After the sad slog that was “How to Stay Married,” I would be remiss not to offer a book with a constructive view of married life. Anne Tyler’s 1988 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel “Breathing Lessons” is a look at one day in the life of Ira and Maggie Moran.
They are ordinary and uninteresting people, as their children tend to remind them with biting remarks. Where Ira is careful and dutiful, always rational, and unflappable, Maggie is passionate, dreamy, and prone to distraction. The combination could have been infuriating, and sometimes it is. If the novel were written thirty years later, it would likely carry heavy overtones of endless, pointless suffering. But in Tyler’s deft hands, the story sings in unexpected moments of grandeur when the mystery of marriage—any marriage—is laid bare by the progress of the day, the reminiscences of a life shared together, and the discipline of two people trained to view each other with affection and gratitude.
Don’t misunderstand me, the Morans are infuriating. Forever conspiring in a lifetime of minor dysfunctions, they are nonetheless loveable. Primarily, perhaps, because they have learned to view themselves as loveable through the eyes of the other.
Throughout the novel, the marriage seems almost pitiable, two limited people trapped in a cycle of mediocrity. Jesse, their oldest son, is a failed musician who can’t hold down a job. After fathering a child out of wedlock and insisting on a shotgun wedding, Jesse fails to provide for his wife, Fiona, and continually disappoints her.
And yet, at the most unexpected moments, the splendor of Ira and Maggie’s love for one another (“Love is a Many-Splendored Thing” as they sang at their friends’ wedding all those years ago), the security of their bond, and the dependability of it all shines forth. Take this passage:
‘Same old song and dance’—that was how Jesse had once referred to marriage. This was one morning when Fiona had left the breakfast table in tears, and Ira had asked Jesse what was wrong. ‘You know how it is,’ Jesse had answered. ‘Same old song and dance as always.’ Then Ira (who had asked not out of empty curiosity but as a means of implying This matters, son; pay her some heed) had wondered what that ‘you know’ signified. Was Jesse saying that Ira’s marriage and his own had anything in common? Because if so, he was way out of line. They were two entirely different institutions. Ira’s marriage was as steady as a tree; not even he could tell how wide and deep the roots went.
There is plenty of “song and dance” in Ira and Maggie’s life, with their idiosyncrasies on full display throughout the narrative. But there is also change, real change. Moments, quiet and private, often unspoken between the two of them, that mark and “before” and “after,” steps on a lifelong journey together in the same direction.
If you’re surrounded by marriages of the self-imposed suffering variety, make some new friends. In addition, find stories, like Tyler’s, that manage to offer a pleasant surprise when shining an uncompromising light on the mystery of marriage in the lives of ordinary people.
