His Third Wife

“Yes,” Jamison answered his mother. “It’s settled. Let’s do it.”

“What? What’s settled?” I asked.

Jamison turned back to me and said, “Mama’s coming to live with us at the house.”

“What? Who? Live?”

I swear I was either hearing Jamison wrong or I was in the middle of a nightmare that was about to end with Mrs. Taylor

twenty feet tall and chasing me down a hallway.

“I’m moving in with you two, ” Mrs. Taylor said so happily it was a dare for me to oppose.

“But I—don’t we need to—”

“Jamison and I already discussed it last week. He said that I should move in to help you two get ready for the baby, but I said, no, because I know you young people need your space,” she said, cutting me off. “But now that I’m sick, I do agree with him that it’s the best thing.”

I looked at Jamison, but he’d turned back around.

“For how long?” I asked his back.

“Mama, the most important thing is that you get better. You can stay with me for as long as you need,” Jamison said, answering my question to his mother.

By the time I really, really, really, really realized what was happening, Jamison was telling me to head home alone and get the guest room ready so he could drive his mother to her place in her car to get some of her things.

I wanted to scream. That or at least ask Jamison how he thought someone suffering from shortness of breath or whatever the hell was wrong with her could get into a car and drive herself to the hospital.

“What’s going on?” I asked Jamison in the lobby. I insisted that he walk me outside of the room.

“My mother’s just coming to stay with us,” he said.

“You didn’t even ask me. We never talked about this.”

“That’s because it just happened. What do you want me to do, Val? Let her die?”

“That’s a bit much,” I said. “Considering that we don’t even know how sick she is. Did you speak to her doctor? I didn’t see a triage bracelet around her wrist.”

“Are you calling my mother a liar?” Jamison asked. “Be very careful.”

“I’m not saying she’s a liar. I’m saying you didn’t discuss anything with me. She said you asked her to move in last week. I can’t believe this.”

“I was joking with her,” Jamison said.

“Apparently, you weren’t.”

“Look, she’s my mother and that’s my house.” Jamison threw up his hands. “And that’s it.”

“That’s it? You say it and that’s how it goes? What if I did something like that? Moved my mother in?”

“Go ahead. Do it.” Jamison turned and walked back toward the room, and I saw the nurse pretending to check more text messages.

I gave her one solid middle finger to post to wherever she pleased. Fuck it. Fuck everyone.

“We’re Still a Family”

Friday. Midnight. Friday night at midnight. Midnight on Friday night. It seemed like it was always that day and time. No matter how many times Jamison looked at his watch to keep track of time, somehow he’d forget to check and somehow when he finally did, it would be midnight and Friday.

That might have been okay for a young man who was trying to make it to the weekend to party until sunup and sleep until sundown. But Jamison was no young man anymore. He had the gray hairs sprouting on his temples and softening biceps to prove it. He wasn’t trying to waste time; he was trying to slow it down. Savor it. Find more of it. Hold on and maybe just once look down at his watch to see that he had a little time. More time. Or extra time. And each Friday night when he looked down and saw that it was midnight, he knew his time was running out. Another week was done. Gone. And the clock was a terrible reminder. A loop of meetings, and meetings about meetings and meetings to set up meetings and trying to find time to work out to build his biceps again, and not working out, and eating in his car, and being late and getting four hours of sleep and arguing with Val or Kerry or missing Tyrian or whatever it was and there he was again—looking at his watch on Friday night at midnight.