An American Marriage(29)

All this is a true story. But life happens. Trouble happens, and good luck, too. I’m not trying to sound all que será about it, but how can I apologize for the nearly three years Celestial and I have spent as partners in life? And besides, if I was going to start apologizing, to whom would I make amends? Would I go to Roy repentant and red-handed? Maybe in his mind it would seem appropriate, but Celestial isn’t something you can steal like a wallet or even a bright idea. She is a living, breathing, beautiful human being. Obviously, there are more sides to this story than just mine and hers, but what can’t be questioned is this: I love her and she loves me. She is the first thing I think about in the morning whether I wake up beside her or wake up by myself in my own pitiful bed.

When I was growing up, Grandmamma used to say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways” or “He might not be there when you want Him, but He’s always right on time.” Evie used to say, “God will do to you what He feels like needs to be done to you.” Then Grandmamma would tell Evie to hush and remind her that getting left by a man was not the worst thing that ever happened to somebody. And Evie would say, “It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.” She said it so much that she came down with lupus. “God wanted me to see what misery really was,” Evie said. I didn’t like all this God talk, like He was up there toying with us. I preferred more of the tenderness and acceptance my grandmother promised in her hymns. I told this to Evie when I was a little boy and she said, “You got to work with the god you were given.”

You also have to work with the love you are given, with all of the complications clanging behind it like tin cans tied to a bridal sedan. We didn’t forget Roy. Celestial and I both sent money to his account every month, but it was like sending thirty-five cents a day to feed an orphan in Ethiopia, something and nothing at the same time. Still, he was always there, a shimmering apparition in the corner of the bedroom.

On the fourth Wednesday in November, I came home from work to find Celestial in my kitchen, wearing her sewing smock and drinking red wine from a bubble glass. I knew she was agitated from the sharp click of her nails against the tabletop.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” I asked, taking off my coat.

She shook her head and offered a sigh I couldn’t interpret.

I sat next to her and took a sip from the glass. This was a thing with us, sharing a single drink.

Celestial ran her hands over her hair, buzzed short since we first got together. The close cut made her older, and not in a negative way. It was the difference between a young lady and a grown woman.

“You okay?” I said.

With the hand not holding the wine to her lips, she produced a letter from her pocket. Before I unfolded the lined paper, I knew exactly what it was, knew exactly what it said, as though the meaning bypassed language and found its way into my blood, uncut.

“Uncle Banks worked a miracle,” she said, rubbing her hands over her naked head. “Roy’s getting out.”

She rose from the table as I got up and went to the cupboard and got my own bubble glass and sloshed it half full of cabernet, wishing for something a little bit stronger. I raised my glass. “To Banks. He said he wouldn’t give up.”

“Yeah,” Celestial said. “Finally. It’s been five years.”

“I’m happy for Roy. He was my friend.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you don’t wish anything bad on him.”

We stood before the kitchen sink gazing out the window at the brown grass covered with fallen leaves. Against the far wall at the edge of the property grew a fig tree that Carlos planted to celebrate my birth. Not to be outdone, Mr. Davenport set out a jungle of rosebushes for Celestial’s first birthday, and to this day, they creep up a dozen trellises each summer, fragrant and undisciplined.

“You think he wants to come back here?” Celestial asked. “In his letter he doesn’t mention any plans.”

“How could he have plans?” I said. “He has to start over.”

“Maybe he could come here,” she said. “You and I could stay in my house and we could set him up in your house. . . .”

“No man is going to go for that.”

“He might?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“But you are glad he’s out,” she said. “You don’t begrudge him that?”

“Celestial,” I said. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

Of course, I was happy to hear that he was being set free. Nothing would change the fact that my chest filled with gratitude on behalf of Roy Hamilton, my friend, my Morehouse brother. Still, there were things that Celestial and I needed to discuss. Yes, last month she finally agreed to talk to Banks about divorce papers, and yesterday I went to the jeweler and selected a ring, something my mama had been predicting since I was three years old. My idea was to wake her with it tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day. The stone wouldn’t put your eye out; Celestial had already been down that yellow brick road. I didn’t even go for a diamond at all, choosing instead a dark oval-cut ruby, shot through with fire, mounted on a plain gold band. It was as though her singing voice had been solidified into a jewel.

To buy it, I walked out on faith, because Celestial says she doesn’t believe in marriage anymore. “Till death do us part” is unreasonable, a recipe for failure. I asked her, “So what do you believe in?” She said, “I believe in communion.” As for me, I’m modern and traditional at the same time. I, too, believe in intimacy—who doesn’t? But I also believe in commitment. Marriage is, as she says, “a peculiar institution.” My parents’ divorce made it clear what kinds of raw deals are brokered at the altar. But right now, in America, marriage is the closest thing to what I want.