An American Marriage

It is morning. It is Christmas Eve. Roy wakes up and showers, cleaning his body in a ritual baptism to commence his resolution to begin a new life. Going to the kitchen, he acknowledges to his wife that they need to talk before Dre arrives. Roy understands now that Celestial has made her choice and he cannot demand she love him again. He says he wants only to collect his things and be gone. He wants his missing tooth: “I couldn’t leave without the rest of my body” (261).

He goes to the garage to sort through the boxes marked “Roy’s Stuff” looking for his tooth. What he finds, however, is a letter from his mother dated just before Roy and Celestial married. In it, Olive asks, “What I want to ask you is if you are sure that she is the woman for you” (265). Roy studies the letter, seeing his mother’s question in an entirely new light: “My mama had tried to warn me, tried to save me” (266). Celestial was never going to be the right wife. The right wife, he reasons, would have waited for him. He reads the letter over and over, each word becoming like a “lash” (267). His anger seethes. Celestial is not the only person who can be terrible. He grabs a tennis racket and begins to smash Celestial’s Volvo parked in the garage. The car alarm sounds, but Roy keeps on swinging. Celestial comes into the garage. His anger erupts. He grabs a massive double-edged axe hanging in the garage with Celestial watching. He demands to know whether Celestial, “raw fear on her face” (268), loves him anymore. She hesitates, and Roy heads out into the front yard and starts taking swings with the axe against the thick gray trunk of the massive hickory tree that Celestial tended for years. 

Dre pulls up and takes over the narrative. Dre suggests the three talk. They sit on a bench, Celestial next to Roy. She tells Roy that she and Dre had fallen in love not because Roy was away but because they had always been in love. Dre puts it succinctly, “Roy, you have to see that we’re together. Full stop” (274). Roy suggests that Celestial go inside, that the men need to talk. Left alone, the two began to scuffle, Roy’s anger fueling his need to hurt Dre. Dre feels that anger: “This was the nasty scrapping of a man with nothing to lose” (277). Roy gets the upper hand and demands Dre apologize. Dre refuses, and the fight continues. Roy yells, “You’re black, employed, heterosexual, unincarcerated, and into sisters. This shit’s your fucking oyster. But you had to go for my wife” (265). Prison has made Roy a wily fighter. He bests Dre, now prostrate on the ground. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” a desperate Roy laments, “I was just trying to come home” (281).

The police arrive, summoned not by Celestial but by neighbors. The police depart once they are satisfied the fight has stopped. Roy begins to drive his forehead against the tree trunk, again and again. The three talk. Roy wants only to understand why Celestial picked Dre over him. Celestial is torn. She notes, “All around Roy were the shards of a broken life, not merely a broken heart.” Celestial is concerned over Roy’s erratic behavior, and she fears he may have given himself a concussion. “I had forgotten,” she admits, “that [Roy] was real” (283). She tenderly nurses Roy’s head wound until he drops into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, Christmas, Celestial sits Dre down on the couch and they intertwine their arms. She tells Dre that she will return to Louisiana with Roy. Dre begs her to reconsider, “You are the one making this choice, Celestial. You” (288). Her mind is set, however: “I have to do this” (289).

Roy comes down, unsteady but feeling the possibility of true reconciliation. The two share a late breakfast of salmon croquettes and grits. Their conversation, however, turns to the last time Celestial visited the dying Olive. Roy asks whether it was true that Celestial took that moment when Olive was so fragile and vulnerable to tell her the devastating news that Roy and his biological father had reunited in prison when Roy asked her specifically not to. A disbelieving Roy demands some explanation. She says Roy has it all wrong—once Olive was sure Roy’s father was in the same prison and could protect their son, she surrendered happily to God. Roy is not sure.

In the quiet after Celestial heads up for a shower, Roy phones Davina. She is confused—is what happened between them something or nothing, she asks. Roy responds, “Something” (295). Celestial returns dressed in a lace nightie. When they go to the bedroom, Roy tells her over and over that he is not a rapist. She calms him: she knows. Roy reveals the truth about his one-night stand with Davina so they would have no secrets. Celestial thinks a moment but then offers herself to him “like a banquet prepared in the presence of my enemies” (300). It is, he sees, a gesture to make amends. Roy declines. The two fall into troubled sleep.