Tram

Marriage isn't a tram. It doesn't have to get anywhere.

~ Iris Murdoch

- - - - -

Hm.

If marriage isn't a tram, what is it? If it doesn't get anywhere is it a chair?

The Marriage Chair might be a good name for a novel. 

In their family, marriage wasn't a love seat. It was a chair. It was a seat for one person while the other stood nearby. One person rested through matrimony while the other stood, worked, ran errands. It was tradition in their household. 

The twins decided to resist the chair. They would - in very different ways - get their own chairs and do their own standing. While their widowed grandmother and mother berated them for their life choices, they stood their ground. When the elders called them lazy, they stay seated and resting. Resting and resisting.

The irony, of course, was that they often rented furniture so as not to be too permanent. They had places to go. They had things to do. They had people to avoid. They couldn't afford to be anchored to a specific apartment just because, "Well, I have this chair."

Yep. I think that would be a pretty good book.