“No,” Jamison said, pulling into his driveway. “I don’t think she’s ready for that. I don’t think either of them are.”
“Dog, I told you, the man who speaks first wins. That’s the bottom line. You have to tell Kerry. You have to tell Val, too.”
“I know, but there’s too much shit going on right about now. You know?” Jamison looked up at the house.
“You’re a married man—there’s always shit going on,” Damien said and Jamison laughed with him at the judgment of the institution that had become more of a game of risk for him than anything else. He knew Marcy had gotten pregnant by him so he’d marry her. He actually loved her and wanted to marry her whether she was pregnant or not. But she was coming from the wrong side of the tracks and he wasn’t raised to be the kind of blue blood to cross over. But the baby coming meant he’d had to marry her to save his name from shame. And while sometimes he thought his daughter’s birth was a blessing that allowed him to keep the only woman he’d ever really loved, other times he resented Marcy for what she’d done. He also resented the fact that he couldn’t bring it up without sounding like he hated his daughter. His therapist had said that resentment was why Damien had slept with so many women outside of his marriage—to try to control a relationship he felt was set up to control him. And since Damien didn’t see any way he’d ever stop self-medicating through random sexual exploits that most often resulted in his being caught and a physical altercation with Marcy, the therapist suggested the two get a divorce. That was the last time Damien went to therapy.
“Just talk to them, man,” Damien advised before getting off the phone with Jamison. “You have to start the conversation. Man up.”
“An Ode to Mercy”
Paschal’s was an Atlanta tradition with a solid heart that just wouldn’t stop ticking. The West End soul food citadel, which had seen its height when it was known as a social club and meeting place for civil rights activists and Atlanta’s black who’s who in the 1960s, had become a place where white tourists went for fried chicken and politicians held court to collect big checks from the old guard, but there was still a solid following that took pride in sitting in its history on a Saturday night or seeing church ladies in big pastel hats line up for the infamous buffet on Sunday afternoon.
When Jamison and Val walked in, eyes shifted toward and away from them like they did at family reunions when a beloved uncle walked in with his wretched wife. Some people smiled and nodded, but no one took pictures or walked over to them. That wasn’t the style at Paschal’s. To be there meant you were cool and just not surprised to see who the mayor walked in with on a Sunday night. Only the workers could demonstrate delight at the sight. And, of course, this meant Jamison was led right to the best seat in the house—a table the manager always kept open for such visits.
Val went with sky-blue kitten heels to play it safe, but her feet were already hurting and she kind of fell into her seat to get the pressure off her toes as soon as possible.
“You okay?” Jamison asked.
“It’s my feet. They’re just growing by the minute.” Val wanted to remove the water from the carafe on the table and pour the ice all over the toes that were already nude under the table.
“Is this normal—you know—in the second trimester?” Jamison asked. He didn’t remember Kerry’s feet getting swollen until the very end of her pregnancy with Tyrian.
“The doctor said everyone is different. It could actually go away. Just
depends.”
Jamison watched as Val picked up the menu and went straight to the dessert page as she always did. She loved cake and ice cream, just anything sweet. When they’d first started fooling around he’d noticed she would go entire days eating nothing but sugary sides that indulged her sweet tooth. So often that he wondered how she wasn’t five hundred pounds and being rolled around on a stretcher. She never exercised or even tried to walk from here to there. But still she had a solid body that curved magnificently wherever any man thought it should.
“Can you feel the baby? Like really feel it moving?” Jamison asked.
It was the first time anyone had asked Val anything about the baby. Well, aside from her doctor, whose eyes always seemed just as judgmental as everyone else’s as they rolled over her stomach.
“Yes,” Val said so efficiently. “I mostly feel the baby move when you’re around,” she said, looking into Jamison’s eyes. And he didn’t shift either.
Jamison looked at Val’s belly and another first came—he wanted to touch her stomach. He did. One arm outstretched, he laid his hand atop her stomach. And closed his eyes. And waited.
It was the first time he considered that there was a human inside of Val. A little human that was a part of him. Just like Tyrian. Just like the baby Coreen had carried in her stomach so many miles away from home in Los Angeles.
Just then, some sharp and rude emotion kicked through Jamison’s quiet darkness and he awoke from his listening. He snatched his hand away from Val’s womb and opened his eyes as if his hand had been on a tomb.
“What?” Val responded to the sudden movement. “What happened?”
“Val, I need to tell you something,” Jamison said, looking at Val.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s about the woman I told you about—the one in—”
Jamison’s words stopped when he saw a man approaching the table from behind Val.
“Jamison?” Val called, trying to get him to focus on her again, but his entire countenance was already changing, causing her to turn around to see what had his attention at her back.
As she turned, Jamison was standing and smiling, extending his hand past her breasts.
“Ma-mayor Ta-Taylor, I-I thought that was you wa-wa-walking in.”
Smiling, Jamison shook hands with a face that froze away the feeling from every extremity on Val’s body.