The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  Xavier stood and smoothed the jacket of his white linen suit. “Ruth is right and so are you. It’s both. We can’t ignore race, but we also have to pool our money together and raise the capital to start something of our own. Look at the talent in this room. We got engineers, accountants, lawyers, and me to market the shit out of this thing. We’re sitting on a gold mine if we figure out how to leverage it right.”

  A familiar fire lit in Xavier’s eyes, and soon a local alderwoman and Victor were both trying to convince Xavier to not only pursue his entrepreneurial dreams but also consider a future in politics. Obama had gotten his start with grassroots community organizing and then state politics, and Victor, having served on the incoming president’s campaign committee, told Xavier he could follow a similar model. She couldn’t deny her husband’s natural affinity for moving and mobilizing people.

  Ruth remembered the night five years ago when she’d met Xavier, at a Bronzeville art gallery exhibition where he spoke to the audience about Blacks who settled in Bronzeville during the Great Migration. The first thing she noticed was how tall he was, towering over most of the crowd. He stood with his feet hip-width apart, the toes of his dress shoes pointed outward. His stance exuded confidence and power, but not in an arrogant way. As he detailed the history of the community, the audience leaned into him that night, hanging on to his sentences, like plants bending toward the sunlight.

  From a corner of the room, Ruth watched him, equally impressed and skeptical. Her suspicion often roused around men with silver tongues after Ronald, her high school boyfriend, had seduced her with his manipulative wordplay.

  That night they met, the gallery had been filled with beautiful women whose bodies contracted and expanded in the right places, while Ruth’s arms and legs hung long, her entire body one straight line. Even she couldn’t stop staring at the other women, their skin glistening like they’d just stepped out of the shower. Their hair—the conventionally good kind—welcomed a hard rain instead of shrinking from it.

  Xavier politely acknowledged their thirsty gazes and then singled out Ruth, asking her opinion on gentrification, embracing her challenge to a statement or two he’d made that she found obtuse. Even though she felt out of her element, she surprised herself by holding her own, springing forth like a baby chick hatching and pushing her way out into a new world. Abandoning the social traditions that she’d grown up with, Ruth pursued him as much as he pursued her. Leaving her son behind had been about running away from Ganton and everything her hometown represented, but she’d never run toward anything until Xavier.

  Ruth scooped rotisserie chicken salad and spread it on a cracker while listening to the others plan the trajectory of her husband’s career. She stewed over the direction their lives could go in next. For the second time this year, she’d been passed over for a promotion and had politely and diplomatically applauded the rise of another engineer she’d mentored. Unsure of her own future with the company, she worried that Xavier would let others stoke his ambitions, forcing him to risk too much when they needed stability right now.

  But no one wanted to be practical in the bubble of this special night. As hedonistic and heady as it was, to Ruth it still felt fragile and new. Like if you pulled the thread of a coat button, it would surely unravel until the button fell off. Yet no one else seemed to be consumed with caution. And so they partied the night away in white, embodying the title of the famous Lorraine Hansberry play To Be Young, Gifted and Black. With a brother on his way to the White House, they had state-sanctioned permission to dream.

  Four

  Ruth

  On Thanksgiving, candles scented the house with cinnamon and cloves. They usually spent the holiday with Xavier’s parents, but this year, the Shaws—unbelievably young and spry at sixty—had flown to Costa Rica for a week of hiking in a rain forest and kayaking through mangroves. The timing worked out well for Ruth, who much preferred to be home alone with her husband on their first Thanksgiving in their new home.

  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 anymor
e. 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.”

  When they were dating, they had talked about having kids someday, but it lurked in the recesses of her brain as a future aspiration, something abstract. She had thought she might warm to the idea at some point down the road. If not, she could push it out of her own mind long enough that it might escape his and he’d forget, and they’d never have to discuss it again.

  Xavier paced across the living room floor to the kitchen. “Penelope and Tess were even talking the other night about having a kid, whether or not they can legally marry. Here we are married, and look at us right now. Something’s wrong as hell with this picture.”

  “Our friends have nothing to do with this. Can you please leave them out of our marriage?”

  “Fine. You’re right. But why don’t you tell me what, or who, this is about then? I’m trying real hard to understand here. If a man’s wife doesn’t want his child and can’t stand to have him touch her anymore, it’s usually because there’s another man.” He choked on those last two words and they came out hard and brittle. Even in his anger, he’d been careful to use the third person, not to accuse her directly, but it meant the same thing. Her husband suspected she was having an affair. How did they get here?

  Xavier gathered their plates and utensils from the table, dropping them in the sink with a loud clatter. Gripping a scouring pad tightly, he scrubbed a serving bowl. She watched the pulsing veins in his hands and thought back to how gentle those hands had been the night they’d met.

  After the art event was over, the street outside the gallery had sparkled from the rainfall, and Xavier had reached for her hand, claiming it was his duty to ensure she didn’t slip and fall in a puddle and sully her sundress. Her hand had felt safe and protected in the cushion of his soft, larger one.

  All that old-school attention had impressed her, which she hadn’t liked to admit back then, but she knew game when she heard it, too. While not begrudging him any player points, she had remained engineering-school practical. She hadn’t fully trusted a man since Ronald left her with a hole in her heart and a baby in her belly.

  After they talked for three hours under the moonlight that night, Xavier began referring to her as his girl, and she’d promptly asked him to take a week to clear the field. He had the nerve to look brand-new. She slowed her speech to give him a chance to catch up.

  “It means that you might want to tie up any loose ends with other ladies before pursuing me.”

  Xavier laughed, and she saw one crooked front tooth breaking formation, turned the wrong way as if in rebellion. That little imperfection endeared him to her even more.

  “You don’t need to worry. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “But is there a woman out there who thinks she’s your girlfriend?”

  He opened his mouth to give a quick answer but closed it just as fast. “All fields will be clear by next weekend, in time for our first official date.” Then he’d saluted, making her laugh, and she knew then, under that star-filled sky, that she had met her husband.

  Standing behind Xavier in their kitchen now, helpless, she touched his arm gingerly, as if it were a flame that could burn her. “There is no one else. You know that. Will you just talk to me?”

  He flinched. “I’ve been talking for months. I’ve been the only one talking while you’ve been running. Making excuses. Lying.”

  She hadn’t seen her husband this angry since their engagement, when he’d asked to meet Mama and Eli to get to know them and receive their blessing for the impending marriage. When Ruth had dodged his request as long as she could, she eventually flat-out refused, and Xavier assumed she was ashamed of him and likely had no intention to marry. Every time her bond with Xavier had stretched thin enough to break, it was because of her grand attempts to keep her worlds separate, to protect the lie of her past at all costs, even if that cost included her husband.

  The truth could serve as a needed relief valve, lowering the pressure inside their marriage before it exploded. She had confessed to him about unpaid parking tickets and finally told him that his “famous” foot rubs were more ticklish than tantalizing.

  But this was different. The birth of her baby seemed to have happened in another lifetime. To another person even. What did a wife owe her husband? How much retroactive truth-telling could be expected?

  For what seemed like an eternity, Xavier scrubbed the same dish over and over in silence, just the way Mama used to when she couldn’t figure out what else to do with her emotions.

  She wanted to see his eyes. She needed to see them. She needed him to at least look at her. But she knew he wouldn’t as long as she kept silent.

  In a small voice, Ruth spoke, unsure at first whether she’d said the words aloud or only in her head. “You’re right. I’ve been lying to you.”

  When his hands stilled in the dishwater, she knew he’d heard her. Without turning to face her, he said, “I’m listening.”

  Hail battered the windows of their town house and the wind roared. Ruth sank into the closest kitchen chair. Xavier dried his hands and sat down opposite her. There was no easy way to begin a story that was years past its due date. Eleven years, to be exact.

  “I was seventeen. My senior year in high school. I messed up. Badly. His name was Ronald Atkins.” She rubbed her hands together in her lap, her mouth going bone dry when she spoke her old boyfriend’s name aloud.

  Xavier had no way of knowing what she’d say next, but he recoiled on instinct. Maybe it had been the way she’d avoided his eyes when she said her ex’s name. Or maybe it was just the sting of hearing another man’s name on his wife’s tongue before a confession.

  “I got pregnant.”

  A noise came from him that reminded her of that burst of air from a deflating balloon. She went on anyway. “I didn’t want to have an abortion. You know I was raised in the church and Mama wouldn’t have let me even if I’d wanted to.”

  Xavier laughed as if she’d just told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. The sound he made tapered off in a little titter and then he cleared his throat. “I can’t be hearing you right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The expression on his face clouded and he shook his head slightly as if to clear the fog. “You have a kid.” It was a statement, not a question, as though he needed to say the words himself to believe them.

  “Yes.”

  “And you never said a word all these years? What the hell, Ruth?”

  “I’m sorry, Xavier. I was scared to tell you and I’m scared now. So, let me finish before I lose my nerve.” She rolled a napkin ring between her fingers. “I had a baby boy. Then I gave him up. I couldn’t keep him. My freshman orien
tation was a few weeks after he was born. I left town and I tried to put all of it behind me. Have been trying to ever since.”

  He stood, shoulders curved, his head shaking, mouth open. “How could you keep something like this from me? After a year of dating and then four years of marriage, you never found a convenient time to tell me you had a son?” He paced in front of the stove, his voice getting louder.

  The ham and all the leftover sides sat cold and congealing at the center of the table, and Ruth kept her eyes on the thin layer of grease forming on top of the corn. When she finally looked up at Xavier, she recognized the hurt in his eyes. Anger would have been preferable. He looked at her like he didn’t know her. All she had to offer him now was more of the truth.

  “I didn’t grow up like you did,” she said.

  “No, don’t give me that. You’re not going to use the size of my family’s bank account to excuse your lies all these years.”

  Ruth gestured to the granite countertops, steel cabinets, and floating shelves. “Every day I walk around this house like I belong here. But inside, I’m that poor pregnant Black girl from Ganton, Indiana. I didn’t want your family to think less of me. I didn’t want you to think less of me, either.”

  Xavier sat down again. “I wouldn’t have judged you. Remember Shavonne, my cousin on my daddy’s side? The one with the light eyes that you met at the family reunion last year?”

  Ruth nodded.

  “She got pregnant her sophomore year in high school and dropped out. She still talks about getting her GED. The same thing could have happened to me. I messed around with my share of girls in high school and didn’t always strap up.”

  “But it’s different for guys,” she said. “People don’t shame you for it. You still get to walk away and have a future.”