Marjorie

Marjorie is Burke Devore’s wife, the person who tries to keep their household intact as his unemployment stretches from a temporary setback into a crisis. Her economies and part-time work provide practical support, but her most consequential act is to insist that the marriage face what Burke will not discuss. In counseling, she gives their estrangement its clearest account: she wants her husband back, not the silent provider he believes he must remain.

Identity and Background

Marjorie first met Burke in 1971, when she boarded the city bus he drove. She was a twenty-year-old college student; he was a twenty-five-year-old Army veteran. Their conspicuous difference in height and build drew teasing from friends, and her college friends also ribbed her for dating a bus driver. Burke later understood that pressure as one reason he applied for sales work at Green Valley Paper & Pulp, where he found the career that would define his working life.

Marjorie had ambitions and skills of her own before marriage. She studied typing and shorthand, took temporary jobs during college summers, and worked for an insurance company for about six months after graduating. She received a promotion and raise and could have stayed, but Burke wanted to marry and start a family quickly, and she left the job market. Years later, she considered returning to work; Burke’s role as provider and protector, as she understood it, made that prospect difficult to raise between them.

Holding the Household Together

When Burke brought home notice that he would be included in a reduction in force, Marjorie began cutting expenses before his final day and before his severance pay ran out. The yellow notice marked an abrupt change in their circumstances, but her response was immediate and practical. She cancelled her exercise class and gardening workshop, ended HBO and Showtime while keeping basic cable, stopped renewing magazine subscriptions, and removed lamb and fish from their meals in favor of chicken and pasta. Shopping trips also ceased.

Burke’s account emphasizes how readily she adapted, and he regards her economies as work she has already done for the family. Marjorie’s later account in counseling gives that response a more complicated meaning: at first she treated the layoff as a short trial in which she could prove herself a perfect wife and partner. She thought the hardship would soon pass. As months became years, however, the savings measures could not resolve the deeper uncertainty over how long Burke would remain unemployed, whether they might have to sell their house, or what would happen next.

She also returned to paid work in limited, unevenly rewarded forms. On Mondays and Wednesdays she worked as a receptionist in Dr. Carney’s office for one hundred dollars a week, paid off the books. On Saturday afternoons she cashiered at the local movie house for minimum wage; taxes left her with no take-home pay, though the job brought a free-movie perk and a reason to get out of the house. The couple had sold their Honda Civic, so Burke drove her to the dentist’s office and collected her afterward. Marjorie was also learning to use a computer through the dentist’s billing work and instruction from a nurse. She had become more capable with it than Burke realized, but kept that progress to herself because she feared he would not welcome it.

Marriage, Silence, and the Affair

The household effort did not produce the closeness Marjorie had hoped for. In her account, Burke responded to the prolonged crisis by closing himself off: he grew secretive, silent, and cold, while she remained unsure what the family’s future would be. She believed he was trying to protect her by carrying the burden alone, but experienced that protection as exclusion. His apparent wish to be the provider left little room for her to speak about work, money, or the possibility that their old life would not return.

Marjorie describes the resulting emotional isolation as the condition in which her affair began. Four months before the counseling disclosure, a man she knew acted tenderly toward her, and she responded. She valued that he would talk openly about his own problems and allow her to comfort him. Her account does not present the relationship as proof that she had stopped loving Burke: she came to understand that she wanted Burke, but wanted him emotionally alive and reachable. She was no longer seeing the other man, yet still felt that she was not seeing her husband either.

She tried to break through the silence by proposing counseling. When Burke resisted talking about their problems, she told him about the affair, making the disclosure a deliberate turning point rather than an incidental confession. She felt unable to tell him the truth without a counselor in the room and wanted the choice to become unmistakable: either they would confront the damage or the marriage would end. The disclosure also exposed a dangerous gap between them. Burke had his own concealed mission and unexplained trips, but Marjorie did not know their real purpose; she could only interpret the papers and secrecy as some mysterious project.

Counseling and a Voice of Her Own

At their first appointment with Longus Quinlan, the formal intake consumed the session, and the couple left without Marjorie’s account of the affair being heard. On the elevator, Burke compared the meeting to a job interview. Marjorie put her arms around him and kissed him warmly, but the intimacy lasted only an instant before they both pulled away. The gesture suggests that affection remained possible even while the larger conversation between them was blocked.

In a later session, Marjorie spoke at length about the marriage, her work, and the fear that their family could not keep living without knowing what came next. She rejected the idea that she wanted to be protected through silence. She wanted a partner with whom she could talk, laugh, or cry, and described Burke’s emotional withdrawal as a wall that left her unable to reach him. Her testimony gives her more than the role of the supportive wife in Burke’s account: it establishes her interpretation of their shared crisis and corrects his assumption that his self-sacrifice was necessarily helping her.

Burke acknowledged that he had not realized he was shutting her out and said he had thought he was simply trying to hold himself together. Quinlan also prompted him to reconsider the meaning of the computer he had bought for the household, which Marjorie had experienced as a reminder that her skills were outdated. Burke said he had not intended that message. Her speech thus changes what Burke can see about his conduct, even though it does not instantly remove the distance between them.

Continuing Tension

Marjorie’s commitment to the marriage persists alongside her frustration. After the counseling disclosure, Burke was glad she had spoken and said he did not want to lose her. He also learned that the man was James Halstead, a former banker who had become a Mercedes salesman. Marjorie’s revelation makes the affair’s identity known, but Burke’s own account remains shaped by a separate secret life she cannot see.

The strain continues into the later counseling sessions. Burke becomes so distracted by his plans that he barely listens unless Marjorie or Quinlan addresses him directly; on the drive home, Marjorie watches him and wonders what is occupying him. When a call comes from Arcadia Processing about an opening that appears to suit Burke’s experience, she sees his broad smile and shares his elation, believing he may really get the job because he believes it so thoroughly. Her hope is genuine, but it depends on an opportunity whose circumstances she does not yet know. As Burke prepares for the interview, she tells him that Detective Burton has arrived. Even at this moment of anticipated recovery, the marriage remains exposed to the consequences of the secrets Burke has kept.