Page 69 of His First Wife

“I know what you mean.” I walked over to the window and looked outside to see two children playing in the street. Aunt Luchie’s house was just down the street from the Atlanta University Center. It was a gorgeous Queen Anne–style home with magnificent fireplaces and hardwood floors throughout. She’d bought it with her inheritance after she graduated from Spelman. My mother wasn’t exactly excited that she’d used the money for that. She had enough money to buy a home right beside my mother. But Aunt Luchie’s love with Red blossomed on the campus of the AUC, as he was a senior at Clark Atlanta when they started dating her freshman year. He was in the jazz band and caught her eye the first week of school. She was in love and felt that she’d always be tied to that place.

“So how will your story end?” Aunt Luchie asked.

“What?” I turned and looked at her.

“Your story with Jamison.”

“I guess I don’t know,” I said, walking over to sit on the sofa beside her. I’d been trying not to think about it. It just hurt too much to consider my marriage being over.

“Well, there are only two options—either you stay or you go. You just have to decide if you will take the gamble.”

“Well, it’s the gamble that I’m worried about. Taking Jamison back after this.... I don’t know.”

“So, you’re just going to walk away?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You know, there was a time when folks didn’t just get up and leave over things like this. They stayed and figured it out—worked it out, no matter what. It was a disgrace for a black family to fall apart,” she said. “We’d fought so hard to stay together during slavery, only to have people pull us apart, so when we were free, being with family was a sign of strength.”

“Well, times have changed,” I said.

“Just because times have changed doesn’t mean they should’ve. You know that boy loves you. He’s done wrong, yes, but he still loves you and I know you love him. Whatever happened with that woman may not be what you think. You never know what all was going on.”

“Please, Aunt Luchie,” I said. “I don’t want to think about them right now.” I sat back on the sofa, afraid I’d hurt her feelings. “And since we’re talking about the past not changing, what about this place? Why haven’t you changed anything here in like twenty years?”

“I don’t know,” she said before swallowing the rest of the brandy. “I just kind of like these things here . . . the way they are. The way they were when my Red was here.”

“Do you think he’ll ever come back?”

“Oh, he sends me flowers—”

“Flowers?” I recoiled. “I thought he was off in Paris living it up in love with some French white woman.”

“Yeah, he is,” she smiled. “But he still sends me flowers for my birthday every year. White lilies.” Her eyes went off to an old place. “The flower he bought me when we were together.”

“Well, do you think he’ll come back?” I

asked excitedly. “Maybe that’s why you keep your place the same . . . like a part of the romance when he returns.”

“Oh, he’s a grandfather now. Been married a long time. He’s not going anywhere. That’s done now,” she said. “I’ve accepted that ending.”

“Oh,” I sighed. “That’s so sad.”

“Yeah, it’s amazing how love will make you either accept the stone cold reality or run away from it,” she said. “Now, I just accepted that my only love was gone. I have never looked at another man like I looked at Red and that’s fine by me. That’s just the way love used to be back in the day. You didn’t try to fill someone’s shoes with someone else who clearly couldn’t fit them. But your mother . . .”

“What about her? You think she’s still upset about my father being sick?”

“You ever wonder why your mother is so hateful when it comes to your relationship with Jamison?” she asked. “Your mother can’t accept the love you have until she finds her way back to her own,” she said as I poured her another glass of brandy. “Now, she never wanted your father to go away to that war. She told him not to go, said she’d heard they were killing men over there—poisoning their minds with gas and the government was sending them back home and not telling the families what happened.”

“I know,” I said, getting back up from the couch to go look out the window. I’d heard this in bits and pieces in the past whenever my mother got upset during the holidays or after our annual trip to see my father. She’d cry and retell how she’d told him not to go, but he was too stubborn.

“Your mother, she loved that man more than you could ever understand—even as their child. If ever the sun did rise and set on a man’s temples, it did the day your mother met Eldridge that afternoon when our mother introduced him as her escort for the debutante ball. Lord, all Janie could talk about was Eldridge this and Eldridge that,” she said laughing. “And it wasn’t so funny back then because my bed was only three feet away from hers and I had to hear her talk about him. Now, we had a big old house and plenty of rooms, but your grandfather was so old school, he’d always say the only privacy we’d ever see was when we got our own houses—that’s how old folks back in the day would keep young people from getting beneath the sheets together—if you know what I mean.”

She winked and we both started laughing.

“Anyway, Eldridge promised Thirjane that he’d come back to her in one piece from Desert Storm. He wasn’t going there for combat or anything. He was too old for that and his rank would keep him far from much combat. But when he came back . . . he just was never the same. And your poor mother had to watch his mind slip away from him one day at a time. I was there with her in that house every day, watching him forget and forget and get angry and lash out, until finally he just lost it altogether and your mother had to let him go. And when he left, when she had to send him away, I think she also lost a piece of herself. You both did.”

“Both of us?” I asked, turning from the window.

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