The Illest, page 9
The closest I came to a resolution was three months after what I would later recognize as my final visit to Serena’s apartment. Tucked in with miscellaneous bills and my monthly issue of Uptown magazine was a postcard of The Apollo Theater in Harlem. The postmark was from a New York City zip code; however, there was no return address. Only a simple phrase written in familiar penmanship danced across the page, lapsing into ellipses: I couldn’t….
I tacked the postcard on the wall of my bedroom, and on the rare occasion these days when I become saddened by the hand life has dealt us, I attempt to fill in the ellipses of the card with my own dreams of us dancing together again—should we share another lifetime.
Bonus Story
Simple Mathematics
* * *
Originally published in
Procyon Short Story Anthology 2014
“Come over here and talk to me,” Elizabeth said, sounding more like Martin’s grandmother than his wife of three years.
He shrugged his shoulders and relinquished his spot on the recliner. There was nothing on television anyway.
As he pulled up a dining room chair to the entrance of the kitchen, Martin admired how effortlessly his wife maneuvered around the rather large space, circling the island containing the stove and oven. As a foodie, he envied the grace with which she prepared dishes, but she was the chef, not he. He didn’t know the first thing about proper knifing techniques or even how much attention was required to prepare the kinds of things Liz came up with. If it were not for her cooking proper meals for him, he’d still be overcooking anything that wasn’t chicken.
“You’re gonna love what I’m preparing for you tonight,” she said, lifting a sauce pan from the gas stove and rotating its contents around with the fluid flick of her wrist.
“I can’t wait.”
Watching Liz, Martin realized he would much rather watch his wife’s shapely figure, all 5’7” of her beautifully round body, move about their spacious kitchen than surf the myriad channels that came with their new satellite dish. He was often overwhelmed by the selections and found himself clinging to two or three channels, just to make sense of the cacophony of content.
Liz lowered the heat on the stove and turned towards Martin. “So there’s this book that I’ve been reading by this relationship expert,” she started.
He didn’t know why, but suddenly his stomach began to bubble with anxiety. A relationship expert? He had thought that everything was perfect the way that it was. Why was she reading a book written by a relationship expert?
She continued, “And there were some things I wanted to run by you.”
“OK,” he offered, not wanting to shoot her down before hearing her point. They had had too many arguments in the past about his doing just that, so he was on guard to not stir the pot in the wrong direction.
“I have a very serious question to ask you.”
His stomach tightened again, and he could feel the slight rumble of gas rolling across his stomach cavity. “Go ahead.”
She paused for a moment, and in that moment Martin knew that whatever she was going to say would more than likely lead to an argument if he didn’t prepare himself to not say the first thing that came to mind. He had been working on the filter between his mind and his mouth, and that pause was exactly what he needed to do a gut check on that filter. Prepare yourself for anything, he told himself.
Rather than ask her question, Liz returned her attention to the stove, turning off the eyes. “Maybe we should eat dinner first. I’d hate for you to eat any of this cold.”
“Is it that bad?”
“What? The food? Of course not!”
“No. I mean the question.”
“It’s not bad.”
“But it’s not good either,” he said.
“It just is what it is. Whatever your answer is, everything will be OK.”
With her words, Martin’s appetite vanished. It was so sudden that he had no reaction to the Ahi steak, lightly sautéed spinach, and pilaf she placed on the dining room table. As he adjusted his seat to face the food, and then her, as she sat across from him, he realized how much better it might have been if his wife had not even brought up the topic prior to dinner.
“It looks delicious,” he offered, “but I want to know what you’re going to ask me first.”
“It’s not that serious. We can talk about it after dinner.”
“Then why did you bring it up when you did, if it could have waited?”
At this, she was quiet. In that moment, Martin realized that she hadn’t even considered the timing of her question. That meant that whatever she wanted to ask him was so important that it moved through her mouth faster than she wanted it to. Whatever it was, they would have to talk about it right then.
“Bon appetit!” she said, forcing a smile to her face.
“Liz, come on. Just ask the question. You’re building this up into something big, so now I have to know.”
He didn’t know why he was paranoid about any of this. He had done nothing wrong—that he could think of. Still, deep down, he harbored a deep fear of divorce after witnessing what his parents went through when he was thirteen. His father had left his mother for another woman, and although he loved Liz with all his heart, he sometimes dreamt that she would come in one day and do to him what his father had done to his mother. As a result, he had pledged himself to making his marriage work at all costs, and although they argued regularly, he made sure that they didn’t go to sleep angry at each other.
“OK,” Liz said. “I’ll ask, but I’d still like you to eat the food while it’s hot.”
Martin lifted his fork and eased it through the Ahi. The fish gave way beneath the weight of the utensil to reveal a brilliant purplish-red center. He took a bite, his eyes fixed on her.
“Have you ever thought about being with another woman?”
The question had been in the air at least three seconds before he realized what she was asking him. “No. Have you thought about being with anyone else?”
“Never?” she asked. Her eyes hinted at incredulity. “Not once?”
“You must have,” he countered.
“I assumed it was just natural to think about things like that.”
Martin put his fork down.
“So are telling me that you want to leave me?” Just saying the words aloud made him feel as if his heart was turning into crystal, fragile and capable of exploding into a thousand pieces in his chest.
“Calm down, Martin. I don’t want to leave you. I love you. And I love this marriage. But I’ve been doing some thinking, and I think we should talk about this.”
“What’s there to talk about? You clearly want to have sex with someone else. Is it a woman? Lord have mercy, Liz. Don’t tell me you’re out there like that.”
She sighed, measuring her breaths. “I’m not saying any of that. But if we’re going to talk about this, we have to talk about it like adults. We are two grown sexual beings, and I need for you to get out of your own way long enough for us to have a serious conversation. Can you do that for me? Please?”
He had already prepared to come back with something to shut down this discussion, but the word “please” had softened him. Still beneath the surface, his mind remained a hardened steel. “Just tell me one thing. Where did you get this idea?”
“Like I said earlier, I was reading this book about how open marriages had certain long-term advantages over traditional marriages.”
“So some sexual deviant with a PhD writes a book and now you think it’s okay to jeopardize everything we have? I can’t even believe that you’d fall for something like that,” Martin said. He was nervous and exasperated and no longer wanted to talk about any of this.
“Dr. Blythe is not a sexual deviant. She puts forth a pretty compelling argument that aside from money and children, sex is the primary reason most marriages don’t work. To keep an enthusiastic and healthy sex life is the purpose of her book. You should at least take a look at the book before you go and rule out everything.”
Liz’s interest in the book unnerved him, and he casually pushed his dinner to the side. “If you were unhappy with our sex life, you could have just told me. I mean, I know that I could try harder.”
“It’s not about trying harder. I love making love to you.”
“Then why change it up with this nonsense?”
She inhaled deeply, her mannerisms deliberate, as if searching for another approach. “Before we got married, what was the freakiest thing that you ever did?”
Martin found himself considering her question reluctantly. He was afraid to admit to his wife that he had not done much beyond what might be considered standard sex. He had never used any bondage devices, battery-powered toys, rings or clips. He had also never been a part of an orgy or anything else his college roommates had bragged about during his days at State. Liz had been the first woman on whom he had attempted cunnilingus, and it had taken him a while to perfect a technique that did not involve her having to constantly reposition his head and coach the movements of his tongue. If he had to rate himself as a lover, he knew that he was definitely a “B-“ most of the time and a “B” on good days. Maybe if he didn’t have the inhibitions he had about sex, he might have had an answer to give his wife to show that he wasn’t as square as he believed himself to be.
“I once received a blowjob in the back of a cab,” he lied. He didn’t know why he said it, but if his marriage was about to go down the tubes, he figured it best to go out swinging.
“Did you like it?”
“It was nice.”
“Would you like for me to give you a blowjob in the back of a cab?” Liz asked.
The idea had never crossed his mind. He had never imagined that they could be intimate outside of their bedroom. “You’d do that?”
“Sure. You’re my husband. Why wouldn’t I?”
Emboldened by her reply, Martin asked, “What is the freakiest thing that you have ever done?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he felt that he had little choice in the matter now that he had already given an answer.
“I once had sex with a guy while my boyfriend watched.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Martin found himself flinching. Now it all made sense. She was reminiscing and decided that she still had a few fantasies to get out of her system. He tried to look at her, but at that moment all he could think was that his wife had been a slut. There was a part of him that felt that was an unfair assignation, but his pride stung from her honesty. Then he had another thought: she had settled for him when they married. Clearly, he wasn’t even on a level to make her sexually happy, but she had gone through with it anyway. He could scarcely understand why she would do that, but even more, he was frightened by how this conversation would end. He wished he could rewind the clock and go back in time. At first, he thought about going back to before the conversation started, but then he realized it might be worth considering going back to a point before he proposed to her.
“Liz, I can’t do this. Any of this. I’m just not built that way. I can’t stand the idea of another guy inside of you. I can barely handle the idea of what your life was like before we met. Now I’m feeling strange knowing that you have all of these thoughts—urges—that I can’t help you with. Maybe this conversation was a bad idea.”
She reached across the table and took his hands in hers. “I would never make you do anything that you didn’t want to do. You come first, and I would never consider doing anything that would undo the marriage that we have built. Please understand that.” She paused, rubbing her thumbs over the backs of his hands. “When I thought about what you might say to my questions, a part of me thought that maybe you had thought about being with another woman. I asked myself how that made me feel. Yes, I was jealous. That’s the natural reaction. Dr. Blythe said that overcoming jealousy was the key to removing the shackles of our fears. I closed my eyes and imagined you having sex with another woman. I was angry for a while until I saw the pleasure in your face. That’s when I realized that I could get over my jealousy issues if it meant that it would make you happy.”
Martin shook his head. She had actually spent time thinking about him being with another woman? Could he have done the same? He doubted it, but he could feel something rumbling deep down in his subconscious: curiosity.
“So if I wanted to have sex with another woman, you would be okay with that?” Although he had not given the idea any thought prior to that moment, he couldn’t help scrolling through his mental database of women who had held their gazes at him a bit too long. If he were another man, he would have already exploited his options, but he was determined to make his marriage work and prove his parents’ dissolution a non sequitur in his own life.
“Yes, I would. But would you be okay with me being with another man?”
Martin chewed on the inner wall of his cheek, his nerves abuzz with discomfort. “What if you got turned out?” He hated to even acknowledge the possibility, but he was a man. How could he not?
“I’m in love with you. You are my addiction. No man can change that,” she answered.
“What if he’s, you know, more endowed?”
“What if the woman you wanted to be with had larger breasts than mine?”
“Breasts and penises are two totally different things.” His formality didn’t escape Liz’s attention.
“So what if I fucked a guy whose dick is bigger than yours? Your dick is perfect for me. Sex can’t trump how I feel about you.”
She had never referred to his penis as a “dick” before, and rather than be repulsed by her language, he was actually turned on—but was he turned on enough to consider any of the things she was proposing? He didn’t think so.
“Will this keep you from leaving me?” he asked.
“I told you that I’d never leave you—regardless of what you decided.”
Martin stared at his wife, his eyes sweeping slowly from her hair down to her sweet, angelic face, down to her neck and, eventually, her breasts. He imagined another man’s hand cupped around one of them as he plunged himself into her, his other hand gripping her round ass firmly. His stomach bubbled, but he forced himself to not look away. Was it really as simple as getting over your jealousy issues?
“Can I see Dr. Blythe’s book?”
“Sure. Hold on and I’ll get it for you.”
As she rose from the table, Martin called out to her, “I’m not saying that I want to go through with this. I just figured I’d at least take a look at the book.”
“That’s fine. I understand.”
When Liz returned with the book, placing it next to his uneaten food, he took her hand. “Baby,” he said, “how did we end up here?”
“Marriage is a journey,” she responded. “A lot can happen between taking vows and staring off into the sunset as grandparents.”
He wasn’t sure if this was Liz’s own wisdom or something she picked up from Dr. Blythe’s book.
As he ran his fingers along the cover of the book, he looked longingly at Liz. Was it accurate to say that if he loved her, he would open it and read it? He didn’t know. But looking into her eyes, he knew that he was going to do something that might have seemed a given with any other married couple, but was revolutionary as far as he was concerned: he was going to give his wife the benefit of the doubt.
Other Books By Ran Walker
B-Sides and Remixes
30 Love: A Novel
Mojo’s Guitar: A Novel/(Il était une fois Morris Jones)
Afro Nerd in Love: A Novella
The Keys of My Soul: A Novel
The Race of Races: A Novel
The Illest: A Novella
Bessie, Bop, or Bach: Collected Stories
Four Floors (with Sabin Prentis)
Black Hand Side: Stories
White Pages: A Novel
She Lives in My Lap
Reverb
Work-In-Progress
Daykeeper
Most of My Heroes Don’t Appear On No Stamps
Portable Black Magic
About the Author
Ran Walker is the winner of the 2019 National Indie Author of the Year Award (selected by judges from Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, IngramSpark, St. Martin's Press, and Writer's Digest), the 2019 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Best Fiction Ebook Award, and the 2018 Virginia Indie Author Project Award for Adult Fiction. He is also the recipient of both a 2005 Mississippi Arts Commission/NEA artist grant and a 2006 artist mini-grant. He served as an Artist-in-Residence with the Mississippi Arts Commission in 2006. Additionally, he is a past participant in the Hurston-Wright Writers Week Workshop and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Callaloo Writers Workshop. He teaches creative writing at Hampton University and lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
Ran Walker, The Illest
