An American Marriage(79)

“You think I don’t know that?” I said. “I been black all my life.”

Celestial said, “Roy, not one day went by when we didn’t talk about you, didn’t think about you. You think we don’t care, but we do. We thought you were gone for good.”

I was silent as Celestial explained. Her words were those we agreed upon, but now they rang less than true. Were we saying that our relationship was an accident of circumstance? Were we saying, too, we loved each other only because Roy had been unavailable? That was a lie. We loved each other because we always had, and I refused to ever claim anything different.

“Celestial,” Roy said. “Stop talking.”

“Look,” I said. “Roy, you have to see that we’re together. Full stop. Details are not important. Full stop.”

“Full stop?” he said.

“Full stop,” I repeated.

“Listen,” Celestial pleaded. “Both of you.”

“Go in the house,” Roy said. “Let me talk to Dre.”

I pressed my hand to the small of her back to urge her toward the door, but she was adamant. “I’m not going,” she said. “This is my life, too.”

We both turned to her. The admiration I feel for her flashed on Roy’s craggy face. “Listen if you want to,” he said. “I told you to go in the house for your own benefit. You don’t need to hear what me and Andre need to talk about. I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

“It’s her choice,” I said. “We don’t keep secrets.”

“Oh yes you do,” Roy sneered. “Ask her about last night.”

I asked her with my eyes, but her expression was blank, shuttered down against the sun.

“I’m telling you that you don’t want to be out here,” Roy said to Celestial. “When men talk, it’s not a pretty kind of conversation. That’s really the main thing about being in prison. Too many men in one place. You’re stuck in there knowing that there is a world full of women who are putting out flowers, making things nice, civilizing the whole planet. But there I was stuck in a cage like an animal with a bunch of other animals. So I’m going to give you one more chance, Celestial. Take your pretty little self in the house. Go sew some baby dolls or something.”

“I’m not going,” she said. “Somebody has to be out here who has some sense.”

“Go on in the house, baby,” I said. “You had your chance to talk to him all day yesterday.” I tried to make the word talk sound neutral, not like I was wondering what they did beyond conversation.

“Ten minutes is enough,” Roy said. “This won’t take long.”

Celestial stood up. I watched her back, smooth and muscular, as she walked away. Roy looked across at the neighbor who was watching openly now, not even bothering to fiddle with her flowers.

After Celestial finally disappeared, he said, “Like I said. The world is full of women, Atlanta especially. You’re black, employed, heterosexual, unincarcerated, and into sisters. This shit is your fucking oyster. But you had to go for my wife. That was disrespectful to me as a person. It was disrespectful to what I was going through, what all of us are going through in this country. Celestial was my woman. You knew it. Hell, you’re the one that introduced us.” Now he was standing before me, his voice not so much raised but going deeper. “What, was it just convenient? You wanted some pussy next door so you wouldn’t have to bother getting in your car?”

Now I got to my feet, because there are some words that a man can’t take sitting down. When I stood up, he was waiting on me and thrust his chest against mine. “Get out of my face, Roy.”

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me why you did it.”

“Why I did what?”

“Why you stole my wife. You should have left her alone. She was lonely. Fine, but you weren’t. Even if she was throwing it at you, you could have walked away.”

“What about this is so hard for you to comprehend?”

“That’s bullshit,” Roy said. “You knew she was my wife before you got caught up with this love stuff. You saw your opportunity and you took it. Long as you got your dick wet, you didn’t care.”

I pushed him because there was no other option. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

“Or what? You don’t like my language? We are not all that PC in prison; we say what’s on our mind.”

“So what do you mean? What do you want me to say? If I tell you she was a piece of ass, you would want to fight. If I tell you I want to marry her, it won’t be any better. Why don’t you just hit me and cut the chitchat? The bottom line is that she doesn’t belong to you. She never belonged to you. She was your wife, yeah. But she didn’t belong to you. If you can’t understand that, kick my ass and get it over with.”

Roy paused for a minute. “That’s what you have to say? That she doesn’t belong to me?” He let out of stream of spit through the space where his tooth used to be. “She doesn’t belong to you either, my friend.”

“Fair enough.” I walked away, hating the questions twining up my legs like a barbed vine. It was doubt that did it, that left me exposed, not watching my own back. Roy’s laugh shook me up, made me forget that I trusted her like I trusted my own eyes.