Samantha had always loved a story with a point. Someone, she couldn’t remember who, had said that stories had points, but never made the mistake of actually saying what that point was. Sometimes, the point was so obvious, though, it might as well have been stated.
Consider, for example, the fate of two of her friends’ marriages. Both had married nice, exciting fellows in their early twenties and entered into the married state full of optimism and plans for the future. Soon enough Karen and John had started bickering continuously. Once Samantha had been walking up their steps for a visit and she had heard yelling and some crashes, which must have been furniture or dishes or something getting thrown around. She was so upset that she almost turned around, but went in anyway. They all had a nice dinner and Samantha wondered if she had heard the TV instead of what she had thought. But after dinner, Karen and John started yelling about whose turn it was to wash up the dishes, and she knew that this was what they did. Karen seemed fine, though, appropriately radiant when her kids were born, appropriately exhausted through their toddlerhood, appropriately happy to return to the world of work when they started school. The kids flourished. Karen and John yelled at each other.
On the other hand, Mary and Simon always talked to each other with honeyed words, even after a couple of years. Simon might have seemed a bit obsequious at times, but Samantha never heard a cross word between them. Hmmm, she wondered after that first traumatic visit to Karen and John’s, maybe Mary just always does the dishes (metaphorically speaking) and that’s why they get along so well. But, even when she had extended stays with them, she observed them sharing work easily and naturally. When the kids came along, it seemed that Simon took care of them just as much as Mary. But they were not happy kids, always full of whining and sickness. And Mary, who had become a stay-at-home mom, seemed dulled and bedraggled. One day Mary called her up to tell her that Simon had yet another girlfriend and she was done with him. Yet another?!
So there you had it. Samantha knew that she could just let this story stand without drawing a moral, but she couldn’t help herself. She had never married and didn’t have any kids. But she saw clearly now that yelling didn’t mean lack of love and that honeyed words didn’t mean love. She hoped the rest of Mary’s story would come out ok.
