An American Marriage: A Novel

by Tayari Jones

  Love,

  Roy

  Dear Roy,

  I’m writing this letter to ask you to forgive me. Please be patient. I know it has been a long time. At first it was because I was going through a lot, but now my reason for staying away is boring and uncomplicated. It’s just that the holiday season is here and I’m slammed at the shop. My assistant, Tamar, is going to cover for me weekend after next. (She’s a student at Emory, with talent to burn. She has a gorgeous gift for quilts. Just breathtaking.)

  So while Tamar minds the store, Gloria and I are going to drive up. She wants to give your mother one of her famous blackberry jam cakes, and I could use the company.

  I know that you’re mad at me. You have a right to be frustrated. But I hope that we don’t waste our visit being angry. When we sit down together, our time is precious. If you can forgive, please forgive me. If I explain, will you listen? Tell me what I need to do to make it better.

  What does Walter have to say about all of this? I hope you haven’t talked about me too badly. I don’t want to meet my father-in-law for the first time and make an unfavorable impression. (I’ll get to meet him, won’t I?) How are you two dealing with this shocking development? I guess you’re the only one who’s shocked, but I’m sure that it has changed things between you. Did you tell Olive? There’s so much to unpack here. In the meanwhile, give me his information and I can put something on his commissary for the holidays.

  I know you’re proud, but let me do that for him and for you. He’s family. I’ll see you soon.

  Yours,

  Celestial

  Dear Celestial,

  Thank you for coming to see me; I know the journey is long and I know that you are a busy woman. You look different. I thought maybe you lost weight because your face had more shape to it. But I don’t think the shift is on the physical plane. Are you all right? Is there something happening that I should know about? This isn’t a backdoor way for me to ask if you’re seeing somebody else. That’s the last thing on my mind. I’m just asking what is going on. When I saw you, I was looking into your face, but I didn’t really see you.

  I don’t have the right words to explain.

  Roy

  Dear Roy,

  How am I expected to respond to your last letter? Yes, I have dropped a few pounds. Some on purpose—I’ve been flying to New York a lot these days and you know they are a little bit leaner up there. I don’t want to show up looking like the unsophisticated chick from “down south” with the folk art. If my dolls are going to be taken seriously, I have to look the part. But I don’t think my waistline is what you’re talking about.

  Am I different? It has been close to three years, so I guess I have changed. Yesterday I sat under the hickory tree in the front yard. It’s the only place where I find rest and just feel fine. I know fine isn’t a lot, but it’s rare for me these days. Even when I’m happy, there is something in between me and whatever good news comes my way. It’s like eating a butterscotch still sealed in the wrapper. The tree is untouched by whatever worries we humans fret over. I think about how it was here before I was born and it will be here after we’re all gone. Maybe this should make me sad, but it doesn’t.

  Roy, we’re getting older. Every week or so I pluck one or two gray hairs from my head. It’s a little early for dye, but still. Obviously, we are not elderly, but we’re not teenagers either. Maybe that’s what you saw—time getting away.

  Am I seeing someone else? You say you aren’t asking that, but you asked it anyway if only to say you weren’t asking. Your ring is on my finger. That’s what I will say.

  Celestial

  Dear Celestial,

  Olive is sick. On Sunday, Big Roy came to visit without her. As soon as I saw him sitting on that little bitty chair, looking like a bear sitting on a mushroom, I could tell that there was news and it was bad. He says she has lung cancer, although she hasn’t touched a cigarette in twenty-three years.

  I want you to go and see about her. I know it’s been a long time since I have been able to do for you in return. I feel like I’m running up a tab, just like with Morehouse and my student loans. At one point I estimated how much it cost me per day, then per hour, then per minute. I know you aren’t keeping a scorecard, but I am. I need you to come see me. I need you to put money on my books. I need you to keep your Uncle Banks on his toes. I need you to remind me of the man I once was so I don’t forget and become another nigger in here. I feel like I need and need and need and it’s wearing a hole in the fabric. I’m not crazy, I can see it. I know you don’t come around like you used to. I know what true feeling looks like, but I know what obligation looks like, too. What’s in your face, that’s all duty.

  This that I am asking you, I know it’s a lot. I know the drive is far and I know that you and my mother have never been friends. But please look in on her and tell me what my daddy won’t.

  Roy

  Dear Roy,

  This is the letter I promised that I would never send. Before I go any further, I want to tell you that I am sorry. I want to tell you that even typing these words is killing me. I won’t say that this will hurt me more than it hurts you because I know how much you’re hurting every day and no matter what is happening to me, it will never compare. I understood that I’m not in the same agony as you are, but I’m in pain and I cannot continue to live this way.

  I can’t go on being your wife. In some ways I feel like I never even got to try my hand at that role. We were only married a year and a half before lightning struck, counting off the time in months like you do with a baby. I have done my best to be married without actually being a wife for three years now.

  You’re going to think that this is about another man, but this is about the two of us, about our delicate cord that has been shredded by your incarceration. At your mother’s funeral, your father showed what the connection is between husband and wife. If he could have, he would have gone into the grave instead of her. But they lived under one roof for more than thirty years. In some ways they grew together and grew up together, and had she not died, they would have grown old together. That’s what a marriage is. What we have here isn’t a marriage. A marriage is more than your heart, it’s your life. And we are not sharing ours.

  I blame it on time, not on you or me. If we put a penny in a jar for each day we have been married, and we took a penny away every day we’ve been apart, the jar would have been depleted a long time ago. I’ve been trying to find ways to add more pennies, but our visits in that busy room at that sad table send me home with empty hands. I know this and you do, too. The last three times I have visited, we said almost nothing to each other. You can’t bear to hear about my days and I can’t bear to hear about yours.

  I’m not abandoning you. I will never abandon you. My uncle will continue to file appeals. I’ll continue to keep your commissary up to date and I’ll visit you every month. I can come as your friend, as your ally, as your sister. You’re a part of my family, Roy, and you will always be. But I can’t be your wife.

  Love (and I mean it),

  Celestial

  Dear Georgia,

  What do you want me to say? Am I supposed to say that I’m okay with us just being friends? Maybe it’s me, but I made a different interpretation of “till death do us part.” Because the last I checked, I wasn’t dead yet. But you do what you have to do. Be an empowered woman or whatever they taught you in college. Leave a brother when he’s down. I never thought you would be this kind of person. There are women around here who have been coming to see their men for decades, riding buses that leave Baton Rouge at 5 a.m. Walter has women he never even met in person and they come to see him, and when they get here, they do more than talk. Some women bunk in their cars in the parking lot so they can be in the visiting room as soon as it opens. Before she died, my mother was here every week. What is it that makes you think that you’re so much better than all of them?

  Don’t come here talking about you’re here to be my friend
. I don’t need friends.

  ROH

  Dear Roy,

  I didn’t expect you to receive my very honest letter with confetti and a ticker-tape parade, but I did at least expect you to take a moment to consider my perspective. Are you really comparing me with the women who crowd the crack-of-dawn bus to prison? I know them, too. I’ve met them myself. They organize their whole lives around coming to Parson; besides working, it’s all they do. Every week they are strip-searched. More than once, I’ve had to let some guard put her hand in my panties just so I can sit across the table from you. This is what you want for me? This is what you want for my life? Is this the way you love me?

  You always talk about how you understand that this is hard. You slump in your chair, admitting that you can’t give me what I need. But now you act like you’re confused. For more than three years, I’ve been there in body and in spirit. But I’ve got to change the way I’m doing things, or I won’t have any spirit left. I said in my last letter and I’ll say it again. I’ll support you. I’ll visit you. I just can’t do it as your wife.

  C

  Dear Celestial,

  I am innocent.

  Dear Roy,

  I am innocent, too.

  Dear Celestial,

  I guess it’s my turn to send a letter I said I’d never write. I want you to know formally that I am discontinuing our relationship. You’re right. This marriage isn’t a two-way street. How can I argue with that? But you cannot argue with this: I only want you in my life as my wife because in my head and heart I’m your husband.

  Please do not come visit me. If you disregard my wishes, you will be turned away because I have taken you off my visitors’ list. I’m not being spiteful, I’m trying to figure out how to live with this new reality.

  ROH

  Roy O. Hamilton Jr.

  PRA 4856932

  Parson Correctional Center

  3751 Lauderdale Woodyard Rd.

  Jemison, LA 70648

  Dear Mr. Banks:

  This will be your last act as my attorney. Please remove the following person from my visitors list:

  Davenport, Celestial Gloriana

  Sincerely,

  Roy O. Hamilton Jr.

  Robert A. Banks, Esq.

  1238 Peachtree Rd., Ste. 470

  Atlanta, GA 30031

  Dear Roy:

  This is a response to your letter of last week. Without violating privilege, I have spoken with the Davenport family, who indicate that they will continue to retain me in my capacity as your attorney. If I don’t hear otherwise from you, I will continue in my duties on your behalf. As per your request, I have drafted the documents amending your visitors’ list, although I urge you to reconsider.

  Roy, in my years as an attorney, I have won cases and I have lost them, but none of them upsets me as much as yours, not only because it has left my niece disconsolate but because of the damage done to you. You remind me, actually, of Celestial’s father. He and I have been friends ever since he had holes in his shoes. We worked the graveyard shift at a box factory, clocking out just in time to run to school. Franklin got where he is by the sheer force of his determination. Your will is like his. And so is mine.

  I know it was disheartening to have our appeal denied by the state appellate court. It is disappointing but not surprising. I know Mississippi is the favored contender for “worst of the South,” but Louisiana isn’t far behind. The federal courts are much more promising because there is a chance of encountering a judge who isn’t drunk, corrupt, racist, or some unpleasant cocktail of these variables.

  There is hope. Do not give up.

  Pride should not cut you off from the Davenports. Prison, as you know, is very isolating. You are staring down the barrel of a long sentence, and while I am working to find a solution, I urge you not to disconnect from the people who remind you of the life you once had and the life you want to live again. That said, I am including here the document I mentioned that will bar my niece from coming to visit. If you choose to post it yourself, you may. As your attorney, our correspondence will be confidential, of course, but I felt that I must offer my advice.

  Sincerely,

  Robert Banks

  Roy O. Hamilton Jr.

  PRA 4856932

  Parson Correctional Center

  3751 Lauderdale Woodyard Rd.

  Jemison, LA 70648

  Dear Mr. Banks:

  I know that you are right, and with this letter I am unfiring you as my lawyer. I will leave Celestial on my visitors’ list, but I am asking you, as my attorney, not to mention this to her. Should she come to visit me, she will find her name there. But to tell her implies that I’m asking for a visit and I’m not asking her to do anything.

  These years have been rough on her, I am sure. But you know that they have been rougher on me. I try to see her side of things, but it’s hard to weep for anyone who is out in the world living their dream. All I wanted from her is that she honor the promise we made when we said to have and to hold, etc. I asked this of her, but I won’t plead (anymore).

  Please continue pursuing my case, Mr. Banks. Don’t forget me in here or think I am a lost cause. You warned me not to be surprised by the outcome of the appeal, but how can I keep hope alive if I’m not allowed to be optimistic? I feel like people are constantly asking me for things that are impossible.

  And, Mr. Banks, I know that your services are not free. Any more the Davenports pay you, I’ll repay to them, and after that I’ll give you the same sum as soon as I am able. You’re my only hope. I never thought I would be saying this to you, someone I really don’t know that well. My mother is gone and my father is here, but what can he do? He’s a hardworking man with values but without money. Celestial seems to have moved on. All I have is you, and it pains me to know that you’re being paid with her daddy’s money, but you’re right: it’s stupid to put pride ahead of common sense.

  So this is my letter saying thank you.

  Sincerely,

  Roy O. Hamilton Jr.

  Dear Roy,

  Today is November 17, and I am thinking of you. Maybe on this anniversary of our first date, you will answer my letter. When it was our “safe word,” we used it to bring communication to a halt. Now I hope it can restore our connection in some small way. This isn’t how I want things to be between us. Let me care for you in the way that I can, as one human being to another.

  Love,

  Celestial

  Dear Roy,

  Merry Christmas. I haven’t heard from you, but I hope you are okay.

  Celestial

  Dear Roy,

  If you don’t want to see me, I can’t force you. It is unkind that you would cut me off because I can’t be exactly the way you want me to be. I’ll say it again: I’m not abandoning you. I would never do that.

  C

  Dear Celestial,

  Please respect my wishes. Up until now, I have lived in fear of this happening. Let me be. I can’t dangle from your string.

  Roy

  Dear Roy,

  Happy birthday. Banks tells me that you’re fine, but that’s all he will say. Will you give him permission to give me news?

  C

  Dear Roy,

  You will get this around Olive’s anniversary. I know you feel all alone, but you are not. I haven’t heard from you in so long, but I want you know that I am thinking of you.

  Celestial

  Dear Celestial,

  Can I still call you Georgia? That will always be my name for you in my head. So, Georgia, this is the letter I have been waiting five years to write, the words I have been practicing. I even scratched it into the paint on the wall beside my bed.

  Georgia, I am coming home.

  Your uncle came through. He went over the heads of these local yokels and ran it straight to the fed. “Gross prosecutorial misconduct” basically means they cheated. The judge vacated the conviction and the local DA didn’t care enough to retry. So, as they say, “in the interes
t of justice,” I will soon be home free.

  Banks can explain it all to you in more detail. I have given him permission, but I wanted you to hear it from me, to see it in my own handwriting, that I will be a free man one month from today, in time for Christmas.

  I know that things have not been right between us for some time now. I was wrong to take you off my list and you were wrong not to fight me about it. But this is not a time for blaming each other for what we cannot change. I regret not answering your letters. It has been a year since I have received any word, but how can I expect you to keep writing when you thought I was ignoring you. Did you think I forgot you? I hope I didn’t hurt you with my silence, but I was hurt myself, and also ashamed.

  Will you hear me when I say that the last five years are behind me and behind us? Water under the bridge. (Remember the stream in Eloe, the way the bridge makes a song?)

  I know that we can’t “start love over.” But this is what I do know: you have not divorced me. All I want is for you to tell me why you have chosen to remain my lawfully wedded wife. Even if someone else is occupying your time, you have chosen to keep me as your husband these many years. In my mind, I picture us at our same kitchen table, in our same comfortable house, passing quiet words of truth.

  Georgia, this is a love letter. Everything I do is a love letter addressed to you.

  Love,

  Roy

  Two

  Prepare a Table for Me

  Andre

  This is what it must be like to be married to a widow. You give her bandages for her wounds; you offer comfort when memories sneak up and she cries for what looks like no reason. When she reminisces about the past, you don’t remind her of the things she has chosen not to recollect, all the while telling yourself that it’s unreasonable to be jealous of a dead man.

  But what can I do other than what I’ve done? I’ve known Celestial Davenport all my life, and I have loved her at least that long. This is the truth as natural and unvarnished as Old Hickey, the centuries-old tree that grows between our two houses. My affection for her is etched onto my body like the Milky Way birthmark scoring my shoulder blades.