His First Wife

“Fine then, go ahead.”

His elbow on the table, Jamison rested his forehead in the palm of his hand.

“Look,” he started slowly, “I just know how you feel about it. That you don’t like it. What I do for a living.”

“Jamison, please, I got over that years ago. You know that,” I said. We’d had that argument about ten million times after we’d gotten married and he made if obvious that Rake It Up was here to stay. Yes, I was mad that he never went to medical school, but this business was pulling in good money, and in the last five years he was making more money than he would’ve if he’d become a doctor.

The front door opened and we heard Aunt Luchie come in with the baby. She was humming a song to him and we listened in silence as the hum faded as she carried Tyrian up to his bedroom.

“You’re no more over the fact that I never went to medical school than my mother,” Jamison said. “You say you don’t care, but I can see it in your eyes. At least she says it.”

“How can you tell me what I feel?” I raised my voice, but then lowered it again. “You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t know that, but I do know you. And I know in my heart that you wanted to be married to Jamison the doctor, not Jamison the man that owns a landscaping company. You can’t lie and say it’s not true. You didn’t even want to take my last name. Now, I was too young and excited about my company when we first got married to see how unhappy you were about Rake It Up, but your feelings have been growing more obvious over the years and it eats me up.”

Of course I wanted Jamison to be a doctor. Everyone did. Jamison was the only one who was ever down with the Rake It Up plan. He knew that. He knew what I had riding on his going to med school. It was no secret.

“‘A little company.’”

“What?” I asked.

“That’s what you said when the woman from Black Enterprise came over to interview me,” he said with tears rising in the corners of his eyes again. “She asked how you felt about all the attention the company was getting, and you said you were surprised that people cared so much about such ‘a little company.’” He paused and looked down at this feet. A tear fell to the floor. “That made me feel like shit. In my own house. In my own house I felt like shit. Like the money I’d made to pay for everything in here was nothing but some dirty money and it didn’t matter to you just because of how I made it. Because there was no M.D. after my name, it wasn’t worth as much as Damien’s money. It’s more, but it’s not the same, right? Because I don’t have the family name or the fucking title to validate me.”

“That’s not it,” I said.

“Yes, it is, and you know it. My own wife,” he said, “said my biggest dream was little.” His voice fell to a whisper. “But,” he paused and cleared his throat, “I told myself that it was just my Kerry being Kerry. The woman I loved was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and I married her, so I’d have to deal with it. And it was easy to take like that. It was my cross to bear. But every time something like that would happen—you’d say you never wanted to come be with my family for the holidays, you acted like you didn’t want any of my family in the house I’ve already paid off, and telling me who I should know and how I should speak to them and make sure to mention who your wife is and what family she’s from like I’m some fucking nobody—and I just felt myself getting smaller and smaller and pulling away from you.”

“Well, why didn’t you say anything to me about it?” I pleaded.

“How am I supposed to say that to you? To say you make me feel like less of a man?”

“Less?”

“Kerry, if you don’t believe in me, in my dream, then how can I feel like a man for you? The only thing I can feel like is less,” he said. “And I didn’t even know that was how I was feeling. Not until . . .”

“Until what?”

“Until I met Coreen.”

“So, she makes you feel like more of a man? That’s why you cheated on your wife? Because some tramp makes you feel like a man?” I heard myself screaming.

“Again, it’s not that simple. You know me better than that,” Jamison said.

“I thought I did.”

“And I thought I knew you too, Kerry.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve changed a lot over the years too,” he said. I stood up. I couldn’t take it anymore. He was just moving from one thing he hated about me to another. How was it that he was the one having an affair but this conversation was all about me? What about how he’d made me feel like less? How he’d changed?

“I don’t want to hear this,” I said, walking past the sandwich on the counter. I’d lost my appetite.

“Why not?” he asked, following behind me.

“Because it’s not about me. This is about you, Jamison, not me.”

“What happened to you going to med school?” he asked. I stopped. Right in the hallway between the front door and the kitchen, I stopped moving because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.