Marriage, Again
Ingrid looked at her husband in the bed. The sleeping face she knew so well, the familiar lines and creases. “Well, what can I say, Clivey? I’m so glad I married you. I’d do it again if I could.”
“That’s it?” Auggie asked, after a few seconds of quiet, because Auggie didn’t understand how much it means for someone to be glad they married the one they married, and not just because of the kids.
“Your father knows the rest,” Ingrid assured him.
Unlikely Animals, by Annie Hartnett
Unlikely Animals is the story of Emma Starling, a natural-born healer who has dropped out of med school and is returning home to be with her dying father without a clear plan of what to do with her life. Her father, who has a degenerative brain disorder, has two obsessions: the animals he has started to hallucinate (and the ghost of a long-dead naturalist), and searching for Crystal Nash, Emma’s high school best friend who has gone missing. Emma feels the pressure to take care of her father, reconcile with her judgemental mother Ingrid, and somehow make peace with her brother Auggie, who has ended his second round of rehab, as well as help answer the question of what did happen to her former best friend Crystal.
It’s a story of forgiveness, acceptance, and what it means to be part of a family. It’s not really the story of Clive and Ingrid’s marriage, although their love and betrayals are big factors in the story, and their marriage was where my mind kept returning as I read.
Last year about this time, I wrote a blog post about the novel Good Company, which actually is a story about a marriage, and although the two books are very different, as I read Unlikely Animals, I found myself thinking about many of the same things. A good marriage is one that can withstand storms, but that withstanding isn’t always pretty. In December, we had vicious tornadoes in this area, and over the past months, I’ve been watching the homes and businesses that sustained severe damage–roofs destroyed, windows blown, walls crumbled. And every time another piece is repaired or a business reopens, I want to cheer. It doesn’t look the same and won’t operate in exactly the same way, maybe, but it’s still here, still standing, still functional and somehow beautiful. That’s marriage.
My husband and I are approaching our twentieth anniversary. Our marriage is my great treasure, even when we irritate each other. Maybe it’s the little habits and routines: he makes my lunch before I leave for work every day. I pick up his socks when I find them around the house. When I get home from work, we spend some time checking on each other’s day. We love to walk around the neighborhood at night, and he always watches the houses of the dogs who consistently leap from nowhere and terrify me, to warn me if he sees any of them coming. There is comfort in knowing we can count on each other for silly things and big things.
I love books that reflect even a tiny bit of the truth about marriage, even if, like this one, Clive and Ingrid’s marriage was not the focus. Because that’s what a marriage is, this beautiful thing that you’re polishing and tending while also taking care of absolutely everything else, and everything else sometimes gets center stage–hallucinating rabbits, buying a fox, getting a kid through rehab, figuring out what to do with your life, giving a kid advice, being in a play. But in my busy life, my marriage is my North Star, and I can steer my ship by it.
He is my great, good friend, and I am so glad I married him. I’d do it again if I could.
He knows the rest.