An American Marriage(7)

“Can you walk in them?”

She seemed embarrassed by her shoes, an architectural construction of polka-dot ribbon and cork. “How was I supposed to impress your mother in flats?”

“No worries, it’s close,” I said shuffling down a soft embankment as she baby-stepped behind me. “Hold my neck,” I said, picking her up like a bride and carrying her the rest of the way. She pressed her face into my neck and sighed. I would never tell her, but I liked being stronger than she was, the way I could literally sweep her off her feet. She wouldn’t tell me either, but I know that she appreciated it, too. Reaching the bank of the stream, I set her down on the soft earth. “You getting heavy, girl. You sure you not pregnant?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” she said, looking up. “This is a lot of bridge for a little slip of water.”

I sat on the ground and pressed my back against one of the metal pillars like it was the big hickory tree in our front yard. I scissored my legs and patted the space between them. She sat there and I crossed my arms across her chest and rested my chin where her neck met her shoulder. The stream beside us was clear; the water gushed over smooth rocks, and twilight outlined the little waves with silver. My wife smelled like lavender and coconut cake.

I said, “Before they built the dam and the water went low, me and my daddy came out here on Saturdays with our lines and bait. In a way that’s what fatherhood is about: bologna sandwiches and grape soda.” She giggled, not knowing how serious I was. Above us, a car passed over the metal mesh, and the sound of the wind passing through the holes played a musical note, like when you blow softly over the mouth of a bottle. “When a lot of cars pass over, it’s almost a song.”

There we sat, waiting on cars, listening for the bridge music. Our marriage was good. This isn’t just memory talking.

“Georgia,” I said, using her pet name. “My family is more complicated than you think. My mother . . .” But I couldn’t manage the rest of the sentence.

“It’s okay,” she promised. “I’m not upset. She loves you, that’s all.”

She swiveled and we kissed like teenagers, making out under the bridge. It was a wonderful feeling to be grown and yet young. To be married but not settled. To be tied down yet free.

My mother exaggerated. The Piney Woods was about on the level of a Motel 6, a star and a half by objective measure, but you have to throw in another star just for being the only hotel in town. A lifetime ago, I had taken a girl here after prom, hoping to get that virginity thing out of the way. I bagged a lot of groceries at Piggly Wiggly to pay for the room, the bottle of Asti Spumante, and a few other accoutrements of romance. I even swung by the Laundromat for a stack of quarters to operate the Magic Fingers. The night ended up being a comedy of errors. The bed massager ate six quarters before it finally kicked on, rumbling as loud as a lawn mower. Furthermore, my date wore a plantation-era hoop dress that flipped up and hit me in the nose when I was trying to get better acquainted.

After we checked in and settled into our room, I told this story to Celestial, hoping she would laugh. Instead, she said, “Come here, sweetie,” and let me rest my head on her bosom, which is kind of exactly what the prom date did.

“I feel like we’re camping,” I said.

“More like study abroad.”

Locking my eyes with hers in the mirror, I spoke. “I was almost born right in this hotel. Olive once worked here, cleaning.” Back then, Piney Woods Inn was named the Rebel’s Roost, clean, but the confederate flag hung in every room. Scrubbing a bathtub when labor pains kicked in, my mama was determined that I would not start my life under the stars and bars. She clamped her knees shut until the motel owner, a decent man despite the decor, drove her the thirty miles to Alexandria. It was 1969, April 5, a year to the day, and I slept my first night’s sleep in an integrated nursery. My mama was proud of that.

“Where was Big Roy?” Celestial asked, as I knew she would.

The question was the whole reason we were here at all, so why did I have such a difficult time answering her? I led her to this question, but once it was asked, I went as noiseless as a rock.

“Was he working?”

Celestial had been sitting in bed sewing more beads onto the mayor’s doll, but my silence got her attention. She bit the thread, tied it off, and twisted to look at me. “What’s the matter?”

I was still moving my lips with no sound. This wasn’t the right place to start this story. My story may begin the day I was born, but the story goes back further.

“Roy, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Big Roy is not my real father.” This was the one short sentence that I promised my mother I would never say aloud.

“What?”

“Biologically speaking.”

“But your name?”

“He made a junior out of me when I was a baby.”

I got up from the bed and mixed us a couple of drinks—canned juice and vodka. As I stirred the cups with my finger, I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eyes, not even in the mirror.

She said, “How long have you known this?”

“They told me before I went to kindergarten. Eloe is a small town, and they didn’t want me to hear it on the school yard.”

“Is that why you’re telling me? So I don’t hear it in the street?”