His Third Wife

by Grace Octavia

  “Fucking shame! Tax dollars at work!”

  Kerry laughed with Marcy.

  “But still, it’s none of my business. You know? Who he’s dating? I don’t really care. Our shit is beyond in the past. I dealt with his bullshit for too many years.”

  “Well, I’m glad you feel that way now,” Marcy said, “because that shit you had going on last year with that detective following him around everywhere was beyond crazy.”

  “I told you, I was just doing that to make sure he was handling the business correctly.”

  “And I told you, Miss Black Barbie, you can go and tell that lie to someone else. I’m your best friend and I know better. I’m just happy you stopped paying that man.”

  There was a telling silence.

  Marcy looked at Kerry. “You did stop paying that man? Right? Please tell me you don’t have a detective following your ex-husband around.”

  “Yes. I did,” Kerry whispered unconvincingly.

  “Paying that man $5K a week! I don’t care if he was in the FBI. Ain’t no fuzzy pictures from the Ramada worth that much money.”

  “Now you know that wasn’t what I was looking for.”

  “Whatever, Kerry. Just tell me you stopped paying that man.” Marcy locked her eyes on Kerry.

  “I stopped paying him,” Kerry said.

  “Good.”

  “And, for the record, I repeat: I was just doing that to make sure he was handling his business correctly. We both had a lot of money wrapped up in his campaign. Those were funds from the business.”

  “Yeah, girl, I hear you,” Marcy agreed comically before laughing with Kerry.

  “And I don’t care a thing about the new Mrs. Jamison Taylor,” Kerry said. “I just need to know who’s going to be around my son. And I don’t see why he didn’t tell me he was going to marry her.”

  “I agree. Your son’s father getting married is your business. He should’ve told you something, Kerry.” Marcy crossed her arms and scrunched up her face at the sun. “All that shit he put you through—please. He owes you.”

  A reel of dark images from the past played out in Kerry’s head as she pretended to watch Tyrian play—Jamison leaving her twice for the same woman with red hair, coming back to Atlanta on his knees, her trying one last time and realizing there was no candle Jamison could light to resurrect her dead heart.

  “Where’s that crazy girl, anyway?”

  “Coreen? In Los Angeles where Jamison left her, I guess,” Kerry revealed. “I haven’t heard anything else about her. His story was that she claimed she was pregnant, but when he told her he was coming back home to me, she went and got an abortion. He said it was over. But he still goes back and forth to LA. Claims it’s for business.”

  The women fell silent.

  “All that shit stirred up—courtesy of Jamison’s silly-ass mother, Mrs. Taylor. All because she couldn’t stand the idea of you two being together,” Marcy remembered. “I’m like, did she really think her little plot to ruin your marriage would work? Set her married son up with some widow from her church?”

  “Actually, if you really think about it, her plan did work. We’re not together anymore.”

  “Old battle-axe! I sure hope she’s getting what’s coming to her.”

  “Don’t say that, Marce. That woman is very sick,” Kerry reminded her friend, and Marcy sobered up fast. Jamison’s mother had had a stroke at Tyrian’s birthday party a year back. Everyone, including a tear-soaked Tyrian, had thought she was dead. She’d been in and out of the hospital ever since.

  “I just want to know how Jamison is going to explain all of this to his son. I mean, how could he get married without even having his son there?” Kerry said. Marcy sucked her teeth at Millicent climbing out of the pool with a head of wet hair.

  “I guess we need to get going,” she said. “It’s going to take me all night to dry this girl’s hair. And she’s tender headed. What time is Jamison supposed to be here to get Tyrian?”

  Kerry looked at the time on her cell phone and peeped Millicent counting as Tyrian went under water to hold his breath. “He’s supposed to be here at five, but that’ll be six. Maybe seven. Always late.”

  “Maybe I should stay. Be right here and go in on that motherfucker for you!” Marcy joked.

  “Um, no! We saw that last time you all were here when he came to get Tyrian for his weekend visit. Horror!”

  “I just asked him what life was like after losing the best thing that ever happened to him,” Marcy said, laughing as they remembered her wine-influenced diatribe in which she promised Jamison nothing but ruin would befall him for all the days of what was left of his meager existence—she’d actually used those words.

  “I’m not going through that again,” Kerry said. “Plus, I have to get out of here as soon as they leave. I’m volunteering at Hell Hath No Fury tonight.”

  “You and that divorced women’s center,” Marcy said snidely. “Isn’t it time for you to move on? You’re pretty far from your divorce now.”

  “I know, but I can still help other women like me. And I enjoy it. Gets me out of the house, keeps me sane,” Kerry said.

  “Hanging with me doesn’t keep you sane?” Marcy rolled her eyes.

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  After Marcy and Millicent had left and Tyrian was dry, fed, and sitting in the living room beside his overnight bag awaiting his father’s arrival, Kerry sat across from her son wondering if she should say something. Try to prepare him. It was only months ago that Tyrian had stopped asking for his father in the middle of the night. His therapist said it was his way of asking why his parents weren’t together anymore. Why Daddy was no longer available for post-bath back rides and pre-bedtime stories. They lived in separate places, and Daddy was only seen every fourteen days and sometimes further apart than that. His little heart was breaking, and nighttime tantrums were all he could do to express the pain. The therapist had said it would stop and it had. But that was no consolation for Kerry’s own heartache, the incessant motherly pangs she felt right at her center anytime anything with the boy seemed out of place. This was motherhood.

  She looked at Tyrian’s lanky arms and brown skin as he tapped away at something on his iPad. He looked just like his father. A curse her own mother had promised.

  “Things might be different at Daddy’s house this weekend,” Kerry started, careful not to speak with too much purpose.

  Tyrian didn’t look up. He kept tapping on the iPad. Then, just as Kerry was about to come up with some other way to say what she was meaning, he asked, “How?”

  Somehow, Kerry wasn’t ready for this prompt. She’d already decided that she wasn’t telling Tyrian about Val or the wedding. That was Jamison’s job.

  “Well,” she started. “Well . . .”

  Tyrian looked up at her with Jamison’s eyes.

  “Just different. I just don’t want you to be surprised.”

  “Why would I be surprised?”

  Tyrian hadn’t seen any of the news footage from the courthouse. There was only one television in the entire house and it was in Kerry’s bedroom.

  “Just by anything new. I want you to keep an open mind. Okay?”

  Tyrian shrugged and disappeared into the iPad again.

  “And remember that Mommy and Daddy love you and we will always be here for you.” This last line was stated only so Kerry could hear it. Tyrian was no longer listening, and if he was, he’d probably wonder why it was the hundredth time he’d heard his mother say this. Since the divorce, the boy associated the string of words with loss and preparation for something horrible. Kerry was about to repeat herself, but luckily for both of them, the doorbell rang.

  Tyrian was at the front door pulling it open before his father could respond to Kerry’s rigid, unneeded request of identification: “Who is it?”

  “Daddy!” he squealed in a way that diminished the actuality of each of the twenty-four-hour periods in the fourteen days since he’d last seen his father a
nd Kerry had been left with the duty of caring for him on her own. Somehow, it always seemed she was greeted less cheerfully when Tyrian returned home.

  The boy was fast in his father’s arms, his face buried in his great chest. Jamison looked at Kerry, surprised. He was the superhero. Again. Just for showing up. And this was fatherhood.

  Kerry looked at the clock. He was two hours late. She wouldn’t mention it again.

  “Hey, lil man!” Jamison laughed, returning Tyrian’s hug. “You got bigger!”

  “Bigger? Really, Daddy!”

  “Yeah, I’m sure of it. Heavier, too!” Jamison lifted Tyrian’s skinny little body higher in a pretend struggle that made Kerry laugh with him. “What you feeding this boy, Kerry?”

  “No pork!” Tyrian affirmed.

  “That’s right,” Jamison said. “The black man doesn’t eat the white man’s pork!”

  “Don’t tell him that,” Kerry insisted with a scowl.

  “Why? It’s the truth! Ask Brother Farrakhan!”

  “Because he goes to camp and says these crazy things and I have to explain it to his teachers.”

  “All right! Fine, Mommy,” Jamison drawled and rolled his eyes with Tyrian. “Well, whatever it is, keep it up. You’re about to be a bodybuilder with all of these muscles, man!”

  Jamison rolled Tyrian’s arm up and pinched the peak of a budding prepubescent bicep. He growled and grimaced at Tyrian, who immediately repeated the wild gesture.

  “You ready to go?” Jamison asked as he put Tyrian down.

  “Yes!” Tyrian ran into the living room to get his bag and iPad.

  “Jamison, I wanted to talk to you before you two left,” Kerry whispered.

  Jamison just looked at her blankly, though he knew what all she had to say. He’d been putting out the Forsyth County courthouse reporter fires for days. He had no reason to believe the embers hadn’t drifted through Kerry’s television set, as well.

  “About the weekend . . . and your house,” Kerry added quickly before Tyrian returned with his things and an eager smile.

  Jamison put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and thought of how easily he could slip out of the house without saying a thing about Val to Kerry. He’d avoided the conversation for this long and he knew Kerry wouldn’t say anything in front of their son.

  Tyrian looked up at him.

  “You ready, Daddy?” he asked.

  “Hey, why don’t you go to your room and get some more of your books, so we can read them this weekend,” he said.

  “Really?” Tyrian dropped his bag and darted up the stairs.

  “And get only the best ones,” Jamison added. “The ones I haven’t read yet.”

  “Okay!” Tyrian agreed, though he was already long gone.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Jamison asked.

  “Your new wife. Val.”

  “What about her?”

  As she’d imagined herself doing so many times in the past, Kerry thought of slapping Jamison just then. His answers, always so light and breezy, mocked any attention she gave to any matter. He almost never seemed present with her. And it wasn’t that she was asking him to make amends or kiss her ass. Just a simple honest conversation would do.

  “Well, she’s your former assistant.”

  “Okay. Half of the world knows that now. What else?”

  “And a stripper.”

  “Something else that’s been widely broadcasted. Anything else?”

  “Yes, Jamison,” Kerry said, filling her voice with a building annoyance at how cavalier Jamison was being. Again, she imagined her open hand slamming against his cheek. “There is more. I don’t want her around my son.”

  Jamison exhaled and stepped back from Kerry, leaning against the front door.

  “That’s impossible. You know that—”

  “No, I don’t know anything, because you don’t tell me anything.”

  “Tell you what?” Jamison asked.

  “That you were getting married. Was I supposed to find out by seeing it on TMZ like the rest of the world?”

  “Yes. I got married,” Jamison admitted. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand. But it wasn’t exactly planned.”

  “I’m coming, Daddy,” Tyrian hollered from upstairs.

  “Slow down, son,” Jamison replied. “Go back and get three more books. We’re going to be doing a lot of reading.”

  “Uggh!” Tyrian pouted at his father’s stalling. “Okay.”

  “Look, Val and I didn’t want to do anything big. We were going to make an official announcement yesterday. And I would’ve told you before that.”

  “I should’ve known sooner,” Kerry scolded.

  “Why? I don’t ask you who you’re dating.” Jamison held up his hands. “We don’t play that game. Right?”

  “But I have a right to know who’s around my son. And I don’t like her or want her around my son.”

  “She wouldn’t do anything to Tyrian and you know that.”

  “No, I don’t.” Kerry retorted.

  “Yes, you do. You’re just being—” Jamison knew better than to finish his statement. Any way he could conclude his idea would lead to an argument. And there were only so many books Tyrian could fit into his backpack before the child realized something was up.

  “I’m being what?” Kerry pushed.

  “Just being difficult—that’s all I was going to say,” Jamison settled on.

  “I’m being responsible. I’m being a parent.” This was a jab right in the jaw—a slap in the face that needed no hand.

  “So, now you’re calling me a bad father?”

  “Two days twice a month and I’m supposed to call you a good father? What happened to you taking him to karate on Wednesdays? Coming to tuck him in on Mondays? I give you the opportunity to see your son and you just can’t make any—”

  “My time is just limited. You know I love my son!” Jamison stopped and lowered his voice. “Don’t go there.”

  “Love and time are two different things. And soon, just saying you love him won’t be enough to show up and be a superhero every time.”

  The words crashed into Jamison’s face a little harder than Kerry had intended. Later, she’d remind herself that outcome was the problem with slapping someone with words—you never knew how hard it would hurt.

  “Daddy, come pick out a book with me. I can’t decide between Brothers of the Knight or Joshua’s Masai Mask!” Tyrian called down to his father at such a time that it seemed he could feel his father’s pain from upstairs.

  Jamison bit his lip and looked at Kerry hard before heading up to their son’s room. He’d deserved that hit. He’d expected it. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt.

  Al Green was talking about something when he sang “Love and Happiness.” It can make you do wrong and make you do right. He should’ve followed up with “Pain and Regret” though, for a little bit of irony, because they seemed to have the same effect. And most assuredly, pain and regret will follow Al Green’s love and happiness. They devour them. Eat them whole and spit them out on a war field where there are no rules of battle. Pain and regret make everything ugly. Made me ugly. Made Jamison ugly. Two people who had been dancing to Al Green what seemed like minutes before were now ugly and raw and vengeful like the devil himself . . . and all over one thing . . . a divorce.

  Anyone who’s been there knows. It’s like an endless night that drags you into darkness, and all over a simple piece of paper that signifies the dissolution of something you ought to have known would end—love and happiness. Marriage.

  And who were we then? I was new. Unarmed. Blissfully naïve. Open and available.

  Jamison was the same. An empty cup. An unlit candle.

  We ignored everything anyone had to say. His own mother. My own mother.

  We created our love and happiness on top of sand. And when the tide water came in to claim our fickle ground, we emerged from either side of what was left of our marriage with hearts wrapped in alli
gator skin and fish scales covering our eyes.

  He cheated. I took him back. He cheated again. I wished him dead and took half of everything he owned. It was mine too. I’d helped him build it.

  I left the battlefield and tried to rebuild again.

  But now I don’t believe in love and happiness anymore, I don’t think.

  I don’t go to weddings. I gave myself permission to stay at home and watch television. Maybe go to the yoga studio. I just couldn’t resist the urge anymore to run up to the bride and groom and warn them of the war coming in the wind. How pain and regret would outplay Al Green. And love and happiness would become a shadow.

  I first met Val one rainy Monday morning when I stopped by Jamison’s office downtown. Tyrian had promised his teacher his father, the mayor of Atlanta, would come speak at their school’s town hall meeting. The only problem was the mayor had no idea about the meeting and though he agreed to do it at the last minute, I was left doing all the running around to make sure things went smoothly and Tyrian got to be proud of his dad again—plus he hadn’t seen Jamison in three weeks.

  I stopped by the office to pick up a letter from Jamison stating any security details or program desires he needed for the town hall meeting. Val was sitting at a desk looking at her fingernails when I walked in.

  She smiled weakly. Asked my name, though I was sure from her glance that she knew exactly who I was. She didn’t have to lean over in her seat for me to see the thin strip of flesh that trailed the part between her fake breasts. She was wearing a red dress with red nails and red lipstick. So obvious. Her computer screen was off. Her cell phone was on her desk. A blue screen let me know she was on Facebook.

  “He didn’t leave anything for you,” she said with pretend urgency after I explained that I was there to pick up a letter. “But you can run along and I’ll make sure he gets back to you when he returns to the office. I’ll email the letter myself.”

  “It’s for his son’s school,” I said.

  “Oh, Tyrian?” She smiled and I just knew. Just knew.

  “You know my son?”

  “Yes. I met that sweet boy at the house. So cute. Looks just like his father. You think?”