“I don’t know yet what I want.”
“I don’t know what else to say besides ‘I’m sorry’. I don’t know what to do to prove it.”
“And I wish I could tell you what to do to prove it.”
“Look, why don’t we go away for the weekend? To the Bahamas or something.”
“Is that my consolation prize, Shawn?” she asked caustically. “You screw around so I get to spend a weekend at the beach?”
“Riley, it’s not about that. It’s about you and me spending some time together, working this out away from all the bullshit.”
“Well I’m sorry but that’s moving a little too fast for me,” she said angrily. “As usual, you want to skip way ahead to the good part. And as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the good part again.”
“I move too fast?” he demanded. “I remember us screwing the same night we met. But that was all me, right?”
“You’re right,” Riley’s voice was calm. “It’s not just you. It’s me too. We move too fast. So maybe it’s time to slow things down. So, no. I don’t want to go to the Bahamas or anyplace else with you for now. I’m going to Lorna’s for the weekend.”
Shawn closed his eyes tightly and grimaced. Lorna. Great. That was like going to a feminist re-education camp. By the time she got back on Monday, she would have divorce papers drawn up and ready to go.
“A’ight,” he said. “And then what?”
“And then I don’t know what. We’ll talk when I get back.”
She didn’t wait for him to reply and hung up before he could decide what to say.
g
Riley didn’t know she was staring into space until Dawn tapped her on the forehead with a pencil. She realized she hadn’t even heard her open the door and come in.
“So how’s this weekend?” Dawn said.
“This weekend?” Riley looked at her blankly.
“For the photo shoot,” Dawn enunciated. “You, me, the inimitable K-Smooth, your apartment. Remember?”
“Oh, shit . . .” Riley hit herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. “We can’t this weekend Dawn, sorry.”
Of course, no one at the office knew about her problems with Shawn and she wanted to keep it that way. She could only imagine the glee of those girls from the mailroom who she knew secretly hated her guts just because she was married to their hip-hop idol. And not to mention the smug ‘I-knew-it-would-never-last look’ that she was bound to get from all and sundry.
“Are you trying to blow this off?” Dawn asked. “Because if the idea of it bothers you that much . . .”
“No. I promise you that’s not it,” Riley looked up at her. “I’m going upstate to see my mother, today, that’s all.”
“Why this weekend? Go next weekend and let me shoot you guys this weekend.”
“Can’t. Already made plans. And his scheduling is a little more complicated than we can work out at a moment’s notice. But how about we talk about this a couple weeks from now?”
Dawn sighed. “I guess. I mean what the hell, you’ve already strung me along for a lot longer than that.”
“I’m not . . .” the phone on her desk rang. “I’m not ‘stringing you along’. Two weeks, okay?”
She reached for the phone and Dawn backed out of her office.
“I’m holding you to that,” she said as she shut the door.
“Riley?”
It was Tracy. She’d developed this new system where she didn’t say anything upon picking up the phone, listening to see if it was Shawn. Sometimes she literally ached to speak to him and other times she thought she would throw up if she so much as heard his voice. Today was one of the latter days.
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
“Bad day,” she said without elaboration.
“I know,” Tracy said. “Still thinking about your conversation with him last night, huh?”
“Yeah. Y’know what the worst part is? I can feel him getting impatient with me. And it makes me wonder if I’m making a bigger deal out of this than . . .”
“You’re not. Okay?” Tracy said firmly. “Don’t you ever think that! You have every right to feel every one of your feelings. And he has absolutely no right to be impatient.”
Still Riley could hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere, so she asked.
“Well. I was just going to say that for you, sooner or later you’re going to have to get to the point where you decide whether you’re going to try to forgive him, or you’re going to walk away.”
“Sometimes I feel like I could forgive him. When he came by the office, all I kept thinking, even while I’m standing there being mad at him is how I just wanted so badly to be able to hold him and say we could work it out. But it’s like . . . I’m stuck. I’m still so fucking mad; I could gouge his eyes out . . .”
“And that’s natural,” Tracy said gently. “So take your time and think about what you want.”
“But I’m scared, Tracy.” She had never admitted this before. Not to anyone. Hardly to herself even.
“Of what?”
“That he’ll just give up and leave me. Or that I won’t ever feel the same way about him . . . . and that maybe I shouldn’t even be trying to forgive him. I mean, maybe what he did is unforgivable and I should just move on and I’m just too much of a needy, weak . . .”
“Riley, you’re none of those things, okay? You’re married to him. He’s not just your boyfriend. You’re right to think seriously about saving the relationship if you can.”
“But what the hell happened?” Riley said, her voice cracking. She lowered her voice, realizing she might easily be overheard by someone walking by her office. “I don’t understand what happened, Tracy. He loves me. I know he loves me, so what happened?”
“I don’t know, sweetie,” Tracy said. “I don’t know.”
g
Riley left work early to get back to the apartment and pack a few items for the weekend. She set out around four and hit heavy traffic leaving the city, but was on the Henry Hudson Parkway by a quarter to six, and cruising north to the sounds of Sade on the CD player. It was a slow ride because Route 9N was not exactly a highway. It was a four-lane parkway that meandered through the small picturesque towns of Westchester County.
Riley had enjoyed this drive since she was a freshman in college—she and Tracy would pile into a borrowed or rented car with the guys they were currently dating and drive into Manhattan for some high jinks that usually involved fake IDs and a hangover the next morning.
Lorna had been really permissive about that kind of thing. She believed in letting kids find their own way in the world, only stepping in when the choices they made presented imminent danger. Riley used to wish for a mother who established clear lines and almost envied Tracy’s constant negotiations with her own mother to extend those boundaries. Now she was just happy she had the kind of mother she could actually tell about the condom incident without having to resort to euphemisms.
After Sade was done, Riley groped at the pile of CDs on the passenger seat and held the cover up to see what she should put in next. As luck would have it, the CD she’d picked up was Shawn’s latest. On the jacket he was standing shirtless with his arms folded, legs planted wide apart and his head cocked to one side in a defiant pose. Riley took the CD out of the case and put it in. The music blasted throughout the car and then his voice. Familiar, but different because it was so fierce. Riley listened to the whole CD, pulling off the exit ramp just as the last song cued up.
She drove the rest of the way to Lorna’s trying to remember what the R&B radio station was this far up north. Finally pulling into the driveway, she saw that the lights were on in the living room. It was a just past seven-thirty. She could hardly wait to get inside.
Before she had even gotten out of the car completely, Lorna opened the front door, clad in jeans and a tank, not unlike what Riley herself was wearing. They smiled at each other and then Lorna opened her arm
s. Riley walked into them and allowed herself to be hugged.
Lorna held her at arms’ length. “You look like shit,” she said, still smiling.
Riley nodded, tears in her eyes. “I feel like shit, Mom.”
Lorna hugged her again tighter this time, and Riley dissolved into noisy tears of relief to be home and with someone whose love was pure and certain.
They made green tea and Riley sat at the kitchen counter watching as her mother walked about, chopping vegetables for Western omelets, and beating eggs in the chipped, big blue mixing bowl that had been around for as long as she could remember.
“The funniest thing happened today,” Lorna said, her hand working the fork in a circular motion through the eggs. “I realized two of my students had turned in identical papers. And I mean absolutely identical.”
“How is that funny?” Riley asked.
“Well, it’s funny because I called them into my office and it turns out that they both bought it from an internet site. The same site. You could tell they were pissed—not at getting caught necessarily, but because they spent good money on this paper—which by the way was only worth a ‘C’.”
Riley smiled politely. They were avoiding the subject that they both knew they would discuss eventually. She decided not to waste time.
“I saw Shawn yesterday,” she said. She could detect a reaction in the slight pause of Lorna’s hand as she beat the eggs.
“How was that?” she asked. Her voice was a study in forced casualness.
Riley shrugged. “He said what you’d expect him to say.”
“And what’s that?” Lorna looked up. She was melting butter in the skillet now.
“That he’s sorry. He loves me. It only happened once. Blah, blah, blah,” Riley droned.
“And you don’t believe any of those things?”
“I believe he’s sorry. I can’t figure out what he’s sorry for though. Getting caught, or doing it in the first place.”
“So you don’t believe he loves you and you don’t believe it happened only once.”
“I don’t know about either of those things. I can’t just take his word anymore,” Riley sipped her tea. It was getting cold.
“So what does that mean?” Lorna asked. “For your relationship.”
“I don’t know that either. But I know this; it can never be the same between us.”
Lorna didn’t say anything, but Riley could see a twitch working at the corner of her mouth.
“What is it?” she asked. “Tell me.”
Lorna emptied the batter into the skillet. “It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“It just seems like a romantic notion to me—‘It’ll never be the same’. Why the hell not? And if not the same, maybe it’ll be better.”
Riley leaned forward, her eyes wide. “Romantic? And better? He screwed some girl! Months after we got married.”
“What I mean by ‘romantic’ is that by saying that it’ll never be the same, you’re accepting this Hollywood version of what relationships are, and what commitment is. As though before he did this, your love was like some precious frigging white rose, and now it’s been stained and can never be as white and as pure as it once was.”
“And?” Riley demanded. “So what’s so awful about that?”
“What’s awful is that’s basically a crock of shit, Riley. Relationships—people—are more complicated than that. We hurt people we love all the time. We do stupid, hurtful, selfish things. That’s what makes us human.”
“So you’re saying I should just forgive him and pretend nothing happened? Coming from you . . .”
“I’m not saying that . . .” the vegetables went into the skillet, “. . . I’m saying don’t make your decision about whether or not to stay with him on the basis of some myth.”
“And the myth would be what?”
“That you get married and live happily ever after. You were thinking that marrying him was the end-game. That all of a sudden everything between you two would be settled in some way. But it’s not, and so you’re panicking.”
“I’m not panicking,” Riley said sharply. “I’m mad as hell—not to mention hurt—that my husband is fucking someone else.”
“I see panic,” Lorna insisted.
“Okay, fine, I’ll take the bait. How am I panicking, mother?”
“You’re realizing that there’s actually 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 playing house, like Ken and Barbie. Always smiling, always happy.”
“This just sounds like one of your lectures to me.” Riley walked over to the microwave to reheat her tea. “You’re making an intellectual exercise out of something that is so not intellectual. 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 picture that without doubling over in agony.”
“But you kind of do believe in fairytales, Riley. I mean, wasn’t that 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 love’. My God, it’s almost corny . . .”
Riley said nothing.
“And then he proposes and you get married. You didn’t think past that point did you?”
That much at least was true. She hadn’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.
“And 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 happening 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 married 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 permanent decision, use your head too. Don’t just make it about your hurt feelings. 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 extolling the virtues of matrimony.”
“The virtues of commitment,” Lorna corrected her. “The two aren’t synonymous. And unless I’m mistaken—which would mean 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,” Lorna cocked her head to one side. “Are you sure he’s not committed?”
“He cheated on me!”
Lorna shrugged. “I’ve cheated 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 seeing a whole lot of commitmen
t. All 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’re 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 permanent male figure in my life. If there was even the hint of something about to go wrong, I just quit the guy—I mean after all, I’m a feminist, right? I couldn’t take some guy’s mess. And even if he was damn close to perfect, I found 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 she was twelve. He was a tall, dark-skinned man who was handsome and strong and who long after his departure remained Riley’s standard 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. He loved me. And more amazing 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 drive 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 anything to do with you, baby girl. Always remember that, okay? And then he was gone.
Commitment Page 37
