His First Wife (11 page)

“And fighting has gotten you somewhere, Luchie?” my mother asked. “You don't even have a husband
to
cheat on you.”

My mother was throwing big stones. Aunt Luchie had only one love of her entire life to speak of. A trumpet player named Red who never married her. He'd left her at the altar twice and finally she found out he had a family in France.

“Well, I don't see a plethora of men walking around here,” Aunt Luchie said. “Unless, you count the fully married judge who seems to stay late after all your parties.”

Ms. Edith coughed loudly. My mother turned to her quickly and she went back to cutting her fruit.

“Will you two stop,” I said. They frowned at each other like little girls arguing over a teddy bear.

“You're right, baby,” Aunt Luchie said finally. “Now what happened that led you here?”

“I went and saw him with her. At her house . . . and I was so angry . . . I slapped him . . .” My mother set her coffee mug hard on the table.

“You slapped him?” Aunt Luchie's eyes widened as Ms. Edith picked up the fruit tray and came over to get a better listen.

“I know I shouldn't have.... But I was just so angry.”

“You're right. You shouldn't have hit him. I would've cut him if I was there.” We all laughed at Aunt Luchie, even my mother. Ms. Edith took the break to sit down at the table.

“Shoot, I'm proud of you,” she went on. “You stood up for yourself. There's nothing to be ashamed of about that. Not in my book. Sometimes you have to scream in order for people to hear you . . . and sometimes if that doesn't work, you have to start swinging.”

“Well, that would've been fine if the cops weren't there,” I said.

“Cops?” Aunt Luchie's eyes grew even wider.

My mother sank farther into her seat.

“Yeah, the cops were there. It was a mess. They saw me slap him, and they arrested me.”

“Arrested you?” Ms. Edith asked. My mother didn't even bother to look at her. I guessed it was because she actually wanted to know how everything happened.

“Yeah, I went to jail.”

“I've been there. We had this sit-in downtown back in '63 and I tell you, we all got locked up. Even my teacher.”

“Luchie!” my mother said.

“How was it there?” Ms. Edith asked.

“It was just a bunch of women,” I started and told them all about the odd friends I'd made in the big house.

“Well, what you gonna do now?” Aunt Luchie asked.

“Do?” I said. “I don't know.... I just needed to get away from him right now . . . and then I guess I'll need a divorce.”

It was the first time I'd said and thought the word. Was that what I was doing?
Divorcing
Jamison? Was this how it happened? I was getting a divorce.

“The bastard,” my mother said. “I knew it.”

“You knew what, Thirjane?” Aunt Luchie asked.

“That he was no good for my baby.” My mother looked over to me. “I always knew he was trash and that he'd cheat on you or steal or something like that. He's no good. Never was good enough to even be with you.”

“Oh, Mother. I don't want to hear that right now.”

“I didn't want to say I told you so, but there it is. I told you never to marry that man. He was just trying to marry up. And once he got you, he didn't know what to do. And that's why he was cheating with that woman. She's probably trash just like him.”

“Everyone already knows what you think about him,” Aunt Luchie said. “That's not what I want to know. I want to know what Kerry Ann thinks. What she's going to do. Because this isn't a simple matter to her. You may have thought whatever you wanted about that boy, but she loved him for the reasons she did and that's her business. Not yours.”

I heard what Aunt Luchie was saying, but I was beginning to think that maybe my mother was right. Maybe Jamison was bad for me. Maybe I'd been fooled all these years and the real him was coming out now.

“How is it not my business?” my mother said. “She's my child.”

“Yeah, and I'm my mother's child and she pushed away the only man I've ever loved,” Aunt Luchie said with her eyes saddening. “No, I never married Red, but I loved him and I know he loved me. But you all pushed him away.”

“Pushed him away?” my mother asked.

“Yes, with you judging him and judging me. What kind of man would want to be around that? A family judging him and his woman for everything they do, everything they are? Red asked me so many times to leave here, to go with him to France, but I just had to be here in
the South
like I didn't know any other place existed. Well, I lost him for it. For allowing other people to decide for me what I needed and now I have nothing.”

“Is that true, Aunt Luchie?” I asked. “That he wanted you to go with him to France?”

“Yes, baby. He asked me years before he ever met that other woman,” she said. “But I was too young, and still caught up in doing what my family said a woman like me was supposed to do. I turned him down. And then I had to watch him live my life with someone else. And that's what I don't want to happen to you.”

“Please,” my mother hissed.

“Look, Kerry, have you spoken to him?” Aunt Luchie asked.

“I don't know what I'll say.”

“Not knowing what to say never stopped two people who love each other from speaking.”

“Love?” my mother said.

“Yes,
love
,” Aunt Luchie said with a look that sobered my mother fast. Her “love” was hard and deliberate in a way that could only conjure, invisibly, the love my mother shared with my father. But she dared not say it. Not his name. Not in my mother's presence.

“You need to talk to him,” Aunt Luchie said, her eyes back on me. “You need to stop running to all these other people with your problems and talk to your husband. Find out what's happening in your home.”

“He called,” Ms. Edith burst out. “Five times today. The boy was crying,” she added.

“Edith, don't you have something do, somewhere in the house?” my mother asked. Ms. Edith got up from the table, taking with her the fruit that I supposed she'd cut for herself.

“Edith, can you hand an old lady the phone,” Aunt Luchie said. “I need to call the pharmacy, so I can pick up my pills today.”

“Yes,” Ms. Edith said, picking up the phone from the receiver and handing it to Aunt Luchie.

“Pills for what?” my mother asked. “I haven't seen you sick a day in my life.”

“I'm ten years older than you . . . it isn't any of your business what pills I have, Thirjane.” Aunt Luchie held the phone far from her face so she could see the buttons. “Look, Edith, could you do me a favor and dial the pharmacy for me? I can't see a thing on this little phone.” She handed the phone to Ms. Edith and the two exchanged slow glances.

“Okay,” Ms Edith said.

“How does she know the number to your pharmacist?” my mother asked.

“Here you go, Ms. Luchie.” Ms. Edith handed my aunt the phone.

“Hello?” Aunt Luchie said. “Who is this, baby? I can't hear you?” She scrunched up her face. “Look, hold on, I'm going to hand the phone to my niece, so she can give you the order. Hold on now.” She slid the phone from her face and pushed it across the table. “Talk to him,” she said, making it clear who was on the phone.

My mother and aunt were sitting on either side of me. I turned to see Ms. Edith standing behind me. I couldn't do it. I couldn't reach for the phone.

“See,” my mother said, taking the phone, “she doesn't want to talk to him.”

“Hand me the phone,” I said suddenly. “Give it to me.”

Aunt Luchie nodded and snatched the phone from my mother.

“Here,” she said, handing it to me. “Talk to your husband.”

“Kerry,” I heard Jamison say before I put the phone to my ear.

“Yes,” I said.

“I. . . . Look, it's not what you think it is. She's . . .”

“She's what? Your friend? Let's not start this by lying. That's not why I'm talking to you.”

“Okay, you're right,” Jamison said. “But I need you to know that it's over between me and her. It's been over.”

“It?” I asked. My throat tightened. “So you admit it?”

Everyone moved in closer around me. My mother placed her hand on my arm.

“I—” he started.

“You cheated? Is that what you're about to say? Because I don't want to hear anything else. I can't. I need to hear the truth from you right now.” I folded into the table and started crying again.

“Is that what you want me to say?” he asked.

“Want? I want you to tell me it never happened. That you didn't cheat on me. And ruin our family. I want you to tell me that you loved me too much to cheat on me. That I'm too important to you. That we're too important to you. That's what I want you to say.”

“Kerry, you're making yourself upset,” he said. “I didn't want this to happen this way.” His voice cracked.

“Why didn't you just say something to me? To me? Why couldn't you just tell me about this and . . .”

“And what?” he asked. “And all of this could happen?”

“Do you love her?” I asked.

“I told you it was over,” he said. “I broke it off the moment I found out you were pregnant.”

“That's not what I asked you.”

“Kerry, let's not do all of that.”

“Do what?
”

“You're just setting this up to be an argument. I don't love her. Of course not.”

“Breathe,” Aunt Luchie said, taking my hand. That's when I realized that all of the women had their hands on me. My mother was holding my arm. Ms. Edith was rubbing my back.

“I want to talk to you about this,” he said, “in person.”

“Jamison, I don't know about that.”

“Breathe,” Aunt Luchie said again. She looked into my eyes and nodded meaningfully.

“Kerry, baby, I just want you to come home. Can you do that? So I can talk to you? You don't even have to say anything. I just want you to hear me out. So I can tell you everything. Can you do that?”

Aunt Luchie nodded again.

“Breathe,” she said.

“I
have to give a toast to my beautiful girlfriend, Kerry Ann,” Jamison said, giving a toast at the graduation dinner his mother planned and reluctantly invited me to. I didn't care to ever see that woman again—she was pure evil unleashed, as far as I was concerned—yet, there I was sitting beside my mother (who I had begged to come, swearing I'd never speak to her again and get pregnant by some trucker I met at a rest stop) at a dinner table in the very living room where Jamison's mother had dug into me like an alley cat in a street fight.

“Without Kerry,” Jamison went on, “I don't think I could've made it.”

His mother managed an unconvincing smile. Her eyes narrowed to tight slits, revealing suspicion, she moved not one inch to look in my direction, nodding only when Jamison looked at her. I supposed this was her noble self, her attempt to appear collected and temperate. Yet everyone around the table sat in a quiet nervousness, their eyes transfixed as they waited for her to start the show.

“You put up with me through finals and all of my stress,” Jamison said. “And I just want to say thank you and that your support was needed and appreciated. Cheers!”

He raised one of the two-piece plastic champagne flutes his mother had placed around the table in her poor attempt to decorate (my mother didn't even bother to pick one up) and took a sip.

“And,” he started, “I have another announcement.”

My mother pinched my arm.

“I know this boy is not about to ask you to marry him!” she tried to whisper. “You brought me here for this? Around these people to embarrass me?”

The transfixed eyes moved from Jamison's mother to mine, the other sleeper cell awaiting activation.

“You had better say no,” she demanded beneath her breath as she smiled at the onlookers.

“Mother, stop it,” I said.

“This negro is trying to marry up,” my mother said, “and I'm not having it. Not my daughter. I will not allow you to assign your life to this meagerness . . . this place.” She looked around the room as if we were sitting in a zoo.

“I'm not going to med school,” Jamison said finally, catching my eyes.

“What?” his mother said, her eyes widening, a deer about to be hit by a truck. Only I felt the same way. I'd had no wind of what Jamison was talking about. As far as I knew, Jamison was leaving for Cornell.

“I've decided to take advantage of my one-year wait, so I can stay here in Atlanta to take care of some things.” He looked straight at me.

“Things? What things?” his mother asked, looking down toward me for the first time. “Hell, no,” his mother jumped up. “You will not ruin everything I've worked for to be with that.”

“That?” My mother jumped up too, her flute falling to the floor and splitting in two. “Who are you calling a THAT?”

“That thang on the other end of the table, that's who!”

“Mother.” I tugged at her arm. “Sit down.”

“Oh, I know how to handle women like this.” My mother went to her purse.

“Gun!” someone screamed. And everyone hit the floor in unison, leaving me, Jamison, and our mothers standing. I kept my eyes locked on Jamison's. What was he doing? Was he giving up med school for me? It didn't make any sense.

My mother finally pulled a sizable gray cell phone from her purse

“Oh, it's a phone,” someone else said.

“I'm calling the police,” my mother said, bringing the room back to order.

“Mother.” I snatched the phone. “Just stop.”

 

 

“I know what you're going to say, but I already called Cornell. I told them I need a year to handle some personal stuff in my life,” Jamison said. We were walking down his street alone after I put my mother in the car.

“What personal stuff?” I asked.

“I can't leave you.” He tried to hug me, but I pulled away. Cornell was his big chance. It was what he'd been working toward all of his life.

“I'm reapplying. I'll be somewhere next year,” I said. “That's our dream; that's our plan. Right?”

“But what if it doesn't happen? What if you're not accepted?”

“I will be. I know it,” I pleaded. “I just need to focus on it and it'll happen. Weren't you the one who told me to keep the faith?

“I can't leave you here . . . not with that woman.” He looked down toward my mother in the car. “If you go home . . . I mean, Kerry, I've seen what she does to you. How she makes you feel when she's around—like you can't do anything right.”

I started crying. Everything Jamison was saying was right, but he didn't understand. I needed him to do this . . . to go to school.

“I can't let you stay,” I said.

“It's already done,” he said with his voice hardened. “They gave me one year and I'm going to help you with applications and in the meantime, I'll help my cousin start this lawn care business.”

“Lawn care?”

“Yeah, he already has a truck. I just need to help him find the work. You know, match my brains with his muscle. There's a lot of money in it right now. We can branch out. Grow it.”

“What are you talking about? Grow it? You're going to med school. That's what we talked about.”

“Baby,” he pulled me into his arms “I'm going back to school. I promise. Just one year. Trust me.”