His First Wife

Romance is the easiest thing to do when you’re in love. Flowers. Chocolate. Poems. Candles. Dinner. These all seemed like silly tokens of affection to me—until I fell in love for the first time. Now I’d liked men before. There was this one boy, Christian Nelson, I had a huge crush on when I was eleven. He was one of my mother’s friend’s children, and whenever they came to visit, I was all googly-eyed over him. I’d sit for hours, looking into his eyes and saying stupid stuff, but that childhood crush in no way prepared me for what I’d feel inside once I truly fell in love with someone.

After that first night with Jamison, all I could think of was flowers and chocolate, poems, candles, and dinner. He was the air I breathed, the wind beneath my wings, and any other cliché ever concocted. What was so great about our love back then was that I could depend on Jamison. He was always there, always willing to hold me and show me that no matter what other people thought or said, our world was ours, and there, we had love.

For this reason, when I began planning a romantic dinner for his twenty-first birthday, I wanted everything to be perfect. My strong, handsome “Ken” had finally arrived and I wanted to show Jamison how much I appreciated and adored him. Plus, it was just a few weeks until graduation and a long list of questions lingered in the air about our relationship. We already knew that he was headed to school in New York; the question was where I was going to go and how were we going to handle the separation.

If it was to be the first and last birthday I spent with Jamison, my first love, I wanted it to be amazing. From the French dinner I’d ordered, to the Tiffany cuff links I bought to go with his first French-cuff shirt, I wanted to show him the world we’d find together. The success we’d both share as we grew. No more macaroni and cheese in the microwave or business shirts passed down from his mentors; Jamison was on his way to the top.

Of course, the matter of my lacking a real plan after graduation was haunting my subconscious, but I wanted so badly to put that on hold for my Jamison. I wanted to be happy and really feel the love in the moment.

Well, the moment just happened to include the last letter of rejection that came from the last med school I’d applied to arriving in the mail. Something told me not to check the box, but against my better judgment, I did, and the slender envelope told the story Yale wanted to tell before I even opened the letter. I’d sunk a million stories into sadness by the time I heard Jamison parking his car outside of my apartment. I’d managed to hold back tears—for fear it would ruin my makeup—but my spirit was shattered, and while I was in love, my heart was breaking fast.

When Jamison knocked on the door . . . the slow four-point knock he claimed was our little secret . . . I jumped up and reminded myself of the reason for the night. The candles were lit, the dinner was warm, and the reason for the evening was there. I didn’t need to talk about my letter. I had to focus on my man. I’d have to suck it all up . . . for the moment.

“Ker Bear,” Jamison said when I opened the door. He stepped inside and with eyes full of an innocent love that I’d later realize was priceless and temporary, he pulled me to his chest and nestled my head beneath his chin. We must have stood there in the foyer for ten minutes, just hugging each other in silence. I could feel his breathing beneath the thin polo shirt he was wearing. It was slow and calm, sweet and longing. He was all into me, around me, and holding me as if it was the first and last time ever. We’d done this before and would again many times after, but this time it was especially sweet. Standing there barefoot and defenseless in his arms, I felt as if anything was possible. I felt safe and loved and desired. And while he had no clue what I’d been going through mentally since I’d checked the mail that morning, it didn’t matter. What he was showing me at that moment was that it didn’t make a difference where I was going. He’d be there. He’d hold me. And that was enough to help me hold back any tears and put my fears to the side.

“What you got for big daddy?” he finally said, stepping back and kissing me on

the forehead.

“You’re so crazy,” I said. “It’s just dinner. For your birthday.”

“It don’t look like dinner! It looks like heaven.” He walked into the living room that I’d decorated with roses and gardenia-scented, white pillar candles. After I forced Marcy to help me pick up twenty-one dozen golden roses and place them around the living room, I sent her to Damien’s house for the evening. We were alone and there would be no interruptions. I wanted to play my favorite Enya CD, but Jamison said her howling sounded like a dying wolf, so I settled for his favorite, Sade. As I’d planned, when he walked in the door, “Your Love Is King” was playing.

“It is heaven,” I replied sweetly. “Because you’re here.”

“Damn, girl.... You’re about to propose to a brother tonight?” he joked. “I don’t know . . . I mean, I’m not ready for all that. I have so much to see in the world and I—”

“Stop playing, Jamison.” I was pouting, but I couldn’t stop laughing. “I’m serious. This is supposed to be a romantic evening to celebrate your birthday.” Since we’d started dating, I realized that Jamison wasn’t exactly romantic. He was silly and playful and whenever I tried to make him be serious, he’d tell a joke and make me laugh. It made me upset because that just wasn’t how I’d envisioned my romantic evenings—laughing until my gut hurt—but it also made me happy because it was why I was in love with Jamison in the first place. He could make me smile once more when my cheeks were already hurting, and on my worst days his playful nature made me forget that the word “sadness” even existed. His imitations of my mother even managed to make her seem funny.

“Okay, Ker Bear wants me to be serious?” Jamison blinked and pretended he was becoming some kind of character by wiping his hand over his face. “I am now Jamison the serious man,” he said like a robot.

“See, you want me to laugh,” I said . . . laughing, of course. “But I won’t.” I struggled to hold it in, but when he started doing the robot, it was too much to hold back.

Jamison was dancing in the middle of my romantic evening and Paris for his birthday was ruined. But I was laughing. In fact, I was laughing so hard I started coughing and had to bend over to catch my breath. Jamison began patting my back and when I stood up, he hugged me from behind.

“Tyrian purple,” he whispered in my ear.

“What?” I asked, shaking off the last bit of my laughter.

“Tyrian purple,” he said again. “That’s what you are.”

“Tyrian?” I turned to face him.

“When I was seven years old, my science teacher, who’d been trying to teach us about the five senses, brought in this cloth his grandfather passed down to him. The day before, he claimed that the cloth was royal—that its color was one of the finest in the world, a scientific wonder that could confuse the senses and make you not only see but also feel color,” Jamison said. “And I was so hard back then, so hardened by the street and stuff going on in my life that I could not care less about what he was talking about. Some old cloth some crotchety white man who probably hated little black boys like me passed down to my lame science teacher??? Who cared? I’d seen color. Nobody could feel color. It was stupid. I hardly made it to school that day. And, as usual, when I got to science, I sat in the last row, in the last seat. I was falling asleep when he finally got to the cloth, but I remember it like yesterday.” Jamison’s eyes glimmered as if in his mind he was going back to this moment in his memory. “And when he took it out and held it up, I swear, Kerry, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I was still in the backseat in the last row, but my eyes, my mind were up front, you know? And while I’d seen murder and drugs and all this other stuff, the cloth, that color, made me so soft I might as well have been born again that day.” Jamison’s eyes went watery and he sank deeper into his memory. “‘Tyrian purple,’ my teacher said. ‘This is Tyrian purple . . . the color of royalty. The rarest color of all.’” Jamison paused again and came back to the moment, looking in my eyes. “Ever since that day, I’ve been trying to find something else in the world that was Tyrian purple. I’ve seen shades of it. Sometimes paint that has come close, but nothing quite as special. But when I saw you at the Valentine’s dance, when I first looked into your eyes—how happy and sad and excited and scared and nervous and bold you looked—the first thing I thought was, ‘Tyrian purple. ’ ”

I was about to say something, but Jamison placed a single finger over my lips.

“I didn’t see the color, I felt it inside. I felt what my old teacher was talking about. I felt color and I wasn’t even looking at it. Tyrian purple. The color that can make you feel. You’re my Tyrian purple.”

Jamison and I ended up eating our French meal in bed the next morning. The candles had all melted, the roses had began to droop, his gift was a day late, and nothing about my evening had gone as planned, but I was Tyrian purple and everything was all right by me.

E-MAIL TRANSMISSION

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

DATE: 4/25/07