r Mr

Just Marr ed

Driving to Sidney on a rainy Saturday in June, I
passed a car by the roadside, its body a bound of
soggy toilet paper. A drenched bride knelt
changing a flat tire while her blushing groom,
looking helpless, took photographs.

Photographs, Susan Sontag says, provide evi-
dence — evidence that we were really there, that
we were in love with one another ... once.

A New Yorker cartoon shows a young man on
his knees proposing to a young woman. “Will you
be my first wife?’ he asks her. These days seven
out of ten marriages are bound to fail. Why, then,
do we keep on doing it?

In Sidney I met three friends for lunch and we
talked about it — our marriages. “When I was
young I married for love,” said Sharon, a poet.

When the day came I sat at the back of the
courtroom dressed as if I were attending a public
execution. The woman before me took the stand
wearing a T-shirt that said I’M NOT FAT I’M
PREGNANT and related the details of her
husband’s shortcomings. ““Your Honour,” she told
the judge, “a three-minute egg takes longer.”

My lawyer had warned me beforehand to
answer all the judge’s questions honestly. That is,
I should say “no” to each one: it would be
quicker. But on the stand I was still unprepared for
the judge’s final question. He looked at me, hard,
over his steel-edged glasses. “Any chance of a
reconciliation?” he asked.

Now I'd sworn to tell the truth and there’s
always a chance — the world’s divorce record

TheReview

Wednesday, October 3,1990 — A12 |

el

It teaches:

Oa and security are unattainable unless
its unity is first established.
Faith *World peace is not only possible but
inevitable.
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“So I married a few people I shouldn’t have.” holder, for example, had married one of the same » Weddin : oe
“I want a family,” said Nancy, a children’s | women twice. “‘No,” I replied, and the judge = =. Ban aes
author. Like Sharon she had been married twice _ closed the book. Another raccoon skin on the EY ies 4 q
and was about to give it another try. “True love at _-wall. ae BAe = FULL
last,” she sighed as our appetizers finally arrived. My first husband and I both remarried (differ- ess Sr CATERING
Ken, a journalist, said marriage was about ent people) within a year. And were divorced : |
companionship. He reminded us hat Plutarch Sean ae Plutarch = Masters and Johnson VICTORIA AIRPORT _ SERVICE AVAILABLE €.

warned long ago and Masters and Johnson
reiterated recently — that great passion lasts no
longer than seven years. Statistically, he said, most
first-time divorces occur at the end of six years.

It isn’t unusual these days to have multiple
marriages. The world divorce record holder,
interviewed on the eve of his twenty-second
marriage, claimed divorce didn’t faze him. “It’s
another raccoon skin on the wall,” he said.

During our main course Ken said each of his
Marriages ended amicably, though he now sup-
ported four households and lived on a shoestring.
Nancy complained that every time she changed
husbands she had to change her name; Sharon
kept her name and her apartment though she’d
had to change the locks. All three had something
in common; getting divorced, they said, was the
easy part. Staying married was hard.

For me it was the opposite. My first husband
and I had stayed married long after we had
separated; we met once a week to share the dog.
On our seventh anniversary we went to the
parking lot where he’d asked me to be his first
wife (we shared the same jokes, too) and there he

popped the next big question: Would I give hima _

divorce?

could have said, “I told you so.”

Why do we keep on doing it? I nursed a Virgin
Mary- and listened to Sharon saying it was °
perfectly possible for well-intentioned, intelligent
people to make mistakes. People change, Nancy
added. The. man or woman you took for better or
worse in 1983 may not be the same person you
see across the breakfast table in 1990.

“Tf you want evidence,” said Sharon, licking
the last crumb of Chocolate Decadence off her
lips, “just get out those old wedding albums and
take a look.”

In the parking lot the sun had broken through
and I met the newlyweds I’d passed earlier in the
tain. The bride’s gown was covered in axle
grease; the groom was reloading his camera. I
stared, wondering what this couple could possibly
hope for out of the marriage — love? children?
companionship? — until the groom came and
asked me, shyly, if I would mind taking a picture.

The words JUST MARRIED had been soaped
across the rear window of their car. As I focussed

the camera the bride reached up laughing and .

erased the letter “I”.
JUST MARR ED, I read, as I snapped the
photograph. There was hope for this couple.

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