The Ramblers (21 page)

“This is Henry, Dad.”

I
n the kitchen, her father takes off his coat and drapes it over the back of a chair. He walks to the fridge and grabs a bottle of beer.

“Hey, Dad,” she says.

He turns and smiles and Clio can see it in his face that he's nervous.

“Henry will be down in a minute,” she says, but Henry is right behind her. She meets his eye and his face relaxes and wordlessly she ushers him over.

“This is Henry, Dad,” Clio says. The word
Dad
sounds strange as she says it. She hasn't called him this in a long time.
William
or
my father,
yes, but not
Dad
. A therapist once said this is what children do to distance themselves from their parents. “And, Henry, this is my father.”

“It's great to meet you,” Henry says, his voice firm, filled with confidence.

“You too,” her father says, and nods.

They shake hands.

Clio hangs back and watches and as she does, she appreciates that this is a sight she never truly expected to see. They are both tall, almost exactly the same height—a touch more than six feet two—and they have similar builds. Wiry but strong. She realizes how on edge she is, how much she cares, that this is probably a good sign.

“Quick beer before you go?” her father says.

“That would be lovely,” Henry says, taking a seat at the small kitchen table. He catches Clio's eye and she smiles.

So far, so good.

Her father returns with the beers and they all sit.

“Clio says you work in construction?” Henry says.

“For more than thirty years,” her father says, and takes a long swig of his beer. “Since I was practically a kid.”

“What are you working on now?” Henry asks.

“We're remodeling an old building not far from here to create an ambulatory care center for Yale–New Haven Hospital. It's fast-track project and there's a watertight budget, so it's been a bit crazy at times but also kind of interesting. There will be a radiology center and a lab. One of those jobs where I feel like I'm doing some good.”

Henry smiles. “Well, I must say I have a great deal of admiration for the work you do. Just finished construction on my hotel and am floored by the amount of intense coordination and skill that goes into these projects. We had a million hiccups, but the windows alone nearly killed me. We were hoping to salvage the old ones, but we were inspected and needed to retrofit.”

“Which ones did you end up installing?”

“We went with the Marvin double-hung Magnums,” Henry says. “They look great but cost us a pretty penny.”

“They're good, though,” her father says, nodding. “Tried and true.”

Clio sinks deeper into her chair and feels the rise and fall of her own breath. For a brief moment, the tangle of voices becomes muted and distant and she thinks to herself:
They are talking shop. They are discussing windows. This is going okay.

Clio checks her watch. It's 6:31. “Henry, I need to get you to the train.”

Henry smiles. “Oh, how I'd prefer to stay, but duty calls.” He takes a final sip of his beer and shakes her father's hand. “It was good to meet you. I hope we have more than fifteen minutes next time.”

“So do I,” her father says, standing and taking the beer bottles to the counter. “It's probably a good thing you're getting out of here anyway. Otherwise, I might have gotten you all liquored up and grilled you about your intentions for my daughter.”

A lifting. Clio hears herself laughing, feels her body relaxing even more. When's the last time she heard her father crack a joke? And where did this protectiveness come from? It's something she's always longed for, to have a parent look out for her. Maybe it's not too late. She looks at her father, catches his eye, and grins.

“Ah, I look forward to my day of pickling and grilling,” Henry says. “Soon, I hope.”

“Soon,” her father says.

At the station, Clio parks and walks Henry inside.

“Thank you,” she says, “for coming here. It means so much that you did this.”

He takes her face in his hands. “I'm so happy I came. That you opened up to me, that you took me to the cemetery, to the house, that I met your old man.”

Clio laughs. “If he's old, you're old, Henry. He isn't that much older than you.”

“Well then, I'm old. Old and madly in love with a certain irresistible young thing. I love you, Clio. I love you even more than I did this morning. I didn't know that was possible.”

Clio feels herself smile. His words are needed and she feels thankful for them; her body literally relaxes with relief. It's another one of those moments; this man, this thoughtful man, is saying these things to her.

“What's my Christmas present?” he begs her playfully. “Now I'm the one who can't handle surprises.”

She shakes her head. “You and me both. You'll have to wait and see.”

A baby cries. It's not a soft cry but a shrill, desperate howling, and Clio follows the sound. The baby is blond, wears pink. She wriggles in her mother's arm, flails madly to get down. The mother holds tight to her child, keeps her cool and kisses her daughter's head again and again, but the tantrum continues. Clio is transfixed. She stares at the scene, her body tightening with each shriek. Henry stands next to her as she feels herself fraying. She's dizzy. She grabs on to him.

“Clio? You were fine a moment ago.”

And she was. He holds her up. She stares at the mother and child. She's six again. Six or seven. Sobbing on the cold floor of a grocery aisle. Eloise has left her clutching the box of chocolate chip cookies. She finds Eloise examining fat green watermelons, her eyes angry.
What's wrong with you, Clio?
she says.
Stop crying right now. You're making a scene.

“Clio,” Henry says, snapping her back. “
Clio.
”

“I can't do this to you, Henry,” she says. “You deserve someone who doesn't fall apart like this. You deserve someone who can give you kids. You deserve better.”

“Clio,” he says, taking her face between his hands. “I want
you
.”

She pulls away, shakes him off her. “I just don't know if I can do this.”

“You are not your mother, Clio,” Henry says, his words loud now. People are watching. The baby stops crying. “How the hell do you
think I feel knowing my mother died of bloody cancer at sixty-one? That she was suffering for months on end and couldn't even eat and died in terrible, crippling pain? None of us is immune to suffering, Clio. You can't go through life putting up walls to protect yourself from pain or grief. I've been around long enough to tell you there's no use.”

She looks up at him. He's shaking now. His pale blue eyes are glossed with tears.

“I know,” Clio says.

He waits. He waits for her to say something more, but she can't. The words are stuck inside her.

“I need to make my train,” he says. “You know exactly where to find me.”

Clio nods. And she waits for him to say
I love you,
but he doesn't this time.

And like that, he's gone. She's alone again. Her heart thumps wildly in her chest and she stands there frozen, the world swirling around her, the muted sounds of people going places a grating static in her ears.

“You'll figure it out as you go.”

S
he drives and drives, her hands gripping the wheel, the world blurry through a curtain of fresh tears. More than an hour slips by as she makes her way through the streets of her hometown, her college town, her past.

When she pulls up back at the house, she thinks she sees something, a flutter of movement, a shadowy figure by the swing set, and her heart drops. She squints in the darkness, walks over. No one's there. Just the three swings, one for each of them. The center one is the one her mother chose. It's still broken, the rope cut and looped, dragging in the grass. Clio sits on the swing she always thought of as hers.

Eloise hanged herself here, inches from where Clio sits now, swinging like a child. Why couldn't
it have been pills like the first time? Why did she have to go and ruin this, this one happy object from growing up? This is the closest Clio's gotten to it since it happened. She takes the rope and holds it, runs her hands over it, memorizes its roughness.

She swings. She cries. Thinks about how her father has been too sad, too paralyzed probably, to tear the swing set down, how he must look at it every single day.

She sends Henry a text.

Clio: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you. I hope you know that.

He doesn't respond. She doesn't blame him.

She swings, her cold hand wrapped around the rope. Her father has always loved building things. This was his first of many swing sets. An accidental side business was born. He made swing sets for Yale professors and their families, and sometimes Clio would tag along as he went to install them, glimpsing big homes and charmed lives and kids with different childhoods. It was work that made her father happy; Clio could see this, and that it heartened him to bring in some extra cash for the family, which they sorely needed once her mother could no longer teach and started going on her spending sprees. In doing her research, Clio would learn that financial irresponsibility was a hallmark of the disease, a telltale symptom of mania. They'd inherited the house from her grandmother June, but it cost something to maintain and it was always a question whether they'd be able to hold on to it.

She looks up. In the darkness, she sees Jack approaching on the lawn. He appears beside her, clutching an extra coat and a steaming mug. He wraps the coat around her and hands her the mug. He lowers to sit on the other swing.

Clio takes a sip. It's hot chocolate. Her childhood favorite. Jack's mother used to make them hot chocolate every winter and they'd pass the plastic bag of mini-marshmallows back and forth between them, refilling and refilling, making themselves sick.

“Spiked,” he says. “I saw you out here and figured you could use it.”

“You figured right,” she says. “Kids asleep?”

“Yes,” he says. “For now. I hope you'll come by and see all of us tomorrow?”

“Absolutely,” she says, staring up at the sky. Stars twinkle. Beside her, he swings, pumping his legs, his feet skimming the grass.

“Where's Henry?”

“He had to get back to the hotel. You'll meet him next time.”

If there is a next time,
she thinks.

Jack nods. “You hanging in?”

Clio shoots him with a punitive look. “Not funny.” Jack and Jack alone is the only person who gets to make a suicide joke.

“Kind of funny?” he says. “Maybe we are allowed to be funny now?”

“How are the girls?” Clio says.

“They're good,” Jack says, looking toward his house. It amazes her that he has kids. “Maddy fought her nap for more than an hour and then passed out on the carpet, and Gabby is miserable cutting a tooth, but all's fair in love and war, eh? I'm fried.”

“But no regrets?”

His eyes brighten as he looks at her. “Are you kidding me? It's a wild ride, this parenthood thing. Hardest thing I've done in my life and by far the best.”

“What's it like?” Clio says, well aware that this is a ridiculous question.

“It's like yanking your own heart out of your chest and handing it over to these tiny humans. It's like falling in love again every day.”

“Wow,” Clio says, smiling at him. “What happened to my macho Jack?”

He grins. “Your macho Jack is a dad now. Total game changer.”

“He wants a family, Jack. Henry does.”

Jack doesn't seem surprised by this. “Do you? Is that what you want?”

“I don't know.”

Clio shoves her hands in her pockets and looks down at the grass. She imagines Henry sitting on the train, probably fiddling away on his phone, getting things done, always getting things done. She still can't believe he came, that he met her father, that everything was fine.

The wind picks up and makes a murmuring, whistling sound. Clio snaps back into the present, looks over at Jack, Jack who was there for everything, who held her as she cried her way through childhood. It was the portrait of innocence, of platonic affection, until that one night the summer before college when it tipped into more. There was beer and laughter, a tangle of young lust and limbs in her floral-sheeted twin bed. It was each of their first time, a simple, sweet foray until Eloise walked in on them. Clio remembers her mother's eyes in that cruel moment, how they glowed in the dark, the rage-filled words she sputtered as she flipped on the light, the keen panic she and Jack shared. He scrambled for his things and escaped.

In the weeks that followed, Clio wondered what might have been if Eloise hadn't ruined that night, whether she and Jack would have found a way to be together, but even back then, Clio knew that it would never work. She loved him and would always love him in an abiding, brotherly way, but he'd seen too much and he knew too much. In August, she went to Yale and he went off to Wake Forest. They promised they'd speak on the phone and they did. Almost every evening of freshman year, less so as time went on, particularly after he met Jessica, an English major, now his wife and the mother of his girls.

She looks over at him, Jack, a new iteration of the boy next door. His eyes are bleary, his forehead showing faint wrinkles. His hair is beginning to thin, but only slightly. She can see that he's happy, content. His contentment, though palpable, is not of the simple, saccharine variety. She can see this. It's a complex breed, edged in effort and exhaustion, an elegy of real life. It inspires her.

“What if it is, though?” Clio says. “What if this is something I want? What if I do want kids with him?”

“Then you'll do it,” Jack says, smiling. “You'll do it and you'll figure it out as you go. That's all any of us can do.”

Clio hears this and feels an odd surge of optimism.
You'll figure it out as you go.
This coming from the one guy who knows
everything
she's been through, who saw it all unfold harrowing scene by scene, who knew her then and knows her now, who knew her mother.
You'll figure it out as you go.

“He met Henry. And it was
fine,
Jack. They just sat there with their beers and talked construction. I don't know why I've been so afraid. I know it's not that easy, that it was just fifteen minutes, that it's bound to be more complicated, but I was kind of shocked. How do you think my dad seems anyway? Do you think he's handling this move okay?”

“Have you asked him?” Jack says. “Have you asked him how he's doing?”

Clio shoots him a punitive look. “You know how it is with us. The fine art of avoidance.”

“You need to talk to him, Clio.”

Clio nods, looks down at the grass. He's right.

“You going to miss this place?” he says.

“Yeah. More than I thought.”

“This better not mean I won't ever see you,” he says. He stands and walks over to her and reaches out his hand. Clio drags her feet in the grass to stop the swing. She lets Jack pull her to stand. He smiles down at her and throws both arms around her, pulls her into a hug. It's cold and she's shivering. He kisses her lips very lightly, but there's nothing to this kiss but simple affection, history. As if he's reading her mind, he says, “Not that my opinion matters anymore, but I think you would make a terrific mother. I always have. She's gone now, Clio. It's your time to live.”