The Marriage Follies

by Susan Matthewson

People get married for all sorts of reasons. Young men once got married to dodge the draft. Some people get married because they’re lonely or bored. Others marry because they believe that two really can live cheaper than one. And, I guess, some people actually marry for love.

And then there’s Bonnie who got married at 18 to save $200 on a season snowboard pass. Bonnie and Brad were high school buddies attending college near a ski resort. When ski season started, the resort offered a family season pass for $100 less than the individual pass.  When you’re 18 and broke, $100 is a lot of money, so while standing in the ticket line, Bonnie and Brad decided to pass themselves off as married and save $100 each. Unfortunately, the resort executives had also once been teenagers and required proof of marriage.

 Okay, said Bonnie and Brad. “We’ll get married.”

 And they did. They didn’t live together, didn’t even sleep together, but they had a great time snowboarding together. In fact, they had such a great time that they both flunked out of school. Brad went to Alaska to work on a fishing boat.  Bonnie took off for Hawaii to live on an organic farm. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on! And it did.

Bonnie returned home, finished school, got a job, and forgot all about being married. And then one day, she got an email from Brad, who she’d also forgotten about. She almost deleted it as spam, but then noticed the subject line: “Divorce Needed Immediately.” It seems Brad had fallen in love with a girl in California and wanted to get married. That’s when he realized he had a problem.

And that’s when Bonnie showed up in my paralegal office. I’d known Bonnie and her mother for years. We’d both been single mothers raising children alone, hoping to remarry someday. When our kids were younger, we’d had monthly lunches where we exchanged hilarious stories about our dating disasters via online meet-ups or family/friend fix-ups, lamenting our failure to find someone compatible. We didn’t see each other as much anymore, but I knew we were both still single.

I asked Bonnie if she’d told her mother what she’d done. Of course, she hadn’t. So I agreed to prepare the divorce papers only if she promised to tell her mother. I knew how hurt her mom would be if she found out the news accidentally. Just tell her, I said, that you made a mistake when you were 18, but you’ve fixed it now. Then you can move on and not worry about it—not that she’d worried about it up to this point.

Months later, I saw Bonnie’s mother at the mall. I didn’t know if Bonnie had kept her promise, but as we greeted each other, her mom whispered, “Maybe we should try snowboarding. I hear there’s action in the season ticket line.” I laughed and we parted with a hug.

But it’s funny. Ever since then, I can’t help myself. I keep wondering:  Just how much does a season snowboard pass cost these days? Who says you have to ever actually snowboard. Can't you just stand in the ticket line?

After all, people get married for all sorts of reasons.  

More Purple

Foreclosures, job losses, anti-Semitism, hate speak, divorce, amber alerts… Too much horrible stuff, and unfortunately, that seems to be what most of the media and many people want to focus on. One could be led to think that nothing good is happening anywhere, and yet there is good – lots of it. Many people are happy; even if their life situations aren’t idealic or even, in some cases, good. Two recent events have proven to me that I have grown, that I have actually been able to take past unpleasantnesses and turn them into the proverbial lemonade.

The first was a youth production of Les Mis Company in Los Angeles. In the production was the 16 year old daughter of my ex-husband’s second ex-wife (I am the first). Attending the performance were said ex-wife, our mutual ex-husband, and his wife-to-be number three. The actress’s biological father was in attendance as well, though his current wife was not there as she had already seen the production and only the biological parents are required to attend all 400 performances.

There was lots of laughter and happy bantering and one would think we were just a collection of good friends out for a nice afternoon. Which, I guess, we were. We are a motley crew who like each other and get along. We have defied the odds.

The second event was the wedding of communal ex-husband, who has proven his desire to keep trying this well-worn institution. Ex-Wife Number Two will more than likely marry again as they are both incurable romantics who want to be in relationships. I am an incurable hermit who actually enjoys being alone.

When my ex-husband called to tell me he was dating someone who he discovered I knew (though not well), I was excited and happy for them both. I liked this woman a great deal when I met her a year earlier. When he called again months later to say they had decided to get married, I, in a moment of insanity, invited myself to their wedding (I did NOT attend wedding number two – too close – not enough time had passed).

After hanging up and realizing what I had done, fear, regret, and nervousness began to bubble up. Several days later I finally called back, apologized, and offered to rescind my self-invitation. I did not want to cause any unpleasantness. I was told that because Third-Wife-To-Be liked me, she was fine with my attending. Her parents were a little confused, but not so uncomfortable they couldn’t accept it.

Despite the tangled web of relationships, all the players from all the various marriages do get along. After my divorce, the most important factor to me was that whatever woman Ex-Husband dated and perchance married, MUST love, appreciate, respect, and enjoy our daughter. It is an added bonus, through lots of personal growth work that I was determined to get along with them as well (though I didn’t have to LOVE them).

Ex-Wife Number Two liked and still likes our daughter. They still spend time together in person and on the phone. In the early days that made me a neurotic and jealous. What if Offspring liked Wife Number Two better? But the loving, kind, and thoughtful relationship which was, I had to constantly remind myself, a requirement of mine for a second wife for Ex-Husband was a much better option than the alternative. There are a plethora of examples of blended families that are disasters, and I have heard too many stories of blended families who appear to be doing fine, but when un-blending occurs, leave behind casualties called children. Children who have been thrown into a difficult situation to start with, but then come to grips with it because they are kindly embraced by the new spouse should not then be abandoned by said EX-spouse. It is horrible.

The 16 year old daughter of Ex-Wife number two has known my ex since she was three. They lived in the same house for many more years than his biological child had. Ex-Step Child is still important in both Ex-Husband and Offspring’s lives. Ex-Step Child is the only sister Offspring has known, and even though they have neither parent in common, which if fairytales are to be believed should be a difficult and disastrous relationship, they get along. They love and appreciate and enjoy each others’ company. Ex-Step-Sister flew to New York for Offspring’s college graduation and we all had a fantastic time together.

Ex-Step Child was, of course, also at the wedding though her mother was not. Too close. Not enough time had yet passed. The wedding was fantastic. It was fun and enjoyable to spend time with old friends, and to enjoy this new familial blending.

Ex-Step Child wore purple which is the preferred color of the bride. In a conversation in her and Ex-Husband’s apartment she said to me “There is not enough purple in the world.” When she made that statement, there was a look of pure delight on her face and true joy in her voice. Purple to her is an indication that all is right with the world. Purple is the proof that all is well.

Offspring, who was listed in the wedding program as ‘the best person/daughter’ also wore purple as did the mother-of-the-bride and the matron of honor, though the bride – because this is her first and hopefully last marriage – wore white.

I donned a purple blouse because I agree, we need more purple in the world.

East Side Story

by Susan Cameron

"Dave got really mad at me when I told him he shouldn't smoke dope near the kids any more, but I don't think I'm wrong. A contact high can't be good for little kids," says Elizabeth. Sarah and I nod our agreement, mouths full of Elizabeth's homemade chocolate chip cookies. Little Jimmy had just turned two, and baby Carly's nine months old. We know smoking dope in front of children must be a bad thing; there isn't a mother on TV who'd put up with it.

The three of us are eating cookies, drinking milk, and listening to George Harrison's latest album, the one to benefit Bangladesh. It seems incredible that people are starving to death in the 1970's, as if we were still in the Dark Ages. I feel a little twinge of guilt about eating the cookies, but that doesn't stop me.

The kids are down for their naps, so the music's too quiet to fully appreciate the power of Dave's stereo system, but that's OK with us. The music's not drowning out our talking. We're in the living room of Dave and Elizabeth's HUD house. HUD stands for Housing and Urban Development. It's a government agency that sells dilapidated houses in dangerous neighborhoods to unqualified people who will never pay for them.

Elizabeth married Dave and gave birth to Jimmy six months later, the week she turned seventeen. At eighteen she had Carly, and that's about the time I entered the picture. Dave supplements his boxboy income by dealing on the side; I like kids, and I'm willing to baby-sit for nicely rolled joints instead of money. It works out for everybody.

I like Elizabeth. She's a misplaced earth mother hippie girl -- she struggles to grow vegetables in the dead ghetto dirt in her backyard, she cooks way better than the rest of us, she loves fussing over her kids. We all think Dave is attractive. He is tall and cadaverously thin, with long, dark hair and skin so white it's almost blue, like ice on the Detroit River in February. He looks like he should be the lead guitarist in some famous rock-and-roll band, and he does play guitar, but badly. We decide he looks kind of like James Taylor on the cover of the Mud Slide Slim album, except Dave used to do a lot of speed and is far, far skinnier than James Taylor, who does heroin. And Dave has a couple of bad teeth you can see when he smiles, but you don't see them often.

"The thing is, I know Dave really loves me, and I know he really loves the kids, but sometimes he just doesn't think," says Elizabeth. "He gets mad and says things he doesn't really mean. He says, 'You know smoking weed mellows me out, you know I need it so I can stand to be around these crying rug rats, and you just want to hassle me!' but I'm not trying to hassle him, I just don't want the kids to get high, that's all. And then I get really angry because he calls Jimmy and Carly rug rats, and I yell at him, and then we start really arguing, and he yells and screams and slams the door when he leaves, and the kids are crying, and then I start crying too, and I'm tired of him coming home stoned and sorry sorry sorry all the time, you know?" The last two words come out all quavery, and she grabs the empty cookie plate and heads for the kitchen so we won't see the tears in her eyes, and Sarah and I pretend we don't notice them. Elizabeth comes back with her famous oatmeal raisin cookies this time, but my stomach doesn't feel quite right and I don't want any, although they're my favorites.

Sarah's the one who blurts out the question. "Has Dave tried to hurt Jimmy again?"

A long silence. My stomach is really hurting now. Elizabeth sighs. "No. It was just that one time. He kept all his appointments with the therapist, just like the judge said, and the social worker doesn't have to come around any more. The doctor said Jimmy's fracture healed perfectly, the arm is fine." She takes a deep breath. "But I'm worried. Dave says weed does him more good than therapy ever did, and I know he's getting high at work behind the grocery store with the other guys. What if the boss catches him? What if he loses his job? We're not making payments on this house now as it is, and Dave's spending all the rent money we collect from our tenants downstairs. I don't know where the hell it's all going, and I don't know what the hell I'm going to do," and she loses it.

She's sobbing, and Sarah's holding her, and I'm holding her, making inadequate comforting noises, when Jimmy stumbles out awakened from his nap, sucking his thumb and clutching his blankie, and he sees his mother crying, pulls out his thumb and starts wailing, which wakes up his sister, who starts wailing, and it sounds like the air raid sirens the city of Detroit tests on the first Saturday of the month to give us time to kiss our asses good-bye when the Russians finally nuke us. Loud. It is loud. I wouldn't break my baby's arm for crying, though, and my stomach wrenches again, and I realize what I'm feeling in my guts is rage, and I want to beat Dave unconscious. We all snuggle together on the couch, everybody calmed down and cuddling like a litter of exhausted puppies.

So it's no big surprise when Elizabeth and the kids show up on my doorstep the following week. We make up my ex-roommate's bed in the dining room. It's only a double, but the kids are so small that all three of them can fit. Sarah and Patty and Mary Ann drop by. We pop a half a ton of popcorn and read Cat in the Hat aloud way too many times, and after the kids are asleep we talk about men and life and the future and lots of other things we don't know anything about.

It's also no big surprise when Elizabeth calls Dave a few days later, they make up, and he comes to take her and the kids home. This is the first time they break up and make up, but it's far from the last. The pattern develops: Dave loses his temper, yells, throws things; Elizabeth fears for the safety of the kids and brings them to my place; Dave cools down, apologizes; Elizabeth goes back to him. This cycle repeats itself for almost two years. Our little circle of friends no longer find Dave attractive.

"Thanks for taking care of my family again, Sue," says Dave, his eyes skidding off my face and landing somewhere behind my right shoulder.

"No problem, Dave." I smile, looking straight at the eyes not looking at mine. Punkass.

It's a very steep staircase leading to my second-story walk-up. As he begins his descent I have the urge to give his bony back a hard shove, watch the scrawny rooster try to fly -- "Squawk! Squa..." as he hits bottom and his skinny neck snaps, stringy carcass fit only for a long, slow simmer in a stewpot -- but I don't. Booting his ass is his wife's job, not mine; and after our friend Sarah tells Elizabeth in exasperation to shit or get off the pot, Elizabeth finally succumbs to the inevitable, and the marriage is over.

* * * * *

Things we don't know at the time: Dave will make his court-ordered child support payments until he falls in love with another stoned, skinny boxboy and runs away with him. Elizabeth will take her children and move to a farm in upstate Michigan where welfare payments stretch farther. She will marry a truck driver with two children whose wife abandoned them to run away with a musician, a really bad guitar player. They will have a son together. They will divorce. Time will pass, and I will lose track of everybody.

* * * * *

I went through some old Detroit photographs the other day. There are Jimmy and Carly on their red-and-yellow plastic Big Wheels, huge smiles, showing off, tearing around the cracked asphalt driveway the weeds were destroying. There's Elizabeth smiling at the camera in front of the peeling yellow garage, all that long dark wavy hair, good-natured hippie gypsy in bellbottoms and bare feet. And there's me. I am nineteen years old, about to turn twenty. I recognize the earrings I'm wearing in the photograph; they're at the bottom of my jewelry box now. The gold wore off and they turn my earlobes green, so I don't wear them any more, but I keep them just the same. I am sitting on Elizabeth's rickety back porch steps with that damned broken ripped screen door behind me, the one that always banged shut and startled me no matter how many times I heard it. Carly is sitting on my right knee with my arm wrapped around her. She has one tiny hand on mine, the other on my leg, and her mouth is open, laughing loud. My other arm is around Jimmy on my left, and his around me, and he's smiling. We're all happy, our three blond heads gleaming in the high-noon sunshine of a perfect late spring day. They have my hair. They have my hazel eyes. They have my nose. How can this be? They look like my children, and I stare at the faces that look like mine and wonder if I could have done more to help them. They even have my smile, three identical smiles for Elizabeth, the black swan mother of the golden chicks, behind my camera, taking the picture.

Susan Cameron, copyright 1999