52Essays2019 #2: The Marriage Story

            You could say I was forced to get married. It didn’t feel like that at the time, but it was part of the experience. When I called my parents to tell them Jack and I were getting married, my father said, “We’re not making you do this, are we?” I replied, “No, of course not.” But I thought, we wouldn’t be if not for you. Here’s what happened.

            It was the fall of 1964. I had returned to Antioch College in the spring after having dropped out two years before. Now I was in New York City for my co-op job (at the New York Times!) and living with Jack, who had fallen in love with the city when we’d visited in the winter from Washington, D.C., where we’d met. A few weeks into my job, my father called to say he was in the city for work and would I like to have dinner. Sure, I said, imagining a mean in a nice restaurant.

            When my father picked me up from work, we went to Penn Station to meet my mother, who was arriving the Philadelphia suburb where they lived. Odd, I thought; Dad hadn’t said anything about her having dinner with us. We went to a nondescript restaurant near the station, and chit-chatted about nothing in particular until our appetizers were served. As I dipped my spoon into my soup, my father asked, “Are you and Jack living together?” The soup never made it to my mouth. “What do you mean?”

            “I came by your address the other day and saw your name and his on the same mailbox.”

            The rest of the conversation may have appeared normal and quiet—my family did not yell or get overtly excited. It was, however, very uncomfortable for me. I had mentioned Jack to my parents as someone I was dating, but they hadn’t met. Jack and I were having a great time, in and out of bed, but I wasn’t thinking about getting married at that moment. I had just returned to college, had about a year and a half left, and wanted to finish. On the other hand, I did expect to get married sometime. But to Jack? Who knew?

            I said, “We’re not planning on getting married.”

            My father said, “My sister lived with her husband before they got married, but they were planning on getting married.” Oh, so it would be okay for Jack and me to be living together if we were going to get married sometime?

            I said, “I’m not going to get pregnant. I’m taking the pill.” This didn’t reassure my parents; “Nothing’s perfect,” my mother said.

            My father asked, “What would Antioch College think about your living with Jack?”

            I said, “Antioch College doesn’t care. They don’t have in loco parentis.” Was my father threatening to tell the college? I was pretty sure he wouldn’t, but I also was pretty sure that the college wouldn’t penalize me.

            My parents were lefties, but they were no bohemians. A few years earlier, while watching a TV program about a college considering co-ed dorms, my father was adamantly opposed. “You know what will happen,” he said ominously. “Why have that temptation?” At dinner, I didn’t know what was bothering them about my living with Jack. Did they have some old-fashioned idea that Jack was taking advantage of me? I knew that wasn’t true.

            I ate hardly a bite all evening, and I was still angry after they drove me to my apartment.

            “My parents are upset because they found out we’re living together,” I burst out to Jack. He was very comforting. But I ranted on about my father threatening to tell Antioch, and why did they care anyway, why were they being so old-fashioned? I didn’t think about it’s being only 1964, and people living together openly without being married was still rare.

            “Why don’t we get married?” Jack said calmly.

            That was totally unexpected. We had never talked about anything long-term or permanent. What did I really want to do? He was asking me to marry him. Maybe no one else ever would. Maybe I should take what was being offered. And if it didn’t work out, we could always get divorced.

            That’s how I came to be calling my parents the next evening and why my father asked his question. Who knows if we would have gotten married without that particular scene at the restaurant. The reality is, through many tempestuous moments and some really hard times, we did indeed remain married until death did us part.

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It’s another year for the essay a week challenge, 52EssaysNextWave. If you’d like to try it, go on over to the Facebook page for 52EssaysNextWave and sign up. Or just read some of the essays that will be linked to there.

 

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Slice of Life (and Death)

A week ago today, my husband died. We were together for 52 years, married for 51. (That still feels as unbelievable as the fact that he's dead.) We sometimes thought of ourselves as the last married couple in America. The day after he died, I wrote this paragraph, perhaps the beginning of something longer.

I always thought I had to get married until I learned that I didn’t. By then I’d been married for six years. On our first date, he asked me out for a drink. I had a drink while he had a dozen. I looked at the 12 empty glasses of Scotch and water lined up between us on the table and thought, “That’s exciting.” On our second date he recited Dylan Thomas’s “In My Craft and Sullen Art.” I was impressed; reciting poetry meant he wasn’t as cynical as he usually sounded. As he lay dying, I read “In My Craft and Sullen Art” to him. I felt I was going to cry as I read “The lovers lie abed” and I thought, I’m such a cliché. Our third date was a party. He sat in a big armchair, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, and beckoned to me. I sat on the arm of the chair, then on his lap, then we were necking. I said, “At every party, there’s always a couple necking in the corner. Tonight we’re that couple." He was a WASP from Kansas, and I thought he was exotic. I was an East Coast Jew, and he thought I was exotic. As he lay dying, I held his hand and said, “Now your story will become my story. Is that okay?” His eyes closed, he smiled and nodded.