Commitment (68 page)

“I see panic,” Lorna insisted.

“Okay, fine, I’ll take the bait.
How am I panicking, mother?”

“You’re realizing that there’s act
ually some work involved here.
That he’s imperfect, and if you want to make your relationship last
it might
be a struggle.” Lorna held her palms up.
“And God forbid you should have to ‘work’ at a relationship
—
it’s supposed to
be
fun, right?
Like play
ing house, like Ken and Barbie.
Always smiling, always happy.”

“This just sounds like one o
f your lectures to me.”
Riley
walked over to t
he microwave to reheat her tea.
“You’re making an intellectual
exercise
out of something that is so not intellectu
al.
It’s about my feelings
.”

Lorna rolled her eyes

“Why is that so strange?
That my feelings should be hurt by . . .”
Riley
’s voice cracked and her mother reached out and squeezed her shoulder briefly.

“
Okay, don’t start crying again.
All I mean to say is that I wonder if what you can’t forgive him for is the sexual act, or the fact that he’s ruined this little fairytale you constructed in your head.”

“I don’t believe in fairytales,”
Riley
said coldly.
“You made sure of that.
And as for the sexual act, I can’t even
begin
to pictur
e that without doubling over
in agony
.
”

“But you kind of do believe in fairytales,
Riley
.
I mean, wasn’t th
at the lure in the first place?
This
secret
romance, all that passion in the afternoon in hotels, him flying out of town the next day,
all your friends disapproving?
And then for it to ‘blossom into enduring lov
e’.
My God, it’s almost corny . . .”

Riley
said nothing.

“And then h
e proposes and you get married.
You didn’t think past that point did you?”

That much at least was true.
She h
adn’t thought past the wedding.
All she’d known was that she wanted him.
His proposal gave her permission to admit that she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anyone, or anything in her entire life.

“A
nd that’s all I’m saying. The wedding is over. Real life has begun.
And in your case, real life involves a husband who’s in a business where women throw themselves at him constantly, and if he doesn’t have the strength or the will to resist, something like this happenin
g is not that damn surprising.”
Lorna slid the first
omelet
onto a plate and handed it to
Riley
who took it and got herself a fork.

“So I should accept his screwing around as the price of being marrie
d to him
?
Because
he’s a rap star
and . . .”

“Hell no,” Lorna said quickly.
“You think I’d ever say something as crazy as all that?”

“You were beginning to
scare
me,”
Riley
said wryly.
“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that when you decided to marry
Shawn you only used your heart.
This time, before you make a permane
nt decision, use your head too.
Don’t just make it about your hurt f
eelings.
You committed to him.
You have to decide whether this fling he had is the deal-breaker, or
just a bump along the road
.”

“I wish I
could record this
,”
Riley
said.
“Dr. Lorna
Terry
, diehard feminist extoll
ing the virtues of matrimony.”

“The virtues of co
mmitment,” Lorna corrected her. “The two aren’t synonymous.
And unless I’m mistaken—
which would mea
n I didn’t teach you anything—
you didn’t marry him for the sake of marriage, you wanted the commitment.”

“That’s true,”
Riley
said, her mouth full of egg.
“But if I’m committed and he’s not, then it’s meaningless.”

“Well,
” Lor
na cocked her head to one side.
“Are you sure he’s not committed?”

“
H
e cheated on me!”

Lorna shrugged.
“I’ve che
ated on men I was committed to.
Genuinely committed to, even.”

“No offense, but I was there through some of these men and
I don’t remember se
eing a whole lot of commitment.
A
ll I saw was you
disposing
of one after another.”

“We’re not going to go
into ancient history, are we?”
Lorna was scrambling her own eggs, dropping in onions and green peppers and jalapeños.

“We just
dug all through my messy life.
Why’s yours off limits?”

“I could always pull rank and say it’s because I’m the mother and you’r
e the kid,” Lorna said smiling.
“But I guess that wouldn’t work for us, huh?”

“Never has,”
Riley
agreed
.

“Fair enough,
” Lorna shrugged.
“Well let’s just say that a lot of what you saw me do with the men in my life, I regret now.”

“Specifically . .
?”

“Being  . . . well, callous . . .” Lorna scooped her eggs onto a plate and sat opposite
Riley
, reaching for her teacup and taking a test-sip and then going to reheat it as
Riley
had done for hers.

“Go on.”

“I was so into being a good feminist
which
in my mind that
was
equated with eliminating any permane
nt male figure in my life.
If
there was even the hint of something about to go wro
ng, I just quit the guy—
I mean af
ter all, I’m a feminist, right?
I couldn’t take some gu
y’s mess.
And even if he was damn close to perfect, I fou
nd a reason to quit those too.
So I sabotaged every good
relationship that came along.
Remember Earl?”

Riley
nodded. 

Earl had lived with them for five years; from the time
Riley
was seven until s
he was twelve.
He was a tall, dark-skinned man who was handsome and strong and who long after his departure remained
Riley
’s standar
d of what a real man should be.
He was as close to her mother’s equal as she’d ever seen a man come
.
He gave as good as he got with Lorna, until
she simply wore him down and
he couldn’t give any more.

“He was a good man.
H
e loved me.
And more amaz
ing than that, he loved my kid.
And he wanted to make
us
happy.
But I wasn’t prepared
to accept happiness from a man.
It felt
like selling out to me.
So I basically did everything in my power to driv
e him away . . .” Lorna sighed.
“Of course I didn
’t see it that way at the time.
But that’s what I was doing.”

Riley
didn’t know what to say.
It was the first time her mother had
ever discussed Earl.
She still
remembered the night he left.
There was a loud fight that woke her up and she’d come out of her room and was at the door when Earl came down the landing, carrying
bags from his and Lorna’s room.
He stopped in front of her and put his huge hand
gently on the side of her face.
This doesn’t have anyt
hing to do with you, baby girl.
Always
remember that, okay?
And then he
was gone
.

Riley
had ne
v
e
r seen or heard from him again.
His wo
rds had always stayed with her.
And because she believed him, she concluded that the real culprit, the real reas
on he was gone had to be Lorna.
And so she’d punished her for that for as long as she could keep it up, until she was too tired of being angry and hurt, and had to let her memories and love for Earl dry up and disappear.

“And the lesson is?”
Riley
tried to lighten the mood.

Lorna smiled and took a leisurely sip of her tea, co
ming back to start on her eggs.
“Hell if I know.”

Riley
laughed.

“With the exception of some kind of abuse, only you can know how much is too much to
take from him or from any man.
You decide
the terms for your life, Riley.
D
on’t let someone else’s standards
for what marriage is
mak
e that decision for you . . .”

“Including yours,”
Riley
interjected.

Lorna grinned.
“You kidding?  With my track record, especially mine.”

g

Chapter Fifteen

Riley
woke up feeling sick to her stomach, her entire abdomen clenched in a tight
agonizing
ball.
When she turned over to try to get out of bed,
she
realized her period had
begun
in the middle of the night and sh
e had bled all over the sheets.
It was unusual for her to be so out of touch with her body that she didn’t know when her period was due, but ever
ything was out of whack lately
.
Sighing, she got up and stripped the bed, rolling every
thing into a ball to throw out.
The down mattress cover was ruined as
well, so she stripped that and
got into the shower, allowing the warm
water to course over her head.
Watching the swirls of blood and tissue wash down the drain, she felt an inexplicable wave of sadness and began crying for no
reason that she could discern.

Except of course for the fact that she was beginning to miss Shawn
.

They hadn’t spoken in several weeks but s
he knew that he’d gotten a sublet in Chelsea from a cellist who was on tour
in Europe with a philharmonic.
And she knew that he’d gone to Baltimore to see his grandmother for a few days and was du
e back in the city any day now.
She knew
only
these things because Tracy talked to Brendan just about
every day
, pumping him for information then faithfully reporting every word.

When she had her period, Shawn
was patient and solicitous, and funny
too
because he acted as though s
he had some strange affliction.
H
e
was completely and sweetly ignorant of this particular mysterious function of the female body exc
ept in the most academic sense.
He brought her food on trays, constantly asked her how she felt and tirelessly refilled the hot water bottle because he knew she got terrible cramps
and because
he
believed
that was wha
t husbands were supposed to do.
But if there were no cramps, he
wanted her just as much
as always, and they
made love
in the shower so they wouldn’t have to deal with the clean up afterward.

Riley
stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in her big
terry
bathrobe, arming herself with her ‘feminine articles’ and then climbing back onto the ba
re bed.
She reached for the phone and called in sick, hanging up and curling into a
fetal position
.

The last time she’d seen him, Riley had actually called Shawn over to see her. Her
plan
was for them to talk but as soon as she saw him, it had devolved into a nasty scene of her saying awful hurtful things, and him
standing there and trying to take it. And
then he came toward her, and
somehow, they wound up kissing—
didn’t they always?
And for a few seconds, it seemed fine and Riley was relieved because it felt so natural, but
when Shawn
lowered
her
back onto the sofa and
tried to undress her, something inside her had frozen. She went rigid beneath him, her hands balled up at her sides.
It took him a moment to realize that she wasn’t responding the way she always had. They looked at each other and it was clear that they were both scared.
The
unspeakable h
ad happened—
she didn’t want him.
S
ex
had always been
the
ir
fail-safe. And it wasn’t working.

Riley pushed the thought of that night out of her mind and turned over into the pillow. Quiet tears squeezed between her eyelids and soon she was sobbing, her chest heaving. Within minutes, s
he fell asleep.

The phone woke her around
eleven
and she reached for it, h
er mind still fuzzy with sleep.
It took her a moment to reco
gnize the voice.
He was probably on a speaker phone.

“Hi Chris,” she said, her voice
gravelly
.

“I called your office.
They said you were
out
sick.
You a’ight?”

“Yeah.
More or less.”

“You want me to bring you anything?”

Riley
thought for a moment.
Chris Scaife was offering to
bring supplies to her sick bed?
Maybe she was still sleeping.

“Some lunch later?” she said finally.

“A’ight.
What you need?”

“Thai food would be nice.”

“Okay.
What you want?”

“Chris,”
Riley
said. “Why are you doing this?
Did Sh
awn tell you to check up on me?
Or Brendan?”

“Damn.
I
can’t just do a good deed?”

Riley
laughed.
“Yeah, but I was j
ust wondering why, that’s all.
It’s going to be a real pain in the ass for you to go out and find me Thai food and bring it all the way over here, so . . .”

“I’ll get one of the girls over here
to go get the food,” he said.
“I
’m not
that
damn nice.”

Riley
laughed again.
“Okay.
You had me worried there for a minute.”

“Well don’t be. I’ll just drive it over.
What you want?”

“Chicken green curry and satay.”

“Spell that,” Chris said.

“S. . . A . . .”

Chris laughed. “I’m messin’ with you.
I’ll bring it around one o’ clock, a’ight?”

“Thanks Chris.
This is really
swee
. . . “

“Yeah, yeah. See you at one.”
He hung up.

Riley
smi
led before hanging up herself.

What a surprise Chri
s Scaife was turning out to be.
For some reason he
seemed to want her to like him.
Of course if Shawn knew he was coming over when she was alone, he would probably fly into one of
his
irrational rages.
Right now, the thought of Shawn being jealous about her and Chris actually made her feel better.

When Chris called from downstairs
later
, it was just a few m
inutes after one. Punctual too.
T
he surprises just kept coming.
Riley
opened the door for him and took the bag he handed her. Chris walked in and surveyed the living room as though he were checking to see if anyone else was there.

“How’re you feeling
?” he asked, sitting on the sofa.

“Better.
Thanks for the food.”
Riley
went into the kitchen to get plates and utensils, returning to set them out on the coffee table.

“Na
h. That’s a’ight,” Chris said.
“Already ate.”

Riley
shrugged. “More for me.”
She sat
cross-legged
on the floor and portioned ou
t some chicken, rice and satay.
Chris was watching her, saying nothing but she had
a feeling he was on a mission.
Mayb
e Shawn had sent him after all.
But that was unlikely.

“So what’s going on with you?” she asked him finally.

“I should be asking
you that,” he returned.

“Yeah
?
Why is that?”

“
You know.
You and
Smooth
being on the outs
.”

“You see him more than I do, so maybe this is a conversation you should be having with Shawn,”
Riley
said without looking up.
“And to be really honest, I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking about it at all.”

“A’ight,”
Chris sa
id agreeably.
“Le
t’s talk about something else.
Let’s talk about you and me havin
g
dinner sometime.
Like tomorrow night.”

Riley
looked at him, trying to read his face and gauge from his voic
e whether she was being hit on.
It wouldn’t be the first time she got this vibe from Chris, but for him to make such a bold attempt just seconds after inquiring about her husband
would be
too vulgar to be believed.
F
ew things would make Shawn as livid as the idea of her going to dinner with Chris Scaife
unchaperoned
.

“Okay,” she said.
“Why not?”

Chris smiled as though he’d kno
wn all along she would say yes.

“I’ll send you a car.”

“No,”
Riley
said, her mouth full.
“Tell me time and place and I’ll be there.”

“You don’t trust me?” he asked.

Riley
smiled.
“It’s not a question of trust
.
I don’t want you thinking the wrong thing.”

“And ‘the wrong thing’ would be what?”

“That this dinner is anything other than me agreeing to have a meal with my husband’s business associate.”

Chris grinned. “But now I’m your business associate too. Don’t forget I hooked you up with those female producers
.”
He stood and pulled
his car keys out of his pocket.
“I’ll holl
a
at you tomorrow sometime.”

“Fine. You do that. And thank you for hooking me up with
your
producer
friends
. My boss really liked that story.”
Riley
stood to let him out but he motioned that she should stay where she was.

He paused at the front door.
“I could be a lot more than just that,” he said.

“A lot more than ‘what’?”

“A lot more than just your
husband’s business associate.”
He smiled at her one last time before he shut the door.

g

Dawn
was giving her the cold shoulder
because Shawn had left town without giving her a chance to do the photo shoot
as
promised.
He’d been gone
two
weeks
this
time around
, and she’d long since lost track of what
city he was supposed to be in.
He didn’t call
when she was home, but sometimes left messages that
told her
little
more than that he was still alive
.
Some she
replayed
several times before erasing them
.

Near the end of a trip out to the West Coast
Tracy
passed on
a message from Brendan asking if she could fly out to California for a photo-op and
launch
party for Shawn’s new contract with
Arista
and the launching of
So
Def Records, his
own
label.
She
couldn’t refuse
the chance to see him, no matter how tense it might be and
she thought the change of
scenery
might
help her shake her dark mood, and
make her feel
more like herself again
.

The weather in New York was just beginning to make the transition from blustery to downright cold
even though it was only October
.
The apartment fel
t positively frigid most nights—a
side-effect of all those glass windows that had gone unmentioned by their realtor.