His First Wife Page 9

  “It’s a boy, right?” Milicent asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh, I wish it was a girl . . .” she moaned.

  “We all want girls, but we all get boys,” Piper said laughing with the other ladies readjusting their configuration around the two girls.

  “You didn’t introduce your friend,” I said.

  “Oh, this is Iris. She’s my new best friend.”

  The girls smiled.

  “Wonderful, how nice to meet you, Iris.” I shook her hand.

  “She has such beautiful blond hair,” one of the other women said. “Like wheat.”

  “Thank you.” Iris smiled and flicked her hair over her shoulders as Milicent looked on in silence. The sharp smile was fading from her face as the other women attended to Iris’s golden locks.

  “I wish my hair would perm this straight,” another woman said.

  “Please, there isn’t enough lye on this earth to relax your nappy hair that straight,” Piper said to another round of fake laughter. The wineglasses shifted from one hand to the other.

  “And Milicent has lovely hair, too,” I said to wash out their well-dated exchange. While Damien had soft, curly hair that begged to be played with, Marcy’s thick, short mane was what Milicent had inherited. I’d watched as Marcy brooded over Milicent’s head when she was a baby, praying it wouldn’t change from its newborn curly state to the tightly curled naps all these women seemed to despise. Marcy even pointed out the dark circles around Milicent’s fingertips and said they were even darker than hers. How could this be? She seemed to be asking. It reminded me of my mother.

  These conversations grew along with Milicent and it always annoyed me. She was beautiful and I didn’t want the same pain that separated me from others as a child to befall her.

  “There you are, Milicent!” Marcy said, rushing over. “Why didn’t you come find me? I need you to go upstairs to get changed for Daddy’s party.” She tugged at the little curls that had gathered around Milicent’s temples.

  “Okay,” Milicent said. She hugged her mother. “Can Iris stay over?”

  “Now is not the time,” Marcy hushed her. “You see Daddy is having company.”

  Milicent groaned.

  “Now go upstairs and clean up and I’ll be up in a while to talk about Iris staying over,” Marcy said.

  Milicent tossed her dance bag over her shoulder and headed toward the staircase I’d just walked down.

  “And do something to that head,” Marcy said sharply, turning back to us. “So, are you ladies having a great time?”

  “Everything is lovely,” Piper said. “And Damien seems to be having a great time.”

  We all turned to see Damien laughing it up with a crew of men I recognized from Morehouse. They’d all grown up. Boys who’d become doctors and lawyers and politicians.

  “You’re so lucky, Marce,” another woman, Mattie, said, that I knew from Marcy’s baby shower. “The perfect husband and marriage. What more could a girl want?”

  They all laughed and gazed at Damien like everyone in the circle didn’t know that Damien was less than loyal to Marcy. Gossip bubbled amongst these women like boiling water. If I knew, they knew. And if they knew, the entire last statement was nothing short of an admission that Damien’s behavior was perfectly acceptable to them. This was where and how I split in opinion with these women. I never expected nor accepted that my husband would cheat. It was not something I ever wanted to deal with. And this little circle they were building was not where I wanted to be.

  Marcy looked over to me and smiled.

  “He sure is the perfect husband,” she said. “If only I could be the perfect wife!”

  They all laughed.

  “I know,” Mattie said. “Now, that’s impossible. All they have to do is bring home the money, but we have to work and take care of our homes.”

  “And our children,” someone else said.

  “And have sex with them!” another woman said who was married to a councilman that had put on about seventy-five pounds during his election.

  Even I had to laugh at that one.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” I said as this rant went on. “On that note, I need a sip of water.” I backed away and headed toward the standing bartender Marcy had positioned temporarily in the dining room.

  “Sex?!” I heard someone say as I walked away. “Who’s having sex with them? I leave that to someone else.”

  The day was beginning to wear me down and I was feeling ready to head upstairs to get some sleep. The baby felt heavy in my stomach. He’d gone to sleep and while the night was young, he was taking me down with him.

  After chatting with a few of Jamison’s friends, I found myself sipping on a glass of water in the corner of the room. With no one to talk to, I was thinking about Jamison and feeling sad again.

  Piper appeared from out of nowhere. It was as if she sensed my tiredness and crept up beside me with ninja-like silence to catch me in a vulnerable state. If I ever forgot why I hated these women, Piper was always there to remind me.

  “Drink too much water and your water will break,” Piper said another one of her corny jokes.

  “Funny,” I pretended to laugh like most people.

  “My mother used to say that to me.”

  “Well, mine had a different philosophy,” I said, imagining what my mother would be sipping on at the moment.

  “You know, I wished I was invited to your shower,” she ambushed me. Piper was not one of my friends and there was no reason in the world for her to have been invited to the shower.

  “Well, it was a small gathering,” I responded.

  “Yeah, but sometimes I just wish we were closer.” She sighed and it was almost sincere. “Like if you’d pledged or something, we might be best friends. We have a lot more in common than you and Marcy. . . . Same family, same history.... We could have been close.” She paused, expecting me to respond, I supposed.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Oh, it just makes me so sad that I couldn’t be there for you right now . . . with Jamison,” she finally said.

  “Be there? Jamison?”

  “Yeah, like through all of this . . . that I couldn’t be your friend and comfort you.”

  “All of this?” I assumed she was talking about the baby, but the tone in her voice . . . Maybe it was the alcohol I smelled on her breath talking.

  “Jamison . . . and why he’s not here.”

  “Why he’s not here? And why isn’t he here?” My heart skipped a beat.

  “I know about the other woman,” Piper whispered, gritting her teeth.

  “Really,” I said to stop myself from saying a long list of other things. I didn’t want to give Piper that satisfaction. She was no shoulder to lean on. She was just as fake as the filler she’d had pumped into her lips. I began to block Piper out and searched the room for the source of this drama beside me. Marcy was the only person who could have told her.

  “No problem, Kerry,” I heard Piper say. “You know I have your back. I always will . . .”

  I felt the fire raging in my stomach. I held tight to my glass to stop my fist from meeting Piper’s jaw.

  “You’re a troll,” I heard myself say.

  “Excuse me?” Piper placed her hand over her heart.

  “You heard me,” I said rather loud. The people standing closest to us turned around. “What gives you the right to come over here and say something like that to me? Who do you think you are?”

  “Kerry!”

  “No, not Kerry to you. And if you really want to know why I didn’t join your sorority, it was because of simple women like you that I have no desire to associate myself with. In fact, that sorority would be better off without women like you. The world would be better off without you.” I threw what was left in my glass in her face. “Now that’s water under the bridge.” I slammed the glass on a table. “My mother used to say that to me.”

  I walked away as the crowd around us grew. Piper sto
od there gasping as if I’d had a full gallon of water in that little glass.

  “What did you do?” Marcy asked, pulling me into the kitchen.

  “Don’t you dare touch me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You told her? I can’t believe you did that! I just can’t believe you’re up to your old stuff, Marcy.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Don’t lie. Because I already know. There’s no way out of this one.” I was fuming.

  “I didn’t tell her.”

  “Why did you do it? Needed something to chat about on the phone?”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I just wanted to protect—”

  “You know what? Don’t say anything else.” I cut her off. “I don’t want to hear it. You did the same stuff in college and I’ve had enough. Just stay away from me.” I turned and headed up the staircase in the kitchen. It was time for me to go.

  “Kerry,” she called after me, but it was too late. This was a deep cut and I was in no condition to pretend to patch it up.

  After five minutes of fussing with the dress and realizing that it was going to take me much longer to get out of it than I needed to make a quick departure, I just grabbed my purse and headed for the staircase. I needed to get out of that house and away from Marcy before I broke down and cursed everyone out. How could she betray me like that? After all of these years and all of these promises she made never to share my business? She was supposed to be there for me. Especially at a time like this. Not out spreading my business.

  Struggling down the hallway, I stopped at Milicent’s door to say good night. I didn’t want her to have to suffer for her mother’s shortcomings. She was my godchild and I would always love her.

  I swung my purse over my shoulder and opened her bedroom door. And there, sitting in front of a mirror, was a Millicent with about a pound of caked-on white foundation on her face. Iris was beside her, applying red lipstick. Milicent looked like she was in whiteface. “Now we look just alike,” Iris said. Milicent saw me in the mirror and turned around quickly.

  “Aunt Kerry, we’re just playing,” she said, clearly knowing she was doing something wrong.

  “Take it off,” I said with a sense of urgency in my voice that was familiar. Painful. “Now!” I snarled, causing both Milicent and Iris to jump.

  “Kerry,” I heard Damien say from the other side of the door. Milicent looked at me with a fear in her eyes that begged me not to say anything.

  I hurried and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind me, just as Damien got close.

  “Everything okay?” he said, looking at the door.

  “Yeah, they’re watching television. I just . . . wanted to say good night and . . .”

  “Yeah, Marcy just told me what happened. I wanted to come and see if you were okay.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” I managed.

  “I’m really sorry about all of this. I spoke to Jamison and he feels real bad—”

  “I don’t want to hear that right now.” I stepped away from the door.

  “Come on, don’t—”

  “I’m angry. I’m real angry right now and I just want to be alone.”

  “Jamison’s not going to leave you. He’s not that kind of man. He’s—”

  “Like you?”

  “You know what I mean, Kerry,” he said.

  “Did you know about her?” I asked.

  “Let’s not go there.”

  “You did?” I eyed him hard. “You knew about this?! You were in my house. With my family. And you lied to me?!”

  “It’s not about that . . .”

  “If cheating isn’t about lies then what is it about?” I said. I felt my heart break again. This time for my friendships. “Give me my keys so I can go home.” I put out my hand.

  “I don’t think you should do that. Not in your condition. You’re eight months—”

  “Fuck my condition,” I yelled. “Give me the Goddamned keys.”

  Together Forever

  Romance is the easiest thing to do when you’re in love. Flowers. Chocolate. Poems. Candles. Dinner. These all seemed like silly tokens of affection to me—until I fell in love for the first time. Now I’d liked men before. There was this one boy, Christian Nelson, I had a huge crush on when I was eleven. He was one of my mother’s friend’s children, and whenever they came to visit, I was all googly-eyed over him. I’d sit for hours, looking into his eyes and saying stupid stuff, but that childhood crush in no way prepared me for what I’d feel inside once I truly fell in love with someone.

  After that first night with Jamison, all I could think of was flowers and chocolate, poems, candles, and dinner. He was the air I breathed, the wind beneath my wings, and any other cliché ever concocted. What was so great about our love back then was that I could depend on Jamison. He was always there, always willing to hold me and show me that no matter what other people thought or said, our world was ours, and there, we had love.

  For this reason, when I began planning a romantic dinner for his twenty-first birthday, I wanted everything to be perfect. My strong, handsome “Ken” had finally arrived and I wanted to show Jamison how much I appreciated and adored him. Plus, it was just a few weeks until graduation and a long list of questions lingered in the air about our relationship. We already knew that he was headed to school in New York; the question was where I was going to go and how were we going to handle the separation.

  If it was to be the first and last birthday I spent with Jamison, my first love, I wanted it to be amazing. From the French dinner I’d ordered, to the Tiffany cuff links I bought to go with his first French-cuff shirt, I wanted to show him the world we’d find together. The success we’d both share as we grew. No more macaroni and cheese in the microwave or business shirts passed down from his mentors; Jamison was on his way to the top.

  Of course, the matter of my lacking a real plan after graduation was haunting my subconscious, but I wanted so badly to put that on hold for my Jamison. I wanted to be happy and really feel the love in the moment.

  Well, the moment just happened to include the last letter of rejection that came from the last med school I’d applied to arriving in the mail. Something told me not to check the box, but against my better judgment, I did, and the slender envelope told the story Yale wanted to tell before I even opened the letter. I’d sunk a million stories into sadness by the time I heard Jamison parking his car outside of my apartment. I’d managed to hold back tears—for fear it would ruin my makeup—but my spirit was shattered, and while I was in love, my heart was breaking fast.

  When Jamison knocked on the door . . . the slow four-point knock he claimed was our little secret . . . I jumped up and reminded myself of the reason for the night. The candles were lit, the dinner was warm, and the reason for the evening was there. I didn’t need to talk about my letter. I had to focus on my man. I’d have to suck it all up . . . for the moment.

  “Ker Bear,” Jamison said when I opened the door. He stepped inside and with eyes full of an innocent love that I’d later realize was priceless and temporary, he pulled me to his chest and nestled my head beneath his chin. We must have stood there in the foyer for ten minutes, just hugging each other in silence. I could feel his breathing beneath the thin polo shirt he was wearing. It was slow and calm, sweet and longing. He was all into me, around me, and holding me as if it was the first and last time ever. We’d done this before and would again many times after, but this time it was especially sweet. Standing there barefoot and defenseless in his arms, I felt as if anything was possible. I felt safe and loved and desired. And while he had no clue what I’d been going through mentally since I’d checked the mail that morning, it didn’t matter. What he was showing me at that moment was that it didn’t make a difference where I was going. He’d be there. He’d hold me. And that was enough to help me hold back any tears and put my fears to the side.

  “What you got for big daddy?” he finally said, stepping back and kissing me on
the forehead.

  “You’re so crazy,” I said. “It’s just dinner. For your birthday.”

  “It don’t look like dinner! It looks like heaven.” He walked into the living room that I’d decorated with roses and gardenia-scented, white pillar candles. After I forced Marcy to help me pick up twenty-one dozen golden roses and place them around the living room, I sent her to Damien’s house for the evening. We were alone and there would be no interruptions. I wanted to play my favorite Enya CD, but Jamison said her howling sounded like a dying wolf, so I settled for his favorite, Sade. As I’d planned, when he walked in the door, “Your Love Is King” was playing.

  “It is heaven,” I replied sweetly. “Because you’re here.”

  “Damn, girl.... You’re about to propose to a brother tonight?” he joked. “I don’t know . . . I mean, I’m not ready for all that. I have so much to see in the world and I—”

  “Stop playing, Jamison.” I was pouting, but I couldn’t stop laughing. “I’m serious. This is supposed to be a romantic evening to celebrate your birthday.” Since we’d started dating, I realized that Jamison wasn’t exactly romantic. He was silly and playful and whenever I tried to make him be serious, he’d tell a joke and make me laugh. It made me upset because that just wasn’t how I’d envisioned my romantic evenings—laughing until my gut hurt—but it also made me happy because it was why I was in love with Jamison in the first place. He could make me smile once more when my cheeks were already hurting, and on my worst days his playful nature made me forget that the word “sadness” even existed. His imitations of my mother even managed to make her seem funny.

  “Okay, Ker Bear wants me to be serious?” Jamison blinked and pretended he was becoming some kind of character by wiping his hand over his face. “I am now Jamison the serious man,” he said like a robot.

  “See, you want me to laugh,” I said . . . laughing, of course. “But I won’t.” I struggled to hold it in, but when he started doing the robot, it was too much to hold back.