Commitment (42 page)

The night he’d come in to find
Riley
with the phone in her hand, looking so happy to see him, he’d been at a party at Mike
and Darryl
’s new crib in Brooklyn Heights
, purchased by the ever-generous Chris Scaife
.
Keisha was there with two of her girls, dressed to kill, pushing up on him
and
trying to create the impression to her friends that
they were
really tight.
Shawn
played along, allowing her to drape an arm about his shoulder, lean in and whisper into his ear, a
nd even grab his butt one time.
That
was
when he decided it was probably better to go home, even though it was still early and nothing had really jumped off yet. 

Keisha
had
followed him out and
cornered him at the
stairs
just as he was leaving, grab
bing his arm.
So what’s up with the video?
She was way too close.
He could feel her
breasts, soft against his chest and his head filled with her
too-sweet perfume.
You’re in
, he told her.
Don’t worry about it.
And that was whe
n she kissed him.
Just
the brief pressure of her crimson lips against his
was e
nough to make him feel guilty.

He pulled back before she could go any further and she smiled at him
then, a coy, flirtatious smile.

O
h,
she said,
I forgot you was a married man.

And then she was walking away, leaving him standing
there
with an almost painful pressure in his
groin
– his first extramarital hard-on
.
He’d made a mental note that night to stay the hell away from her.

“Left turn
and then the very next right,”
Riley
was saying now.

Shawn focused, taking in the tree-lined streets
and
t
ranquility of his surroundings.
The neighborhood was not unlike
Largo
,
Maryland where he
had his townhome
before
moving
to New York.
Well-kept lawns, large colonial-style houses with two-car garages and children riding
bicycles
along the sidewalks.
He’d felt out of place there,
without
the picture-perfect family to go along with the
picture-perfect surroundings
.
And he felt out of place here too
, though for different reasons
. 

Riley
directed him to an older, Tudor-style house, with a
short
driveway, an
d an old Saab parked in front.
He
pulled up behind it,
turned off
the engine and looked at her.
She smiled and took a deep breath, looking nervous and excited at the same time.

“Ready?” she asked.

He nodded.
“Let’s go.”

She kissed him fleetingly on the lips and reached back to fix his collar.
He swatted her hand away.

“Get the bags?” she said.
“I’ll go in and get her.”

Riley
headed up the driveway while he
took
his time
unloading their stuff
.
Momentarily, the front door opened and
Shawn
heard
Riley
exclaim, and
watched as she embraced
someone.
They held each other for
what seemed like
a long time and then the two started ba
ck down the driveway together.
Shawn watched their progress.
Riley
’s mother wasn’t much different from what he’d expected; wearing faded blue jeans with a pair of those ugly
shoes,
Birkenstocks, and a white Indian-style tunic that had an intricate pa
ttern embroidered on the front.
She was staring right at him, taking wide strides in his direction, even as
Riley
kept an arm about he
r waist, chattering in her ear.

The t
wo women hardly looked related.
Riley
was more delicate than her mother, her features sma
ller, her figure more slender.
Lorna
Terry
was solidly built without being masculine, fe
minine without appearing weak.
Something about her physical appearance seemed to announce her view of the world.

“Shawn.
I’m Lorna.” 

I
nstead of the handshak
e he expected, she hugged him.
It took Shawn a moment
to respond, hugging her back.
She smelled
like
cigarettes and patchouli.
She stepped back and stared into
his face, into his eyes really.
Then she grinned and looked over at
Riley
.

“He is
cute
,” she said finally, nudging her daughter in the ribs.

Shawn smiled, not knowing what to say.

“I have three students
coming over for dinner, Shawn.
I hope you don’t mind.
It’s this thing they expect the fa
culty to do once a month or so
.
Pretend we give a shit about young minds, all
that crap.” S
he winked at him.
“So I’m making pasta.
Easy, quick and painless
and won’t expose me for the lousy cook I am
.
You like pasta, don’t you
, Shawn
?”

“Yes ma’
a
m.”

Lorna
grimaced.
“Don’t call me ma’
a
m.
Lorna’s good enough for my daughter, so it’s
good enough for my son-in-law.”
She reached out and patte
d the side of his face.
“I can’t
get over how handsome you are.”
She tu
rned and headed for the house.
“We eat at six.”

Riley
stood in front of him grinning, her arms folded.
“Lemme show you everything.” 

She grabbed one of the bags and looped an arm through hi
s, leading him into the house.
It reminded Shawn of a house on a sitcom - everything in its pla
ce and a place for everything.
And there were more pieces of African art than he had ever seen in any
one place except for a museum; m
asks and statuettes, tapestries and vas
es,
all
of
African
origin
.
A
nd then there was the
smell of
incense
permeating
the entire house, and underlying that, the u
nmistakable odor of cigarettes.

Upstairs, in the room
Riley
had grown up in, old posters of Denzel Washington were side by side with others bearing the likeness
es
of Huey
Newton and Geronimo Pratt.
A Kenté
bedspread covered the full
-
size
d
bed.

“Damn,” Shawn said.
“She started on you early, huh?”

“What’s that mean?”
Riley
sounded defensive.

“With this Black Power stuff.”

“I can’t remember it being any other way.
Lorna always taught me it’s important to feel comfortable in your own skin.
”

Shawn looked over
the books on the bookshelves.
More of the same.
Autobiography of Malcolm X
,
Black Like Me
,
American Hunger
.
All the books he had always told himself he would read
.
One
day.
Suddenly, the gulf between his
life
and
Riley
’s seemed that much wider.
He turned away from the bookshelf and saw that she was sprawled across the bed, completely c
omfortable and in her element.
She was more at
ease here than in their own
living room back in the city
.

“How long
did
you live here?”
he asked.

He
got
up to go look out the window into
the backyard.
A little blonde
boy next door was playing in the dirt, kicking it at a little girl with red curls who put a hand up and turned her head away each time, but made no move to get up or run.

“All my life pretty much.
And then I enrolled at the coll
ege and lived in the dorms.
I
moved back for senior year.”

“You ever want to move back now?” He turned to look at her again. 

Her eyes were narrowed, confused.
“What do you mean
‘
now
’
?”

“I mean now.
Do you miss it?”

“I miss my moth
er sometimes, but living here?
Not really.
I
don’t understand what you
. . .
”

“I mean, this
is like a college town, right?
Lots of people like you.
Writers,
poets
. . .
”

“Shawn.
There are more poets and writers per square mile in New York
City
than there
are in this entire town.
I’m
perfectly
happy
where we are.
Okay?
”

A sharp rapping on the door startled them both and then Lorna was looking in.

“I need h
elp in the kitchen,” she said.
“Shawn?”

Game on
.
He followed Lorna downstairs and toward the rear of the house into
a
large kitchen
that adjoined a
sunroom and looked out into the backyard
.
A pot was boiling on the stove
top
and she pointed to two large onions and a green pepper.

“Cut as finely as you can manage,” she said handing him a knife.

Shawn started his task, watching as Lorna searched through the
cabinets
taking out a variety of spices and pastes, stirring things together in a large mixing bowl.

“
Riley
’s father was a musici
an,”
she announced suddenly.
“Did she tell you that?”

“No.
She didn’t.”

“Well,
Lorna paused in her stirring.
“He thought he was a musician anyway.
I’m not sure he was ever any good.
”

“So what happened?”
Shawn asked, more out of politeness than curiosity.

“He took off when I
was eight months
pregnant.
He thought I was trying to trap him into some kind o
f middle-class domestic ideal.
And maybe I was.
I don’t know.
I was only nineteen.”

“So you didn’t get married.”

“Nope.
Never did.
I’m glad of that now.
At the time, I was actually ashamed that he didn’t
want to
marry me. Can you believe it?
Ashamed
.
And then
Riley
was
born and
I looked at her
and
. . .
” S
he stopped and smiled at him as though embarrassed tha
t she’d sounded so sentimental.
“Well anyway, let’s just say that all of a sudden, her father di
dn’t seem so important anymore.
He popped up every once in awhile as she was growing up.”

“You’re tell
ing
me how important your da
ughter is to you,” Shawn said.
“
I
understand that.”