His Last Wife Read online

  “And what were you going to do if I did? Beat him up?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “And what if there’s some new buster every night?”

  “Then I’ll fight every night.” Ernest kissed Val on the forehead, like she was something precious, and tears she didn’t expect and couldn’t control fell out of her eyes.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said, “about me.” Her voice quivered in anxiety.

  “You bring more busters here and you’ll see how serious I am,” Ernest said. He then swept Val off of her feet and carried her to bed for restful sleeping.

  Mama Fee, of course, saw this from her perch.

  Chapter 9

  Thirjane wasn’t resting easy. Though she’d taken a little Prozac, had her evening sip as she watched the news, had lain in bed and closed her eyes, her sleep was less than restful.

  Somewhere between real life and a real nightmare, Thirjane tossed and turned under her sheets, reliving a past she wanted to forget.

  From his bedroom down the hallway, Tyrian could hear her crying, “No! No!” and “Stop! Stop!” He sat up and thought to go and wake his grandmother, but he’d done it before and gotten two licks on his backside for getting out of bed without permission. So, instead he did what had become a kind of directionless hobby with his grandmother’s odd actions: He climbed out of bed, grabbed his iPad, and went to sit outside of her bedroom to record the strange cries. But what he couldn’t record were the heartbreaking memories his grandmother was forced to visit in a lifelike retelling of her history with his mother.

  “I’m so sorry, Zachary, but my Kerry can no longer chat with you. We have to leave. Come along, dear.” A young Thirjane was sliding on her overly prissy day gloves and beckoning for Kerry to gather her things and follow her out of the Fullerton house, just doors away from their summer home in Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard. Kerry, just seven or eight at the time, had accompanied her to an afternoon tea at the Fullertons’. Mrs. Olivia Fullerton was the wife of a respected surgeon from Old Westbury, New York, whose family had been vacationing with Thirjane’s family in the Bluff before Labor Day weekend for as long as either family could remember. While Olivia was a newbie to the group and had none of the legacy of either the Fullerton or Jackson clans, her marriage to the good doctor, with his lineage and impeccable training, made her at least acceptable in the vacation enclave, where the ilk of Martin and Coretta King and later Bill and Camille Cosby made friends with other black elite and, more importantly, new family ties. As Thirjane’s mother had told her, “A woman ought to marry above her station, Janie. Never equal. Never less.” As such, when the Fullertons announced that they were expecting a boy when Thirjane and her husband were expecting a girl, Thirjane couldn’t have been happier. She delighted at the idea of connecting her Kerry with their Zachary. Of course, he’d go to Morehouse when Kerry was studying at Spelman. He’d follow in his father’s footsteps and go to Morehouse Medical School, become a surgeon, and then marry her daughter. The teas the women had were to casually bring their children together as friends first and then, over the years, through strong suggestion and careful planning, a romance would develop that would lead to a ring and a wedding at the Summer White House.

  This sensational scenario came to a hard halt that afternoon, when Thirjane had to so expeditiously fetch her daughter from the Fullertons’ parlor and escape at once. Just seconds before, Thirjane had been sipping Darjeeling on the back porch with Olivia. The two were laughing and talking about the ways of their growing children, when Olivia had consumed just a little too much brandy in her tea and asked if she could open up to Thirjane—who accepted such an invitation, knowing full well the woman was drunk and probably about to tell a secret she should never tell another soul—especially not in the Bluffs. But, Thirjane wasn’t one to pass on the opportunity to hear juicy gossip, so she assured Olivia of her sincere secrecy and listened up. Olivia Fullerton was having an affair. She’d been sleeping with the gardener. She blamed the blues of being a housewife in boring Long Island and an afternoon brandy habit. She was certain her husband either knew or was about to figure it out. She didn’t know if she could stop—if she wanted to stop. She wanted Thirjane’s advice.

  On the surface, Thirjane was a pillar of support for her Bluff buddy, but inside, the little Janie who’d been coached by her mother never to involve herself in such activities that could ruin not only the family’s name, but also the chances of good connections moving forward, was screaming that she needed to get herself and her daughter out of that house as soon as possible. The Fullerton ship was about to sink and she wasn’t going to allow her child to go down with it. Marry some Zachary Fullerton who’d soon be from a broken home and raised by a single, pedigree-free, drinking mother.

  Thirjane nearly dragged Kerry out of the house.

  “Why do we have to leave now? Zachary and I were having fun,” Kerry said, pouting, as they made the short walk back to their smallish bungalow.

  “Never mind that boy. You’ll never see him again, girl, so don’t ask me another word about him,” Thirjane said in her strict voice that was pretty much the same as her relaxed voice.

  “But he’s my friend. My only friend in the Bluffs. Why won’t I see him again?”

  “I said, don’t ask me about him. Now, that’s it. You are never to talk to him again. You hear me?” Thirjane stopped and turned to Kerry. “Do you understand?”

  “But he’s my friend. He’s my—”

  Thirjane stopped Kerry’s back talk with the back side of her right hand up against the little girl’s soft lips.

  She pointed her index finger between Kerry’s eyes.

  “You bring that boy up again and I’ll tell your father. You hear? You don’t understand it now, but he is not good enough for you. He never will be. One day your mama will find a husband for you and he will be suitable and he will be perfect. Do you understand?”

  “But he’s my—”

  Thirjane cut in with, “Answer me yes or no, girl, or I swear I’ll spank your behind right here, right now.”

  A spring of tears erupted from Kerry’s eyes and she sobbed out, “Yes, ma’am,” like a good Southern child.

  Thirjane grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her the rest of the way home.

  This history was followed by similar scenes—boys Kerry wanted to love, friends Kerry wanted to make, places Kerry wanted to go, things Kerry wanted to know—all squashed with the heavy hand of a mother who did the honors in the name of love.

  “I love him, Mama. And he loves me.” This was Kerry speaking more than ten years after the situation in the Bluffs. Then she was graduating from Spelman and she’d met some boy who was on scholarship at Morehouse. Thirjane had met the boy a few times. He was rather dark. Didn’t know which forks to use and spit in her begonias.

  “I can’t believe you said yes to this man and accepted this ring—without speaking to me first.” Thirjane looked at the sad little ring and decided that there was no way she’d let her child go showing that thing to her people around town.

  “What is there to talk about? We’re getting married.”

  “He’s not good enough for you, Kerry Ann. And you don’t understand what I’m talking about now, but someday you will. He’s going to bring you down. This man is going to ruin you; ruin us—this family—our legacy. You’re my only child. Please!”

  Kerry rolled her eyes like her mother didn’t know anything about anything.

  “Mama, please stop. You’ve been telling me that since you forbade me to talk to Zachary Fullerton when I was eight years old. And he’s on his way to medical school.”

  “Well, why don’t you call him up then? This Jamison isn’t going to medical school.”

  “That’s because he’s staying here with me until I can get into school. And he wants to marry me.”

  “This is going to be the biggest mistake of your life, girl. I’m telling you. Listen to your mother. I know best. That boy
isn’t from anything and he’s never going to have anything. You’re going to struggle and struggle just to have a little bit, just to keep up. You will have to work. You will have to clean. You will have to pretend it’s all okay, but it won’t be. It’s going to be hard as hell because you married down and you married the wrong man. And I am not going to help,” Thirjane said so nastily her words dug into Kerry’s tear ducts and produced the crying Thirjane was seeking. “I will not let that nigga have a dime of my husband’s money!”

  If the situation in the Bluffs with the Fullertons set the tempo for the dream, then this later scene about Jamison was the chorus and so many other similar situations filled in the rest of the brain noise that had Thirjane tossing and turning in bed. Soon she was sweating and popped up in the bed like a mummy waking during the zombie apocalypse. She looked around, surprised at her surroundings. It was like she’d been returned to the waking world, with all of her worries packed on her shoulders ten times heavier.

  When her feet hit the floor on the side of her bed, Tyrian was about to get up and run back to his bed, but he sat for a minute and kept his recording going.

  In the bedroom, his grandmother was walking around, talking to herself. He held the iPad to the door to capture the angry mumbles and fear-tinged declarations.

  “He was ruining everything! Everything! I worked so hard. Gave her everything! What was I supposed to do, just sit by and watch him hurt my baby? Not again! Not my baby!”

  Tyrian dropped the iPad and pressed his ear against the door. He couldn’t tell if the sounds were coming from his grandmother or the television, which she sometimes left on at night when she’d gone to bed.

  But then there was: “Jamison was never right for her. I told her. Why couldn’t she listen to me? Why? If she’d listened to me, none of this would’ve happened. I never would’ve done this!”

  What had she done? What? Tyrian pressed his head closer to the door and wondered this. Why was she talking about his father? She never liked him. Tyrian knew that and quickly learned when he was just a baby and noticed just by watching the two that whenever his father walked into a room, his grandmother walked out. And if she stayed, soon there would be arguing.

  On the other side of the door, Thirjane was standing in the middle of her bedroom beneath an antique Tiffany light fixture. She was wearing a simple, white cotton nightgown and her long, silver hair had slipped from beneath her nightcap and was hanging down her back. She wrapped her arms around her waist like she was holding some agony down in the lower part of body and was afraid to let go, or else it would rise and rise and drown her as it filled the rest of her.

  “Why, God? Why?” She shook and looked up at the ceiling. She kept imagining Kerry’s sad eyes that afternoon in the Bluffs. “No! No! No!”

  Something got into her and she rushed to the little baby blue bathroom in her bedroom, flipped the light switch, and planted herself in front of the mirror.

  She squinted at her reflection. At the drama of the years in lines beneath her eyes and sagging cheeks. Where was the tight chin and piercing eyes that used to send people into fear and trembling? That chief of chiefs, who’d walk into a room and put everyone into a corner? She’d lost her power day by day when she wasn’t looking. Every ounce of it. And her child was sitting in jail and there was nothing she could do about it. All she ever wanted for that little girl was for Kerry to be better than her. Happier, maybe. Softer. To have everything and not have to fight. Not to have to enter into the world with boxing gloves on every single day.

  “Kerry!” Thirjane cried at her reflection. “Kerry!”

  And then seconds later she was sitting on the edge of her bed with an ivory house phone pressed to her ear.

  “In the morning, I’m going to turn myself in,” she got out through sniffles. “I’m going to turn myself in, so my child can go free. I did this. I can’t stand by and watch Kerry suffer because of it.”

  “No need, Mrs. Jackson,” an ominous male voice said on the other end. “The DA is making a statement in the morning. He’s releasing her.”

  “What? What? Why?”

  “Change of heart, it seems.”

  Thirjane hung up the phone and fell to her knees in prayer.

  In the morning, she’d find Tyrian asleep on the floor, cradling his iPad in front of her bedroom door.

  Part 2

  Chapter 10

  “While recent rumors tell a tale that Jamison Taylor is alive and working with underground militant groups in Harlem, New York—some even claiming to have spotted the Atlanta mayor who faked his death to escape a CIA plot to have him murdered—reliable sources who preferred not to have their identities revealed, due to government agents working undercover in the publishing industry, say Taylor has actually been connected with the growing African Liberation Army camp in Cuba, where he now resides.”

  Kerry read this passage from a blog aloud. She was sitting at one of the computer terminals in the library at the jail. Garcia-Bell was seated beside her, hunched over and listening.

  Kerry scrolled down the screen and read some more, before turning to Garcia-Bell for a response.

  Kerry’s eyes were so big and excited. This was a different Kerry than the one Garcia-Bell had met when she shuffled into the jail looking like she’d just landed in hell.

  “So, what do you think?” Kerry asked, pushing for some confirmation from Garcia-Bell.

  “I don’t know. It sounds like all the other ones. Same thing. I don’t know,” Garcia-Bell said, trying to sound even and not dedicated to believing or disbelieving what Kerry had read.

  Kerry had been reading those blogs for days since she talked to Auset on the jail yard. While she’d started a skeptic and claimed she was just looking into it to see what Auset was talking about, after a while it seemed like Kerry believed some of the stuff—and Garcia-Bell . . . well, she didn’t.

  “I found this site this morning. Some guy who lives in Atlanta publishes it. He says he has contacts with ALA,” Kerry said, clicking to the about the author tab on the blog. She’d started using the lingo and jargon writers used on all of the sites and her eyes popped with enthusiasm that also registered in her voice.

  She’d been clicking from site to site for almost two hours, dragging Garcia-Bell through a story that began with the CIA plotting to kill Jamison because he was the next perceived leader of young black males seeking success in the South, him connecting with whatever militant group could free him from the ill-fated plot, faking his death, and fleeing to wherever any blog would claim.

  “What’s the ALA?” Garcia-Bell asked.

  “The African Liberation Army. It’s in Cuba—well, that’s where it’s based, but there are camps everywhere,” Kerry explained and then she read lines from the author’s biography. “Baba Seti. Founder of the Fihankra Center in the West End.” She looked at Garcia-Bell. “Well?”

  “Well? What?”

  “What do you think? I mean, he sounds very confident.”

  “Think about what, Kerry?”

  “Do you think he knows—like, about Jamison?”

  “What about him?” Garcia-Bell was trying to push Kerry, so she could hear how crazy she sounded even considering what she’d read on some blog. Kerry frowned at Garcia-Bell like she’d missed something and lowered her head down to Garcia-Bell’s level to whisper as if anyone was listening: “If he’s alive?”

  Garcia-Bell looked away.

  “What?” Kerry asked. “What?”

  “I don’t know. I think—” Garcia-Bell paused and looked down to avoid the hope in Kerry’s eyes. “I think it’s just like all the others. The other conspiracy theory—”

  “Conspiracy theory?” Kerry stopped her with an accusatory tone.

  “Yes.” Garcia-Bell looked up and into Kerry’s eyes. “I do. All of it is and I don’t know why you’re reading this stuff,” she said. “No, I guess I do. I guess I do know why, but you can’t believe it. You said it yourself. You saw it happen. You were th
ere. Right?”

  “I was, but what if I didn’t see what I think I saw?” Kerry asked. “What if what I saw was what Jamison wanted me to see and—I don’t—he’s . . .” Kerry looked off to consider the seduction of her frazzled ideas. “He’s alive.”

  Kerry released the computer mouse and kind of sulked at her words.

  “He’s alive and you’re in jail? You said he loved you. And you think he’s in Cuba. So, he’s over there and he knows the woman he loves is in jail for killing him? That doesn’t even sound right. None of it does. It sounds crazy. Too far out there, you know?”

  “Maybe he had to do it. And he knows I’m in jail, but he’s preparing to come and get me. To get me out,” Kerry said.

  Garcia-Bell wanted to shake Kerry and ask her if she heard herself. But she didn’t and she couldn’t. She’d actually seen this inside before. Women who’d gone delusional or half-crazy about everything going on outside once they were locked up. And it was usually about men, all to explain why this or that had happened or wasn’t happening. Prostitutes who believed their pimps loved them and hadn’t come to bail them out because they were “teaching” her a lesson. Girlfriends locked up for crimes committed by their drug-dealing boyfriends, all taking the rap for their lovers, claiming they’d get the easier sentence and do the time in the name of love. But Kerry, how was she falling for this? What was with this sudden change?

  She thought to tell Kerry all about the other women and what the bars could do to the desperate mind, but she didn’t think it would do Kerry any good. Maybe these theories could actually help Kerry with her time. Put some bandages over her broken heart.

  “Baba Seti?”

  Garcia-Bell and Kerry turned to find Auset standing behind them, reading the words on the computer screen over their shoulders.

  Garcia-Bell rolled her eyes instantly.