between her breasts.

"I wish I could," she murmured, and meant it. "But she'll be here in about twenty minutes. Besides, you won't have anything left for tonight."

"You underestimate your own seductiveness," he argued, but he lay back, grinning, and watched her dress. "Anyway, you didn't answer me. I make enough now. We don't need garage sales."

"That's true. But why spend it all when we can still get bargains and use the extra for special things? And anyway, there's a kind of adventure in going to these sales. You never know what you might find."

"Excuse me? Ma'am?"

Margaret started.

"Are you going to take that?"

She looked down at the seascape at her feet.

"Margaret, come on! It's our first vacation in seven years, and I don't want to spend it sitting in a hotel room!"

"And whose fault is it that we haven't had a vacation in seven years?"

"Margaret, the research projects were important, to the department and to my career." His voice spoke of how many times they'd had this argument. "But they're over now, and we're here in New England, alone, and I want us to get to know each other again."

She fought the wave of irritation that surged like the gray sea hidden in the mist outside the window.

"Ma'am?"

The irritation subsided as she glanced at the soft-spoken young man beside her. He stood hand-in-hand with a young woman, about six months pregnant. "I'm sorry," Margaret said, feeling slightly foolish. "Did you want this?"

The young woman nodded shyly. "It reminded me of our honeymoon," she explained.

Margaret looked down at the sun-washed sea foaming up the glistening cliffs. "I thought it reminded me of something, too, but I guess I was wrong. Please, take it."

She waved off their thanks with the mug and wandered away between a bed and a bicycle. She retrieved the throw pillow from atop a pile of jeans where it had again been abandoned, and once more approached the woman at the cash box, whose glass now appeared to hold tomato juice.

Why? thought Margaret as she waited for the woman to fumble out change for a bowling ball, a wall clock, and a red leather footstool. Why did you take my husband? You had one of your own already. He must've made good money, too, or you wouldn't be forced to sell everything. So why Bill? He's forty-seven years old; sure he keeps himself in top shape, but he's got to be a good ten years older than you, at least.

She looked at the woman, and then imagined a mirror next to her in which she could see herself. The woman was also at least ten years younger than she. But was she that much better looking? Sure, her hair was a deep auburn to Margaret's light brown with hints of gray; but Margaret's was long and full the way Bill liked it, while this woman's was chopped off short and functional. She and Margaret were almost equally thin, except in the breasts. There the woman was almost child-like. Margaret was large, but that's what men liked. Wasn't it? And yes, Margaret had a few wrinkles and the woman had fashion-model skin, but--

And then Margaret was standing in front of her. And as she looked down at her, she saw the bitter lines of sorrow etched around the hard-set mouth and the pain-deadened eyes. To her amazement, Margaret found herself pitying this woman, a woman with whom Bill had apparently been sleeping. She was sipping with exaggerated care from her glass again, and Margaret felt the shock of realization and wondered, what kind of hell could have pushed you into a morning of screwdrivers and Bloody Marys?

The woman lowered her glass and, in a monotone, said, "The pillow's three bucks. I'll throw the mug in free."

As she handed over the money (without even haggling over the price), Margaret startled herself by asking, "Did you love him?"

At best, Margaret expected a cold stare. But the woman stopped, stared at her own hand holding the bills above the cash box, then muttered, "Love? God, who knows? What is love?" She carefully tucked the money into the box, but didn't look up. "I told him I did, and he said he did. But you know why he left? Because he loved his damned wife."

"What about your husband?"

This time the woman drained her glass, and then watched it being rolled back and forth between her hands. She stayed silent so long that Margaret decided she'd asked one question too many. But before she could discreetly withdraw, the woman whispered, "Yes. Oh, God, yes, I love him, I love him desperately." Her voice rose. "But you know the really funny part of this whole thing? He loves me, too! He said so! He stood by the damned front door with his damned bags and told me he would always love me and me alone but that he couldn't take any more and there was no use talking about it and that I could have the damned house and everything in it. And then he walked out. Excuse me." She stood abruptly. "I'm not having a very good day."

"I'm--" began Margaret, but the woman was already disappearing back into the house with her empty glass. So she turned and slowly found a path back through the growing crowd of scavengers picking over the bargain-priced wreckage of two lives.

When Margaret reached the pickup, she carefully tucked the throw pillow into a nook between the sofa and the chair. Then she climbed into the cab, set the mug on the seat beside her, and began to shake.

"We did it!" he shouted, grabbing her and spinning her around the room, oblivious to her laughing protests. "Margaret Ellis, we finally did it!"

"Margaret Ellis," she chanted. "Margaret Ellis. I think I'm going to like the sound of that. Bill! Watch the dress! Our daughter might want to get married in it some day!"

"And our granddaughter, and our great-granddaughter!" he laughed, sending her whirling onto the bed. "And we're going to be there for every one of them, because we're going to love each other forever!"

She would have agreed with him, except that his lips were suddenly in the way.

Two people can love each other forever with no problem, thought Margaret as she started the truck. But what about ten years? What about 20, 25, 26 years? She nudged it into gear, still trembling slightly. As she circled the Plum Court cul-de-sac, she glimpsed the woman back at her cash box and wondered how she decided what price to put on her memories. She turned left onto Bitter Ridge Way and automatically switched on the radio. “The Firebird” filled the small cab.

"What are you listening to?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," he smiled. "I was hoping you could tell me."

She listened for a moment. The music echoed in the garage where he had been changing the oil in their vintage Volkswagen bug. "It's a Haydn string quartet," she decided. "I'm not sure which one. The third, I think. But since when have you begun listening to classical music?"

"I've been playing it on my way to and from classes," he admitted. "I'm getting to like it."

She laughed. "I have a confession, too. I've been listening to your country station while I've been doing the housework."

“See?” he grinned. “Two cultures can learn from one another!” And he kissed her, transferring some of the oil from the tip of his nose to the tip of hers.

She reached out blindly and punched a button. The Kentucky Headhunters replaced Igor Stravinsky just as she passed the low brick pillars that insulated Laurelwood from the rest of Fell Park. She switched off the radio.

So, what now? What was her next move? Should she confront him with the mug and her knowledge and demand some answers? Did she want to know those answers? Should she smile sweetly and hand it to him and say, guess what, honey, I found your mug, and then walk away and let him sweat? Or should she just ignore the whole thing, hide the mug, forget about it? The woman said it was over, that he dumped her because he still loved his wife.

She stopped for a red light. But if he still loved her, why didn’t he do something about it?

"Happy anniversary." He set their kitchen calendar on her makeup table.

She paused, eyeliner in hand, and frowned. He had circled the following Thursday and written "4:30" in the box, in red. "Gee, and I didn't get you anything. What is it?"

"I've made an appointment with a friend of mine. A marriage counselor."

"A marriage counselor?!" She felt betrayed, offended. "That's a hell of a 25th anniversary present!"

"Margaret, after 25 years, any marriage can get stale." He had obviously prepared his speech. "It can even get stale after one year. I love you, but I'm not sure we're still in love with each other."

"Double talk!"

"No, Margaret, I mean it. We don't talk at all, or when we do, we argue. I don't want to go on like this."

"Are you threatening divorce?"

"Of course not! I just want us to get back to how we were when we were first married."

"No one can get back to the way they were when they were first married." She shoved the calendar back at him. "Here. Cancel the appointment. I'm not spilling my guts and the intimate details of our lives to one of your drinking buddies. Now let me get ready for the party."

He looked at her in silence, then turned and walked out. He did not mention counseling again.

A horn sounded. She hurried through the intersection. She saw a McDonald’s restaurant ahead, and suddenly realized that she wasn’t ready to go home yet. She parked where she could keep an eye on her sofa and chair, then went in and ordered a cheese Danish and a cup of coffee.

He came running when he heard the coffee cup shatter on the kitchen floor. "Are you all right?"

She was clutching the phone with one hand, the back of a chair with the other. Her face was the colour of unglazed pottery. He helped her into the chair, took the phone, spoke into it and listened for a while, hung it up, then came back to kneel by her side.

"Honey?"

"Sharon," she whispered.

"I know."

"She was only forty, Bill!"

"I know, honey."

"What if it's me? I'm only forty-two!"

"It won't happen to you." He put his arms around her.

"A stroke can happen to anyone!"

"It's not going to happen to you."

And for the next half-hour he knelt beside her, reassuring her with impossible promises, making her believe them, while she clung to him and sobbed into his chest. He stayed with her for the next three days, through the visitation and the funeral, letting one of the other professors teach his classes and counsel his students until she was strong enough for him to go back. Then he called her every day at lunch. He still did, and though now they often fought over the phone, they both missed it if he couldn’t call.

A noisy crowd of children was gathering; Ronald McDonald was putting on a show in about fifteen minutes. Margaret cried quietly, head down, hair hiding her face. I love him, she thought. More than anything, I love him. I can't love him. He can be such hell to live with sometimes. He's always so quiet, almost timid, but he's stubborn, too. He's not a passionate man, God knows, but I'm too passionate. I anger so easily, I complain, I brood; Lord, are either of us worth a damn to the other? Are either of us any fun? We must be, we must have been once. We were; I can remember so many good times. Why did he let it all go bad? Why did I? How did it happen, so quietly, so quietly? Can we do anything about it? Can I?

She wiped her eyes with a napkin and left, dumping her mangled Danish and half-cup of tepid coffee. She pulled out of the parking lot to the cheers of children and the bouncy blare of canned calliope music. She carried with her a couch, a chair, an iced tea set, a throw pillow, a mug, and the firm resolve to fight for her marriage, whatever the price. She touched the mug on the seat beside her. She would show it to Bill, explain calmly how she had found it, and allow him to explain how it had gotten there. They would have a nice, rational conversation, and everything would be fine.

She held on to her fantasy until she pulled in the drive. Then Bill came out of the garage, smiling, wiping his hands on a rag, and she stuffed the mug in her bag.

"You're back early." He cocked an eyebrow at her as she stepped out onto the asphalt.

Margaret forced a smile. "I decided a sofa and a chair and a couple of small things were enough for one day."

"David? Kent?" Bill called at the house. "We need a hand out here!" He looked at the furniture. "Nice. How much?"

"A hundred." Margaret marveled at how they could both be so cool, so calm.

Bill nodded. "They're worth it. They'll look great in the den. By the way, I've got something to show you." He loped into the garage and back. "Look what I found this morning behind some old paint cans."

Margaret stared down at the mug in his hands. The blue and brown and the LSU seal and the departmental logo were almost totally obscured by dust and grime and even a bit of mold, but the "WJE" on the bottom was as clear as on the day she had unwrapped it. Once again she felt the world shift beneath her. Tears ran down her face again, tears of relief and gratitude and shame for her doubts and fear that it could still happen or maybe already had with someone else.

"What's this?" Bill blinked. "It's only a mug!"

She laughed and hiccoughed and then, suddenly, she was in his arms, clinging to him as though she were drowning.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing!" she sobbed and laughed. "I'll tell you some day. But will you do something for me?"

"Anything!"

"Call that friend of yours, the marriage counselor. Tell him we're coming in as soon as he can see us." And give his name to Walter James Eckhardt, she thought; I think he's going to need it.

Then before either of them could say any more, the boys appeared. Together, they all carried the sofa into the house.

THE END