My friends David and Lucy met 10 months before they got married, and I guess they still had some things to discover about each other. But since it's hard to know what you don't know, neither of them suspected anything. I kept my mouth shut.
The marriage started breaking down on the honeymoon, I guess it was. The bride played a joke on the groom. Nothing cruel, just a tiny practical joke. But like most timid people, David hated looking like a fool more than anything, and by the time he figured out that he would not have been required to stand and salute even if "Molly Malone" were the Irish national anthem, he already had a barful of drunken farmers laughing their Guinness-soaked heads off at him. (The pair were cycling through Ireland.)
I'm sure it was then that the seeds of his paranoia -- part and parcel of the Y-chromosome -- began to sprout.
Lucy had a kind heart, and felt bad for making David miserable. But she was an inveterate trickster, who loved to tease and tell jokes. In an attempt to shake him up, to free him from his insecurity, she tried a few more jokes on him, this time in private. But each time he found himself scraping whipped cream off his raincoat or searching in vain for a snappy comeback to one of her remarks, his irritation grew. The first time he stopped talking to Lucy, she called me, crying.
"I just wish he would laugh at himself a little," she said. But after a 30-minute monologue, during which I quietly ate a pint of ice cream, my friend argued herself to a resolution: She would stop playing practical jokes, and stop teasing David.
Whenever I was with them, I noticed that instead of enjoying Lucy's lively sense of humor, which he had once been so attracted to, David remained somber and serious. It was as if he were afraid to laugh, as if laughter would open him up to more foolish behavior. And although Lucy swore to him that she would no longer play practical jokes, his paranoia began to flower. He became obsessed with avoiding pratfalls of any kind.
These examples came directly from Lucy: If they were going to be driving in a strange city, David would insist on seeing the map and memorizing the route himself; it was as if he didn't trust her to navigate. If she told him that so-and-so had phoned, he would call that person up and first determine whether they had actually called. If Lucy made a single observation about something he said or did, no matter how innocuous, he would get defensive immediately.
And his paranoia extended beyond Lucy. Once, after returning from an airplane trip, David unpacked his suitcase and began checking off the items from a packing list he had made. He discovered that his favorite gray cardigan -- the one with the raveling hem and the coffee stain on the collar -- was missing. David instantly began a review of everyone who might have had access to his suitcase, in order to determine who had stolen it.
Lucy said she didn't think anyone would take an old sweater, which threw David into a defensive rage. Then Lucy suggested that since he often slept in that cardigan he may have left it tangled in the bedclothes at the hotel. This turned out to be the case, but it didn't slow David's stampede of suspicions toward everyone -- from his own wife to the cashier at the ice cream shop who "purposely cheated" him out of 20 cents. He sulked the whole way home about it, Lucy told me later.
For this bad behavior, Lucy blamed herself. When they met, David was quiet and shy. He laughed freely at her jokes, even if they were a little harsh sometimes. But once she turned her wit on him, it ruined him. Now if she tried to tease or make a joke, he would shoot a look of disgust her way and shake his head, or even leave the room. For a while she became very serious, consoling herself with the occasional dimwitted pun. If she wanted to speak freely she would seek out new company.
Now when Lucy wants to go to the movies, David usually says he would rather stay home and read. On weekends, if David wants to go camping, Lucy finds an excuse to go to the city, where she can stay with friends. David's silences last longer, and Lucy no longer holds her tongue when she sees the opportunity to laugh at his expense.
I know that while people don't change over time, marriages do. I see the marriage of David and Lucy developing like a Chekhov story, something the old master might have written in a particularly bitter mood.
And yet, up until last year, it was clear that
when David looked at Lucy, he still saw the beautiful,
sparkling woman he had been drawn to: it wouldn't be
inaccurate to use the old moth-
The last time I saw them both together was a night I had been visiting David. We were sitting at the kitchen table, having tea and talking about, I don't know what, probably overpopulation or the threat of nuclear disaster or one of David's other favorite topics.
At around 10 o'clock, Lucy came in. She had been out and her cheeks and nose were pink with cold, and she was singing. The moment she came into the kitchen and saw us, her face grew stony. She sat down with us, and within a minute or two she looked more tired and discouraged than I had ever seen her. I asked her about her evening, and made a joke about her wicked ways.
For a moment her eyes brightened and she started to respond in her old way, making fun of David and I hanging out in the kitchen ("like two old ladies at a coffee klatch," I think she said). I saw David's body stiffen. Without a word he got up from the table and left the room. By that time Lucy no longer cried when he punished her with his silences. Now she just looked at me and shrugged.
"I can't help it," she said. "It's exhausting, trying to be boring all the time." I thought this was a little mean to David, but she had a point.
It looks like the marriage is at an end, and I don't want to see another couple that I care about go through a divorce. What makes it so terrible is that, while I suspect that his depressing sulks and her annoying jocularity have evolved into nothing more than perverse acts meant to piss each other off, I know that separating would make them both miserable to the core.
