An American Marriage(47)

I had run into Davina at Walmart when I had gone to buy flowers for Olive. Davina, dressed in a blue uniform, unlocked the floral refrigerator and helped me select a bouquet that I couldn’t bring myself to deliver. Wrapping my purchase in clean white paper, she asked me if I remembered her from high school, even though she was a couple of years ahead of me. I told her that I did. She asked me if I would like to have a home-cooked meal. I told her I would. A few hours later I stood in front of the clapboard house outfitted for Christmas with multicolored lights and metallic ribbon.

I climbed up the three concrete steps and stood on the sloping porch. The little house must have been seventy, maybe eighty years old, built probably by Miss Annie Mae’s husband. This neighborhood was known as the Hardwood, where the colored mill workers lived, back when there was a mill, back when colored was a word of respect. I rapped on the silver-wreathed door, almost wishing I wore a hat so I could take it off and hold it in my hands.

“Hey,” she said through the screen door, looking inviting in a holiday apron that set off her skin tone, a lush brown with red underneath like a nice pair of loafers. She tilted her head to the side. “You look nice.”

“You, too.” Kitchen aromas spiced the air all the way out here, and I wanted more than anything in this world to cross her threshold.

“You’re early,” she said with a little smile, not like she was annoyed, but letting me know. “Give me a minute to fix my hair.” Then she shut the door. I sat down on the front stairs and waited. Five years away and you get good at that sort of thing. I sat there, but I didn’t turn my face on the diagonal to the orange-brick funeral home where they had taken care of my mother. Instead, I sat with my eyes on my own fingers, so much like Walter’s, knotty with yellowish calluses. I went in with bankers’ hands and came out looking like a mill worker. But at least I was out. Something you learn in there: keep your mind on what’s important.

Edwards Street was mostly quiet. A cluster of little boys used bacon and string to catch crawfish in the ditch that ran along the sides of the road. In the distance, I could see the reflection of the neon lights in the liquor store window and feel the faint vibration of the subwoofers that shook the air. This was my hometown. I skinned my knees on these streets; I learned to be a man on these same corners, but I didn’t feel like I was home.

When Davina came to the door the second time, she wasn’t wearing the apron, and I missed it, though the burgundy dress she changed into highlighted everything captivating about a woman’s body. In high school, she had a perfect figure—small and thick at the same time, what we used to call a “brick house.” Big Roy warned me those girls that are fine at fifteen get fat by thirty, so you shouldn’t marry them. Thinking of Davina, that advice seemed childish and cruel. Yes, she had a lot going on in the bust and the hip, but she looked delicious.

“You still married?” she asked through the screen door.

“I don’t know,” I said.

She smiled, cocking her head, showing a tuft of tinsel tucked behind her ear like a gardenia. “Come on in,” she said. “Dinner will be ready in a minute. You want something to drink?”

“What you think?” I watched her splendid curves as she walked the few steps to the kitchen.

The old me, and I don’t mean the me before I went to prison, I mean the old me from way before I starting going out with Celestial, the me I was in my early twenties and running through women like water—that me would have known what to say. Back then, I knew how to focus. Keep my mind on my money and my money on my mind. I used to say that to myself under my breath, no matter what it was that I was zooming in on. One thing at a time. That’s how you win. But here I was, in front of one woman, one fine woman, and I was sitting here thinking about a wife I hadn’t talked to in two years.

I’m not saying that I was anybody’s angel during my marriage. As they say, mistakes were made and feelings were bruised, like that one time when Celestial happened upon a receipt for two pieces of lingerie, not just for the one I gave her for her birthday. She wasn’t livid, but it was going that way. I said to her, “Celestial, I don’t love anybody but you.” It didn’t necessarily explain the little piece of paper in her hand, but it was God’s truth, and I suspect that she understood that.

Sitting in Davina’s living room drinking up her liquor, I held Celestial’s face in my mind, her scent in my nose, her song in my ear. Even still, I looked at Davina and my mouth went wet. “When did Miss Annie Mae pass?” I asked her. “She was a nice lady. I remember when she sold sour pickles for a dime. When we were little. You remember that?”

“She’s been gone four years now. I was surprised that she left everything to me, but we were always close, and her son lives in Houston now. His name was Wofford. Remember him?”

I did remember him as the local boy made good who came to speak to us when we were in high school, telling us to not to drop out, get anybody pregnant, or smoke crack. “Yeah, I recall.”

Davina smirked. “With Miss Annie Mae gone, I don’t expect we will ever see him again in this town.” She shook her head. “My daddy was the same way. Halfway to Dallas before I even turned five years old.”

I said, “You don’t know for sure why he went.”

She smiled again, a real smile like she appreciated me trying to look on the bright side. “All I know is that he’s gone. Same trifling story everybody tells.”