Commitment (43 page)

“Well then now it’s your turn,” Lorna sai
d, her voice firm.
“Tell me how important she is to you.”

Shawn held his breath,
counted to ten and then spoke.
“I don’t need to prove to you, or anyone, how important my wife is to me.”

Lorna smiled. “Fair enough.
But your wife,” she said lightly, “
is still
my daughter
.
S
o you’ll forgive me for being overprotective
.”

They stared at each other, neither of them willin
g to be the first to look away.
Finally Shawn smiled and
resumed
chopping vegetables.

“
Yeah, I guess I can forgive that
,” he s
aid finally.

g

Lorna’s students were three fres
hmen - one guy
, Kevin,
and two girls
, Brittany and Lisa
– a
ll of w
hom immediately recognized him.
Lisa
was a sister from D.C.
so she especially had followed Shawn’s
music
and had a couple of his CDs
but to her credit, she played it cool when introduced to him and seemed to have no problem treating him like a regular person
.

Lorna laid the spaghetti and meatballs out in the kitchen with a salad and opened a bottle of red
wine.
Everyone served themselves and sat
cross-legged
on the floor in the living room, or on the sofa, balancin
g their plates on their knees.
Shawn couldn’t help but think about his grandmother, and how she would have had a heart attack to see people ea
ting in her living room.

Riley
sat
next to her mother, and touched her a lot as they talked, looking happier than Shawn
remembered
ever seeing her.
A
tight
, irrational
knot
of jealousy
formed
in the
pit
of his
stomach
to see that there was someone other than him who could make her look that way.

“I
have a question for you, Shawn.
” It was Brittany, the
skinny blonde
girl from
Wisconsin
. 

She had been
giving him the eye all evening
and at first he’d mistaken her interest as purely
related to his being K
Smooth
but the more she looked in his direction, the more he
became aware
that it was simpler than that - just an everyday case of ‘look at me, like me, fuck me’.

“Don’t you think a lot of wha
t rap is about degrades women?
And I don’t just mean the obvious stuff like c
alling women bitches and ‘hos.
But the imagery in the videos, the exaggerate
d machismo, the whole thing
.”

Lorna and
Riley
halted
their conversation
and looked at him expectantly.
Lisa, the sister from D.C. looked uncomfortable and Kevin,
seemed merely curious.
But Brittany, he knew, was more interested in getting his attention than in getting an intelligent response.

“Yeah,” he said agreeably.
“It does.”

He could see
Riley
’s face freeze.
Obviously she’d expected him to defend himself, prove to her mother and these smug, don’t-know-their-ass-from-their-elbows undergrads that he was more than “
just a rapper” and
that he was aware of the
socio-political ramifications
of his work.
Bu
t he was sick of that bullshit.
He’d had this conversation too many times, and with people far sharper than Brittany
from Wisconsin
.
He was tired, the
meatballs
were
too damn spicy, and all he wanted to do was drive back to Manhattan,
and sleep in his own bed
.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Brittany persisted.

He shrugged.
“Sometimes.”

Riley
was
growing
irritated with him.
He could
feel
her
battling
the impulse to defend him
since he wouldn’t defend himself
.
And then Lorna spoke.

“
Just because a person has an audience
there’s
no guarantee that they
see the larger
significance
of what they put into the public
square
,” she said
, speaking directly to Brittany as though he wasn’t there
.

Sh
awn bit down on his lower lip.
“
Oh,
I s
ee the significance,” he said.
“I just try to keep a
healthy
sense of perspective about my responsibility for how other people understand my work.”

Everyone - except for
Riley
he was relieved to see - seemed shocked to hear
him string a complete sentence together
.

“Well.
”
Lorna recovered the quickest.
“What l
evel of personal responsibility do you think is appropriate?
If someone listens to your songs and calls his girlf
riend a ‘ho.
Or starts to see women on
the street as just ‘bitches’?
How responsible are you for that?”

“Not at all.”

“Really.
So who
is
responsible
?”

“I can’t pretend to know that,” Shawn said calmly.

“Oh, I see,” Lorna sipped her wine.
“As long as it’s not you.”

“Mom,
”
Riley
cut in.
“Let’s just
. . .
”

“No.
I find this curious.
Shawn feels he isn’t
accountable
for
the effect of
his own words.
So
I’m at
a loss.
I wonder, what would it mean if I were
to abdicate responsibility
for my words,
for
my ideas?
”

“People who listen to rap come with their own baggage,” Shawn said, putting down his plate
.
“
They
have a
lifetime of experiences that
helped make them who they are.
I’m not so egotistical to believe that the single most influential thing that’s shaped
the way they see the world
is a
track on the latest K
Smooth
CD
.”

There was the vaguest h
int of a smile on Lorna’s face.
She took anoth
er sip of her wine and sighed.
“It’s late, and I’ve had
too much to drink,” she said.
“Anyone want to help me
clean up
?”

All three of her students scurried to
the kitchen after
her, and Shawn and
Riley
were left alone.

“I’m
so
sorry,”
Riley
said.
“She gets like that.
Combative.”

“Forget it,” Sh
awn said. “I can hold my own.
Even with your mother.”

Riley
lo
oked down at the rug.
“I just don’t want you two to be enemies or anything.”

“I don’t have
a
beef with her
, Riley
.
But it sure as hell looks like she’s got one with me.”

Riley
said nothing, half-heartedly emptying her wineglass.

They had dessert out in the sunroom; a cheesecake from Junior’s that Riley had p
icked up before they left town.
Shawn ate his slice while standing, looking out onto the backyard. 

“I didn’t mean to put you on the spot before.”

Shawn turned to look at Brittany
who had sidled up next to him.
She had clear, blue eyes and curly hair that she’
d pulled back into a ponytail.

“You didn’t put me on the spot,” he said.

“It’s just that I’ve always wondered that, y’know?”

“Wondered what?” Shawn asked.

“Wondered what you
guys really think about women.
But I guess seeing as how you’re married to Professor
Terry’s
daughter and she’s so smart and accomplished and everything, you can’t possibly think less of women.”

Sh
awn looked at her for a moment.
“Have you ever even heard any of my stuff?” he asked her.

Brittany reddened.
“Well, on the radio sometimes
and
. . .”

“But have you ever
listened to it?” he demanded.
“Not the beat, but the lyrics.”

Brittan
y finally shook her head.
“No, I guess not.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“I’m sorry, I . . .”

“So, no I don’t fe
el like you put me on the spot.
But I do think your question wasn’t very informed.”

“I certainly hope you aren’t picking on my students, Shawn,” Lor
na called from a few feet away.
“Because it wouldn’t be a fair fight.”

Riley stood and came to stand next to him, putting
a hand on his shoulder. “Mom.
Stop.
Shawn doesn’t know you well enough to understand that you’re kidding.”

Lorna sighed.
“Is that what I’m doing?”

Shawn waited until the three students said their goodbyes then went upstairs, lying across the bed in
Riley
’s teenage bedro
om, staring up at the ceiling.
T
here was still so much
they
didn’
t know about each other.
But
none of
their
differences
would have mattered for shit when all he could think about was getting her t
o marry him.
Even when they were standing in
City H
all
, he
’d
felt like
he
was
holding his breath
until she said the words, “I will
.”
And every moment since then had been a new life – one where he was constantly surprised that he had found her, the woman he hadn’t known he needed,
who he damn
sure hadn’t been looking for, and whom he now could not
imagine
living without.

He remembered his conversation with Tiny that night when he’d flown to New York to reassure Riley about the tabloid photo, when he’d been amazed to hear how sure Tiny was that he was married to the right woman. As much as he’d wanted Riley then, he couldn’t have said he was sure she was right for him. He just knew what he wanted. But now? Now he was
certain
.
The problem was that everyone else hadn’t arrived at
the same conclusion just yet.
Lorna
Terry
being the most immediate
example.

Later w
hen
Riley
was asleep
next to him
under the covers, Shawn
sat up and fumbled through the dark, finding his bag and retrieving from it the blu
nt
he had known for sure he would
need
this weekend.
He opened the door and
made his way quietly
down the stairs and out through
the kitchen into the backyard.
It was bracingly cold and he hunched his shoulders, lighting the
tip of the cigar
taking a deep drag and
exhaling slowly, eyes closed.

Somewhere to his left, someone clea
red their throat and he jumped.
It was Lorna, sitting on a lawn
chair, barely visible, smoking.
In her case
though, it was merely tobacco.
He could just make out that she was wearing a robe of some kind,
and
that
her hair was pulled back.
Her face was completely obscured
by the darkness
but
if
he squinted, he could see the glowing embers of her cigarette.