His First Wife

Marial opened her bag and pulled out a little digital recorder, which she placed on top of the piano between her and Kerry.

“So, how do you feel about all of the attention Rake It Up is getting?” she asked.

“Oh,” Kerry said, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. I listened just as intently as the little recorder. “It’s kind of funny,” she went on. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of her neck. “How so many people care about such a little company.”

Marial and I must’ve recoiled at the same time. Her answer was clear and plain, but there was just something about the way she said “little” that made me feel like I was wearing the wrong tie. I was dressed like a big man, I’d gone with the black and gold jacquard print bow tie, but suddenly I felt small and my shoulders sank in a bit.

Kerry sounded as if she thought I was running some small-time, worthless company that only managed to bring home a few dollars. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. She didn’t have to want for anything. And it wasn’t because of her parents’ money. It was because of what I’d done. I’d made sure that she could be independent and do whatever she wanted without having her mother breathing down her back. Even if it was just sitting in the house all day, having another woman do the work she should’ve been doing. But I hadn’t brought that up. I didn’t have the heart to do that. I only wanted to protect Kerry, and I was beginning to see that I was the one who wasn’t being protected. I wasn’t born a big shot and perhaps Kerry would always see it that way—no matter how big or small my company was.

“Well, it’s not exactly a small company,” Marial said, reading off our numbers to Kerry as if she was a common housewife who knew nothing of her husband’s work. “It’s a pretty big deal. We have companies that are now modeling their business plans on your husband’s. A class at Wharton School of Business is studying him right now.”

“Really?” Kerry and I said at the same time.

The woman slid a stack of papers over to us that she’d been holding in her hands. “Neither of you know?”

“Well, we just try to stay grounded,” I said, but I was a bit disappointed that she was now looking at me in the same surprised way she’d looked at Kerry. At first I’d been mad at Kerry, but now I felt ashamed for not knowing. How could I not know that? One of the top business schools in the nation was studying my company and I didn’t know? Why was I being so indifferent to my

own success? The pats? The waves? I played it off during the interview, telling Marial that I was just humble, but inside I was wondering if maybe part of my indifference was coming from Kerry. Maybe if my only cheerleader wasn’t cheering me on, I simply couldn’t see myself as the MVP, making the winning shot.

Thanksgiving

“Girl, you look like you saw a ghost,” Aunt Luchie said when I came in the kitchen door. I was steps ahead of Jamison and his mother, carrying Tyrian in my arms. “Did Jesus rise at that church?”

“And give me my grandbaby,” my mother said, getting up from the table. I handed her Tyrian and headed out of the kitchen, toward the office where the computer was.

“Girl, you all right?” Aunt Luchie called behind me. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I had to see it. I had to get to the computer to see if everything Coreen had said in the church was true. My heart was beating fast, my stomach was cramping, anger was boiling so hot within me that I couldn’t even feel my hands. I didn’t want anyone to say anything to me. I was tired of this. Just done. As I walked through the living room, I noticed that some of Jamison’s family members had begun to arrive. Two of his cousins were sitting on the sofa in front of the television watching football, and his uncle was laid out on the chaise longue.

“Hey, Kerry,” someone said.

I simply waved and walked into the office.

“Kerry,” Jamison called from the kitchen. “Where did she go?”

“She seemed like she was in a rush,” Aunt Luchie said to him. “Maybe she went to the bathroom.”

I heard everyone exchange a barrage of greetings. My mother said hello to Jamison’s mother. If only she knew what Coreen had told me. I was trying to hold it in, but I was about to crack.

“Oh, you should’ve seen Tyrian grinning at Pastor. He looked so cute,” I heard Jamison’s mother announce to everyone. “Pastor invited him back to the church to be the baby Jesus in the pageant next month.”

I sat at the computer and tried, as I had many times since this whole thing started, to open Jamison’s e-mail. I sat there, knowing I had to figure out the password this time. Numbers, names, dates all went through my head, none were right. And then, just like that, a word came to me that I’d been hearing for years, but had never tried. T-Y-R-I-A-N I typed, and after a prayer, I pressed the enter key. It worked.

My heart was pounding as I went through the e-mail. I heard talk coming from the living room and I could tell more people had shown up. It was a little after 12 PM and we were set to begin eating at 1 PM. Mostly Jamison’s family agreed to come. We decided to keep it small, since it was our first time hosting. Only twelve people, enough to sit around the table in the dining room.

I wasn’t nervous because of all of the people, though. I could not really care less about what anyone had to say or think at that point. My nervousness was stemming more from fear of what I was going to find. After Jamison and I talked, I reasoned that Coreen was just a fling. I’d been with Jamison for a long time and we’d never had anything like that. Coreen was nothing, I helped myself believe. And when he said it was over, I believed him. I trusted him. But now, here I was, stooping to breaking into my husband’s e-mail, because the other woman had told me otherwise.

There was nothing in his “new” e-mail file. Just some stuff from work—employee’s invoices, a request for service. I quickly scrolled down and opened the “sent” file. And there it was. The last e-mail he’d sent was to [email protected]

In the outer world, the world my mind was no longer attached to, I heard people talking and the sound of the television in the family room. My mother was calling my name. Tyrian was crying. All of this was happening, but to my mind it was a haze, a soundtrack to a movie playing in another room, something someone else was watching. I was no longer a part of that world. I was in the office, reading e-mail after e-mail, dying and detaching along the way. My spirit sank deeper each time I clicked that mouse. How? Why? I almost wanted to believe it wasn’t Jamison, my best friend, the person who knew me like no other, sending those e-mails, but there it was—his name at the end of each message, big and broad as the screen in front of me. I was falling to pieces again. And I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it together.

“Kerry.” My mother scared me. She’d managed to walk into the office and make her way beside me at the computer without me even hearing her. “I’ve been calling you.” She was carrying a receiving blanket in her hand. “Tyrian spit up on his clothes . . . do you have something you want . . .”

She trailed off, looking at the screen in front of me. My hands were at my sides. In my anger I had no energy to change the screen. I didn’t want to hear her mouth, but the last thing I felt like doing was hiding anything anymore.

“What’s this?” she asked, reading as she spoke. She dropped the blanket to the floor. “Kerry,” she said, not even looking at me. It was my mother’s serious voice. I hadn’t heard it many times in my life, but when I did, I knew the woman meant what she was saying. She walked away and closed the door to the office, exhaling deeply as she turned back around to me. She came back to the desk and knelt down beside me in the chair. “Baby, I need you to hear me. I don’t need you to say anything . . . I just need you to hear your mother right now. Can you do that?”

I was crying. I just nodded my head.

“I told you I’d be here for you right now. Didn’t I?”