An American Marriage(31)



“The timing’s not right, Dre.”

“Just tell me what you want. Either you want to marry me, or you don’t. Either we’ve been playing house for almost three years, or we’ve been here building something real.”

“Is this an ultimatum?”

“You know me better than that. But, Celestial, I need to know and I need to know now.”

I loosened my grip and she went to her side of the mattress and I went to mine, like boxers in our corners.

Nobody talked; nobody slept. I wondered if this would be the end of us. I considered rolling over to join her in her territory, the side of the bed that smelled like lavender. We often slept close, sometimes sharing a single pillow. But this night, I felt like I needed to be invited, and it didn’t look like an offer was coming. You can never know another person’s mind; this is one thing I have learned. But regardless, she extended herself to me before dawn, barely ahead of the deadline ticking in my chest. She reached for me with her hands, her legs, her lips, her everything. I was right there, ready, like I was spring-loaded.

As far as the state was concerned, she was another man’s wife, but if the events of the last five years have taught us anything, it is that you can’t trust the state to know anything about the truth of people’s lives. In my bed, in the exhausted, sweaty tangle of us, you couldn’t tell me that this was not communion.

“Listen,” I whispered into the perfume of her skin. “Roy being locked up isn’t why we came together. You hear me?”

“I know,” she said, sighing. “I know, I know, I know.”

“Celestial. Please, let’s get married.”

In the dark, she spoke with her lips so close to mine that I could taste her words, rich and peaty.





Celestial


At the time, I was a newlywed, combing rice from my hair. Eighteen months in, I danced the line between wife and bride.

Marriage is like grafting a limb onto a tree trunk. You have the limb, freshly sliced, dripping sap, and smelling of springtime, and then you have the mother tree stripped of her protective bark, gouged and ready to receive this new addition. Some years ago, my father performed this surgery on a dogwood tree in the side yard. He tied a pink-blooming limb stolen from the woods to my mother’s white-blooming tree secured from a nursery lot. It took yards of burlap and twine and two years for the plants to join. Even now, all these years later, there’s something not quite natural about the tree, even in its amazing two-tone glory.

In my marriage, I never determined which of us was rootstock and which the grafted branch. The baby we were trying for might have rendered this irrelevant. Three takes you from being a couple to being a family, upping the consequences for walking away, upping the pleasure quotient for staying home. It wasn’t as calculated as all of that at the time. The chilly rationale of hindsight is what exposes the how and why of something that once seemed supernatural. It’s the magician’s manual that shows you how the tricks are done, not with sorcery but with careful cues and mysterious devices.

This is not an excuse, just an explanation.

I woke up on the morning of Thanksgiving beside Andre, wearing his ring. I never imagined myself to be the kind of woman who would find herself with both a husband and a fiancé. It didn’t have to happen this way. I could have asked Uncle Banks to draw up divorce papers the instant I knew that I couldn’t be a prisoner’s wife. In the wake of Olive’s funeral, I knew I wanted Andre, sweet Dre, who had been there all along. Why didn’t I set this thing right on paper? Did some dormant love for Roy sleep inside me? For two years, that was the question in Andre’s eyes, just before bed. It is the question just beneath the words in Roy’s letter, like he wrote it down, erased it, and scribbled over it.

There are many reasons. Guilt seeps in through the cracks in my logic. How could I serve him with the divorce papers, subjecting him to yet another state decree, another devastating development? It seemed gratuitous to make official what he certainly already knew. Was I being kind, or was I just weak? A year ago, I asked this of my mother, who offered me a glass of cold water and assured me that everything works for the good.

I placed my hand on Andre’s sleeping shoulder, cupping my fingers over his birthmark. He breathed deeply, trusting that the world would keep spinning until he had gotten his rest. Life was less daunting at five in the morning when only one of us was awake. Andre had grown into a handsome man. His long and lanky solidified into slim but strong. He was still leonine, with his sandy hair and reddish complexion, now like a lion full grown and not just an adorable cub. “You two are going to have some pretty babies,” strangers said to us from time to time. We smiled. It was a compliment, but thinking of babies raised a knot in my throat that threatened my air.

Jolted by a dream, Andre caught my hand with his, so I rested against him a while longer. Today was Thanksgiving. One of the hurdles of adulthood is when holidays become measuring sticks against which you always fall short. For children, Thanksgiving is about turkey and Christmas is about presents. Grown up, you learn that all holidays are about family, and few can win there.

How would my mother, the dreamy romantic, interpret this ring on my finger, deep red like an autumn leaf? According to the ruby, Andre is my fiancé, but Roy’s diamond, so white that it’s blue, insists that this is impossible. But who listens to the wisdom of jewelry? Only our bodies know the truth. Bones don’t lie. What else hides in my jewelry box? A small tooth, ivory like antique lace, with a serrated edge like a steak knife.

Tayari Jones's Books