A few weeks ago, I went downstairs to Richard’s office and said, “Let’s get married.” He looked up from his book and said, “Okay.” I am 78. He is 74. We have lived together for more than 18 years.
Many times before, he’d reported the money I could get if we were married. From filing a joint tax return. Access to the same amount as his social security payments after a year. Dental insurance. I would say, “I don’t believe in marriage. I don’t think I’ll feel good if I’m married. It’s not worth the money.”
I love money, but appraently I loved something else more.
A few months ago in our local CVS, a clerk we’re friendly with made the assumption we were married. I told him we were not married. He asked why. I said, “The history of the institution has not been a good thing for women,” and I referred him to Engels’ great book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. I said, “Would you want to be a called a wife?” He looked scared and said no.
Not that Richard was pushing for marriage. Or against it. Who knows what he feels about marriage. Or anything else. Who knows what anyone is feeling about anything, including the person feeling something. We don’t know anything, if we’re honest. We’re in a fog, a cloud, on a street we’ve never seen we walk on every day. For Richard, this is marriage number four. So far, his only expressed concern is, “Now, I’m Zsa-Zsa Gabor.”
I’m happy we got married. Happy, happy, happy. It’s a street I’ve never seen I walk on every day. There was the election, and the it-will-be-easier-if-we-have-to-travel-and-live-somewhere-else factor. And last year Richard was in the hospital for a few days because he had a bad case of the norovirus. The marriage thing makes hospitals and health proxies easier. I think.
That’s not the reason we got married. I don’t know the reason. Not exactly. I was suddenly aware a layer of resistence the weight of a night gown had slipped off me, and there I was, naked on stage and not caring.
At first, we were going to get married and not tell anyone. I instantly told everyone. It was fun. Something was happening. People sent back notes of congratulation, and it made me happy to stir happiness in a world that can be gray and sad.
The first time I got married I was 19. Bruce and I had found an apartment. My father came to see it. He stood on the empty parquet floor and said, “I’ll cosign the lease if you get married.” Bruce smiled. I said okay, and then I felt like a suitcase on a conveyor belt at the airport, totling along in a line with other suitcases until we were pitched down a winding chute to a cold, dark whatever.
I don’t remember the words I was asked to affirm back then. I remember the office of the rabbi my mother had found in the phone book. It was on Park Avenue around the corner from where my parents lived on 34th Street. The rabbi had mentioned it wasn’t necessary to believe in God, and maybe he’d said he didn’t believe in God, either, or maybe I’ve invented this part of the conversation.
On Tuesday, December 17, Richard and I got a marriage licence at the office of the County Clerk, and the next day, at 4 PM, we were at the Columbia County Court House in Hudson. Judge Michael Howard sat where he usually hears cases and read aloud from a marriage script. Gathered as witnesses were a police officer and two lawyers in coats.
We were all in a good mood. Lots of wide grins. It was an office party, and we were standing under a sprig of invisible mistletoe. After the ceremony, the judge even mentioned it would have been nice to share a glass of bourbon, and I wished I’d thought to bring a bottle of something for a toast.
There Richard and I stood, side by side, like a pair of animals waiting to enter the ark. No one mentions the age of the animals Noah collected. We’re meant to understand their job will be to reproduce. Theoretically, after the Flood, God could have created more animals and more species, but once he’d set the game in motion, he apparently decided to step back and hand over the future to genes and physical birth.
Before we were invited into the courtroom, a charming clerk had made copies of our photo IDs. I mentioned wanting to be named married people, rather than husband and wife, and she smiled as she changed the words. Otherwise, I hadn’t given much thought to the text that would be read. Maybe, I didn’t want to be stopped. During the ceremony, when the judge read the word holy. I said, “What! No holy! No metaphysics!” The judge changed it and laughed.
Near the end of the proceedings, he read out a passage that is more or less a standard part of the marriage ceremony and that we’d forgotten: “I promise to love and cherish you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse, and forsaking all others, keep myself only unto you, for so long as we both shall live.”
I thought no one in the history of promises has ever said yes to one word of this with an untroubled conscience. And I was reminded of a brilliant remark once made by Richard I have often quoted without attribution: “Every promise invites a change of heart.” The suitcase on the conveyor belt at the airport feeling was coming over me, but It was almost over, and I said, “Okay, well I guess?”
So far, everyone has been happy, happy, happy for us. I’m not sure what they’re celebrating, but I think most people want to affirm the decisions of friends they feel attached to. I think this is what it’s about, attachment, and I can see why people set aside times on calendars to celebrate together. They want cake. Any opportunity for cake.
The difference between being 19 and marrying Bruce and being 78 and marrying Richard is the decision to get married this time is mine, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. I like starting a new episode in life I will be able to write about because my feelings will keep changing. To get married when you don’t believe in marriage is a contradiction that can’t be resolved. Contradictions that can’t be resolved are what I write about. Contradictions that can’t be resolved are ultimately funny. Comedy is about limits. Tragedy is about transcendence. Best to stay clear of transcendence.
The other day, a friend was over at our house, and we were talking about how it felt to be married. It was day number ten. I said something about holding Richard more firmly to life. It surprised me. What does it mean? What’s the image that comes to mind? It’s magical thinking to think a symbolic act gives you a firmer footing on ground that tilts. After Gardner died, I dreamed the floor of my apartment became slanted as steeply as a ski slope. It was not a good feeling. I was 44 years old. Now, do I mean a firmer footing when you’re old? The reaching out of a hand from behind a curtain? What is the curtain?
On day eleven of being married, I had a small car accident in a town 20 minutes from where we live. No one was hurt. My car and another car have external damage that can be repaired. I called Richard, and as the incident unfolded, he sent me texts about how to handle myself, all helpful. I called my insurance company. A police officer filed a report. He was nice. It was cold, in the low single digits.
After everyone left, I couldn’t start my car. It was a battery thing. I had to wait for a jump in the cold for more than an hour. I drove home, and this is what I want to tell you.
I felt bad. I felt rattled. I felt I’d hurt the car. I felt the sad shake after an adrenalin rush. Richard said, “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is you weren’t hurt and the other person wasn’t hurt. Only the car was hurt, and it can be fixed. The money doesn’t matter. I made you a drink. It’s in the living room. I’ll eat a cheese sandwich for my tea. I put the heat on. We’ll watch tellies. I know the bad feelings won’t go away. I know you will hold onto them. You didn’t do anything wrong. Honest.”
Another day, we backed away from a fight, two dogs sniffing at bad water and deciding not to drink. We trotted off down the road, and now it's snowing. Our contractors John and Andrew came over to cut pieces of trellis for the apron of our deck. Richard told them we'd gotten married, and they said they’d thought we already were married. A thing we’re surprised by is how much marriage is a communal activity that’s immediately out of your hands—the way it outlines the trees and blankets the ground.
When Richard wrote to his sister, who lives back in England, about our getting married, this is what he wrote, and I’ll leave you with his words, trusting you know everything is provisional, everything is in flux—or maybe not everything: “I think it has got inside us, the tsunami of enthusiasm. Laurie and I appear to have decided to be more tender to each other, to back off from disagreement. To be more affable, a term not easily applied to either of us. If I have to come up with one word to describe what has happened to us, I would say, we have become sweeter. The tsunami comes over us, the wave recedes, and on the beach past the wreckage what’s left is sweetness.”
So much delight here. Zsa Zsa Gabor, Noah’s ark, the promise inviting a change of heart, Richard’s closing words, which remind me of “Dover Beach.” Richard’s words dance beautifully with yours, Laurie. Your choice to marry at this stage of life suggests another poem. If you can’t make your time stand still, make it run.
I love this. Why? I don’t really know. I who have been married to the same man for 60 years. Perhaps it is the photo that sealed it for me. I look at the two of you and you are laughing . My hubby and I have not always been happy. We have been, happy, unhappy, happy, unhappy, etc. Thanks to Richard I now know to call the transitions “tsunami”. After hard moves, job change, cancer and much worse there was pain, unhappiness, yes anger, and then a tsunami. And after each tsunami there was laughter - we could laugh together again. At 80, we laugh more now and cheese sandwiches taste twice as good.