Commitment (39 page)

“I heard you just mo
ved to a really nice place
.
”

“
Who from
?”
Riley
sat upright. 

The last thing she needed was for the word to get around that she was living high on the hog while trying to write gritty reality-based stories.

Dawn shrugged.
“Word gets around.”

“Does Greg know?”

“Maybe.
But her
e’s my point.
What if I took some pictures of you and your hu
sband in your new digs and
. . .
”

Riley
was already shaking her head.
“Forg
et it, Dawn.
”

“That’s very disappointing,
Riley
.”

“I’m not a celebrity!”

“But he is.”

Yes he was.
Unfortunately.

“I don’t think he’d be interested.”

“
Well
could
you ask?” Dawn persisted.

Riley
sighed.
“I’ll ask.
But even if he says yes, I will definitely not be in these pictures.”

“Whatever you want.
But think of how happy it would make Greg if you decided to share your happiness with
Power to the People
.” 

Dawn stood and turned to leave, paus
ing to look over her shoulder.

“Could be a real positive career move,
Riley
.”

When the door shut,
Riley
lifted the receiver to her phone and punched out some numbers withou
t thinking.
She
hadn’t spoken to her mother in
weeks.
Not since before the wedding.
Lorna would be wondering what had happened to her, especially since her number in Queens
wasn’t in service any longer.
To have no contact for this long a period of time was a record
.
Their fights tended to flare u
p and burn out just as quickly.
E
ven now, the memory of their last conversation stung
, b
ut it didn’t matter.
She needed someone who anchored her to reality, and whatever else she was, Lorna definitely
did
that.

Listening to the phone ring now, all of
the unpleasantness of their last conversation
seemed trivial when measured against her need to hear
her mother’s
voice.
Next to Tracy, there was no one else in the world she felt safe enough
with
to share her fe
elings on the subject of Shawn.
Even Lorna’s cynici
sm would be welcome right now.
Just as
Riley
was about to hang up,
she
answered.
Riley
took a deep breath.

“Hey, Lorna.”

“Mom to you.”

Riley
laughed.
I
t was an old joke between them.
In actuality, h
er mother had never li
ked it when she called her Mom.
Riley
had stopped calling her Lorna when she was about thirteen and realized that not one of her friends call
ed their parents by their name.
It had taken Lorna weeks to stop rolling her eyes when
Riley
addressed
her by anything other than her first name.

“How are you?”

“No, how are
you
?” Lorna returned.
“A
married
woman
by now, I guess.”

“Yeah, I am.
I’ll have to tell you all about it one day when you can stand to hear it.
”

“And of course you’ll be in therapy for years because I didn’t support you, and didn’t come to your wedding.”

“No,”
Riley
said.
“I just miss you, that’s all.”

“You alright?”

“I’m fine.
I just, sometimes want to talk to you, is that alright?”

“Of course, sweetie.
I’m sorry I was so
. . .
blunt.”

That was Lorna all over – apologizing for the way she said something but never for the substance of what was said.

“It’s okay,”
Riley
said, wanting to believe the words as she said them.

“How’s Shawn?”
The question sounded forced.

“He’s g
ood.
Busy.
We moved.”

“Yeah?
Wh
ere to?”

“This place we bought o
n Central Park
West
.”

“You mean
he
bought.
Don’t
start falling into that trap.
It’s still his money
,
I assume.”

Riley
closed her
eyes and let the remark pass.
“Anyway, le
t
me give you the new number.”

She waited while he
r
mother rustled about f
or a minute and then came back.
Riley
recited the phone number to her and waited as she wrote it down.

“That’s all.
Ju
st wanted to keep you informed.
Let you know I was fine.”

“
Riley
, w
hy don’t
you come home thi
s weekend?
I mean, come upstate.
Bring Shawn.”

“So you can torture me up close and personal?”

“Stop being melodramatic.
I’m n
ot interested in torturing you.
I want to meet my son-in-law.”

“Are you sure, Lorna?
I mean, if this is going to be a big deal . . .”

“Of course it’s going to
be a big deal for chrissakes.
He’s married to my only child.
But if you mean am I going to
be a bitch, the answer is no.
Okay?”

“I’ll see if we can make it.”

“Well if he can’t, I still want to see you,
Riley
.”

“
I’ll let you know.
”

“I love you,
Riley
.”

“Love you too.”

Riley
hung up
and leaned back in her chair.
She felt better.
Now she could drink her coffee and face her day, even if Greg and everyone else were still looking at her strangely.

Twice a month around three in the afternoon, Greg held staff meetings where each
staff
writer was expected to give a
progress report
of the stories they were working on and pitch ideas for
the next issue
.
Apart from the gourmet coffee and muffins, the whole thing was
about as enjoyable as
it had been
decipher
ing
a math problem on the board in front of the whole class w
hen she was in sixth grade.

Greg considered it a character-building
exercise
to have you defend your articles from the most merciless critici
sm everyone else could muster.
For the last couple of weeks, even though she had doggedly pursued every available lead on her current slumlord story,
Riley
knew a part of it was that she was stalling. She
could not for the life of her think of what
her next pie
ce would be about.

With Shawn home, it
was difficult to concentrate.
All her
old routines were shot to hell. G
radually, she’d stopped getting up
at dawn to write before work
,
since being in bed had become a much more attractive alternative with him in it
,
and there were no more spontaneous stops at Harambe to sit
for hours
and brainstorm.
Every free moment
was
in some way connected to him
and his career.
 

The week before last they had gone out
four night
s
in a row
.
At the industry parties, she was pursued by the wives or partners of other entertainers and subjected to endless ta
lk about stylists and shopping.
On the other end of the spectrum were the women Shawn called the “baby factories” – on average, they had three kids with their famous spouse and had devoted their entire lives to taking care of them.
With those women, the conversation centered
on
pre-schools and the difficu
lties they experienced finding
“
good help
.”

Needless to say, she had little in common with either group and
Riley
sat mostly silent while they prattled on
.
W
hen the occasion was a dinner with a record executive, Riley was
also
pretty quiet then too.
None
of them
were
much interested in Shawn as a person but rather, saw him as a product and she was essential
ly his accessory.

Most of
the evening, they used
industry
jargon she didn’t understand
.
S
he didn’t complain because it was obvious Shawn liked having her there, taking particular pleasure in saying the words
“
This is my wife,
Riley
.
”
And
she took pleasure in it too, but
the novelty had worn off and
now
the way people reacted
was
starting
to
grate on her nerves.
Raised eyebrows and invariably an
o
oh
or an
a
ah
,
as though she’d
won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Lately, she was just a writer who had run out of ideas
.

There was a sharp knock on her door w
h
ich she immediately recognized.
Riley
str
aightened
her back and
grabbed
a pen, preparing to look busy.
Greg Harris was a handsome man, about fifty-five, tall and dapper, reminding
Riley
of
that old actor,
David Niven with a similarly t
hin face and elegant manners.
Everyon
e
at the magazine knew he
had
been
with his partner for more than twenty years but throughout the time
Riley
had known him he had never so much as hinted at
any
kind of private lif
e, gay, straight or otherwise.

A former sixties radical turned magazine publisher
and editor
, he was now
firmly entrenched in the upper-
class but dabbled in the more acceptable forms of protest like letter
-writing campaigns and petitioning
.
The tone of the articles he
permitted
to be
published by
Power to the People
was
consistent with
his philosophy
of
speaking softly
but carrying a big stick
.

“I wanted to speak w
ith you before the meeting
,
” he said
now
.

Riley
tensed. If what he had to say was too h
eavy even for that bloodthirsty
gathering, it could not be good.

“
I
t’s somewhat connected to your new situation.”

“I’m not sure I understand,
she said, deliberately obtuse.

“Your marriage.”

“Yes?”

“Someone approached me r
ecently and made a suggestion.
I wond
ered how it might sit with you.”
He
perched
on the edge of her desk where Dawn had been sitting earlier, and fiddled with his glasses the way he always did when he was con
templating something troubling.
“It was suggested that because of your recent marriage, you may have e
nt
rée into certain circles -
circles that were not as accessible to us before.”