The History of Us (14 page)

She opened her eyes. “You mean for real?”

He nodded.

“I am one,” she said.

“But if you weren’t.”

She yawned again. “I wouldn’t exist,” she said.

That stung for some reason. She’d spoken so definitively, as though it should be obvious that her art was her vocation, her identity, her all. “I exist,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I exist, and I’m nothing special.” He heard the edge in his voice, the way the comment practically begged to be contradicted. He was sure she heard it, too, and he cringed.

“Oh, don’t say that,” she said. “When I said you were normal earlier, I hope you didn’t think it was an insult. I’m happy you have a stable life and an office job. I’ve dated my fill of temperamental artist types. Plus I have to live with myself, and that’s enough drama for anyone.” She yawned again, stroked his arm, and then patted it, as if she were soothing him. “Normal is good.”

Earlier, when he’d told her about his job, she’d asked, “So what do you do all day?”

“I think about where to go for lunch,” he’d said.

“But that’s just in the morning.”

“In the afternoon I think about what to have for dinner.”

She’d laughed, which was what he’d wanted, but she hadn’t said, “No, really, tell me what you do,” which was also, it occurred to him now, what he’d wanted. Maybe she really didn’t care. Maybe she was one of those artists who imagined anyone with an office job must have a conventional, pedestrian mind to match his conventional and pedestrian life.

Maybe he did have a conventional, pedestrian mind. Not long ago he’d been trying his broken French on Parisian hipsters, smoking one of their pot-and-tobacco cigarettes in their apartment above a rock club, while girls milled in the street below with throats sore from screaming his name. Maybe even then some part of him had been longing for an office with a desk. Even the way he was thinking about that time was conventional and pedestrian—rock ’n’ roll, cigarettes, girls. Why didn’t he just picture himself in a black leather jacket, throwing his leg over a motorcycle? When he was in the band he’d supported himself
with freelance Web design—that was how Ben had justified hiring him—and it was true he’d enjoyed those times when he spent the day in some office or another. He’d always found a certain novelty in getting up before ten, putting on professional clothes, making trips to the coffee cart. But back then he’d felt like a spy from Bohemia, traveling incognito, wearing his khaki disguise. Even after he started working in an office permanently, he’d felt like that for a while. When, and why, had that feeling gone away? Maybe learning that he was capable of making that transition would make Adelaide like him less instead of more. Instead of a stable, steady guy, she’d see him as a loser, a failure by his own design, a crass abandoner of dreams.

She was so warm next to him in the bed, her hand on his arm, her hair tickling his cheek when he turned to look at her, her legs pressed against his own. He’d been lonely, he realized. He’d been lonely even when he was with Sabrina, which meant he’d been lonely for years. He said, “I guess I’ll be normal, then.”

T
he email was there when Eloise turned on her computer in the
morning. She came into the office as usual, put down her coffee, pressed the button on the back of the monitor, and then stacked papers on her desk while the computer sang itself awake. She opened her email, drumming her fingers on the keyboard tray as she waited for the in-box to load. All this was normal, and then there it was, this one unusual thing, a note from a woman who worked for the library downtown and had once been married to one of Eloise’s colleagues.

I’m sorry this is so last minute. Jason Bamber is speaking here tonight, and then we’re taking him out to dinner, and when I picked him up from the airport we put together that you two know each other. I said I’d invite you to the talk, and he asked me to ask you if you would join us at dinner. I’m afraid we can’t pay your way (strict budget rules these days!) but we’d love to have you there. Marianne.

Eloise took her hands off the keyboard and rolled her chair back from the desk. She sat with her hands braced on her thighs
and read the email again. Jason Bamber. She couldn’t go to a talk that night. Tonight was dinner party night at Heather’s house. Once a month Heather and her friends gathered for an elaborate dinner, taking turns playing host, which meant spending hours in the kitchen preparing a feast for the others. At least once a week Heather could be counted on to ask what Eloise thought she should cook when it was her turn, and then in the month leading up to the dinner the frequency of these questions intensified, until Heather finally came to Eloise, the wild light of inspiration in her eyes, and announced what she’d decided on. Tonight it was Thai food, and Heather had spent days researching recipes as she planned the menu. She’d had to go to three stores to find lemongrass.

But, see, the thing was, they weren’t really Eloise’s friends. The other women. She liked them and everything, and certainly it was nice to have a social group where she and Heather were recognized as a couple, but they were really Heather’s friends. They were all midwives, or mostly—two were nurses and one was a physical therapist—and when the conversation drifted, as it always did, toward work, the topics were dilation, and preterm labor, and unnecessary C-sections. About these things Eloise had nothing to say. Never given birth, never would. Never seen birth, probably never would. She’d been born, okay, but that wasn’t much to contribute to the conversation. Sometimes after a while she picked up a magazine and flipped through it, but Heather was always put out with her after that, partly because Heather’s ex, Suzanne, a member of the group, was always on the lookout for disharmony in their relationship, and was one of those people who would make a joke that managed to point out that disharmony to everyone else in the room. Doubtless Heather
would have been equally bored during equivalent conversations at a party with Eloise’s colleagues, but there was no way to prove this, since Eloise never took Heather to those parties, and so the comparison wasn’t one she liked to evoke.

Jason Bamber. They’d gone to graduate school together in Chicago. He’d been a year behind Eloise in the program. Back then he’d been a nervous guy, and then at parties he’d drink too much, probably to calm those nerves, and start to exude jealousy and adoration, mostly at Eloise. When she’d found out her book was coming out, he’d said to her, “I don’t know if I want to kiss you or be you.” In the last few years, though, he himself had become a star in the field, thanks to the publication of his own much-heralded book, and now he taught at their alma mater.

She scooted back up to the desk and positioned her hands over the keyboard, her mind running along the tracks of polite regret.
Alas,
she wrote, but did that sound sarcastic? Marianne was a pathologically earnest woman who always suspected other people were being sarcastic at her expense but could never quite be sure. This was one of the reasons Eloise had failed to keep up with her after the divorce. She put her finger on the Delete key. One, two, three, four. She reached over and picked up the phone.

“What are you talking about?” Heather said. “Are you talking about tonight?”

“I’ll come over afterward,” Eloise said. “I’ll still get to try all the food.”

“You’ll still get to try all the
food
?”

“If I’m not there, you guys can talk freely about all your work stuff. I won’t be a drag on the conversation.”

“No, you’re not canceling on me, not tonight. That’s bullshit.”

Eloise wavered. She swayed from side to side in her chair. Then she said, “But I’m going to take Theo. I want to introduce her to him—I mean, Heather, this is a guy I actually know who’s actually in a position to help her. She needs to meet people like him.” This all made sense. This sounded like an idea she’d had all along.

A long, fraught silence. “Fine,” Heather said. “I guess I’ll see you after.”

Eloise hung up, sorry she’d had to tell Heather, wishing the email had come on another day, any other day, when she could have just said she was working late. Or even better, said nothing at all. She didn’t live with Heather, not yet, and so she didn’t have to account to her for her whereabouts. The impulse to go, which was strong, had come with a slightly sickening, sneaky feeling, like she knew giving in to it was bad for her. Like she was rummaging for food in the dark, past-midnight kitchen, like a raccoon, like a furtive backyard animal. Jason was an emissary from the other life she could have had, and while she understood, of course, why Heather wanted her to let that life go, why that would make sense, she still wanted to look at him and see what she was missing.

Now it was time to magic the lie she’d told Heather into truth. In the week since she’d told the kids about the house, she and Theo had avoided one another, speaking when it couldn’t be helped with a polite reserve. Theo’s voice was formal and wary when Eloise got her on the phone. Eloise explained what she wanted, maintaining a bright, encouraging voice, and several times using the word
great
. Listening to herself, she wondered if she would always do the parent thing, the teacher thing, with Theo, and hide her own roiling feelings behind a mask of calm
assurance. She could have said that this guy was someone who used to be below her on the career ladder and now he’d surpassed her by kind of a lot and she was both driven by curiosity and hampered by dread in thinking about seeing him. But since he knew she was here she didn’t want to not go and have him imagine she was afraid to see him for the very reasons she actually was afraid to see him. She wanted to be as cool and breezy and comfortable with herself as she had been when she’d known him. Not just pretend to be.
Be
. She wanted Theo for moral support tonight and, now that you mention it, also on the issue of the house, but there seemed to be some law that she had to pretend support was nothing that she needed.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Theo said, but not like she really meant it. Because she was still angry? The thought of Theo being angry made Eloise angry, so she didn’t ask. “Great,” Eloise said again, and then told her niece what time she’d be home, what time they’d leave the house, and my God, it really was like they’d rewound twelve years, like they were headed to parent-teacher night at the high school.

Jason Bamber. Wow, that, too, had been a lot of years ago.

She was already running late when she knocked on Theo’s closed
bedroom door. This should not have been a surprise to her, and yet somehow it was. This was what Heather rolled her eyes about—not that Eloise was always late but that she always seemed baffled by her own inability to be on time. She
was
baffled. It wasn’t an act. She wanted to be on time. She couldn’t understand why it never happened. She knew, of course, that she’d always been late before, but that didn’t stop her from hoping she could change.

“Yes?” Theo said.

Eloise pushed the door open. “You ready?”

Theo was sitting on the bed hugging a pink throw pillow in her lap, like a teenage girl who’d been dumped by her boyfriend. “I don’t think I can go.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think I should stay here and do work.”

Theo’s laptop was closed and on the floor. There were no papers or books on her bed, just Theo herself, who was, Eloise now registered, wearing pajamas. “You don’t look all that busy.”

“I know,” Theo said. “But I should be.”

“Theo, I told them I was bringing you. They’ll be expecting you now. And this is a great opportunity for you, to meet him. He’s somebody who could really help you. A letter from him would be—”

“I know, I know all that,” Theo said.

“So come on. Let’s go.”

“I don’t think I’m up to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can talk to someone I don’t know. I don’t think I can make him like me. I’m not up to it. I’m sorry. It would be much better for me to try to work, because I’m just not up to anything social.”

“Why not?” Eloise asked. “What’s wrong?”

Theo shook her head like the reasons were beyond enumerating. Then she shrugged. Finally she said, “I miss Claire.”

“Well, go see her.”

“What?”

“Go visit her, Theo. It’s not like she moved to another planet.” Eloise thought, It’s not like she died, and behind that thought
came a flood of resentment at Theo’s failure to appreciate all that she had.

“I guess not,” Theo said. “I guess I could just go see her.”

“It is possible for you to leave the city limits,” Eloise said, against her better judgment, and Theo stiffened. Eloise made it worse. “It’s also possible for you to leave the house.”

“I’m aware of that,” Theo said, her voice on a trembling edge. “You’ve made that quite clear. But I’m still not going.”

“Do you not believe me when I say it would be good for you to meet him? Why can’t you ever take my advice?”

Theo looked incredulous. “Maybe because you never give me any.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You never give me any,” Theo repeated slowly. “Not even when I ask.”

“That’s completely untrue. I give you advice all the time. I gave you advice about where to go to grad school, which of course you ignored.”

“Okay, fine, you give me advice about my career. Everything else is up to me.”

“Well, who should it be up to, Theo? You’re twenty-eight years old.”

“Now,” Theo said.

“What?”

“I’m twenty-eight years old
now
.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Eloise said. “And I don’t have time to find out.” She turned to go, but she still heard Theo say, in a soft but audible voice, “Of course you don’t.” She left angry—and not just angry but hurt. She was trying to help Theo with her career in a way that anyone else in her niece’s
position would have been grateful for, and all she got back was attitude, and this accusation that she—what? Trusted her niece? Failed to nag her enough? For four years of Theo’s adulthood Eloise had let her live in this house rent-free, knowing the smallness of a grad student’s stipend. In return Theo had tidied and cooked and done laundry and occasionally paid for groceries. In Eloise’s opinion this was a pretty good deal for Theo. Where was the appreciation for that? Why, instead of thinking about all she owed her aunt, was Theo so certain that her aunt owed her a house? Because, these days in America, not until children have children of their own do they feel any gratitude to the people who raised them.