The History of Us (15 page)

In the car Eloise gripped the steering wheel with both hands and took deep breaths. She punched buttons on the radio until she found a passionate song of the late 1980s—“In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel—and she sang along loudly and tried to lose herself in the music and forget her anger and her nerves.

Once Jason had called her breasts the twin towers of beauty and justice, and in his eyes was the puppyish longing of men who feel overborne and helpless in the face of their attraction to women. “I would make love to your breasts,” he said, “if they were not attached to a woman.” He was too ridiculous to inspire outrage, or much beyond a kind of annoyed bemusement. “But they’d just be two globs of fat in your hands,” she replied.

Now she wondered if he’d even recognize her, though of course she knew he remembered her from Marianne’s email. She fought hard to keep her expectations low, hating not just that familiar disappointment but the feeling that her own overblown hopes had paved the way for that disappointment to arrive. It was like having a hangover, the sickness made worse by being self-induced.
Eloise had once been full of insouciant expectations, but that state of being was now as foreign and distant from her experience as the lives of people in faraway lands, as everything else about elsewhere.

He recognized her. She’d heard applause as she hustled toward the lecture room door and had slipped inside in time to see him making his way to the podium. Now he said his thank-yous while she made her way into the latecomer’s seat—seven seats in, third row from the back. “Excuse me,” she was whispering when his voice from the front of the room struck her consciousness, because he had just said her name. What he had said was, “I’d like to dedicate this talk to Eloise Hempel.” When her head shot up to look at him, he flashed her a smile and added, “She’s always been an inspiration to me.”

What was his talk about? She had no idea. She sat in her seat and pretended to herself that she was paying attention, while her mind worked furiously at the question of what the hell that—his dedication—had been. Surely it was only her own insecurity—her own humiliated convictions of failure—that made her think he’d done it to embarrass her, like a hot guy pretending the ugly girl was his date. Because why would he do that? She’d never done anything to inspire such treatment, or if she had she couldn’t remember what it was. Maybe he’d done it to impress her, because the desire to impress her still lingered from all those years ago. Maybe he’d wanted her to rush up to him after the talk, flushed and grateful. It seemed to be Heather’s voice in her head saying, “There’s also the possibility that he meant it.” Yeah, okay, sure, there was that possibility, too.

After the talk she hung back while Jason received well-wishers, and then saw Marianne, similarly hanging back, as people do
when they know they’ll have plenty of time with the anointed one later. She made her way over to Marianne and said hello. “That dedication was so sweet!” Marianne said, and Eloise smiled and agreed that it was. “Where’s your niece?” Marianne asked.

Eloise explained. “It’s good to know she has the scholar’s necessary selfishness!” she said brightly. Marianne smiled nervously and looked away. She didn’t like to participate in criticism of others, even others she didn’t know, and Eloise could tell Marianne wasn’t sure whether Eloise had been criticizing Theo or not. Eloise wasn’t even sure. She thought of another reason she wished Theo had come—so that when Jason asked her what she’d been up to for the last seventeen years, she would have had living proof of what that had been.

The last praise offered, the last questions asked, Jason walked toward them up the aisle. He had his notes clenched under one arm and both hands in his pockets, and so looked like a tense person trying to appear relaxed. “That was wonderful!” Marianne said, and Jason thanked her with a sincerity equal to hers, and then he turned and grinned at Eloise. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said. She was aware that she was supposed to note how much older he looked, or didn’t look, but instead what she saw was that he looked happy to see her. He looked like he didn’t care where she taught or what she’d published. He just looked like he was glad to see her face.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“Thanks for that dedication.”

“That was so sweet,” Marianne said again.

“It was an impulse,” he said. “When I saw you come in.”

Eloise nodded. They’d never slept together. They’d never even been on a date. She’d been aware that he was attracted to
her, but it had never seemed very serious, because his come-ons had been so dumb they’d seemed like jokes. They’d been good banter partners, but all that sexual innuendo had just bounced off her like darts bounce off the edge of the board. So why did she have this nervous energy, and why was she getting a nervous energy from him? Like they had a mutual past, lingering memories of a torrid affair.

“Shall we?” Marianne asked, and for a moment Eloise had no idea what she meant.

All through dinner at a crowded downtown restaurant the frisson of excitement persisted, despite the presence of Marianne, one of Marianne’s less interesting colleagues, and another, younger one with holes in her eyebrows where piercings had been removed. Jason kept meeting Eloise’s eye, and she’d hold his gaze a beat too long, and then turn away as flushed as if he’d touched her under the table. He kept talking about her work—how she’d inspired him in graduate school, how much he admired her book, and the articles she’d published since, which she was impressed he’d even read. He said he was a hack compared to her—that he could make an argument, he could do research, sure, but Eloise had a gift for understanding and expression that was, well, it was beautiful.

“I am pretty amazing,” Eloise said.

“You are!” Marianne said, and Eloise laughed, because Marianne meant it, and Jason seemed to mean it, and the formerly pierced young woman had known who she was, and at this moment Eloise felt pretty amazing. She felt really damn good.

After dinner Eloise went outside with Jason, who said with some embarrassment that he’d become a smoker since graduate school. “You started smoking in your late twenties?” she said.

“I know,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I was a late bloomer. I don’t know if you noticed at the time, but in grad school I was pretty much going through puberty.”

Eloise laughed. “I noticed.”

“I’m sorry for being such an idiot.”

Eloise shrugged. “You weren’t so bad.”

“You know,” he said, “I realize I’m literally blowing smoke here, but I meant all that stuff I said about your work and the impact it’s had on me. What are you working on now?”

“It’s about location and identity,” she said.

“Sounds interesting. You should send it to me when you’re done.”

“Okay,” she said.

There was a silence, then Jason asked, “Do you ever think about leaving here?”

“Only all the time,” she said.

“If you got another book out you could do it,” he said.

“Do you think so? It’s been so long since the first one.”

“Yeah, but that was a significant book. That means something. Especially if you paired it with something new.”

Eloise looked out at Fountain Square, where an enormous TV screen was showing a Reds game. “You think so?”

“I think so. Let me ask you—would you ever consider something besides teaching?”

“It would depend on the something.”

“I’m starting a journal out of my department. I have funding, but I don’t yet have a staff. I’ll need an editor, and I’m standing here thinking you’d be great. Is that something you’d consider?”

“I don’t know,” Eloise said. “I mean, I might enjoy the work. But there’d be complications to leaving here.”

“Well, we can talk about it. We’ll stay in touch.” He dropped his cigarette on the ground and spent a long time rubbing it out. “I want to say something else, but I don’t want you to think what I say means I didn’t mean what I already said.”

Eloise laughed. “I think I followed that,” she said.

“I think we should leave together,” he said.

“Cincinnati?” she asked, though of course she knew what he meant.

What was she thinking, saying yes? She stood there waiting while he offered Marianne and her people his goodbyes and thanks, and she could see by their expressions they knew exactly what was going on. She got in her car with the blood high in her face, and then when he got in, too, the click of his seat belt sounded so final, as if there was a contract in the shutting of his door. They both watched in the rearview mirror as Marianne’s car pulled away, taillights bright against the night. And then he reached over and touched her hair. He ran his thumb down the side of her face. She undid her seat belt, and then undid his, and for a few breathless minutes they made out like teenagers in the car.

She drove him to his hotel with his hand on her inner thigh. She gave the keys to the valet, and held his hand as they walked into the lobby. In the elevator with an elderly couple, she pressed her leg against his and vibrated with anticipation. And then, just as the lights flashed green on his door and he yanked out his key card with a flourish, her phone rang. It was Heather. “Oh, fuck me,” she said, staring at that name on the screen. “It’s like she knew.”

He was standing there in his open doorway, waiting for her to come inside. “It’s like who knew what?” he said.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have to go.”

“What? Really? Why?”

“I have this life here,” she said. “I really do.”

He frowned. “Well, of course,” he said.

Eloise was nearly to Heather’s house when her phone rang again,
and though she lectured the kids about using the phone while driving she fished hers out of her bag and checked the screen. She was still in a fraught state of guilty desire and she thought maybe it was Heather, calling to accuse her, or Jason, calling to persuade her back. But instead it was Francine. Eloise let out a breath of exasperation and relief, thought, Oh hell, and answered. “I called the house but you weren’t there,” her mother said, “so I talked to the kids.”

“Okay,” Eloise said, already impatient.

“They want the house, too,” Francine said. “So I can’t sign it over to you.”

They want the house? For a beat or two Eloise couldn’t imagine what her mother was talking about. Who were
they
? “Theo and Josh?” she said slowly.

“Yes, honey,” her mother said. “Those kids. What other kids are there?”

Eloise still couldn’t quite make sense of things. “Theo and Josh want the house? What would they do with the house? Theo’s not even going to stay in Cincinnati, and hopefully Josh won’t either.”

“Well, Theo’s the one who asked me to stop you from selling it, so maybe the two of you should talk.”

Eloise said slowly, “Theo asked you to . . . ” She frowned at her
face in the rearview mirror, and it looked back with angry puzzlement.

“At any rate, I’ve come up with what I think is a fair way to decide. I’m going to hold on to the house for now and see who needs it most. Unless there’s some other pressing reason, I’ll probably give it to whoever gets married first.”

Married? She and Heather could never get married, not in Ohio anyway. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Eloise said. “You told me you were going to sign it over to me.”

“Yes, but that was before I understood the kids’ position. I can hardly give it to you to sell knowing how they feel, can I?”

“I don’t make all my decisions based on how they feel,” Eloise said. Her mother laughed, and Eloise, taken aback, inadvertently said, “Do I?” She never liked to give her mother an opening—not just to criticize or tease but even to express love or sympathy. She never liked to give her mother an opening of any kind.

“Eloise, sweetheart, that’s a subject for another day,” Francine said. “I just wanted to let you know I’ve set this up.”

“Set it up? Like a legal arrangement? Or, no, more like a competition.” Eloise could feel her anger growing. “You should pitch it as a reality show. Matriarch pulls the strings while relatives race to the altar to win the family house.”

“It’s not a competition,” Francine said, managing to sound wounded. “Getting married is just a good measure of whether people are ready to settle down in life.”

Was this Francine’s elaborate way of getting at Eloise for being, as far as she knew, single? What was Eloise if not settled down? “That’s bullshit,” Eloise said.

“Is it?” Francine said. “Look at history.”

“Are you kidding?” Eloise asked. “Are you
kidding
me?
I wrote a book
—Never mind. You’ve got to be kidding about this whole thing, right? No one’s even close to getting married. This is just yet another way to avoid keeping your promise. If you didn’t want to give me the house, Mom, why the hell did you ever tell me that you would?”

“Don’t be selfish, Eloise. I’m trying to think of everyone here. I’m trying to see the big picture.”

“The big picture is that I need the house now and they don’t. If you’re assessing based on need, my need is greater.”

“Your financial need, maybe,” Francine said. “But there are all sorts of need.”

Two blocks from Heather’s house, Eloise pulled the car over to the curb and stopped. She closed her eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“This is not just about you. I’m thinking of those children. When Theo called, she was practically in hysterics. She begged me not to let you do it. I don’t think you’ve really considered how much that house means to her. It was what gave her a sense of security after she lost her parents.”

“It was the house that did that, huh?” Eloise said. “I don’t suppose it had anything to do with me.”

“You did your best,” Francine said, and the implication that her best clearly wasn’t good enough hung in the air. Eloise had no idea why this should sting her like it did, when Francine’s best was a damn sight less adequate than hers.

“You left me with them,” Eloise said. “I gave up my life. You told me you were going to give me that house.”

There was a pause before Francine spoke. “When you put it
like that,” she said, “it sounds like you took them because you thought you were going to get paid.”