The History of Us (13 page)

They drove back to the house in silence. Theo had returned to her position as soon as he got in the car: head back, eyes closed. He wanted to ask her what was wrong, but the idea made him nervous. It occurred to him that lately when he wondered why they couldn’t seem to talk anymore, what he was wondering was why he couldn’t talk to her. Had she ever come to him with her problems? He couldn’t remember a time, but until things got really bad with Sabrina, he’d always gone to her with his. In a moment of familial telepathy, he, too, was visited by the memory of the time she clobbered the neighbor boy, whom Josh could picture although he couldn’t remember the kid’s name.
He’d been sitting in the snow, cold and wet and crying as blood streamed down his face, and Theo had been a superhero swooping to his rescue, the way she’d flown at that boy. He’d stopped crying immediately, filled, as he watched her pummel that kid, with the certainty that he was safe. He wondered if she remembered that moment with as much clarity as he did. He thought of asking her, but for no reason he could name, the silence between them seemed too hard to break.

W
hen Theo called, Josh had been standing at the open door of
Adelaide’s apartment, having just arrived to pick her up for their first date. Adelaide was wearing a slim, pale dress and high heels, and her dark hair was down. Their reservation at a nice restaurant was in fifteen minutes’ time. Even as he said, “Oh, sorry, hang on,” and answered the phone, he wondered why he was doing it. Probably guilt over the last thing he’d said to Theo, before she’d walked out of the house and disappeared. He was surprised she’d call him after that, and the fact that she had gave him a presentiment that something was wrong. “Okay, this is really bad timing,” he said after he hung up, “but I have to go pick up my sister. She’s unbelievably drunk.”

“It’s so early,” Adelaide said.

“I know. It’s not like her, but she had a fight with my aunt this afternoon.” He put the phone in his pocket slowly, deciding what to say. “Do you want to come with me?”

“Oh.” Adelaide frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” he said in turn. “Right. Okay.” He was flummoxed. “Well, we’ll miss our reservation.”

“How about this? You go get your sister and take care of her,
and I’ll order pizza. You can come back here with a bottle of wine.”

“Really?”

She shrugged, then nodded, an ambivalent response if he’d ever seen one. “A first date at a fancy place is usually uncomfortable anyway,” she said. “You know, the place makes you feel so formal. We can be relaxed here.”

He hoped she was right. He felt anything but relaxed walking away from her door. He’d been tense all day, anticipating the date, and Eloise’s timing in delivering her news hadn’t helped. As soon as Eloise had withdrawn to her room, parting from him with a hug that suggested she thought he was on her side, he’d tried to put the whole thing aside to think about later. But the weird scene with Theo and that guy—that kid—brought back his dismay and confusion, and he began to feel that way too much was riding on this date, although what the “too much” was he couldn’t be sure. By the time he took Theo home and got her upstairs with Advil and a glass of water and had her reassure him two or three times that she wasn’t going to throw up, nearly an hour had elapsed, and he still had to stop and pick up wine. He got two bottles, not knowing whether Adelaide liked white or red. For an anxious, manic moment he considered getting more, because he didn’t know if she liked Pinot Noir or Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay. Driving back to Adelaide’s he played the music loud to drown out his nerves. He pictured her sitting with a cold pizza, staring angrily at the clock. He hoped she’d waited a little while to order it.

There was no cold pizza, no angry stare, just Adelaide, still in her dress of ambiguous color, but now a few inches shorter, and wearing ankle athletic socks. She opened the door and stepped
way back to let him in. “The pizza should be here soon,” she said, closing it behind him. “How’s your sister?”

“She’s okay, I guess,” he said. “She was really wasted.”

“And that’s unusual.” She went ahead of him into the kitchen, and he followed. The apartment was kind of a boring, new-building place, the sort where everything would work but nothing had any special charm. He hoped this was no reflection of her personality.

“Yes, that’s unusual,” he said. He leaned against the counter and watched her reach up to retrieve wineglasses from a cabinet. “Really unusual. I’m sure it was the fight with my aunt, but the way she lost her temper was unusual, too. She’s one of those people who prides herself on keeping it together. They both are.”

“What were they fighting about?”

Josh found that he didn’t want to answer this question. If he explained about the house, and Eloise’s and Theo’s positions on it, then Adelaide would probably ask about his, which had been complicated lately, truth be told, by Noah’s suggestion that he could record a solo album there. Josh had been unable to stop himself from trying out the acoustics of various rooms. While he was making up his mind what to say, Adelaide was distracted by the insides of her wineglasses. She blew into them, then glanced at him as if to see if he’d noticed. “Maybe I should rinse these,” she said.

“Why?” He grinned. “What’s in them?”

“Just dust,” she said. For some reason she was blushing. He felt much better himself, seeing that she was nervous, too. “I guess I don’t entertain a lot.”

“If you point me toward your corkscrew, I’ll open a bottle. White or red?”

“Oh, either’s fine,” she said. She opened a drawer and made a little racket shifting everything in it around. “It’s in here somewhere.”

“If you don’t find it I’ll just use my teeth.”

“Oh!” she said, missing his joke. “Here it is.” She straightened with the corkscrew in her hand, triumphant, and thrust it, point forward, in his direction.

“Whoa.” He jumped back, playacting that she’d been trying to attack him. And then wished he hadn’t. She didn’t seem amused. Her blush deepened. She looked like she wanted to flee the room. “Thanks.” He took the corkscrew and opened both bottles without saying another word.

The doorbell rang then, and Adelaide said, “Pizza!” like she was saying, “We’re saved!” Food and wine in front of them, they sat at the table and talked about food and wine.

“Have you been to Boca?” he asked her.

“Once.” She pulled pepperoni off the slice on her plate, and he wondered why, if she didn’t like pepperoni, she’d ordered it. “I don’t get out much anymore.”

“Really?”

“My life is kind of boring,” she said.

“How is that possible?” he asked.

“All I do is dance.”

“All day long? All night long? Like in
The Red Shoes
?”

She seemed, finally, to find something he’d said amusing. “I hope not. That girl dies.”

“That’s true. Don’t dance until you die.”

“I won’t.” Her mouth turned down. What had he said? Why was it wrong to ask her not to die? Take a deep breath, he told himself. You can do this. This is nothing you haven’t done before.
“I admire your discipline,” Josh said. “Now, me. I don’t even exercise.”

“Not at all?”

He grinned. “I’m supremely unathletic. And I’m a whiner, too. I get sweaty, I get tired, I want to quit.”

“Really?”

“When I was in college one of my friends took me to her tae kwon do class. I had to go sit down in the corner and put my head between my knees. She was really embarrassed. She went around making sure everybody knew I was
not
her boyfriend.” Adelaide laughed and he said, “In my defense, I’d gone out to dinner beforehand and had two beers. Also I wore jeans. Although come to think of it, telling you I went to tae kwon do drunk and wearing jeans might not be much of a defense.”

“No, it is,” she said. “You weren’t a wimp, you were just—”

“A dumbass?”

“I didn’t say
dumbass
.”

“You were going to say
dumbass
. Weren’t you? You were thinking dumbass.”

“Oh,” she said. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Well, that’s true,” he said, suddenly thoughtful. “That’s definitely true.”

He picked up his wineglass, and she picked up hers, and for a moment they drank in silence. Now what? Would she just wait for him to start talking again, ask her a question, tell another story? He knew he had a knack for filling silence, but even he got tired, sometimes, of talking. Usually he was good at finding out what was on people’s minds. It was part of his drawing-people-out skill, asking them questions that led gradually, imperceptibly to the information he wanted. He’d been the one to figure out,
year after year, what Eloise wanted for her birthday. He’d been the one to talk to the bass player when he fell into a sulk. He’d even been able to use this skill on Sabrina, ferreting out the reason for one of her moods even as she denied being moody. Why had he kept up this sleuthing, almost to the end of their relationship? The big reveal had always been the same: She was brooding over some inadequacy of his.

“What do you want to know?” Adelaide asked.

“About what?”

“About what I’m thinking.” She narrowed her eyes in challenge. “I’ll tell you one thing.”

“Okay.” He stalled a moment, feeling suddenly wary. Then his eyes lighted on her feet. “Why are you wearing athletic socks?”

“Oh.” She twirled her glass by the stem, keeping her eyes on it. “You picked one I don’t really want to answer.”

“Should I try again?”

“No.” She shot a look at him. “I’ll answer. My shoes were hurting, but I like to wait awhile to let a man see my feet.”

“Really?”

“But you’ve probably seen Claire’s, right? So you might be the exception.”

“I guess I’ve seen Claire’s. I haven’t really paid attention.”

“Plus hers have gotten ten less years of use.”

“Okay, I’m both curious and terrified. Are they, like, little monsters, your feet?”

“Kind of. They’re so callused, it’s like I’m always wearing shoes. I could walk down a hot street barefoot and not feel a thing. When I get a pedicure they always want to take the calluses off, and I have to stop them. Dancers need their calluses. But it’s kind of gross.”

“So I’ll know you trust me when you let me see your feet.”

She nodded, meeting his eyes. “In the meantime I’ll let you ask me one more question. Because you didn’t really ask what I was thinking.”

What the hell, he thought, and asked what he actually wanted to know. “What do you think of me?”

“I think—” she said and hesitated. “You are really normal,” she said.

He laughed. “You are really, really wrong,” he said.

“Prove it,” she said.

He pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, made a show of considering. Now was the moment to tell her about the band. She’d asked! It wouldn’t be an obvious play for her respect. But he wasn’t going to tell her. He had the sense that doing so would be cheating, would give him an unfair advantage, and at the same time he had a contradictory but equally strong sense that there was a weird power in knowing this one thing she didn’t know, that to tell her would be to give her power over him. So he shook his head. “You’ll just have to find out,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “Give me one thing. I can’t stand the suspense.”

“Let’s see,” he said. “So many to choose from.” He grinned at her. “I lived in Chicago, during college and for years after. And I came back to Cincinnati. Voluntarily. For
no reason
.”

She laughed. “And that’s not normal?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

“Are you glad you came back?” she asked. “Do you ever want to be somewhere else?”

“Not anymore,” he said. “I’m really comfortable here. It’s a
very livable city. Plus in Cincinnati you don’t have to work too hard to be stylish.”

Adelaide laughed. “That’s true.”

“Whenever I’m in L.A. or New York I feel broke and underdressed,” he said. “Everybody in those places is just trying so hard. It’s exhausting.”

She nodded, looking thoughtful.

“Why?” he asked. “Do you ever want to be somewhere else?”

“Sometimes,” she said.

“Now?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “Not now.”

After that it seemed to Josh that the evening was going reasonably well. They sat on the couch with their wine and he interviewed her about her life before this moment. She was from Virginia. She’d started dancing at three. She kept insisting her life had been boring. Aside from the earlier talk about her feet, their exchanges were so entirely unphysical that he was surprised when she leaned over and kissed him. She kissed him fiercely, as though this passion had been anticipated, as though they’d spent the evening playing footsie under the table. He wasn’t complaining. He wasn’t thinking she should stop. After a moment he wasn’t doing any thinking at all. He did notice, through everything that transpired afterward, that she kept her socks on.

Later, in her bed, she traced her fingers down the middle of his thigh. “I love this muscle,” she said.

“Really? You have specific muscle preferences?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “And don’t make a dirty joke.” She sighed and smiled at once. “The body is such a beautiful thing.”

He kissed her for the sincerity in her voice. “You are a beautiful thing,” he said.

“Thing?” she repeated.

“Oh, wait,” he said. “This is real? You’re not a blow-up doll?”

“I’d never be a blow-up doll,” she said. “I’d be a tiny ballerina in a jewelry box.”

He laughed. “I guess you would be,” he said. He thought of other things to say—
You belong in a jewelry box,
for instance—and was both amused and horrified by his own sentimentality. Was this a symptom of lovesickness? When was the last time he’d succumbed to that disease? Not with Sabrina, not in that puppyish way, because he knew she would have hated it. High school, probably, and Jen Lovelace. Lovely Lovelace, he’d called her, in a note he’d left on her porch, under a single red rose. He’d nearly forgotten he was capable of such romantic idiocy.

Adelaide yawned. He watched her snuggle into the pillow. Her eyes were closed, her face relaxed, her hair a lovely, dark chaos against the white pillowcase, everything about her the opposite of the upright elegance she usually projected. “What would you be if you weren’t a ballet dancer?” he asked, so quietly he wasn’t sure she’d hear.