The History of Us (24 page)

Some king. Gary fell a couple inches short of Josh. He was impressively broad-shouldered—he looked like a swimmer—but balding fast, with a briefcase and a very white expanse of forehead. Who carried a briefcase still? Josh himself toted his stuff around in a messenger bag. Maybe a businessman in his midforties would feel self-conscious with a messenger bag, like he was trying too hard, which was exactly how Josh would have felt arriving at the office with a briefcase. I don’t get it, was Josh’s first thought, and his second, and also his third. Gary put the briefcase down to shake Josh’s hand, looking him right in the eye, and for a moment Josh expected to be sold insurance, or real estate, or a car. But though the man had a salesman’s grip and gaze, he lacked the easy, direct manner of one. In fact he sounded pained and awkward as he said how glad he was they’d finally met. Well, like a salesman, he was totally full of shit.

“Me, too,” Josh said, and then, exerting himself in the face of Gary’s silence and Claire’s hopeful eyes, he said, “So, you’re a developer.”

“Yes,” Gary said.

Josh had no follow-up. “I don’t know much about that,” he said. “Except what I’ve seen on
The Wire
. But that’s not very pro-development, of course. I’m sure it’s, you know, got a particular political . . . thing.”

“What’s
The Wire
?”

“Oh, it was a TV show,” Josh said. “A really good TV show.”

“Ah,” Gary said. “The glass teat.”

“Huh?” Josh said.

“TV.”

“Gary doesn’t like TV,” Claire said. “Not even the good stuff.”

“There is no good stuff,” Gary said.

Claire rolled her eyes indulgently. “Everybody but you agrees there’s good stuff. Even snobs liked
The Sopranos
.”

“People just believe what they’re told,” Gary said. “Everything’s advertising. Without advertising you probably couldn’t even tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke.”

“Sure I could,” Claire said.

“Me, too,” Josh said.

“If I blindfolded you and gave you a taste of each you think you could tell?”

Bring it on,
Josh wanted to say, but he swallowed his irritation and held up his hands. “We just met,” he said. “We’ll get to the blindfolding later.”

Gary checked his watch, as if to say this meeting was over. “Anyone want a drink?” he asked and then headed for the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

“Sorry, he was being obnoxious,” Claire said. “I’ve noticed he does that when he’s nervous. I’m still figuring him out, too.” She smiled as if figuring out this self-important asshole were a delightful prospect. She seemed so young—not just nineteen but thirteen. Twelve. And Josh wanted to tell her what he knew: that love might look like a shore but turn out to be a desert island, where you roamed alone, talking to yourself, trying to crack open coconuts with your shoe. So thirsty you drank the salt water. So hungry you ate the sand.

He wanted to sail up in a boat and rescue her, and he had a sudden, painful understanding of all that Theo had felt about him. Once, Sabrina had said in front of Theo that she’d leave him as soon as she had enough money to pay for a place on her own. He’d insisted to Theo that Sabrina had been joking, growing angry when Theo didn’t seem to believe it. He’d never considered how hard it must have been for his sister to see him treated that way. She must have wanted to knock Sabrina to the ground like she had that neighbor boy, rub Sabrina’s face in the snow, take her baby brother home to wipe the blood away, set the world right again.

But Josh refused to make Theo’s mistakes. He wouldn’t judge. He wouldn’t urge. He wouldn’t harangue. He’d let Claire see for herself how wrong this was. He’d wait it out. Hadn’t it been, in part, Theo’s insistence on Sabrina’s faults that had made him so determinedly blind to them?

“So,” he called after Gary, “how about that drink?”

T
he first day of classes at Wyett College was a week away, and
Eloise needed to write a new lecture and change the dates on her syllabus and have a meeting with the two older professors who were refusing to do committee work. She also needed to make a decision about the offer from Jason Bamber, who’d all but promised her the job. She wasn’t doing any of that. She was leaning against her kitchen counter with a glass of wine in her hand and watching Heather mince garlic for bruschetta. Watching Heather cook was one of the pleasures of Eloise’s life—the clean, brisk confidence of Heather’s movements, the rhythmic tapping of the knife against the cutting board. But tonight even that simple joy was denied her.

Things were a mess. The house still wasn’t hers. Theo would barely speak to her. Josh wore a constant crease line of worry in his forehead. Eloise hadn’t told Heather about the job offer, even as she considered it, which was tantamount to lying. She had a confused sense that she needed something definitive to happen with the house before she could decide about Chicago, or even talk about it. If she could sell the house, she could move in with Heather and be content. But if she had to walk away with nothing,
if her kids and her mother did that to her, she could endure her own anger and disappointment only if she could consign them and the house to a completed life, and start living a new one.

Old-country societies had it right when they said you owed something to the people who’d taken care of you. All the things they’d done for you should give them a say in your destiny. I labor for you, you labor for me. I house you, you house me. I choose the person you marry. I get something in return. But contemporary Western types had to go and decide children were not ours to keep and make use of, but rather a gift we offer the universe. Here you go, universe, here’s a child I gave up my life for. Let her do what she wants. I’ll just sit over here and die. In America people were surprised over and over when their years of effort were met with ingratitude, when their children drove around in brand-new cars failing to visit them in the moldering nursing home. But that was what happened if you didn’t raise them to believe it was their duty to return the favors you’d done, remind them all the time of what they owed you.

For nearly a week after Claire’s secret emerged, Eloise had waited to see if the girl would call. When she finally did, and Eloise answered, Claire said, “Aunt Eloise?” though none of the kids had used that title in years.

“Yes,” Eloise said. “It’s me.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. How are you?”

“I’m so sorry you found out the way you did,” Claire said. “I know I shouldn’t have handled things like this.”

“Okay,” Eloise said.

“I thought maybe everybody could get used to the idea. With a little time.”

“You have to live your life,” she said. And because that was all she could think of to say she said it again.

“I want to come see you,” Claire said. “Can I come see you?”

“Oh. Now?”

“Whenever,” Claire said. “Whenever I can.”

Eloise was in the kitchen, then, too, well into a bottle of wine. She looked around in a panic: dishes in the sink, newspapers strewn across the counter, a toppling stack of unsorted mail on the table. She couldn’t have said why it mattered whether Claire saw the house messy after years of living blithely in the mess. She only knew that it did. “Let’s do it in a few days,” she said. “We’ll have a family dinner.”

“At home, you mean?” Claire said.

“Here, yes,” Eloise said.

“There,” Claire said. “Right. When?”

“Let’s see,” Eloise said. She walked over to the calendar and stared at it blindly. “How about Friday?”

“Okay,” Claire said. “Friday.”

“Great! We’ll have a family dinner.” She stressed the word
family,
and then just in case Claire still didn’t get it, she said, “You, me, Josh, and Theo.”
You, me, Josh, and Theo,
she repeated in her head. “Seven-thirty,” she said, and then as fast as she could she got off the phone.

She had no idea what she was doing. She had no idea what to do. The feeling plunged her back into her early years with the kids, with Josh and especially with Theo, when she felt like the substitute teacher, making herself look foolish by failing to know the real teacher’s method, fucking up the lesson plan. Growing up, Claire had been willful and defiant—prone to tantrums and claims that she didn’t love Eloise anymore—but these rejections
had been more affirming than Josh’s agreeable acceptance or Theo’s stunned obedience. What Eloise did really mattered to Claire. Claire was the only one who remembered nothing but Eloise. Claire was her child. Not the most like her—Theo was the most like her, because of genes, or happenstance. Claire was the one whose personality Eloise helped form. Claire was the only one whose mother Eloise really was.

Eloise had told Josh and Theo about the dinner, and she’d told Heather she was having it, but otherwise she’d been in a state of denial for the last several days, from the moment she hung up the phone. For God’s sake, the last thing she wanted was a family dinner! She and Theo could barely look at each other; she had no idea how she wanted to behave with Claire, and less idea why she’d suggested they stage a false display of togetherness and normalcy. Why, why, why was she forever agreeing to things she had no desire to do? And not just agreeing but instigating. Once upon a time she’d been a person who just said no.

Now she swigged her wine, and made a face. “I don’t want this,” she said. “I want a martini.” Heather stopped mincing and looked up. “Not just a regular martini. A huge martini. In one of those joke glasses.”

“No liquor,” Heather said. “In the mood you’re in, wine is bad enough.”

“But I want it,” Eloise said. “It will change the mood I’m in.” Heather ignored her, the way you might ignore the mulish, futile protests of a small child. She set the knife down so that she could pull Eloise’s head forward and kiss the top of it, an offer of comfort that made Eloise’s eyes fill with tears. “Don’t be nice to me,” she said.

“Okay,” Heather said and gave Eloise’s cheek a painless smack. Then she went back to mincing. Eloise hadn’t asked Heather to come cook. Heather had just shown up, and seemed unsurprised to find Eloise in a state of sedated panic, a glass of wine in her hand, not a single thing done. Sometimes it drove Eloise insane, how much Heather seemed to know. Sometimes she wanted her quirks and failings to go unobserved. Sometimes Heather’s air of businesslike amusement about those quirks and failings made Eloise want to up the ante. To be even later. To be even more dramatic. To just take the roof off the place. “Ugh,” Eloise said, closing her eyes. “I hate myself.”

“Well,” Heather said. “That happens sometimes.”

“I want my sister,” Eloise said. Again the sounds of the knife stopped, and Eloise opened her eyes to find Heather looking at her with such openhearted sympathy she felt she’d collapse under the weight of it. My God, of course she wouldn’t take that job. How could she even think about doing something that might mean leaving Heather behind?

“I love you,” Heather said.

“I know,” Eloise said. “Hey, here’s an idea—let’s move in together.”

“Really?” Heather’s voice held a carefully controlled excitement.

If she said yes and then changed her mind, Heather wouldn’t forgive her anytime soon. To say yes was a commitment. Heather had come over to cook for her, to cook a meal she wouldn’t be eating, for people who had no idea how important she was. “Yes,” Eloise said.

Heather smiled. “That makes me happy,” she said.

Eloise laughed. “I’m glad.”

Heather resumed mincing, a new energy now in the tap-tap-tap of the knife. “Oh, that makes me very happy,” she said.

“Let’s just do it now,” Eloise said. “Forget this dinner. Let’s get out of here.”

“Maybe it won’t be that bad,” Heather said. She picked up the cutting board and used the knife to sweep the garlic into the bowl. She stirred, then dipped in a spoon to taste.

“You think?” Eloise said.

Heather turned, holding out a spoonful for Eloise to sample. “No,” she said.

“It smells really good in here,” Theo said, coming into the kitchen.
Heather had taken her knives and gone home, leaving Eloise to wait, with increasing dread, for the children to appear. Theo was the first. She wore a skirt with a cute top Eloise recognized from the catalog of a rather expensive store. Theo looked like she’d actually taken the time to blow-dry her hair. So Eloise wasn’t the only one treating this like a dinner party, one to which they’d invited some important and barely known guest. Eloise herself coveted the clothes from the store that had sold Theo her shirt, and sometimes went there and walked around looking at the clothes and touching them, but she hardly ever allowed herself to buy something. Theo was living here rent-free. Eloise hoped she’d bought that shirt on sale.

“I didn’t do shit,” Eloise said. “It was all Heather.”

Theo cocked her head. “Heather? Is she eating with us?”

“Nope. She just came over to cook.” Eloise studied the look of puzzlement on Theo’s face, noticing that she took pleasure in
her own failure to explain. Her anger at Theo over the house was a flavor added to every thought about her niece, every interaction they had.

“That was nice of her,” Theo said.

“She’s a nice person,” Eloise said, bending to pull the last tray of Heather’s brown sugar cookies from the oven.

“Yes, but that was
unusually
nice of her.”

“She’s a fucking nice person.” Eloise said this with her back to Theo, and when she turned from the oven she found that her niece had left the room. The sight of the empty kitchen brought tears to her eyes, even though she knew she’d been behaving badly, acting like she wanted Theo gone. She ate a hot, crumbly cookie, chased it with another swig of wine, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and picked up the platter of bruschetta to carry it into the dining room.

She found Josh at the bar making two vodka tonics. She placed the tray on the table—already set with the good china, which was also Heather’s doing. “Where’s Theo?” she asked.

“I think she’s watching for Claire,” he said. He sipped one of the drinks and made a face. “Though I doubt she’d admit that.”