On the trouble with marriage

when the remake hits home more than the original

What is necessary to let go of in a relationship that breaks apart, and what is necessary to keep? What are the complications that keep you tied to someone?

“Hey, what are you doing?” I say out loud in the dark, talking to my dashboard. I’m driving down a stretch of highway on the way to the Cape and haven’t reached the bridge yet. A white center line glows on the road dividing up the night into this half and that half, a long straight line, with only the dark smudges of trees in my periphery blurring by. The car is packed. I’ve jammed a long rolled area rug from front to back, covering the cup holder and creating a wall between the seats. Earlier, I tossed half a sandwich still in cellophane over the barrier onto the other side. Now I lean over to fish around with my right hand to find it, keeping my head up and not taking my eyes from the road.

“I’m driving, what are you doing?” says my ex-husband Jim, yelling into his dashboard.

“I’m driving too,” I say. “Have you talked to the boys?”

“They don’t call me anymore. I tried texting one of them last week and maybe a day later I got a very brief response back,” he says. “They don’t want to talk to their father.”

“Don’t you remember being in your twenties?” I say. “You didn’t want to talk to your parents either. It will come back around again.”

He keeps talking, telling me something about being halfway home, now he’s turned the car around and is returning to do something at work he forgot to do.

“But it’s late,” I say.

“This is it. This is my life,” he says.

He sounds tired. Or maybe sad. Or maybe it’s just that old song from Coldplay that was on the radio a few miles ago. I couldn’t take the mournfulness of it any longer and I turned it off, started hitting numbers on the dashboard, first both kids with their mailboxes full, and then Jim.

Oh no, I see
A spider web is tangled up with me
And I lost my head
And thought of all the stupid things I'd said

“Hey, do you want to come to the Cape house for a weekend in December?”

“Why?” he says.

“It will be fun. I will cook, we’ll watch movies, you can stay over. One night.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says. “I’ve got some time I need to use. Yeah, maybe.”

“I forgot some wet clothes and I left them on a chair,” I say. “Can you stop by the house?”

“You left wet clothes on a chair?” he says.

“I did. Can you just spread them out on the dryer?” I say.

“Yep. I’ll text you later. Say hi to the J for me” he says.

Oh no, what's this?
A spider web and I'm caught in the middle
So I turned to run
The thought of all the stupid things I've done

Last week, I binge-watched the remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage by myself. I thought it was a beautiful version. Not just for the superb acting either, but for the way it’s put together. The series is filmed to look like it’s taking place in Brookline (it was New York, actually) and it is present day. Each episode opens with the actors coming to the set, grabbing their script, and a few minutes of all the pre-film commotion before the director yells action and slams the clapperboard together. The camera also spends long quiet pans on the interior and exterior of spaces in the house and out on the street, a visual metaphor for the interiority and introspection of the subject matter.

It’s so dispiriting to me to read the lackluster reviews of this series now because I don’t think the critics get it. Everything doesn’t have to be fast cuts and action every minute. It’s Bergman’s script that matters here, and the script is universal. The whole point of showing the actors getting ready to perform as a part of the performance is to bring the dialogue out of the make-believe insular television world and into the present consciousness of the person watching. This is not time for you to escape, it seems to say, this is time for you to see yourself here.

At least I did.

I was mesmerized watching the 2nd episode called “Poli” when Mira tells Jonathan she is leaving.

Mira: People do this. I won't be the first, or the last. Men do it all the time, and then, you know, it's not really a big deal, so...

Jonathan: Okay. As long as you've convinced yourself.

Mira: I don't care if I'm convincing anyone. I don't give a sh1t. You can think I'm a monster, think whatever the f*ck you want, I don't care!

I remember that rage, I remember a conversation that was similar. I remember being the one to leave. I remember feeling like the shitty mom with Jim as the virtuous dad. I remember saying, “men do this all the time,” and “the kids will be fine.” I remember how long it took to move out. How long it took to get divorced. How ambivalent I felt. How certain I felt that there was no other way. How desperate I was to go. I remember it all.

And I, I never meant to cause you trouble
And I, I never meant to do you wrong
And I, well if I ever caused you trouble
Oh no, I never meant to do you harm

---

We’re walking along the empty path to the lighthouse on our favorite Chatham beach at the end of the workday. It’s Friday evening. I’ve been telling my spouse Janyce all about my interpretation of the series, and my thoughts about how a same-sex marriage isn’t the same as a straight marriage.

“I’m not saying it’s better or worse,” I say. “I think they’re just different. For one, our marriage is not fraught with all the heterosexist mythologies that come with straight marriage— what a wife is supposed to be, what a husband is supposed to be, what a mother is supposed to act like.”

“Hmm,” says Janyce.

“See, I think what the director does brilliantly here, is to flip the genders on Bergman’s original, so that it’s the wife that leaves. She’s the one with the career, and he’s the one home with their kid. And maybe where Bergman was originally wondering about whether love dies in marriage, I think in this version the director is asking different questions: What is necessary to let go of in a relationship that breaks apart, and what is necessary to keep?” What are the complications that keep you tied to someone?

“Do you think its has anything to do with age?” says Janyce. “Because we were both married so young?”

“You remember how hard it was to leave your marriage. We share that experience,” I say and grab her hand.

We’ve now reached the halfway point at the end of the path with the lighthouse looming beyond the makeshift gate and we turn to trudge through the sand back to the parking lot.

“I don’t think people really understand what happens to you after a long marriage to someone you’ve grown up with,” she says. “I mean, there’s a bond there whether or not that person is still in your life or not.”

“And if the person is in your life, you are constantly negotiating, I think.” I say. “How much do I hold onto? What line am I crossing? How much intimacy is still necessary, how much isn’t?”

The sun starts dipping below the horizon line over the ocean, darkening the bottom of the clouds.

“I think I’m going to start writing my blog post tonight,” I say. “What are you going to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “I think maybe I’ll sit on the couch beside you with my headphones and computer. Maybe I’ll watch Scenes from a Marriage.”