The Marriage Book (11 page)

Feynman and Arline had been high school sweethearts and married in their twenties. Feynman’s second marriage, in 1952, ended in divorce two years later. His third marriage, in 1960, lasted until his death.

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that—but I don’t only write it because you like it—I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you—almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; & I thought there was no sense to writing.

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead—but I still want to comfort and take care of you—and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you—I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that together. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together—or learn Chinese—or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now. No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to & thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true—you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else—but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish & that you want me to have full happiness & don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girl friend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I—I don’t understand
it, for I have met many girls & very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone—but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

P.S. Please excuse my not mailing this—but I don’t know your new address.

TAMMY WYNETTE AND BILLY SHERRILL

“STAND BY YOUR MAN,” 1968

As a country-western singer/songwriter, Tammy Wynette (1942–1998) was a Nashville legend with more than twenty chart-topping songs and record sales of more than $100 million. Wynette had hits including “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” “I Don’t Wanna Play House,” and “ ‘Til I Can Make It On My Own,” so the loyalty-above-all point of “Stand By Your Man” was, despite its fame, hardly her only message. Wynette herself was married five times.

Country music producer Billy Sherrill (1936–) secured Wynette’s first recording contract, convinced her to change her name from Wynette Byrd, and—according to legend—cowrote this, her most famous hit, with her in just fifteen minutes.

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman,

Giving all your love to just one man.

You’ll have bad times and he’ll have good times,

Doin’ things that you don’t understand.

But if you love him you’ll forgive him,

Even though he’s hard to understand.

And if you love him oh be proud of him,

’Cause after all he’s just a man.

Stand by your man,

Give him two arms to cling to,

And something warm to come to

When nights are cold and lonely.

Stand by your man,

And tell the world you love him.

Keep giving all the love you can.

Stand by your man,

And show the world you love him.

Keep giving all the love you can.

Stand by your man.

TOM WOLFE

THE RIGHT STUFF
, 1979

Gus Grissom was the second American to travel in space but, as memorably described by Tom Wolfe (1931–) in his National Book Award–winning account, the astronaut’s fifteen-minute suborbital flight was controversial from the moment it ended. The fact that the capsule’s hatch opened unexpectedly and the capsule sank meant that Grissom’s welcome was considerably clouded by questions about whether he had been responsible. In Wolfe’s novelistic telling, the upshot was that Gus’s wife, Betty, would feel she’d been cheated out of the rewards she had expected in exchange for years of matrimonial sacrifice and devotion.

Grissom went on to a successful space mission in 1965, but died two years later in a fire during an Apollo 1 simulation. Except for those in brackets, the ellipses are Wolfe’s.

Few wives seemed to believe as firmly as Betty did in the unofficial Military Wife’s Compact. It was a compact not so much between husband and wife as between the two of them and the military. It was because of the compact that a military wife was likely to say
“We
were reassigned to Langley” . . .
we,
as if both of them were in the military. Under the terms of the unwritten compact, they were. The wife began her marriage—to her husband and to the military—by making certain heavy sacrifices. She knew the pay would be miserably low. They would have to move frequently and live in depressing, exhausted houses. Her husband might be gone for long stretches, especially in the event of war. And on top of all that, if her husband happened to be a fighter pilot, she would have to live with the fact that any day, in peace or war, there was an astonishingly good chance that her husband might be killed,
just like that.
In which case, the code added:
Please omit tears, for the sake of those still living.
In return for these concessions, the wife was guaranteed the following: a place in the military community’s big family, a welfare state in the best sense, which would see to it that all basic needs, from health care to babysitting, were taken care of. And a flying squadron tended to be the most tightly knit of all military families. She was also guaranteed a permanent marriage, if she wanted it, at least for as long as they were in the service. Divorce—still, as of 1960—was a fatal step for a career military officer; it led to damaging efficiency reports by one’s superiors, reports that could ruin chances of advancement.
And she was guaranteed one thing more, something that was seldom talked about except in comical terms. Underneath, however, it was no joke. In the service, when the husband moved up, the wife moved up. If he advanced from lieutenant to captain, then she became Mrs. Captain and now outranked all the Mrs. Lieutenants and received all the social homage the military protocol provided. And if her husband received a military honor, then she became the Honorable Mrs. Captain—all this regardless of her own social adeptness. Of course, it was well known that a gracious, well-spoken, small-talking, competent, sophisticated wife was a great asset to her husband’s career, precisely because they were a team and
both
were in the service. At all the teas and socials and ceremonies and obligatory parties at the C.O.’s and all the horrible Officers Wives Club functions, Betty always felt at a loss, despite her good looks and intelligence. She always wondered if she was holding Gus back in his career because she couldn’t be the Smilin’ & Small-Talkin’ Whiz that was required.

Now that Gus had been elevated to this extraordinary new rank—astronaut—Betty was not loath to receive her share, per the compact. It was as if . . . well, precisely because she had endured and felt out of place at so many teas and other small-talk tests, precisely because she had sat at home near the telephone throughout the Korean War and God knew how many hundreds of test flights wondering if the fluttering angels would be ringing up, precisely because her houses all that time had been typical of the sacrificial lot of the junior officer’s wife, precisely because her husband had been away so much—it was as if precisely because that was the way things were, she fully intended to be the honorable Mrs. Captain Astronaut and to accept all the honors and privileges attendant thereupon. [ . . .]

In the days after the flight Gus looked gloomier and gruffer than ever. He could manage an official smile when he had to and an official hero’s wave, but the black cloud would not pass. Betty Grissom looked the same way after she and the two boys, Mark and Scott, joined Gus in Florida for the celebration. Some celebration . . . It was as if the event had been poisoned by the Gus-grim little secret. Betty also had the sneaking suspicion that everyone was saying, just out of earshot: “Gus blew it.” But her displeasure was a bit more subtle than Gus’s. They . . . NASA, the White House, the Air Force, the other fellows, Gus himself . . . were not keeping their side of the compact! Nobody could have looked at Betty at that time . . . this pretty, shy, ever-silent, ever-proper Honorable Mrs. Astronaut . . . and guessed at her anger.

They were violating the Military Wife’s Compact!

BILL AND HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

60 MINUTES
INTERVIEW, 1992

In the heat of his first presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was accused by an Arkansas woman named Gennifer Flowers of having conducted a twelve-year-long affair with her. Together the Clintons sat down for a televised interview with
60 Minutes
’ Steve Kroft, who grilled the candidate on the question of his fidelity. This exchange came near the end of the interview, when future first lady, senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton (1947–) voiced her support for her husband.

See two entries above for the lyrics to Tammy Wynette’s song.

DIVORCE

BURGUNDIAN LAW

“OF DIVORCES,” CIRCA 6TH CENTURY

The history of divorce may be even more abstruse than the history of marriage: There are divorces and divorce laws on record as far back as 1700 BC in Babylonia, as well as in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome. By the early part of the new millennium, Romans governed the lands (eventually areas of Germany, France, and Switzerland) where a tribe called the Burgundians settled and recorded these four simple rules.

Solidi were gold coins, originally issued by the Romans. In this context “put away” and “put aside” mean “leave.”

1. If any woman puts aside her husband to whom she is legally married, let her be smothered in mire.

2. If anyone wishes to put away his wife without cause, let him give her another payment such as he gave for her marriage price, and let the amount of the fine be twelve solidi.

3. If by chance a man wishes to put away his wife, and is able to prove one of these three crimes against her, that is, adultery, witchcraft, or violation of graves, let him have full right to put her away; and let the judge pronounce the sentence of the law against her, just as should be done against criminals.

4. But if she admits none of these three crimes, let no man be permitted to put away his wife for any other crime. But if he chooses, he may go away from the home, leaving all household property behind, and his wife and their children may possess the property of her husband.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

“THE DIVORCE COURT JUDGE,” CIRCA 1615

The legendary Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) was not only the author of
Don Quixote
, but also of poems, short stories, and plays. He was probably least successful in the last endeavor, and it is unclear how many of his plays were performed during his lifetime. But in his farce about an imagined divorce court, Cervantes anticipated a suggestion about marriage that was put forward by Mexican lawmakers as recently as 2012.