His First Wife Read online

  I know you really don’t want to hear all of this, but I’m tired of keeping it to myself. I think we’re meant to be together. I know you know it too. You’re just being a husband out of obligation and I understand that. But I want you to know that I’ll always be here waiting for you. I feel crazy even saying that, but it really is how I feel. I need to be honest with myself right now. There’s no other man for me.

  I have been alone and lonely for a long time. Even when I was married, I felt alone. I always thought there had to be someone else out there for me. Something else. When I met you, I figured I’d found it. Not just because of who you are, but what you make me want to be. How you make me feel like being more than what I am. Now that you’re gone, refusing to even return my e-mails, I feel alone again and I really don’t know how I’m going to find my way out. I’m afraid to think of what I might do. But I’m a woman who has nothing. I can’t even say that to anyone else. And it hurts me to even write it. And here I am crying again over a man that doesn’t even want to be with me . . .

  Turkey

  The morning after Jamison found his way back to our bed, we woke up to a full Southern breakfast, courtesy of Aunt Luchie. Homemade biscuits, gravy, eggs, bacon, grits . . . There was so much food on the table, I thought it was already Thanksgiving. Aunt Luchie, Jamison, and I sat at the table as Tyrian rocked in a swing Isabella had set up in the kitchen. It was the first time we were eating as a family, and while we were just making small talk, it felt so good to be in that space. Like we were whole for the first time in a long time.

  When we finished eating, Jamison got up from the table and kissed Tyrian and me on the cheek before heading to work. He did it methodically, so practiced, as if it was something he’d been doing or thinking of doing every morning for his entire life.

  “Bye babies,” he said, exiting with a hopeful smile on his face. I didn’t respond. I just smiled back and nodded.

  “Wow, that was great,” I said to Aunt Luchie. I got up from the table and began helping her put the dishes away.

  “Thank you, baby. I thought we could all use a little something extra on our stomachs this morning,” she said. “I think Georgia saw its first real winter night last night. It was so cold.”

  Unlike my mother, Aunt Luchie didn’t see it as being necessary to be completely dressed before you sat down at the breakfast table. She was wearing a brown silk bathrobe and had a colorful scarf on her head. She looked lovely, even that early in the morning, but I don’t think I ever saw my mother at the breakfast table with something covering her head. She hated head scarves. Said they only had a place in the bedroom and made us look like Aunt Jemimas. If it wasn’t for the pictures, I’d swear my mother and Aunt Luchie were raised by different people.

  “Yeah, it sure was cold,” I said.

  “I had to get an extra blanket out of the closet.”

  “Oh, you could’ve turned up the central air,” I said.

  “No sense wasting money now. You and Jamison have enough to worry about.” Aunt Luchie poured herself a cup of coffee and went back to the table. I set the dishes in the sink so Isabella could load the dishwasher later.

  “So how did your talk go last night?” she went on. “I saw that Jamison wasn’t in the guestroom this morning.”

  “Well, we talked a bit more before we went to sleep,” I said. “We just agreed to start talking more and we both need to make some major changes.” I got my cup of coffee and as I sat down across the table from Aunt Luchie, I peeked at Tyrian to see that he was sitting in his swing asleep.

  “That’s good,” she said. “You two do need to take it slow. But don’t stop communicating. When the ear doesn’t hear the news, it tends to make up the news.”

  “What?” I laughed at her saying.

  “Well, if your husband isn’t telling you what’s going on, you’ll make it up,” she said firmly.

  “You’re right,” I said remembering how Jamison’s silence was what had put me off in the first place. “Oh, and I agreed to have Thanksgiving dinner here next week.”

  “Really?” Aunt Luchie looked stunned but happy. Jamison hadn’t attempted to bring our families together completely since the wedding. That was over ten years ago now.

  “He’s always wanted to have a big Thanksgiving here in this house.”

  “Well, it’s a house made for gathering family.”

  “I’m not excited about having to entertain his mother, but if it’ll help us get through this, I’ll do it.”

  “So, when are you going shopping?” she asked.

  “For a dress?”

  “For food, child.”

  “Oh, I don’t cook. They’ll bring food and Jamison is doing some of it,” I said. “And I’m ordering some pies.”

  “What?” Aunt Luchie withdrew. “I know you’re not going to let a bunch of women come into your house with food to feed your family. You aren’t sick!”

  “But I can’t cook.”

  “Well, today you start.”

  “No, you have no idea how bad I am,” I said, laughing. “And we don’t have enough time.”

  “Nonsense.” Aunt Luchie picked up a sheet of paper and a pen that was sitting by the phone. “I’m going to show you how to make your own pies. Sweet potato pies. And you’ll make dressing on your own too.”

  “What? I can’t!”

  “You can try,” she said, writing. “Can’t you?”

  It was a charge. A charge from my oldest aunt who never failed at being there to defend and take care of me—even when my mother was acting crazy.

  “Fine,” I said under my breath.

  “Good. Now here’s the list of things I’ll need you to get from the store.” She slid the paper over to me.

  “Oh no, I’ll have Isabella get the stuff for me. We can leave the list on the counter,” I said, realizing Isabella had been a ghost all morning.

  “Oh, she went home,” Aunt Luchie said quickly.

  “Home?”

  “Yeah, I sent her home. There wasn’t nothing for her to do. I got tired of watching her sit around here looking simple, so I told her to go home.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until you call her and tell her she has her job back.”

  I wanted to believe she was faking or playing a joke, but I knew by her tone that Aunt Luchie was telling the truth. I couldn’t believe it. How could she just send my maid home?

  “Why would you do that?” I asked, trying to remain calm. Now it was clear that my mother and Aunt Luchie did indeed have the same parents. Only these two could pry into other people’s lives without so much as a thought.

  “I didn’t get why that girl was here in the first place.”

  “I needed her to help me keep the house clean and cook. That’s what she was doing here,” I said.

  “Keep the house clean while you do what?”

  “I do a lot,” I said, surprised Aunt Luchie was making me defend myself. She’d had a maid her entire life.

  “Like what?”

  “Help Jamison.”

  “He has an assistant. Two from what I can tell.”

  “Well, there are some things they don’t know.”

  “Please,” she said dismissively. “What else?”

  “I also have to keep the house in order. I decorate and I have to take care of Tyrian.”

  “You have had that girl here for three years. Tyrian is a little baby. He doesn’t need much. And it isn’t like you’re a working woman.”

  “So I need to be a working woman now?”

  “Kerry, you need to be doing something. And from how it looks, you’re doing nothing.”

  “You sound like Jamison now,” I said. His words were still stinging me.

  “What happened to your dreams? You were going to med school. What happened to that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know . . . I guess I just didn’t go,” I said simply. But I knew it wasn’t that simple. Jamison was right. Something had happened to me, but I sti
ll wasn’t sure what it was. “I guess I just didn’t care about it anymore. I didn’t want to do it.”

  “Well, what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” I was irritated now. Was this suddenly the question of the week or something? “Look, what I do has nothing to do with Isabella’s work here. It’s just how it is. And Jamison approves of it. He likes having her around.”

  “And that’s exactly my point,” Aunt Luchie said. “Why would you want some young girl walking around your house, taking care of all the things the lady of the house should do, right in her husband’s face. That woman was feeding, looking after, and entertaining your husband, and you were walking around here like you didn’t have anything to do.”

  “But she just makes things easier for us.”

  “She could make things really easy for you if she steals your husband.”

  “She couldn’t.” I laughed. “He doesn’t see her like that.”

  “Hum . . .” She exhaled. “You can say what you will, but I know love and how to break it up. And a sure way to do it is to have another woman caring for your husband. Jamison works hard to give you all of these things you have and all you do is write a check for someone else to pay him back.”

  “My marriage isn’t about favors. I don’t have to earn Jamison’s love,” I said. “I don’t have to pay him back for what he does for me.”

  “No, baby, you don’t have to do anything in life. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

  A couple of frowns later, I was walking around the supermarket looking for the things I needed to make sweet potato pie. I hadn’t been in a grocery store in so long it was laughable. I wanted so badly to call Marcy and make her guess where I was, but I hadn’t spoken with her since the party. She came over with Damien to see the baby when he came home, but I stayed upstairs. I didn’t understand how she could do what she’d done. I’d always been there for her, and all I asked was that she be there for me in confidence. That confidence didn’t include spreading my business. It hurt so much to be without her, to go through this whole thing with Jamison without a friend by my side, but I couldn’t let her hurt me again.

  A lot had changed since I’d walked the aisles at the grocery store; it seemed more like a night club now. Men and women were walking up and down the aisles, overly dressed and smiling at each other as they pretended to shop. But it was clear they were there to pick up people. No more elevator music; they were playing hip-hop and there were these little food sample stations where people stood and chatted as if they were at a cocktail party.

  Without Tyrian for the first time since he was born, I was sad to be away from him, but happy to see that none of the men in the market could tell I was a new mother. They were giving me the eye and one guy even offered to push my cart. As usual, I simply flashed my wedding ring and said no. “He’s a lucky man,” he said, stepping back. “I sure do envy him. And I’m willing to share.”

  I was shocked by how forward this man was at implying that we have an affair. After that encounter I started looking more closely at all of the people I saw mingling at the food sample tables and I noticed that many of the women had on wedding rings, but the men didn’t. But there they were, chatting and laughing as if they were hooking up at a single’s club. Was that how it happened? Did people just know what the affair was before it even began? Marcy said the men she knew never even mentioned her marriage. It was just known and respected. I didn’t want to start a situation like that. But I also wondered if I could. Could I have a discreet affair by the frozen peas?

  Walking out of the grocery store with a cart full of some things on the list and a bunch of things that weren’t—I’d forgotten all about the ice cream aisle . . . and the potato chip aisle too. I felt a bit more alive than I had in the past few weeks. It was great being a mother, and I missed Tyrian dearly—I wondered what he was doing every second—but it was also nice to see that the world was still going on around me. To breathe in a space as a woman alone with no attachments. No one who wanted anything from me. There was no one crying or needing to be fed. Now I fully understood why so many mothers wanted to go to the grocery store alone.

  After placing the bags into the back of the car, I was about to push the shopping cart back to the store when a certain matted cocker spaniel I’d seen before was marching toward me. The only thing was that just like the first time, this little guy was stapled to a skull. It was McKenzie from the jail, pushing a row of shopping carts through the lot. My first instinct was to push the cart away and pretend I didn’t see her, but she was heading right to me and a part of me just couldn’t believe I was seeing her.

  “I got that cart, mama,” she said. She was obviously tired and while I hadn’t noticed it at the jail, she was pregnant. Only now, her stomach was sticking out much farther.

  “Oh, no . . .” I said, holding the cart.

  What was she doing pushing carts in her condition? From the looks of it, she was at least seven months.

  “I got to keep these carts out the lot,” she said. “I ain’t doing you no favor; I can push it myself. They pay me to.”

  “Oh, I know.... I need the exercise,” I said.

  “Suit yourself. But I asked.”

  She went on, pushing the rest of the carts to the store. It was obvious she didn’t know who I was.

  “McKenzie,” I called after daring myself.

  She stopped and turned, her stomach lightly brushing the cart in front of her. She looked like she was sure I was calling her name by mistake. Maybe I was talking to someone else.

  “McKenzie,” I said again.

  “You calling me?” She pointed a broken nail toward her heart.

  “Yeah, I’m Kerry. We know each other.” I listened to how ridiculous I sounded and wished I’d just gotten into my car.

  “We know each other?” She stepped toward me. “From where?”

  “Well, we . . . Um . . .” Suddenly I was very aware of all of the things I had surrounding me: my Ferragamo bag, Vittadini shoes, the Benz, Chanel perfume. Yes, we were in jail together, but we didn’t know each other. Not by a long shot.

  “That’s you girl?” she said suddenly, the cocker spaniel shaking from surprise with each syllable. “From the—”

  “Jail,” we said together.

  “Oh my God,” she said again. She looked like she wanted to hug me. I felt like I wanted to do the same, but there were things between us. “The mad sister that beat her husband’s ass!”

  “Yeah, that’s me.” I laughed at how she’d put it.

  “So how you doing? Ya’ll back tight now? You and your man?”

  “Um . . . kind of,” I replied. “I guess so.” I felt bad for admitting that. Like I’d sold out on the “mad sister” she’d called me.

  “Mama, please, you ain’t got to apologize for being back with him,” she said flatly. “Shit, I ain’t never know a woman that went upside her man’s head that didn’t go back to him.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “So how are you?” I looked at her stomach. “I hadn’t noticed that you were pregnant.”

  “Yeah, I’m about to have a baby,” she said proudly. “It’s gonna be a girl. That’s why I’m out here.” She rubbed her stomach. “I got to make some changes before this one comes. I promised myself and my other kids that. No more out in the streets for me. I’m too old for that. I got to get clean and make some money so I can get a good doctor and a nice place to live.”

  “The state can’t help you with that?” I asked. There were plenty of programs that could help her and get her out of the parking lot, pushing carts when she should have been somewhere off her feet.

  “Please, the state don’t do nothing,” she said. “I’m tired of that shit—the lists and lines and folks that don’t care nothing about you. See, you ain’t got no money and the doctors and people with Section 8 know ’cause you working with the state. So they treat you like garbage. And ain’t nobody in the welfare gonna stop
them from doing it. Because they all got degrees and think they better than us. I ain’t stupid. I know fake shit when I see it. I got to make my own way.”

  I couldn’t say anything. These were all things I’d heard before, but never from someone who was directly affected.

  “So there’s no one who can help you?” I asked.

  “Not no one I want to,” she said. “There’s my mother, but she got her own problems, and my child’s father—I don’t want nothing from him. That’s how I was locked up before, fooling with him turning me out in the street . . . and he knew I was pregnant. No, I can’t ask nobody for help. I think maybe it’s time I help myself. I know this money ain’t gonna be enough to get us by, but it’s enough for me to make sure my baby is born in a nice hospital and not get no skin rash before she come home. Then after she come, I got to work harder.”

  “McKenzie,” a man called from the front of the store.

  “Damn, he getting on my nerves,” she said, stomping her foot on the pavement. “I got to get back to work.”

  “Okay,” I said, opening my wallet. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I didn’t have any cash to give her and I had a feeling she wouldn’t take it anyway. I pulled one of my old cards from when I used to work with Jamison and handed it to her. “You can contact me if you need to. I may, well, my husband might, have some work you can do for him.”

  “Really?” She took the card and a smile blossomed on her face. The spaniel shook accordingly.

  “Yeah, I can’t promise anything, but we may be able to help.” I hoped what I was saying sounded as sincere as it felt. I didn’t know how I would help McKenzie, but I wanted to.

  She waved and turned, pushing the shopping carts along with her as I got into my cozy car and headed to my cozy house where everything was going to be exactly as it had been when I left it. I didn’t have to worry about anyone taking care of me. Even if Jamison left me and I didn’t work another day in my life, I didn’t have to worry about anything.