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).