His First Wife

TIME: 2:16 AM

I just walked in the house from our fifth time hanging out and I couldn’t go to bed without writing you. I know I’ve been drinking a lot (I’m never doing shots with you again!) but I figure maybe that’s a good thing because the alcohol will loosen me up and let me put everything I’m feeling on the page.

Jamison, the past month that I’ve been trying to get to know you has been amazing. You are the best man I’ve ever known and while I loved Duane with all my heart, he in no way compared to you. It’s just the little things you do for me that I really love.... Getting me all those scholarship books for college and talking to your friend at Georgia Perimeter to see if I can sit in on one of his classes to see what it’s like. Those are the signs of a good man that isn’t afraid to help people. I love that spirit in you. That you don’t look down on me because I don’t have what you have and are willing to help lift me up. What a man!

Every time I see you, I just smile because I think of how lucky I am to know someone like you. Even though it’s just a month, I feel like I’ve known you forever. And I look forward to the future. I know that sounds crazy, because we’re friends, but it’s how I feel. And sometimes I know I’m not the only one.

I see how you look at me too and I can’t lie and say it doesn’t feel good. I haven’t been to bed with another man since Duane and I’m about to burst! So, when you placed your hand on my shoulder when we walked into the movie tonight, I wanted so badly to turn around and just tongue you down right there in front of everyone. I didn’t care. I wanted to feel your lips against mine. Feel your heat. Let you know how soft my tongue is and how it might feel against your body. Am I the only one thinking this? I know I’m not crazy!!! I’m not trying to make you do anything, but I know how I feel and I’m old enough to know what I want. I also know what you need and what you’re not getting at home. I don’t see why two friends can’t help each other out.

I can’t even believe I just wrote that, but fuck it. It’s how I feel. And I’m tired of hiding it and pretending it’s not. Alcohol or no alcohol, it’s what’s inside and I’m going to hit send before I lose my nerve…………….

E-MAIL TRANSMISSION

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

DATE: 4/27/07

TIME: 1:15 PM

First, I have to apologize for taking so long to write you back and not returning your calls over the last two days. I have read your e-mail many times and I wanted to wait a second before I responded.

You’re not the only one feeling what you’re feeling. I like you too and I’m attracted to you. You’re a beautiful woman. Believe me I have been wrestling with both of these feelings and while I first thought the answer was to stop being around you, the truth is that I can’t. You make me feel good. I look forward to seeing you and how you look at me with those pretty eyes and something inside of me won’t let me stop. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I’m man enough to admit that it’s there. When you came into my life it was by chance and then it seems like everything I feel, think, and say is changing.

I’ve never questioned anything about my life before, but now I am and I realize that I’ve been holding a few things back. I used to just make decisions I thought were right and noble and then I stood by that. But right now, I am not sure what’s right and noble. I just know what I’m feeling. But all that is beside the point. I guess the real question is, what are we going do?

The Morning After

When it rains it pours. . . . And when it pours . . . you’d better have buckets to keep from drowning.

Sometimes you need to remind yourself of old sayings you’d heard and ignored in the past in order to get out of bed in the morning. And it was raining the morning after the worst day of my life, so the saying just came to my mind. My entire body was hurting when morning came to wake me. Before I even opened my eyes, I knew it would take me minutes, maybe even an hour to convince my overstretched body to rise. When I opened my eyes and found that I wasn’t sleeping in the bed I shared with my husband, but rather the bed my mother put in the room that was once my bedroom, I recalled the events of the night before and how I reasoned that the only place I wanted to be, could be with any emotional sanity, was home . . . the home I grew up in. It wasn’t a decision I’d come to lightly.

After I left Marcy’s, I had been sitting in the driver’s seat of my car with my head spinning in a vat of drama. Jamison. My mother. Marcy. Milicent . . . It seemed the whole world was off. Crumbling. Falling apart. And I didn’t know what to do. I needed these people right now. I’d waited thirty-three years to get pregnant. And I needed something to go right. Just someone to lean on. But now they all seemed out of place.

Was this me? My life? I was so confused that without thinking, I drove straight to where my mind had been programmed to take me—my home. But when I pulled up in the driveway, I saw Jamison’s tr

uck and realized that I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. That truck outside, the man inside, had been somewhere else just one night ago and that was still heavy on my heart. What was there to say between us? Ask about the thing?

After sitting there for a few minutes, I decided to drive to a hotel, but when I got there, I thought of how ridiculous I’d look—eight months pregnant, checking into a hotel with a local driver’s license. . . . Even in my “unright” mind, this was a low I wasn’t ready for.

So I kept driving. My foot to the pedal, just as firmly as it had been the night before, I kept driving and realized that the only place left was my mother’s house. Then I got mad. Mad that she’d come up with some silly excuse not to come pick me up from the jail when both of us knew she wasn’t going anywhere. This wasn’t about scheduling. This was about pride and order and I was tired of both. If not one of the people in my life was there for me, even my own husband, my mother was supposed to be. I wasn’t going to drive around like a homeless, motherless child when it wasn’t true. She was about to have to do her God-given job, like it or not.

So, I woke up in the bed in the guest room that was once my bedroom. My back aflame, my ankles completely swollen, my baby shifting from side to side, begging for food, if I’d forgotten just how pregnant I was the day before, it was clear now. Everyone was right. I had no business being out like that. But you try telling that to a pregnant woman who’d just found her husband cheating.

“Mother,” I called without moving a muscle a bit. She knew I was in the house. She was an old, Southern woman who dared not even snore in her sleep for fear of seeming crass. If one thing moved in that house, she knew it.

“Mother,” I cried again.

I tried to pull myself up in the bed, but it was useless. My back had been hurting since the fifth month, and now it was next to unbearable.

“Mother,” I hollered this time. The door opened slowly and my mother poked her head in as if unaffected by my screams. She was never a fan of loud voices and things. She always said the home was to be a place of serenity and calm. But then, she used to say a lot of things.

“You are in here hollering like my house is some saloon,” she said. She was dressed in a blush night robe with a floral head scarf tied toward the back of her head.

“I just need you to help me get up,” I said. “My back hurts.”

“Of course it does. That’s what happens when you’re eight months pregnant and out in the street chasing some man.”