His Third Wife

“Well, I’m cooking over here if you’re hungry. Making some soup. Got me some okra and chicken breasts and truffle salt and cayenne pepper in it. Just the way I like it.” Mrs. Taylor droned on with Val still on the other side of the refrigerator. “A lot of people don’t like it like this, but I do. Nutritious and delicious! That’s what I like to say. What Jamison likes to say, too.” She laughed some more.

Val was trying hard to keep her eyes rolling in steady rotation, but the list of select, otherwise odd ingredients in the peppered pot had her ears at attention. Those were the things on the list she’d emailed the maid. The things her belly bump had her craving. She closed the refrigerator door slowly, like a cat climbing out of a corner.

“You put a lot of pepper in it?” Val asked without realizing she’d said a word.

“Hell yeah! I like my food Cajun style! Hot and sassy—like me. Why—you don’t like it like that?” Mrs. Taylor frowned regretfully.

“No, I do! I love spicy food!” Val’s eyes and heart and gut softened at the idea of the boiling matter on the stove finding its way into a bowl for her. For the last three days she’d been craving the kinds of spices Mama Fee cooked in her big pot in Memphis. A soup of okra and cayenne might make her forget an old enemy. Might. But old habits seldom die in a kitchen. And when Val looked from the pot to the pot stirrer, her little phony smile hiding beneath a black wig, Val remembered everything Jamison told her about his mother’s little spy job outside that morning and the frown returned to her face.

“I ain’t hungry,” Val said suddenly.

“What? Not hungry? But you just—”

“I ain’t hungry!” Val set her eyeballs back into circular motion and turned to walk out of the room with a still empty belly that was now hollering out for food in audible ways. But when she reached

the threshold, the fiery child who could tongue lash her own mother to tears realized she’d been walking away and turning her back from trouble all day and she was just plain tired of the action. Tired of all of the acting.

“And, so you know, you need to mind your business,” she said, with her rolling eyes back on Mrs. Taylor. “What I was doing outside didn’t have nothing to do with you. And if you had a question, you needed to come to me first. Because I don’t have nothing to hide from you. Everybody else, including your son, might be scared of you, but I’m not.” Val snapped back, crossed her arms over her chest, and waited for a return jab, but Mrs. Taylor just kept smiling and stirring at her pot. After a long time waiting, she had no choice but to ask the smiling woman, “What?”

Mrs. Taylor looked at Val with her purest smile. “I’m sorry,” she offered meekly.

“What?”

“I’m sorry for what I did.” She placed the long wooden spoon she’d been stirring with on the counter beside her brew and walked over to Val. “I was upstairs listening to you two argue and”—she extended a hand to place it on Val’s shoulder in a tender way—“I felt bad. I feel bad.”

Val snatched away from a touch that felt cold. “You should feel bad.”

“You’re mad. I get that, but I was just looking out for my son’s best interests,” Mrs. Taylor said. “You’re not a mother yet, so you don’t know, but you will soon. Being a mother is hard. You’re always looking out for your kids—sometimes you can be blinded by it.”

“Whatever. Look, I’m not about to take parenting advice from you.”

“Okay. You don’t have to, darling.” Mrs. Taylor reached for Val’s shoulder again and this time she did not move. “But I am asking that you accept my apology. Just for right now. We both want what’s best for Jamison. Right? To make him happy?”

Val nodded.

“And that’s only going to happen if we’re getting along.”

“You’ve said this before,” Val said, remembering the little chat Mrs. Taylor had initiated at the courthouse.

“I know. I know.” Mrs. Taylor laughed a little at her obvious backtrack. “But I really mean it this time. I heard Jamison’s voice today, and I realized something—I don’t want to hear him sad or upset. And I know he can’t handle this situation, so I have to. I need to step up.”

“Step up?”

“Yes. Look, I realized that after I get things in order here in this house between me and you and that baby, I can go. Jamison can handle the rest on his own. He’ll know what to do,” Mrs. Taylor explained.

“So, now you’re moving out?” Val worked hard to temper her voice to hide jubilant emotions concerning that revelation. Still, her excitement gleamed through unsophisticated eyes that led Mrs. Taylor back to her pot.

“Yes, I am!” Mrs. Taylor claimed, walking over to the pot as she wiped her hands on an old Christmas-themed apron she’d found tucked deep in the back of a cabinet beside the stove. “And to celebrate, I decided to make some of my famous soup”—she looked back at Val when she made it to the pot—“for my daughter-in-law.”

“You made that soup for me?” Val took two steps to the pot. Her hands were fidgeting behind her back like a little girl who’d just come in from playing in the snow to discover a cup of real cocoa simmering just for her on the stove. The unconscious emotion, a fuzzy memory of things Val had seen children expect and receive on television shows and in movies was something she’d hardly had in her life or appreciated enough to acknowledge as it was happening. It was mother love. Or mother comfort. Or something that was made to look like it.

Mrs. Taylor went to the cupboard and pulled out a huge sable bowl. “You sit down, baby. Get off those swollen feet and let me take care of you. I know you’re hungry. I heard your stomach growling.”

Val laughed and rubbed her stomach. “You sure?” she asked.

“Sure? I’m obliged. Go’on and sit down.” Mrs. Taylor was filling the bowl with a healthy serving of the stew. She grabbed a spoon as she told Val about Jamison’s love of summer soup and placed the bowl on the kitchen table.

Val was still standing. Looking at the chair and the bowl. The woman standing beside the seated meal.