His First Wife (26 page)

TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
DATE: 1/1/08
TIME: 12:17
AM

 

I know this e-mail might be a little late, but I figured I'd wait until the right time to respond to your heartfelt message. And now, as I begin my new life, in a new year, I think it's good to let you know that I am fine. I was going through so much last year that I needed to pull back and really get myself together before I could reach out to anyone. I hope I didn't scare you, but I had to do this for myself. I've been running from my feelings for so long and I finally realized that I had to face myself and the pain I felt after losing Duane in such a violent way. I do miss him, but I didn't allow myself to feel that. I hid it with a bunch of other drama and I'm tired. I sold the house and moved to Oakland with a cousin and I am now seeing a therapist who specializes in helping victims of 9/11.

 

I am not sad about this. I am excited and ready for a change and prepared to let go of the pain. I am sorry for hurting people and I can only pray that God forgives me for what I did.

 

This will be the last e-mail you receive from me. I don't feel a need to carry on any relationships from the past. I am seeking to build new, healthy ones that match my new attitude. I hope you understand and know that this is not about you; it's about my recovery.

 

I wish you all the best in the New Year and pray for you and your family.

 

Coreen

A
fter a predictable rising sun had rolled through hopscotch maps of plantations, crawled along the tips of decaying steeples in suburban enclaves, and made its way to the ambitious stacking skyline that marked Atlanta's city center, a body was found all akimbo in the middle of Peachtree Street. People who'd come from pollen-fecund cars, which had been stopped to a crawl in both directions along the venous strip that connected all of what was being called the official “capital of the New South,” looked to the sky like maybe the bloody brown mess had fallen from the sun's fiery rays. One person pointed. Then two pointed. Three. Then four. A reporter arrived. And then a police officer. All pointed to the top of the Downtown Westin. The body in the street in the bloody gray suit had come from there. Had to. One pointing son asked his mother, “Was that a woman up there looking down at us?” Further along in the crowd, a coworker asked a driver, “Was that a man dressed as a woman standing at the top of the Westin?” A wife, who'd thought the same thing, said to her husband and then later to a reporter, “You could tell by the jaw. It wasn't a woman. It was a man dressed as a woman. The shoulders were too broad.” Her husband disagreed: “She was too small to be a man.” But some hadn't seen anything. Just a shadow. Maybe a bird sitting on the edge looking down at the body like prey.

Soon it was a scene. And someone in a white cloth jumpsuit lifted the head that had nearly been crushed by the weight of the fall. Looked into the eyes. Open and dead. And knew. This was no angel that had fallen from the sun to halt rush hour traffic. It was the new mayor.

That was when the talk started. When it would never stop. Because that man, the mayor who'd fallen from the top of the Westin to the black tar, was Jamison Jackson. Everything the chocolate side of the city could be proud of and the white side could use as an example of Southern progress. Born poor in the SWATS. A Morehouse man. Fraternity guy. Self-made millionaire. A heart that won the old guard. A voice that had vowed to repave the very street that would become his deathbed. A soul that wanted everything he could imagine. And he was dead. The city dressed in black for the funeral. And from the boardrooms in Buckhead to the lunch counters at the Busy Bee and Chantrelles in the West End, chatter was king. There was a first wife. A new wife. A mother. A son. A fat pig's belly worth of secrets. A mess of shadows that everyone thought they could see clearly. Politics at its finest.

But that was just the tipping point of it all. Stories like that never begin with a body falling from a midlevel hotel.

E
verything started when a mother came to town. Quiet and all alone, she got off a Greyhound bus across the street from a conveniently placed strip club. Had on fake pearls and a blond lace front wig. Her daughter picked her up in a shiny new Jaguar with two seats and the top down.

Maybe thirty minutes of silent riding later, the mother was standing at the window in the big house—there were pillars out front and all. She was looking away from everything beautiful behind her. Clutching her purse like she wasn't staying. Thinking. Trying to decide how she should tell her smiling baby girl, who always wanted more than she could hold in her arms, that she ought to get on the next bus and go back to Memphis with her.

“I don't know why you didn't accept the tickets I sent you. First class flight? I thought you'd like that,” Deena, the daughter, said. Maybe she was sipping mimosa or waiting for the maid to pour her another glass.

“Memphis ain't but a stone's throw away,” the mother mumbled. Her name was Mama Fee—everyone had always called her that, even before she'd had children. “Take more time to get on the plane and fly than it does to get on the bus and ride. And I don't do big birds.”

“That's old talk. This is a new world.”

“Is it? Is it really, Deena? You tell me.”

“Yes, Mama Fee. You still act like flying is just for white folks. Or rich folks—”

“Ain't said nothing like that.”

“Well, that's good, because it isn't. As long as you can pay, you can play. That's the Atlanta way.” Deena chuckled and looked at Lorna, the maid, holding the pitcher of mimosa to her glass to support the comedy of her play on words with laughter. “I mean, it's 2012—not 1902!”

Lorna was only able to produce a half smile before Deena shooed her away with a tired wave. As soon as Lorna stepped over the threshold, the mother turned and looked at her daughter.

“Seems like you shouldn't be drinking,” she nearly whispered. “Not in your condition.”

“Condition? Please! What do you know about it?”

“Plenty. Had you and your sisters. Doctor says it's bad.”

“No. Doctor says it's good. Helps to relieve stress. A little won't hurt the baby at all.” Deena downed the last of her drink. There was an audible gulp that resonated with pangs of short nerves or anxiety. “And I need it today—with it being my wedding day and all.” She looked at the big blue diamond on her ring finger. She'd purchased it a week ago with her fiancé's credit card and full blessing. “I need to relax.”

Mama Fee was still looking out the window and thinking. The shiny Jaguar was resting in the middle of a circular drive that was filled with perfectly shaped creamy stones and purple pebbles that made the whole world outside the house look like a giant fish tank.

“Maybe you should've waited until the baby was born,” she said. “At least until we could've had a proper wedding—your family come. You know? Like Patrice and Rhonda did. Still don't see why you couldn't invite your own sisters.”

“Would you stop it? I didn't invite
you
here to go drilling me about everything.”

“I ain't drilling you. They're your sisters. You were in their weddings.”

“Yeah, and they married big, fat losers. Is Patrice's husband out of jail yet?”

“You watch your mouth.” Mama Fee said, finally turning to look at her daughter. But she needed no confirmation that it was Deena who could bring up such a thing. Her youngest child was born spitting fire at anything that didn't seem to pick her up in some way that she deemed acceptable. This might've been considered gross ambition or maybe even unapologetic drive if it wasn't for the fact that sometimes Deena's desire for uplift went beyond frustrated tongue lashings and straight to unmitigated evil—well, the kind of evil a girl from Memphis who'd hardly graduated high school could spin. When Deena was 15, Patrice had just finished beauty school and her prized graduation gift was a beauty box filled with emerald and sea foam and lavender and canary eye shadow. Lipsticks of every shade of red and pink. After Deena had begged to sit and try just one shadow, paint her lips in one shade of red, Patrice balked and hid the box beneath her bed. The next morning, the rainbow of shadows and lipsticks were floating in a river of bleach on the bathroom floor. Mama Fee nearly killed Deena with her switch in the backyard after that incident, trying to teach the girl a lesson. But Deena didn't cry one tear.

“Patrice's husband is a fucking jailbird. Don't blame me for that,” Deena said, nearly laughing.

“And what about you? What about your husband?”

“Fiancé. And what about him?”

“Well, where is he?” Mama Fee asked, fingering a small Tiffany frame she'd found in the windowsill. It was a picture of a handsome, brown man standing beside an older woman at what looked like his college graduation.

“He had to work this morning,” Deena replied.

“On your wedding day?”

There was a pause. And then, “You're picking again.”

“I'm not picking. I'm just asking. It's an obvious question.” She held out the picture to Deena. “This him?”

“Yes. Him and his raggedy-ass mama,” Deena snarled. “Hate that old bat.”

“A least you've met her. I can't say the same about her son. Don't seem right neither.”

“Damn, Mama Fee! What's that supposed to mean? Because you've never met him, something's not right?”

“It just means I would like to have known him first—before he married my youngest daughter. Know what kind of man he is. Stuff your daddy would've done.”

Both mother and daughter paused at the mention of a daddy. He'd been long gone. Was a good man. But disappeared one evening after leaving a bar following a fight with one of his white coworkers. Everyone cursed him for leaving Fee alone to raise three girls. They'd never eat right again. There were rumors of another woman, another family in Kentucky. Soon Fee believed these rumors, but soon after that his body floated to the top of a forgotten old swimming hole at the back of town. There was noose tied to his neck. No genitals left on his body. No one was ever interviewed, interrogated, or charged.

“A rich man. A powerful man. That's what kind of man he is,” Deena finally said in a voice so vindictive it promised some secret punishment for a private vendetta.

“A man who works on his wedding day?” Mama Fee asked.

“God, would you just leave that alone? Look, Jamison didn't want anything big. He just got elected to office. I'm his former assistant. I'm pregnant. The press, they'll run all over it. They're still running pictures of his first wife in the newspapers here. ‘Kerry Jackson.' Fucking press.”

“The press?”

“The press. Yes, the newspapers. The fucking websites. I have to think about that. We have to think about that. I'm marrying the fucking mayor of Atlanta, Mama Fee. Jamison Jackson. Not some jailbird like Patrice did.”

“I know, baby. I heard you a million times before.”

The sound of the beautiful stones and pebbles cracking beneath tires in the driveway announced a new arrival.

Deena jumped up from her empty champagne flute with amazing ease and stepped quickly to the mirror over the fireplace. She puckered her lips, cleaned her teeth with her tongue, smiled, and was out the front door.

Mama Fee looked back out the window in time to see the soon-to-be son-in-law she'd never met close his car door and lean into Deena's open arms with a stiff back. He was carrying a laptop in one arm. Had a gym bag draped over the other shoulder. Was wearing sweats. Mama Fee looked from him to the picture in her hand. Alone in the silent room, she looked over her shoulder for the maid and then slid the picture into her purse.

“You're late, Jamison” Deena said outside. “We're gonna have to hightail it downtown if we're going to do this today.” She paused but he didn't say anything. “We
are
doing this today. Right?”

“Jesus. A million questions. I just got here.”

“My mother's here.”

“I know,” Jamison said. “I bought the bus ticket.”

Deena stood in front of him with her feet firmly planted in the pebbles and stones like a little girl about to cry.

“So, we're doing it?” she repeated after recovering with a hand on her hip.

“Yes.”

“I'm just asking because we were supposed to go before the judge earlier and—”

“We're going to Forsyth.”

“Forsyth County? Why? That's too far away.”

“It's just far enough. I can't risk everyone knowing about this.”

“They're all going to know soon. Right?” Deena asked, setting off a conversation they'd had most every day since she'd announced she was pregnant.

“Yes. I just need to keep this quiet now. Until we're married. Then I can make a statement. I need to control the situation. Get in front of it. I'm still dealing with Gause's shit. And Jeremy with those hookers in Biloxi. I need some time out of the headlines.”

“Fine. Well, where's your mother? Where's Tyrian?”

“Mama said she'll meet us at the courthouse,” Jamison explained. “She didn't want to risk blowing my cover.”

Deena smiled at this lie. She knew Jamison's mother didn't like her. She'd actually told Deena herself just days after Deena started working as Jamison's assistant when he announced his run for mayor. She'd come up behind Deena in the bathroom, looked at her reflection in the mirror and said, “I smell your shit. More like diarrhea.”

“What about Tyrian?” Deena asked again.

“My son's with his mother.”