There were three incoming messages on his phone that he hadn’t heard. Riley, asking when he was going home and reminding him of a reception she was going to for The Association of Magazine Media, and one from Cullen and Cassidy’s nanny asking whether he needed her to put the children to bed. That one had come in only fifteen minutes earlier. The third was from Livia Kincaid, letting him know that she was leaving but didn’t want to interrupt, and asking when he would next be in the studio.
He ignored that one and responded to the other two, letting Riley know he was on his way home, and telling the nanny to go ahead and get the kids ready for bed, but that he would be there shortly. While he was typing that one, his phone pinged. His driver was outside.
When Shawn got home, Cullen and Cass were bathed and dressed in pajamas, jumping on his and Riley’s bed in the master bedroom, looking as though they hadn’t even begun to entertain the idea of sleep. Their nanny, Mrs. Park, who had been with them since Cass was a baby was frantic, scurrying around the bed, trying to catch them, scolding them sharply in Korean.
“Sorry, Mr. Shawn,” she said, looking up as he entered. “Birthday cake at school today.”
Noticing him for the first time, Cassidy let out a high-pitched scream so operatic that it would rival a world-class soprano. Bouncing in his direction, she began incanting.
“Catch … me. Catch me. Catch … me!”
Finally, she launched herself off the edge of the bed and toward him, her knee slamming into his solar plexus and robbing Shawn momentarily of his breath. Cullen, not to be outdone, charged at them and without hesitation jumped on, hooking his arms around his father’s neck, almost crushing his sister in the process. Feeling their weight pull him forward, Shawn decided not to fight the momentum and allowed himself to fall onto the bed, shifting just enough so that he wouldn’t fall on top of them.
Thinking this was all part of the game, Cullen and Cassidy only started screaming more, and louder, causing Mrs. Park to retreat from the bedroom with hands over her ears.
“Hot cocoa, Mrs. Park,” Shawn called after her, knowing that the elderly woman would not feel good about going home unless she had played a role in solving the problem of his unruly children.
After about fifteen minutes of play-wrestling, during which Cullen accidentally kicked his sister in the face, and she miraculously didn’t cry, Mrs. Park reappeared with a tray and Shawn made his over-excited children sit with legs folded while he handed them each a mug. Toeing off his shoes, he reached for his own mug, which when he tasted it, turned out to be a cappuccino.
Beaming, Mrs. Park noted his surprise. “Mrs. Riley told me you’re working again,” she said. “So I said to myself, ‘he won’t sleep. Just music, music, music … day and night.’”
Shawn grinned. “Thank you,” he said. “Yeah, that’s the plan. Music. Night and day.”
He sipped his drink and looked at his kids, sitting across from him, quieted for the moment, their chubby little hands wrapped around their mugs as they slurped and sipped. Cass had to work hard to hold hers, and once or twice, chocolatey liquid sloshed over the rim and onto her pajamas and the comforter. Each time she looked down mournfully and said in the same tone of voice, with precisely the same degree of surprise, “Oh no!”
Shawn tried not to smile, taking in how much like him she looked, and yet, how much like Riley at the same time. Seeing both him and his wife, melding into a single person never always caused the most profound, wonderful, terrible emotion—love and pain and joy, intertwined and inextricable. There was no single word that could describe how his kids made him feel.
Cass’ temperament was like his. She didn’t easily warm to strangers; smiles had to be coaxed, and words had to be pried out of her unless she was in the company of familiars. Cass would be the strong, steely one. She wouldn’t suffer fools gladly, would be a good judge of character, and have a strong character of her own.
Cullen though, was like his mother, always exploring, testing, asking, and trying to understand the world around him. He would be more sensitive, more likely to give money to friends, to have his heart broken before he was out of high school, and to believe that people of good will could change the world.
Just as both kids tipped their mugs way back, emptying them, Mrs. Park reentered the room and gave three sharp claps.
“Bed!” she said, in a tone that brooked no denial. “Let’s go!”
Both Cullen and Cassidy put their mugs in the tray nearby, and scampered off the edge of the bed, pausing only to give him chocolatey kisses before following their nanny out of the room.
Shawn was sitting at the kitchen counter in the semi-dark and quiet, eating the herb-roasted chicken that Tony had prepared for him and Riley, and which he honestly thought he was too full to eat until he took a whiff. The accompanying kale and cranberry salad he left untouched.
“What’s for dinner?”
He spun at the sound of Riley’s voice. She was shoeless and in stockinged feet, her hair loose and a little disheveled, like she had been running her fingers through it, or had just released it from a clasp.
“Hmm. Roast chicken.” She rested a hand lightly on his shoulder and leaned over it to look at his plate.
He moved it to the side and spun the stool so he was facing her, pulling her to stand between his legs.
“Didn’t hear you leave this morning. You good?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
Her tone was flip as if she couldn’t figure out why he was asking.
Saturday had been the tears, and Sunday had been the silence. She did speak, but mainly to have transactional conversations about meals, schedules, the kids. She wasn’t angry with him, that much he knew. On the contrary, she seemed to want him to stay close. But something was definitely bothering her.
“Baby.” Shawn gave her a gentle chin-check, so she would look up.
“What?” Riley’s eyes were soft, warm but also guarded.
“Tell me,” he said coaxingly. He nudged the tip of his nose against hers.
“Are you asking me to talk?” Riley said. “That never happens.”
Her lips curled in a slight smile and Shawn leaned in closer, brushing his against them. The brushing turned into kissing, which went on for a while, until Riley pulled away.
“You taste like Tony’s chicken,” she said, skirting out of his embrace. “By which I mean … delicious.”
Shawn released her and nodded in the direction of the warming lamps.
“He left you some.”
“Good. I’m going to demolish that in a minute. Just have to change.” She turned and started walking away from him, then paused and looked at him again. “Good session in the studio today?”
“Yeah,” he said, still trying to read her, unsuccessfully. “Thinking of heading back over there in a short.”
“Okay. Cullen and Cass …?”
“All good.”
“Good,” Riley said again before turning and leaving him alone in the kitchen.
Reaching into his back pocket, Shawn pulled out his phone and texted Dennis, asking him to meet him out front. And then as an afterthought he texted his long overdue response to Livia Kincaid.
Heading back to studio for late-night session. Ur welcome to sit in.
14
Flipping through the pages in front of her, Riley pretended not to be aware that Brian was looking around her office. Even as she skimmed the pages of his proposal, looking for the section that she’d referenced in a question, she did inventory of what he saw.
Pictures of her kids on the built-in bookshelves off to the left. A wedding photo of her and Shawn, both of them looking just as clueless as they had been in that moment about what marriage truly entailed. And a wide shot in a large mother-of-pearl frame, of her and their friends, and their large brood of children—sixty percent of whom had sprung from Chris’ loins—on the beach in the Hamptons, sleepy-eyed from the heat, darkened by long days in the sun. There were also statuettes in a ro
w on the bottom shelf, collectibles, one from each country visited during one of Shawn’s world tours.
Riley had gone with him because they were planning to start their family, and she wasn’t sure she would ever get to see so many places ever again, without babies in tow. Getting her pregnant was a mission Shawn had taken very, very seriously. They had so much sex she had taken to swatting him off her when he crawled into bed talking about how cool it would be if their son was conceived in Rome, in London, in Brussels …
He’d always said ‘our son’ for the first one, even before Riley was pregnant, and once she was, even before they knew the gender. For the second he said he didn’t care what they had. Then Cass was born, and he was smitten with her, too.
Also around the office were tapestries and heavy authentic Turkish rugs, one of them supposedly over a hundred years old. The building was modern, which wasn’t Riley’s preferred aesthetic, so she filled her office with things that were old or recycled. Instead of blinds, she had heavy, dense drapes that pooled on the floor in masses of fabric. She knew how … rich it must all seem to Brian, especially now after she had seen his relatively humble professional abode.
“The thing is, Riley …” He spoke unexpectedly, startling her so she jumped a little. “There isn’t anything in that proposal that can guarantee you certain outcomes. This isn’t that kind of work. You either believe in the mission, or you don’t.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” she said putting the papers down, and looking at him. Then she shrugged.
Brian exhaled one sharp, short burst of breath. “You’re kidding.”
“No. But it isn’t because …”
“You think some kid convicted of a crime he committed when he was sixteen should die in prison, Riley?” he demanded. “Knowing what you know about our criminal justice system, you really think …”
“Brian. I’m only saying I don’t know enough about this issue to …”
“That’s bullshit.” He stood and extended a hand. “Thank you for your … indulgence.”
“If this is how you speak to potential funders, then it’s no wonder you aren’t raising more money,” Riley said, ignoring his hand. Then she nodded in the direction of the seat.
Brian sat, his jaw rigid, his eyes still angry.
“Your entire proposal … it assumes too much,” she began, speaking slowly. “It’s just a little too … woke. It made me feel like if I didn’t agree with you, it might be because I’m not woke enough.”
Brian’s eyes lit up a little, like he was—despite himself—beginning to get what she was trying to say.
“I mean, give the rest of the world a chance to catch up a little, maybe?” Riley suggested. “Otherwise we feel judged, and don’t want to support your cause because you’ve been a little too much of a …”
“Woke asshole?” Brian supplied.
Riley smiled. “Your words not mine.”
Leaning forward, Brian reached for the proposal pages and Riley slid them toward him.
“See here?” she pointed out. “In your problem statement, you write, ‘Given the racism rife in our public systems, it should come as no surprise that many juvenile lifers, a majority of them Black and brown, were railroaded into sentences that far exceeded those given to their white counterparts.’”
Brian looked up. “And … do you doubt that’s true?”
“No. But you don’t give facts to support that assertion, you give us your passion, your righteous indignation.”
Sitting back, Brian frowned and bit his lower lip, his front teeth bared as he did, like he was about to bite right through the soft flesh. It was a long-held habit of his, which Riley remembered from when he was writing a particularly difficult brief, studying for finals, or testing an argument on her that he intended to use in moot court.
“Ella is probably the better person to sell you on …”
“You don’t need to sell me,” Riley said, shaking her head. “I want to donate to the Campaign. I definitely want to.”
“You do?” Brian squinted. “Then why tell me you weren’t convinced of my cause? Why tell me my proposal sucks?”
“Because I can give you general operating support that’ll tide you over for a while, but I can’t support the organization indefinitely.”
“I would never expect …”
“I know,” Riley said, speaking over him. “I know that. So, you’re going to have to fine-tune this proposal and get other funders. I’m going to insist on it. As a condition for my support.”
“Riley.” Brian’s eyes clouded over, and he swallowed hard. “I can’t even …”
“Don’t thank me yet. I still need to talk this over with Shawn. And you know … I mean, it’s not a foregone conclusion that he’ll want me to do this. And if he doesn’t …” She paused and shook her head. “I’m not sure I could proceed without his approval.”
At that, Brian looked worried again. “He’s gonna say no, isn’t he?”
“It isn’t a question of him ‘saying no’. It’s my money. That’s how he sees it. But I’m the one who isn’t sure I could go ahead without him. You understand?”
Brian said nothing.
“He’s my husband, Brian. And our history, with you, and …”
“What did I ever do to him?” Brian asked bitterly. “The way I remember it, I had a girlfriend and he was the one who …” He broke off and shook his head. “Whatever. Anyway, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? With Ella and me.”
“Dinner?”
“Yeah. A meal. You know. Dinner. It doesn’t sit well with me that you say you’re not sure you’re on board with the cause. I’ll take your money if you give it, but I want you to feel good about your investment in this work as well. And Ella’s not nearly as ‘woke’ as I am, so I’m sure she can give you the idiot’s guide to why we shouldn’t incarcerate people for life for something they did before their brains were fully developed.”
Riley laughed. “The idiot’s guide, huh? God, you are way more judgmental than I remember.”
He laughed with her. “And you’re way more … so many things than I remember.”
Riley’s smile dissolved. “Not sure what to make of that comment.”
Brian folded his arms, and settled back into his seat, studying her. His eyes traveled from the top of her carefully secured hair, over her face, and down to her finely-tailored Ted Baker London blouse.
For home, Riley liked loose fabrics, but she had long ago decided to make the distinction between work and play distinct. For the office, she wore clean lines, structured pieces with only a hint of whimsy. A-line skirts with blousy tops, straight-legged pants with loose shirts, or tunic-style dresses that followed her body, but did not cling to it.
“You’re more beautiful,” Brian said finally. Then he nodded and gave her a slight smile. “Definitely more beautiful.”
Feeling herself about to blush, Riley broke their stare and looked down at the proposal in front of her again, gathering the pages into a neat stack.
“Dinner would be great,” she said, keeping her tone light. “And maybe then we can talk about the second part of your demand when you walked in off the street a couple weeks ago.”
“What dema…”
“You said you needed exposure, as well as money,” Riley reminded him.
“Oh yeah. Except now I feel like I should quit while I’m ahead now that you’re thinking about giving me general operating support.”
“In for a penny,” Riley said shrugging. “So, what were you thinking?”
“Okay, so this is going to sound egotistical. And it’s embarrassing even to ask, but …” Brian grimaced.
“What? Tell me.”
“I want you to help make me and Ella … social justice … rock stars.”
“Excuse me?” It was Riley’s turn to lean forward.
“Not in the literal sense. But see, here’s the thing, everything these days is about the culture of personality. The other Bryan. Bryan St
evenson wrote ‘Just Mercy’ and did a TED Talk now people are throwing money at his work. And then there’s Nadine Burke Harris talking about ACEs scores and suddenly everyone figures out trauma is a thing …
“Ella and I? We need that kind of visibility. If we’re to bring this work to the scale it needs to be at to eradicate the scourge of sentencing children to die in prison …” He stopped speaking and smiled. “What?”
Riley shook her head, taking a moment before she could trust herself to speak.
“Let’s … That all sounds great, but why don’t we talk about it over dinner? It sounds like a much longer conversation than we can possibly have before my next appointment.”
She was lying. There was no ‘next appointment’. But apparently, she had been convincing because Brian was nodding apologetically, and standing.
“Cool. Let’s do that. I don’t want to keep you out too late this evening on such short notice for dinner, so how’s six-thirty?”
“Don’t you have to check with Ella first?”
“Nah, she’ll be good with it. I’ll text her. We’ll get home and throw something together.”
“I don’t need anything fancy,” Riley began.
“Everything she cooks is fancy. My wife? Amazing cook.”
“Okay, well. Yes. Six-thirty is fine.”
Brian stood. “I’ll text you our address and see you then.”
“Should I bring anything?”
“Nothing. Just your open mind.”
Standing to see him out, Riley was surprised when he pulled her into a hug. It was warm and clearly heartfelt.
Just as she thought he would pull away, he spoke into her ear. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice trembled a little. “You always believed in me.”
When he was gone, Riley shut her office door and exhaled a deep breath, falling onto the small sofa in her sitting area.
Listening to Brian speak with such emotion about his life’s work had almost sent her over the edge. It made her heart feel as though it might burst with a mixture of pride and something like longing. He was doing it. Everything they had talked about when they were dating, sitting in his small apartment on his futon, he was actually doing. Despite what had to have been an extraordinary amount of family pressure, financial pressure, and not to mention societal pressure about an unpopular cause, Brian had stuck to his guns and was exactly the man he had always said he wanted to become. With eyes that were teary for reasons she couldn’t quite explain, Riley smiled.
Four: Stories of Marriage Page 11