inklings long ago?
I want to call my mom, cry on her shoulder, and feel the sacred comfort of motherly advice, but I know that’s not what I’d get if I called home. I know Mother and Daddy’ll join forces and in unison chime: “ We told yo u so.”
My folks have despised Garrett from the first day they met him. They were not at all happy about my even talking about marriage at twenty-one, much less to Garrett Nelson, whom they found arrogant, rude, and downright shady. They wouldn’t be at all surprised if Garrett hurt me.
“That Garrett is just so full of his wee little self!” Mother has been on an anti-Garrett campaign ever since he basically told her and Daddy to mind their own business and butt out of our marriage. To my folks, Garrett might as well have told them to go to hell.
All of this family drama still comes as a tremendous shock to me. I thought for sure my folks would love Garrett. After all, he came from “good stock.” The Nelsons were featured on the cover of a major national white magazine back in the 1950s as one of the first black families to integrate the upper-middle-class, traditionally white Shaker Heights community of Ohio. Garrett’s dad was a lawyer and his mom a schoolteacher, who baked big, fat Virginia hams just so her three beautiful black preppy sons could have fresh ham-and-cheese sandwiches with homemade potato chips after their football practices.
His little sister was my age and the only black girl I ever knew named Jenny. She was a daddy’s girl who spoke in a baby voice and craved constant attention. Jenny would have normally gotten on my last nerve—in fact, under any other circumstance, I would have just downright despised the girl—but I desperately wanted to be a part of her family. So I bit my lip, behaved myself, and worked harder to get along.
The Nelsons were a beautiful family. Garrett’s dad adored me and would spend hours holding court in the kitchen of their ranch-style suburban home, acting out his latest joke or sharing another one of his many golf adventures. He would have me doubled over with laughter, while Mrs. Nelson smiled on, her gregarious husband’s stories getting longer and more elaborate with each telling.
Thanksgiving at the Nelson home was amazing. As many as thirty family members lovingly gathered around one long, exquisitely set table full of delicious food, including as many as three turkeys—and of course, a nice, fat, honey-baked ham. I was amazed at how much unconditional love, laughter, joy, and unyielding support was around that table. When Garrett and I announced our engagement, they all clapped and whooped and hollered. They jumped up and down. They hugged and kissed us and told us how happy they were. I never ever wanted to lose that feeling of unconditional love and acceptance. Not ever.
Yet on this bright spring morning, I apparently have.
It’s nine in the morning, and Garrett will be getting off the ABC news desk soon. We have to talk—today. I cannot pretend any longer. I pick up my work phone, fingers trembling and cold, and begin punching in Garrett’s number, nervous and still not sure what to say.
“Yeah, Nelson.” His abrupt I-am-very-busy-and-even-more-important news voice snares the phone.
“Garrett?” My voice does not sound like my own.
“Hey, baby, what’s up?”
I feel like an interruption. “I … we … we need to talk, Garrett. Can we talk when I get home?”
“What’s wrong?”
I can’t get the words out of my mouth. It hurts too much to speak. “We just need to talk.” There’s silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you there?” I ask.
“Yeah … I’m still here … I’ll see if I can go in late tonight so I can spend some time with you, okay?”
“I’d appreciate that, Garrett.”
We sound like two people who don’t even know each other, not the loving couple we used to be. Not the two people who met the first day of journalism school in 1980 and watched their