A Good Marriage

Fran Schumer

Hannah Gluckstein

Word Count 997

For a long time, I thought I would never get married. I wanted to get married -- my parents had been happily married forever – but I hadn’t been in love with anyone since I was fifteen, and I despaired that I'd ever feel that delightful, unrelenting fluttering again. And then one day I did. And here it is 37 years later, and in so far as my arthritic body allows, I still feel it.

I met my husband when I was 27. We were introduced at a party. After a quick hello, I brushed him aside to finish my conversation. To this day he reminds me of my bad manners.

Five years later, we met again, and this time I fell in love. In the interim was a broken engagement – mine – and a separation – his. A friend had arranged for the three of us to have dinner and as he entered the restaurant, I felt the old fluttering. He had recently started a new job and wore a long tweed coat. A gust of cold, crisp air from the clear December night came into the restaurant with him. It wafted off his cheeks, pink because of the cold, and that lovely tweed coat. I was thrilled.

We went back to his apartment, basement level, not to my taste, dog hair everywhere, and danced to old Beatles’ albums. We had one bad date and then only good ones and half a year later, I moved in with him, dog hair and all. For most of those two years I coaxed, urged, and did not ask him outright but made it clear I wanted to get married. I wasn’t liberated enough to simply pop the question, but I let it arise. We were walking on the Upper West Side near our apartment when I said, as casually as if I were expressing a desire for a latte, “I’d like to get married in Brooklyn.” And then he said, “Yes and let’s have a piano trio.” Two months later we were married across the street from Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It rained all day and at five p.m., when we said our vows, it stopped, and the beautiful night began.

Marriage was difficult for me at first mostly because my husband and I were so different. I got up early. He slept late. I loved breakfast. My husband couldn’t even think about food until at least noon. I was a restaurant reviewer for a dozen years, and yet I was married to someone who was mostly indifferent to food.

Most of my adjusting took place in our early years. After six months of dating, we traveled together, my first time in Europe. Jet lag disoriented me but after a few days, so did all the religious art. I’m Jewish. My husband isn’t. I felt uneasy sleeping with him beneath the crucifix in our hotel room. Other aspects of the trip dismayed me. I admired my husband’s interest in culture and art, but after three hours in a museum, I was hungry and fatigued. Had I said, “Honey let’s break for lunch,” he would’ve said, “fine,” but I didn’t. I didn’t want to seem less interested in Donatello than lunch or let him think I was superficial or a nag. Eventually, he found out exactly who and what I was, and in a way, it was a relief. It didn’t deter him.

Over the years, more important adjusting took place. I was lucky; these adjustments benefited us, our family, and especially me. When our children were young, they wanted guinea pigs. I hadn’t grown up with animals and felt uncomfortable around them. Bathing them, cleaning them, cutting their nails made me anxious. If the children made a mistake, my reaction was to scold them. “Look what you did to Wiz!” Or “How could you hurt Kelly like that?” My husband’s approach was different. Working at my desk in our bedroom, I would hear the peaceful way in which he instructed the children. “Be gentle,” “speak softly,” “hold them so they aren’t afraid,” he told them. Listening, I felt he was reparenting me.

If you’re fortunate, your spouse makes you feel better about aspects of yourself you once regarded as flaws. My husband’s technique is mockery. All my life, my mother focused on my appearance. When I looked good, I felt I was the most beautiful girl in the world. When I looked bad, I felt the opposite. My mother, who is 95 and still visits the beauty parlor regularly, has only recently stopped urging me to dye my hair, and otherwise “perk up” my appearance. My husband’s reaction is different. If he catches me off guard (in a giant sombrero) or in one of my usual get-ups (oversized sweatshirt, baggy pants, wild, gray hair stuffed into a ski hat), he snaps a photograph and sends it to our children. It makes me feel ridiculous and loved.

A few weeks ago, I read about a couple who, after 42 years of marriage, had gotten divorced. In the past, the woman had written beautifully about her husband. A decade earlier, my psychiatrist and his wife, whose 30-year marriage I had envied, also got divorced, and his wife, too, had written beautifully about him. I say this as a kind of kinehora, a way of warding off the evil eye, because who knows whether some event or situation might drop like a meteor into any of our lives and, as in a good novel, change everything. I would say I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened even in my case, except I would. On bad days, when I worry about how much I’m annoying my husband, I think as a grim joke, “Well if he leaves me, at least I’ll have a good plot for a novel,” but I don’t want a good plot for a novel. I want my husband right here beside me, flicking the remote and seeing what’s on Netflix tonight.

Fran’s poetry, fiction, and articles have appeared in various sections of The New York Times; also, Vogue, The Nation, The North American Review, and other publications. She is the co-writer of the New York Times bestselling Powerplay (Simon and Schuster) and the author of Most Likely to Succeed (Random House). Her poetry chapbook, Weight, was published in 2022. She wrote the Underground Gourmet column for New York Magazine, and the restaurant reviews for the New Jersey Section of the New York Times.