Agreeing to Agree
EVERYTHING WAS as everything always is: On
that otherwise ordinary Saturday morning, we were sipping coffee,
turning pages of the newspaper. Jessica was reading; I was reading
aloud, to her increasing irritation.
Around the third cup of coffee, we took a short break from the
paper and were discussing particle physics - even 20 years into our
marriage we always enjoy nothing but the most stimulating of
conversations - when she said something that would have confounded
both Einstein, who knew particle physics, and
Don Juan, who knew
women.
She said: "I'm not arguing with you."
That sentence was not the confounding part, as I had heard those
words before. In married-people language, it generally translates
as: "You may think I am arguing with you, but I'm not. I am just
letting you know that what you consider an argument, I consider the
fundamental right to free speech. Which, as far as I know, has not
been repealed, even in this marriage."
But there was something about the way she said the words that gave
me pause, as if … as if she actually meant them.
While I was trying to determine if I was overanalyzing her
inflections, the tremor of her sentence was followed by a
syntactical earthquake. "I've decided," she said, "not to argue
with you all day."
My knees buckled. Never in our 151,200 hours of marriage (more,
actually, because as I write this, it has been 20 years, seven
months, and 21 days - but who's counting?) had I heard anything
remotely close to those words.
"You what?"
"I just decided to try it," she said.