His First Wife

“What?”

“He e-mailed me last night.”

“Well, that hasn’t been proven yet,” I said, stepping to her. “Coreen, can’t you find a man who isn’t taken? What’s wrong with you that you have to scrape and struggle to get at something that someone else already owns? I guess you thought that getting my husband to sleep with you somehow made you a stronger woman than me. No, it only makes you a trifling, lowlife whore. Spreading your legs and you don’t have a damn thing to show for it. Jamison isn’t going anywhere. You were living a fantasy.”

One of the ushers came over and tried to squeeze between the two of us as people walking by began to stop and stare.

“No, there’s no need,” I said to usher. “I’m so done with her.” I stepped to walk away but then I turned back around and said, “Stay away from my family.”

E-MAIL TRANSMISSION

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

DATE: 11/21/07

TIME: 11:15 PM

Hey, it’s the day before Thanksgiving. I just wanted to say hello and make sure everything is OK with you. I pray that if you need something, you’ll call me.

Jamison

Black Enterprise

Success. Everyone seemed to be saying that word to me when Rake It Up celebrated its tenth anniversary. When our numbers were published in a story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution , the company that started with one truck and two hands, and had grown into a fifteen-truck, fifty-man operation servicing most major companies in Atlanta, people could only describe it as a success. I’d never thought about it. Maybe it was because I’d been there working and worrying since day one, but I hadn’t had time to really assess my success. Yes, I’d done big things. I was far from the old neighborhood. I’d paid off three houses (including my mother’s), completely funded both mine and Kerry’s retirement, and had well over a million in assets and investments. I’d even set up a scholarship fund in my name at my high school for any young man seeking to attend Morehouse. I agreed to pay tuition if he promised to keep up his grades and do community service.

Everyone seemed so excited about the company. It was a unique idea that I’d stretched to its farthest potential, and not a day went by that I didn’t get a pat on the back or a wave from a car window. While my mother still managed to mention medical school in between the compliments she gave me about Rake It Up, Kerry seemed to be coming around a bit too. She wasn’t exactly the biggest supporter, but working with the business helped her see how much earning potential there was and she was good at what she did for Rake It Up. In addition to keeping me organized, she made all of our new contacts, and her mother helped us get big clients who ultimately changed the face of our company. Within three years of working with me, we’d gone from doing okay, to being invited to speak before the 100 Black Men, the Urban League, and Boule, and I was voted Man of the Year for my fraternity. For the first time, when we walked into those gatherings, Kerry was on my arm and I truly felt like she was honored to be with me. She’d cling to my elbow as we entered and while she never broke the rule of spending too much time with her husband at a public function, I often caught her looking at me from across the room.

When Black Enterprise called, saying they wanted to do a story and even take pictures of my house, I was ecstatic. Kerry had just left the company to focus on getting the house together and we were talking about having a baby. My life was like a picture and everything in it was in its place. I wanted to share this reality with the world; to show every little black boy in every ’hood that he could be everything I was and then some more on top of that. I’d come from the bottom and now I was at the top and they’d all know. Maybe someone would look at me and say, “I can do that too.”

The day of the interview and shoot, Kerry and I were running around the house like cats on rollerblades. She was trying to get the house together; I was trying to make sure I had on the right tie. Nothing seemed to match and I’d seen so many bad tie pictures in Black Enterprise that I didn’t want to make the wrong choice. I didn’t want to be the man with the cheap tie, trying to look rich, or the dude with the tie that was way too expensive, looking like a complete wannabe. I was who I was and I wanted my tie to say that. I kept asking Kerry for help, but she seemed like she was in her own world. She hadn’t really looked at me all morning and whenever I called her, she’d say she’d be right in. But she never came.

When the doorbell rang and Isabella let the interviewer in, Kerry and I found ourselves in the same room for the first time the entire day. We were in the foyer, arm in arm, smiling at the woman like we were completely at ease.

“Marial DeLouch,” she said, shaking our hands.

“I’m Jamison,” I said. “And this is my wife Kerry.”

Kerry smiled pleasantly, but I could tell something was up.

“You two have a lovely home,” Marial said as we headed to the reading room where Kerry had planned to have her take pictures.

“Thank you,” I said as proud as a new father.

When we walked into the reading room, which Kerry had spent all week filling with books from an antique shop, the woman seemed excited, but then after a minute, she asked if there was somewhere else we could go. She said the lighting was poor and that she wanted to see a place that really defined me as a leader, “a powerful player,” she said.

“Well the reading room is dignified and will show that he has a passion for culture,” Kerry said.

“Yeah, but something tells me there’s more to Jamison.” She smiled. “I know you’ve come a long way. I want to show that in the picture.”

Kerry crossed her hands over her chest.

“Well, there’s the baby grand in the great room,” I said. Kerry shot her eyes at me. She hated the piano. I’d always wanted a white baby grand, but Kerry thought it was gauche and in poor taste for the style of the house. She said it reeked of the nouveau riche, which I didn’t know meant newly rich until I said it to Damien the next day. We fought about it for years and finally my mother bought it for me for my birthday (with money I’d placed in her savings). She had it delivered to the house with a note saying, “A baby for my baby,” and Kerry said nothing else about the thing. She’d learned to play classical piano as a child, but I never once saw her sit down at the piano. And I couldn’t play, so it just collected dust. But it sure looked good.

“That’ll be great,” Marial replied. When we walked into the room, she went on and on about how great the lighting was and how the piano added to the contemporary edge in the room. To this Kerry gave little more than a lifeless grin.

“So, before we take the pictures, let me do the interview,” she went on. “I’ll need some quotes from you first, Kerry.”