The Kindest Lie(8)
Ruth provided the Honey Baked ham, which she swore tasted just like home cooking. Xavier, who had handled most of the culinary duties since the day they married, made broccolini and candied yams.
“You put your foot in it this time.” Ruth spooned her second helping of yams onto her plate. “Even better than your mom’s, but don’t you dare tell her I said so.”
“Everything I know, I learned from her. Don’t let the prissy fool you. She can throw down in the kitchen.”
She gave him the side-eye. “Yes, I know that. When she doesn’t have dinner catered, that is.”
“She only did it that one time to impress you when y’all first met. Must’ve worked.” He grinned. “You married me.” Ruth held up a corn muffin and threatened to throw it at him.
For dessert, they ate sweet potato pie (never pumpkin) while sitting in the windowsill of the living room, their legs intertwined.
Ruth figured Mama and Eli had probably long finished their Thanksgiving meal. She often wondered if they still spent the holidays together now that Eli was married with a family of his own. Growing up, the four of them ate an early holiday supper, no later than two in the afternoon. A few hours afterward, the second and third cousins and play cousins would come over with aluminum foil and Styrofoam containers, prepared to take home whatever they couldn’t eat at Mama’s table. As if they hadn’t taken a bite all day, she and her brother would help themselves to more mac ’n’ cheese and potato salad, the two dishes Mama was famous for. When they had a family quorum, everyone held hands while Papa said grace and they took turns recounting what they were thankful for.
Putting her plate on the coffee table, Ruth, inspired by the memory, got up and went to the kitchen. She returned with a stack of orange, yellow, and brown notepaper left over from an abandoned scrapbooking effort.
“Let’s start a gratitude box. Once a year, we’ll write down what we’re grateful for, share with each other, and then keep the notes in here.” She held up a small wooden box with a golden latch. “We can read them the following year and remember how blessed we are.” They took turns sharing their gratitude for everything from love and health to hummingbirds, rum, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life album, short lines at Whole Foods, and all the ways they were fulfilling their dreams.
On his last piece of paper, Xavier quickly scribbled something and stared at it for a long moment before scratching his brow and folding the note.
Sensing his hesitation, Ruth pulled the paper from his hands and unfolded it. In his careful cursive, he’d written that he was grateful for our 2.5 children on the way.
Nausea rose inside Ruth and it must have shown on her face.
“Okay, okay,” Xavier said. “I’ll erase the point-five so you don’t think I’m trying to be slick rounding up to three kids.”
“You are so not funny.” Absently, she creased the corner of the orange sheet where he’d put his wish in writing. Something about seeing the words on paper unnerved her, creating what she knew would inevitably grow into a chasm between them.
He reached for a Sharpie, took the note back from her, and crossed out the number 2 and replaced it with the number 1. “Better? Even though I do think children without brothers or sisters can grow up with some issues. I know I did. But we can start with one and take it from there.”
“Will you please stop?”
The stack of paper fell from Ruth’s lap to the floor, but she didn’t bend to pick it up. Xavier disentangled his legs from hers and rested his back against the opposite end of the windowsill. “Tell me what’s really going on. If you don’t want to have kids with me, just say so.”
“Nothing is going on.”
“Now, we’ve been married long enough for me to know that ‘nothing’ really means ‘something.’”
“No, that’s not it. Things are just complicated.” She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Every time I mention kids you act like I just asked you to rob a 7-Eleven. You hardly want to make love anymore. There’s nothing complicated about a man and his wife having a family. Is it my wide forehead? You don’t want our kids to inherit it?” He laughed at his feeble attempt at a joke, but it came out hollow, devoid of any humor. His face tightened like he was in pain and his mouth twisted at the corners.
She bowed her head. Xavier continued without waiting for her to respond, his voice increasingly ragged.
“I know you think I was born into some kind of Black aristocracy. But we were still regular folks who sat down at dinner every night and talked about regular shit. My parents worked damn hard to send me to prep schools and overseas immersion trips. They wanted to give me every shot possible at making something of myself. When I married you, that’s all I could think about—giving that same amazing life to our children. That’s what being a real man is about, leading a family. Is that so wrong, for a man to want that?”
Ruth’s throat squeezed, and her voice emerged tinny. “I love you, Xavier, I do, but have you considered that I may be dealing with my own thing, something that has nothing to do with you or your precious manhood? Have you thought about that?” She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, her hands buried in the sleeves of her sweater.
“All I know is I shouldn’t have to build a case and have to persuade my own wife to have kids with me like we’re in a Law and Order courtroom.”