An American Marriage(26)

Today is November 17, and I am thinking of you. Maybe on this anniversary of our first date, you will answer my letter. When it was our “safe word,” we used it to bring communication to a halt. Now I hope it can restore our connection in some small way. This isn’t how I want things to be between us. Let me care for you in the way that I can, as one human being to another.

Love,

Celestial

Dear Roy,

Merry Christmas. I haven’t heard from you, but I hope you are okay.

Celestial

Dear Roy,

If you don’t want to see me, I can’t force you. It is unkind that you would cut me off because I can’t be exactly the way you want me to be. I’ll say it again: I’m not abandoning you. I would never do that.





C


Dear Celestial,

Please respect my wishes. Up until now, I have lived in fear of this happening. Let me be. I can’t dangle from your string.

Roy

Dear Roy,

Happy birthday. Banks tells me that you’re fine, but that’s all he will say. Will you give him permission to give me news?





C


Dear Roy,

You will get this around Olive’s anniversary. I know you feel all alone, but you are not. I haven’t heard from you in so long, but I want you know that I am thinking of you.

Celestial

Dear Celestial,

Can I still call you Georgia? That will always be my name for you in my head. So, Georgia, this is the letter I have been waiting five years to write, the words I have been practicing. I even scratched it into the paint on the wall beside my bed.

Georgia, I am coming home.

Your uncle came through. He went over the heads of these local yokels and ran it straight to the fed. “Gross prosecutorial misconduct” basically means they cheated. The judge vacated the conviction and the local DA didn’t care enough to retry. So, as they say, “in the interest of justice,” I will soon be home free.

Banks can explain it all to you in more detail. I have given him permission, but I wanted you to hear it from me, to see it in my own handwriting, that I will be a free man one month from today, in time for Christmas.

I know that things have not been right between us for some time now. I was wrong to take you off my list and you were wrong not to fight me about it. But this is not a time for blaming each other for what we cannot change. I regret not answering your letters. It has been a year since I have received any word, but how can I expect you to keep writing when you thought I was ignoring you. Did you think I forgot you? I hope I didn’t hurt you with my silence, but I was hurt myself, and also ashamed.

Will you hear me when I say that the last five years are behind me and behind us? Water under the bridge. (Remember the stream in Eloe, the way the bridge makes a song?)

I know that we can’t “start love over.” But this is what I do know: you have not divorced me. All I want is for you to tell me why you have chosen to remain my lawfully wedded wife. Even if someone else is occupying your time, you have chosen to keep me as your husband these many years. In my mind, I picture us at our same kitchen table, in our same comfortable house, passing quiet words of truth.

Georgia, this is a love letter. Everything I do is a love letter addressed to you.

Love,

Roy





Two

Prepare a Table for Me





Andre


This is what it must be like to be married to a widow. You give her bandages for her wounds; you offer comfort when memories sneak up and she cries for what looks like no reason. When she reminisces about the past, you don’t remind her of the things she has chosen not to recollect, all the while telling yourself that it’s unreasonable to be jealous of a dead man.

But what can I do other than what I’ve done? I’ve known Celestial Davenport all my life, and I have loved her at least that long. This is the truth as natural and unvarnished as Old Hickey, the centuries-old tree that grows between our two houses. My affection for her is etched onto my body like the Milky Way birthmark scoring my shoulder blades.

On the day we got the news, I was aware that she didn’t belong to me. I don’t mean that, on paper at least, she was another man’s wife. If you knew her, you would know that she never belonged to him either. I’m not sure if she even realized it herself, but she’s the kind of woman who will never belong to anyone. This is the truth that you have to lean close to see. Picture a twenty-dollar bill. You think it’s green, but when you get up close you find that it’s beige linen with dark green ink. Now consider Celestial. Even while she wore his ring, she wasn’t his wife. She was merely a married woman.

I’m not making excuses for myself. I know that there are men in this world, better men than me, who would cut these feelings off and burn the stump the day that Roy went to prison, especially with him being falsely convicted. His innocence is something that I have never doubted. None of us did. Mr. Davenport is disappointed in me, believing that I should have been a gentleman and left Celestial alone, letting her be a living monument to Roy’s struggle. But anyone who can’t understand doesn’t know what it means to have loved someone since you first figured out how to bend your tongue to talk, how to flex your feet to make steps.

I was a witness at their wedding, you know. The day she married Roy, I signed my name, Andre Maurice Tucker, even though my right hand trembled so badly I had to steady it with my left. At the church, when the preacher asked if anyone could say why these two should not wed, I kept my own counsel there at the altar, cummerbund strapped around my waist and a sloppy fist beating in my chest. She meant what she said on that spring day, but now you have to consider all the days that came after as well as those stacked up before.