“You didn’t make any apology for hating my movie choices last weekend.” I was in the mood for some John Hughes, and Shawn suffered through both The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink before telling me in no uncertain terms that he found the movies unwatchable and making me promise not to make him see any more.
“Baby steps, but yes, that was Shawn 2.0 in action. That is who I am now, but while I still believe that the way Linda—Lynne—behaved at the end of our marriage was hateful, I cannot be my new improved self if I don’t own that some of it was deserved. I genuinely loved her, but apparently not enough to let her really know the real me, not until I felt sure of her, of us. And the risk with that is that when you do reveal who you are, it can blow everything up, which is what happened with us. I should have been man enough to be myself from the beginning, and I wasn’t, so a lot of it is on me.”
“You can’t take the blame for the whole thing.”
“I don’t. Just the parts of it that are mine to carry. But I know that it was wrong on both ends, and she does have a right to not want to be around me, to want to protect you, because she doesn’t know who I am now, only who I was then. And who I was then, well, she would have been within her rights to warn you off. So I’m going to bite my tongue, swallow the nasty things I want to say, and put my energy into supporting you in whatever you decide to do.”
“Wow. Now I know it’s true, I’m definitely much less of a grown-up than you are!”
“I don’t know about that. You seem to be all woman to me.” He pulls me into a kiss. “Look, whenever the two of you figure this out, know this. If, this one time, it is easier or better for me to bow out of the party, for your sake, not hers, I won’t fight you on that. I won’t be happy, but I will manage. You and I will be celebrating on the day, and this one time, I will let that be enough. That is a one-time deal. I might be handling my anger right now and being as mature as I can be, but if you do decide to keep her in your life, it has to be with the caveat that she is accepting of you and me. One of the things I love most about you is that you do not bring drama. I am forty-four years old, and I do not have time or inclination to deal with that shit in my life. You feel me?”
“I do. Trust me, I don’t want drama either.”
“Good. We are understood. Now, what do you say we go to bed and skip pool circuit tomorrow and just sleep in a little bit and I’ll make us omelets in the morning.”
“That is, without a doubt, the best thing anyone has said to me all day.”
Twenty-one
You did a great job today, Ian. Your sauce work is getting really terrific.”
“Thanks, Eloise. And thanks for coming with me to New York. I’m so excited!” I told Shelby and Brad that I would chaperone Ian to New York, and they are going to come in for the weekends. They decided to trade off alternate weeks to have some one-on-one fun quality time with him, which will give Shawn and me the weekends to play. I know I’ll be a lot more comfortable with it being just the two of us. It’s one thing for us to talk semijokingly about our accidental family sitcom; it’s another for us to act it out in real life.
“We’ll have a great time, kiddo. Now I’m going to leave you to clean up, Chef.”
“Are you seeing Shawn? He’s the coolest!”
Last week Ian made good on his promise of dinner for us and the family, a repeat of his winning dinner from the audition, to rave reviews all around. Shawn was his amazing self, engaging with the kids in a totally natural way, talking to Robbie about sports, and Darcy about music, and Ian about food, and Geneva . . . he never had to talk to Geneva about anything, since that kid doesn’t stop talking herself. But by the end of the night, she was sitting in his lap, and he and Brad were making a date to go to a Bulls game, and Shelby was dragging me into the kitchen, on the pretense of making coffee, to gush about how fantastic he is.
“He liked you too, bud.”
“Will he really come over and teach me some of his family recipes?” Shawn said he would do a soul food master class if Ian wanted to have some stuff up his sleeve for the competition.
“Of course he will. He already asked me to look at your weekends to see if there is a good one for you guys to play.” Shawn is in surgery weekdays, but unless someone famous has an emergency, his weekends are pretty much his own.
“Awesome! Tell him I said hi!”
“Will do. See you tomorrow.”
I head out and try to settle my stomach. Because tonight isn’t just dinner with Shawn. It’s dinner with Shawn and his parents, who got back to town earlier this week. He’s given me the brief: His mom, Cheryl, grew up in North Carolina; his dad, Darren, in Chicago. They met at Northwestern, got married right out of college, and moved to Bronzeville. Cheryl was a curator of photography at the Art Institute, Darren was the president of a small independent publishing house, and they are now both happily retired and split their time between a condo in the Gold Coast and their place in North Carolina.
We’re meeting them at Bavette’s for dinner. Sort of a get-to-know-you before Easter next week at his aunt’s house with the whole family. Shawn said Easter will be fun, but something of a madhouse, and he wanted us to have some quiet time to really get to know each other first. It’s been interesting—things between us are really good, but also different since our big talk and his confession about his actions during his marriage to Lynne. Slowly, he has been opening up more and more to me about those days, and I’ve been doing the same about Bernard. We seem almost to be in a competition to show off our flaws to each other. Under different circumstances, I might see it as daring each other to flee, but there is something freeing about being completely honest, about just being. I get that he isn’t communicative at all during work hours, so I don’t reach out during the day unless absolutely necessary. He gets how close I am to Mom and Claire, and lets me know when he is up for family time and when he isn’t, and I don’t take it personally when he opts out. He’s admitted that he really just prefers to sleep at his place on work nights, and I don’t take it personally when he kisses me good night and leaves. Our weekends are spent together, and I don’t worry that the weeknight separations are about me. He let me show him the way I like the dishwasher loaded, and doesn’t get annoyed when I move stuff around after he does it. And I try to keep my navigation advice to a minimum when we are going places, because Lord knows that man can get prickly if I imply he isn’t taking the best route somewhere. We are figuring each other out, in very real ways, and how to best be together, and it is new and a little scary, but mostly good.