The Reality of Marriage

Anthony here. In my previous post I talked about a bunch of great books by Robb White. There’s one I didn’t talk about. It’s called Our Virgin Island, and it’s a memoir of the time when the writer and his young bride, Rodie, bought their own small island in the British Virgin Islands and carved out a difficult but amazing life just prior to World War II. Some of their true-life adventures include encounters with sharks, hurricanes, and crazy natives. But most of all, the book is about them, Robb and Rodie.

Robb grew up with nothing. He made his way by resourcefulness and hard work, including a stint in the Navy. Rodie was the daughter of Southern plantation money. As Robb explains, “To Rodie’s parents money was divided into two distinct, separate, and never-to-be-jointly-considered kinds — principal and interest. Principal is sacred stuff kept somewhere deep under Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Only in the subconscious can you even consider the principal. Interest, on the other hand, is the sole source of money which you can spend. I was helpless against this line of reasoning because I had always believed (and still do) that money is something you work for. It’s to be made and if you don’t make any, you haven’t got any.” Rodie, Robb says, “should have married a man with a ragged, sun-lamp-burned mustache and a Dunhill pipe. A man in tweed, driving a Jaguar; a man with a comfortable unearned income. Instead, she married me, a natural born wandering son of a missionary. A bad tempered, butt-headed, clean-shaven, impractical, broken snouted type who, without any of the easy talents which make authors successful, was determined to be a writer.”

Robb and Rodie's Wedding

Immediately after their wedding the two traveled to the Caribbean, bought a small boat, and rented a miserable little house. Robb spent six hours a day in the little boat, rowed far enough out to be safe from the mosquitos on shore, hunched over a heavy typewriter. One day he came back to find a hulking native standing near the house staring fixedly at his wife. The man, another native informed him, was mad, lived in the bush, and ate dogs and goats raw. Rodie told Robb, in an offhand way, “His name’s Malvo. He’s nuts. He hangs around.” But he ran away if he saw her sweeping with the broom. “That’s the only way to get rid of him. But don’t wave the broom or threaten him with it. Just sweep."

Robb lay awake that night. 

I lay there on the floor (our bedsteads had not yet been made) drowning in sweat while beside me Rodie slept. Moonlight filtered through the thick cloth walls of netting and showed that her face was not peaceful in sleep as it once had been. Her mouth was drawn a little at the corner, a line was dark down her forehead. Her hands were tightly closed.
How in the world had we gotten so far apart that Rodie hadn’t even told me about this insane enormity hanging around her for days, maybe weeks? 

And yet was Malvo more important than the hard, lonely business of trying to make thirteen short stories come out one long story? For weeks — months, actually — I had hardly even mentioned to Rodie a thing that, to me, was big and worrisome. 

I woke her up. For a little while I stumbled around with words. 

She said, "Marse Robb, if I had told you about Malvo you wouldn't have wanted to go so far away in the boat. Then you wouldn't have done any work." 

"But will that broom trick always work?" 

When she answered she said, “I’ve wondered about that." 

I lay for a moment thinking. Some rats or mongooses were gnawing steadily at the food safe. Outside the netting there was a whining hum of mosquitoes. Behind the house dogs barked and growled. The fitful wind brought a wet, hot chill of rotten vegetation and hogs. 

“Rodie,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” 

She touched my shoulder with her finger tips. "All right.” 

I thought of her house on the plantation. The ceilings of the rooms are 12 feet high with books in glass cases going all the way up. There's a butler named Thomas who brings you hot, good coffee when you come in from the woods. Old bird dogs lie in front of the fire there and old carriages are still stored in the Coach House. If we went there we could have a whole floor all to ourselves. I could have an office, complete with private bath. We could go there and, if we did, I would lose her. 

I asked, "Do you want to go home?" 

The finger tips on my shoulder pressed a little harder. "If we went home now," she said, "I'd lose you, Later on, maybe, I wouldn't." 

I told her then about never having owned anything and the fine feeling of freedom no possessions give you. I told her I didn't want that feeling any more. 

“Marse, let's find just a little bay. A clean beach with clean water and a little piece of land where we can build a house. Not much, not expensive, but ours."

So they did. They found, after a long search, a tiny island named Marina Cay, and persuaded the owner to sell it for $60 (about a thousand bucks today). They built a house with much labor and help from two colorful islanders, and Robb wrote stories and got his book finished and published. The little money it brought went a long way in such a simple life, but things were still often tight. Luxuries arrived on Rodie’s 25th birthday in the form of a battery operated radio from Robb’s parents and a kerosene-burning refrigerator from Rodie’s. They endured a hurricane, hosted a visit from Rodie’s mother (who turned out to be an “indefatigable explorer” but wanted to know what Robb’s plans were for “assured income”). Robb risked a shark attack to save their $12 fish trap. They briefly hosted thirteen Jewish refugees who had sailed all the way from Holland in a little boat and landed on Marina Cay on their way to Cuba. Most of their days were spent with Robb writing and Rodie gardening, cooking, and helping to fish and hunt. 

A couple times in the story Robb pauses and turns the focus fully on Rodie:

Rodie isn’t a chatterbox. Rodie, at a party, doesn’t shine. She creates a little pool of quietness into which, if you want to come, you’re perfectly welcome. She isn’t a show-off. She’s honest and wise and unselfish. Her dignity is so much a part of her that it is warm and charming. When you’re with her she makes you feel more important, more significant, better than you really are.

Soon after the house on Marina Cay was finished

But rather than these few moments of telling us, it’s the interaction between the two, the quiet moments shows so well, that bring Rodie to life. When they were down to two dollars and change and Robb suggested asking her father for some of her trust fund money, Rodie replied, “I would if I just loved you and you were a little weak and you needed my help. But you don’t. I mean, you aren’t.” Robb had moments as well. When Rodie was sick from appendicitis, he swam an hour through the dark night to get help. One of the men transporting his unconscious wife to the doctor in a wheelbarrow dumped her out twice, so Robb, when Rodie was safely delivered, knocked him down.

Unfortunately the British government disputed Robb’s claim to Marina Cay, about the same time as his Naval Reserve status was activated for World War II. They lost the island. (Marina Cay now hosts a restaurant and small resort. Robb and Rodie’s house has been restored, and is the reading lounge for the resort.)

Robb closes the book with these words:

Marina Cay . . . We have never been back to that lonely, lost and lovely island. And yet it is a living symbol to us, a cornerstone. We lost a few acres of land, a house, some boats. They are nothing. For on that little island Rodie and I took love and loyalty, respect and compassion, laughter and hardship, and made a marriage of them. 

We had said these words to each other: ". . . for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish . . ."

From Marina Cay, we brought away an understanding of what they mean.

Losing Marina Cay makes a bittersweet ending to a beautiful book. But the real tragedy is the knowledge that, about ten years after this book was written, Robb and Rodie divorced.

In 1985, Robb wrote a new version of Our Virgin Island, called Two on the Isle. I haven’t read it, because I read that it is “slicker, more matter-of-fact” and omits much of the focus on Rodie from the original book, which often reads as a love letter to her.

What happened? Who knows. But whatever it is, it’s a tragedy, and anyone who has read Our Virgin Island, who has traveled to Marina Cay with Robb and Rodie, who has experienced along with them their hopes and disappointments, their hardships and triumphs, and most of all their love for each other, will be heartbroken.

I don’t think “heartbreak" is too strong a word. I just re-lived that agonizing, sick feeling as I looked through the book to write this post. It feels like a death.

But that’s what it is: the failure and destruction of life.

Divorce is a death.

Marriage is real. It’s not just an idea, or a convenience. “Two become one” is not merely a pleasant-sounding metaphor, it’s a description of a reality. Two people, independent, complete, join to create a new greater whole: the family. They renounce something of themselves, their independence, their time, their ability to follow their own whims. They join together in serving each other and the family they create. In a wonderfully paradoxical way, the more they give of themselves, the more they become fully themselves. And the greater the reality of the family is.

Marriage is hard because any self-sacrifice is hard. We humans are fundamentally selfish. Watch a toddler cry because he doesn’t get the toy he wants at the moment he wants it. We’re all still that toddler, on some level. We may have matured enough to give up that toy, but there are always other things, other wants, other moments of focusing only on ourselves. We are always having to grow up, and growing up means giving up. From “I will let my sister play with my toy,” we progress to “I will wash these dishes to surprise my mom,” to “I’ll go out on a winter's night and pick up my friend whose car broke down," to “I will stay with my wife and love and support her no matter what comes, be it sickness, health, riches, poverty, good times or bad times, or (all of the above) lots of kids." The greatest among us ultimately learn to say “Thy will be done” to God, and mean it.

Self-renunciation is always hard, so yes, marriage is hard. Marriage is also joyful, wonderful, even resplendent. Sometimes that joy is easy to see and experience. But sometimes it is a veiled splendor. Day-to-day work, hardships shifting the focus outside, and countless little worries and business-like interactions can cause us, sometimes, to miss the true reality of marriage. Like a fine wine, that reality doesn’t leap immediately to the forefront of the senses. It has to be considered and thoughtfully experienced. It may be something we have to learn to see, in moments of quiet, in recollection, in humor, keeping always the knowledge before us that it is there, even if we can’t see it.

Someone might say about Robb and Rodie, “Maybe the book was embellished. Maybe it made them appear happier than they were. Maybe it was all rose-colored glasses.” But the book includes many hardships, internal and external to the marriage, even doubts. And beyond that, every marriage is a mixture of times of happiness and times of suffering or doubt. When we look back, we choose which to focus on. This is true of everything in life; it’s why Aristotle said that a man’s happiness could only be evaluated at the end of his days, when he can see all his life laid out and whether it has matched virtue. When you understand the reality of marriage and keep that at the forefront of your thoughts, then when you look back you will see the good, the moments of tenderness, the laughter, the joy, the quiet moments during hardship when you came together to comfort each other, and you will see happiness. And what you see is real! More real (if more subtle) than the hardships, the frustrations, the worries and fears which are all you’ll see if you lose sight of the staggeringly grand reality of marriage. The rose-colored glasses show truth.

My wife and I are moving soon. My job was cut; I’m taking another quite far away. Andrea will have to leave her family. I will have to try to learn and fit into a new job. Both of us are worried, stressed, scared. Sometimes we dump that worry on each other, looking for comfort. Sometimes we are the comforters. I can imagine, in times like this, that some couples turn from each other, no longer seeking to understand, building a hard and cynical shell around themselves. More so, I can imagine couples splitting who endure little hardship but who have lost the thread of meaning in their marriage, who do not understand that marriage is not for their self-satisfaction but is a something greater than themselves that they serve. But as for me, I am glad that I have the most beautiful woman in the world by my side. It is my honor to comfort her, and my privilege to be able share my thoughts and worries with her. She is gallantly following me 1,700 miles from her family, and she is sad and scared so she does not think she is strong, but she is doing it, so she is strong. And we, together, are leaning on God, who is stronger than either of us. We’ll continue to lean on Him all our lives, and our marriage will never die. Not because we are superior to those whose marriages fail, but because we know what marriage is, and with God's help we won't lose sight of that. And when we look back in our twilight years, we will rejoice that our lives were so rich.