The Goal

231

"Do you want another fight?" she asks.

I look the other way.

"No, I don't want to fight," I tell her.

I hear her sigh. Then she says, "You see? Nothing has changed... has it."

Neither of us says a word for quite awhile. Julie gets up and walks over to the river. It looks for a second as if she might run away. She doesn't. She comes back again and sits down on the bench.

She says to me, "When I was eighteen, I had everything planned-college, a teaching degree, marriage, a house, chil- dren. In that order. All the decisions were made. I knew what china pattern I wanted. I knew the names I wanted for the kids. I knew what the house should look like and what color the rug should be. Everything was certain. And it was so important that I have it all. But now... I have it all, only it's different somehow. None of it seems to matter."

"Julie, why does your life have to conform to this... this perfect image you have in your head?" I ask her. "Do you even know why you want the things you do?"

"Because that's how I grew up," she says. "And what about you? Why do you have to have this big career? Why do you feel compelled to work twenty-four hours a day?"

Silence.

Then she says, "I'm sorry. I'm just very confused."

"No, that's okay," I say. "It was a good question. I have no idea why I wouldn't be satisfied being a grocer, or a nine-to-five office worker."

"Al, why don't we just try to forget all this," she suggests.

"No, I don't think so," I tell her. "I think we should do the opposite. We ought to start asking a few more questions."

Julie gives me a skeptical look and asks, "Like what?"

"Like what is our marriage supposed to do for us?" I ask her. "My idea of the goal of a marriage is not living in a perfect house where everything happens according to a clock. Is that the goal for you?"

"All I'm asking for is a little dependability from my hus- band," she says. "And what's all this about a goal? When you're married, you're just married. There is no goal."

"Then why be married?" I ask.

"You get married because of commitment... because of