Commitment

by Forrester, Nia

  “Shut up, Malik, your ass is drunk,” someone else cut him off.

  “Yeah, he has this tendency to get verbose when he’s in his cups,” Brian said. “But the sentiment is appreciated.”

  They all took a swig and for a moment, there was quiet. Brian had called her at work with the news and Riley had left early to join him and his study group for drinks and dinner at a bar near the university.

  She knew all of them well by now – Malik, the tall, dark-skinned bald West African, Serena the boriqua who was the first in her family to go to college let alone make it to law school; and Terence, a Wisconsin native who’d come to New York for law school and been excited to meet other smart, driven African Americans and not be considered a curiosity.

  Over the time that she and Brian had been together, they’d all become good friends because Riley recognized them: young, ambitious, upwardly-mobile people-of-color who lived in a world of ideas and achievement. Many a Sunday afternoon had been spent with this group, eating Indian food and arguing good-naturedly about politics, religion and the state of the world. Afterwards, they went off to study and Riley returned to her writing, which was always enriched by her time spent with them. Even though Brian and his friends had chosen different paths in law school and no longer took the same classes, they’d remained thick as thieves.

  “You okay?” Brian leaned toward her. “I know you have lots of work to do, so if you have to leave early . . .”

  “Oh hells no,” Serena said. “She is staying right here and taking one for the team. If we can blow off all our work, Riley can too.”

  “That’s right,” Terence said. “At least she’s already gainfully employed.”

  Riley smiled at them. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Let’s get another round and order up some of those greasy Buffalo wings.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Brian kissed her on the neck. “Thank you,” he said.

  It was past midnight when the party finally broke up and Riley stood a little apart, watching as Brian and his friends said their boozy goodbyes. She’d managed to sober up just a little by drinking only water for the last couple hours, but Brian was still pretty wasted and unsteady on his feet.

  “You up to the train?” she asked him once everyone else had gone. “Or should I call you a cab?”

  “Call me a cab?” Brian said, leaning on her. “I’m coming with you. We can continue the celebration back at your place.”

  Riley’s heart pounded against her ribs. She had only been back from L.A. for a week and hadn’t slept with Brian since. It had been easy to avoid him, breaking a couple of their dates because she had to play catch-up at work. And he’d been stressed about law review, so hadn’t wanted to sleep over.

  She had the engagement ring in her apartment, stuffed in the back of one of her dresser drawers where she didn’t have to look at it and face the confusion and longing that just the sight of it aroused.

  Shawn had called her once since the trip and was a little different on the phone, like he was holding back. The careful distance in his voice made the call unsatisfying and they’d only spoken for about five minutes.

  “You’re in no shape for that kind of ‘celebrating’,” Riley finally managed, putting an arm about Brian’s shoulder.

  “Want to bet?”

  Brian turned her in his arms and kissed her, and she responded more out of habit than genuine feeling but he was too inebriated to notice.

  “Okay, come home with me, but I think we both better try to get some rest. Tomorrow all eyes are going to be on you.”

  Within minutes of them getting into her apartment, Brian was passed out on the sofa. Riley sighed with relief and removed his shoes, peeling his sweatshirt over his head and covering him with an afghan. In bed, she reached for her phone, wanting to hear Shawn’s voice. Instead, she dialed Tracy’s number on the off chance that she was still awake. She was, though barely.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I just got back from a little party celebrating Brian making president of law review.”

  “Don’t sound so excited.”

  “I am excited for him. He’s worked very hard for this. You should have seen him . . .”

  Tracy said nothing.

  “I really wanted this for him,” Riley said.

  “And he got it, so what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is I have to tell him. About Shawn.”

  “Not that I’m condoning what went on before, but why would you tell him now? Unless you’re planning on accepting Shawn’s proposal.”

  “I can’t accept his proposal,” Riley snapped. “I barely know him. He barely knows me. It would be crazy.”

  “Then I guess I don’t see the problem. And I definitely don’t see why you would play true confessions all of sudden either.”

  All or nothing, Shawn had said. All or nothing.

  “Are you saying I should break it off with Shawn?”

  “Don’t sound so hysterical at the thought, Riley. You’re asking me to give you answers that only you have,” Tracy said yawning.

  “No, I’m asking you to tell me what you think.”

  “What I think . . .” Tracy yawned again, “. . . is that Shawn is crazy about you. It was practically coming out of his pores. And I think you feel the same way about him. Where that leaves you, I have no idea.”

  “Me neither,” Riley said, her voice barely audible.

  “Look, get some sleep. You don’t have to decide anything at one in the morning.”

  After Tracy hung up, Riley lay awake for hours more, thinking about her non-response when Brian kissed her. She tried to recall the early days when she and Brian lay in the sun in Central Park, hands at their sides, fingers barely touching and it was effortless. Those memories – and dozens more like it – were easy to summon but the feelings that once came along with them were gone.

  g

  “Are you hung over?” Brian asked from across the breakfast table. “Because I feel like shit.”

  Riley smiled. “No, I’m not hung over.”

  Riley watched him as he went to get more milk from the refrigerator for his cereal. He was good-looking in a pretty-boy GQ sort of way. Café au lait complexion, light brown eyes and curly hair that made people constantly question his racial heritage. That and the fact that he sounded like exactly what he was – a kid who’d grown up in the privileged community of Darien, Connecticut and not seen a moments hardship in his entire twenty-six years.

  He tended to overcompensate for his lack of street cred by wearing a lot of Afrocentric symbols, like the Black Power fist carved in wood that hung on a leather string around his neck. His physical appearance was not what had attracted her to him. In fact, he was totally against type for her.

  They’d met at a lecture she’d audited at his law school titled “Race and the Criminal Justice System.” He was the only person in the lecture who didn’t just ask questions of the professor, but issued challenges and engaged in spirited debate. And you got the sense he wasn’t showing off, but was genuinely present and thinking critically when everyone else just wanted to make sure they took good notes.

  “I emailed Lorna,” he said now. “About law review.”

  Riley looked down into her breakfast. Lorna. That’s right. Brian and her mother had their own relationship as well, forged over time mostly through email and the occasional phone call. They’d only met once, but on that occasion – a lunch at Sylvia’s – they had slipped easily into conversation like old friends.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she wasn’t surprised. Which I appreciated since everyone in my family seemed to think I must have paid someone off.”

  Brian came from a family of well-heeled trial lawyers. His father, brother and sister were all members of the bar, high-powered types who didn’t understand Brian’s fascination with the messier side of the law like civil rights cases and the death penalty. He was snide when he talke
d about them but only because it hurt so much that he had yet to gain their respect. Riley knew all this about him and more because he was more than a “boyfriend”, he was one of her best friends. A confidante. And yet she’d lied to him so convincingly and for so long.

  “Brian,” she said abruptly. “I have something to tell you.”

  He leaned forward. “Okay?” Something in her voice must have told him it was important because he put down his spoon and gave her his full attention.

  g

  It shamed her to admit it, but her first reaction to Brian’s departure was relief. And then she’d simply gotten up from the breakfast table, showered, dressed for work and left. On the subway, she sat staring, strangely devoid of emotion. She’d just ended a yearlong relationship; surely that should have commanded more feeling than it had.

  When she got to work, Riley was hoping that Shawn had called and left voicemail, but there was nothing there. Occasionally he did that, leaving her messages that were almost stream of consciousness in nature – disjointed and exhausted, talking about his schedule or the view from his hotel room. Just the sound of his voice made things better. When he spoke to her, even if it was just a voicemail message, his tone was always different than it was with other people; deeper, richer and more intimate. And when they were together, he leaned in ever so slightly, completely focused on only her when she spoke to him, making her feel like she was the only person in the world.

  Things like this were difficult to explain but they tugged at something deep inside her that no one had ever touched before, as though she was tethered to him with an invisible string. Brian had been a buffer to all that. Without him, honestly, she was feeling a little frightened and completely exposed.

  She dumped her things on the chair next to her desk and sat. She’d promised Tracy a phone call, but reliving the scene with Brian felt like more than she could handle right now. The look on his face, the sound in his voice when she admitted that she’d deceived him for more than nine months.

  No, not Tracy, not now. She would call her mother instead, make small talk, get caught up, and fill the silence so she wouldn’t think so damn much.

  Lorna picked up the phone after only two rings, sounding like she was in a good mood and Riley hesitated for a moment before speaking, making sure her tone was carefully neutral.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Riley? Did you get my message?”

  “No, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing urgent. I have a symposium at Columbia next week and I wanted us to have lunch or something. Maybe I’ll take Brian out to celebrate his news.”

  Her mother was a Sociology professor at the same college Riley and Tracy had attended upstate. Her expertise was Women’s Studies and she was one of only a handful of remaining true radical feminists. All over the country she was in demand for speeches and presentations about feminism, but, as she was always telling Riley, these days it was more because of the ‘freak factor’ than anything else.

  “I’m sure he would love that, Mom.”

  “You sound distracted. What’s wrong?”

  Never mind Tracy, her mother had the original bullshit-o-meter – it only ever took her a couple of syllables to hear when something wasn’t right. And the fact that she’d called her ‘Mom’ was a dead giveaway.

  “I don’t know that you could say something is wrong exactly,” Riley stalled.

  There was no reply for a moment. She could hear her mother exhaling and pictured her sitting at the kitchen counter, one of her Marlboros suspended between her lips, her eyes squinting against the smoke. It was morning, well before she customarily walked over to the college, so Lorna would be wearing one of those dashikis Riley had always hated, blue jeans and her braids pulled back into a loose ponytail with some escapees falling about her heart-shaped face.

  Riley didn’t look at all like her mother, so she assumed she resembled her father. Not that she had too many memories of him. Her parents had never married and her father was nothing more than a vague and blurry picture in her mind. Sometimes she thought she remembered a mocha-skinned man with curly hair and slightly crooked front teeth, throwing her into the air, kissing her face, giving her chocolate and Archie comic books.

  Other times, she thought she may have imagined it all, made up those memories in her head when she was a kid. Now she could no longer tell the difference between what was true and what she’d wished for so long ago.

  “Tell me,” her mother said finally.

  “Brian and I broke up.”

  “Oh.” Lorna did not sound particularly shocked by the revelation. “Lousy timing for him, I would think. Unless he did the breaking up.”

  “I guess it was mutual.”

  “I thought you two were pretty comfortable.”

  “We were.” Maybe too comfortable.

  “So what happened?”

  “Shawn . . .” she began.

  “Are you pregnant, Riley?”

  Riley laughed. “Where is that coming from? No. I’m not pregnant.”

  “I don’t know,” Lorna said sounding mollified. “I just had a premonition something big was going on with you, that’s all.”

  “Shawn asked me to marry him, Mom.”

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Lorna said with a derisive laugh. And when Riley didn’t respond, there was a brief silence followed by a sigh. “Jesus Riley. You’re not considering it, are you?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I never thought . . .”

  “You know what this is about, right?”

  She held the phone away from her ear for a moment.

  “It’s like he’s acquiring property. That’s all. It’s that misogynistic rap subculture.”

  “Mom, please. Could you stop? Stop being a sociologist for once and just be my friend?”

  “I am being your friend! By pointing out what I see and what you’re obviously not in the state of mind to see for yourself. What have you been telling me all these months about Shawn?

  “About how jealous he gets when he’s on the road and can’t reach you? How he keeps trying to get you to fly with him all over the damn country? How threatened he is about Brian? And now all of a sudden he wants to get married. How very convenient that would be for him.”

  “It’s not that sudden. We’ve been seeing each other for almost a year.”

  “Seeing each other? I think that overstates it just a little, don’t you?”

  Riley gritted her teeth, willing herself not to respond.

  “Just how much of that time have you actually spent together? Three nights at the most per month? Riley. You don’t need to attach yourself to a man to be a woman.”

  “Now you’re being insulting. Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Riley, you’re a strong, beautiful, intelligent woman. Shawn is not the kind of man who can handle you trying to make your own place for yourself in the world. He wants a ‘wife’, Riley. Not some rabblerousing, loudmouthed writer. He doesn’t see who you really are.”

  “Thanks a lot. That’s a really nice thing to say. And how would you know what kind of man he is anyway?”

  “Newsflash: they’re all very similar. At least in this regard.”

  “That is absolutely not true and you know it. The least you could try to do is muster up something more original than your old man-hating diatribe!”

  “Well, he can’t know how important your work is to you.” Lorna said, heading straight to the heart of what she knew was most important to Riley. “He hasn’t seen you consistently enough to know that.

  “All he knows is that the sex is good and you don’t hassle him to make a commitment. Men are not that complicated, Riley. Just because you seem so casual about this relationship, it’s made him desperate to keep you. And what do you do? You break up with Brian just to placate him.”

  Riley said nothing. The same things had occurred to her. Maybe that was the only reason Shawn wanted her so badly. Because he was competing with Brian an
d because she didn’t seem to want him as much. God, if he only knew. If her mother only knew.

  Or maybe she had an inkling.

  “Riley,” she said finally, her voice almost desperate. “You’re only twenty-five.”

  For her to have resorted to such traditional objections, Riley knew Lorna must really be scared. Was there something in her voice that betrayed how much she wanted to say yes?

  “I’ve thought about that,” she admitted.

  “Think about it some more. Do you know how many people you’re going to meet in the course of your adult life? Fascinating, interesting people who will help you grow and learn. Isn’t it a little early to foreclose all of those possibilities?”

  Maybe so, but she was having a hard time seeing any other possibility besides Shawn. And no, she didn’t know who she might meet later, but she remembered her mother’s parade of lovers and that hadn’t seemed like such a great bargain either. If there had been ‘growth and learning’ in those relationships, Riley had missed it.

  All she recalled were the messy endings. Sometimes older, sometimes younger, they were men who came and went – some lasting as few as three days, one as long as five years. And when they were gone, her mother’s explanation was always the same.

  It ran its course, Riley.

  That was Lorna’s theory of relationships. They simply reached the point of diminished returns and had to be terminated quickly and painlessly. Painless for her at least. Some of the men in her mother’s life Riley had liked. Even loved. And when they were suddenly gone, no one bothered to stop and ask her how she felt.

  “Y’know what’s funny about this conversation?” Riley said. “You haven’t even asked me if I love him.”

  “Because it’s irrelevant.”

  “How can it be irrelevant? We’re talking about marriage.”

  “Exactly. An institution that – as you well know – has very little to do with how you feel.”

  “Maybe that’s true in your classroom, Mom. But in the real world, people still like to think that love has a little something to do with it . . .”