The Ramblers

by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

  “Around one. I’m going to take him around campus and then we’ll head back to the house. When will you get off work?”

  “Six,” he says.

  Her father nods and drives, winding them through familiar streets toward their home. “I wish you would have given me some warning, Clio,” he says huffily.

  “I just found out myself, Dad. He didn’t think he could get away from the hotel in its first week, but he’s coming. He can’t stay long, but even if you just get to say hello, I figure that’s better than not meeting him, right?”

  “I guess.”

  Her dad has never been a fan of surprises. This makes sense. All those years with Eloise, all that ferocious unpredictability. She flips on the radio. They listen to a weather report, learn that Thanksgiving travelers are scrambling to book earlier flights to avoid the big storm bearing down on the East Coast. A messy mix of snow, rain and wind threatens to complicate the busy travel day and ground the giant balloons at the Macy’s parade. Forecasts call for sustained winds of twenty miles per hour and gusts of thirty-six miles per hour.

  When the small house comes into view, Clio feels a shiver travel through her body from her ears to her toes. She tastes vomit in her mouth. Her hands tremble and her palms grow slick. After this weekend, she’s concerned that she might be at the edge of another panic attack. She must eat something. She forgot to eat earlier. She looks over at Jack’s house next door. A small pink bike sits outside it. He has daughters now. A three-year-old named Maddy and an eighteen-month-old named Gabby. They live in Chicago but are back here visiting his parents for Thanksgiving, just as they were last year.

  Her father stops the car. The drum of the engine fades into an evocative silence. Sunshine blasts in on them.

  “Clio,” her father says, grabbing her hand, then taking her chin to turn her face toward him. “You were busy moving on. You’re here now. I’m happy you’re here.”

  Clio nods. Tears come, but she won’t let them fall. It’s a familiar feeling, this welling up. All of those years of stuffing it down, of wanting to let go or lash out, but resisting because she knew her role: to be a buffer, to support them with her meekness and invisibility, to quietly navigate the turbulence. There was enough drama. She couldn’t add to it.

  She looks over at her father and feels an intense mixture of empathy and anger. He’s been through hell, a hell only she knows, but he never once put Clio first. He never pulled her aside and asked her how she was doing. It was always about Eloise, her cycles, her depressions and episodes. It was a given that Clio would hold it together and she did, but the resentment built.

  And the house. There it is. The small home that could have been charming had it been cared for, but it wasn’t cared for and so it wasn’t charming. The exterior paint is rudely chipped, the roof a constellation of angry leaks, and the walls inside are zebra striped with brown water stains. Every now and then, Eloise would energetically scamper about, proclaiming a desire to “fix it up,” to beautify. She’d do her little dance, collecting carpet and paint samples, but these little squares would meet their predictable fate on the tiny kitchen table Clio’s father built in their backyard, gathering dust. They’d sit there next to the unopened bills and her father’s crushed cigarette packs.

  She follows her father inside.

  Everything is the same. Everything is different.

  The same flickering lights. The same damp, musty smell. The same old fridge that makes the angry humming sound. The same stained linoleum floors. The same water-damaged walls. But all else is gone, all the colorful clutter and knickknacks of their onetime life. Big boxes sit in the center of each room, boxes labeled in her father’s clumsy scrawl, the antithesis of her mother’s meticulous handwriting. She remembers them well, those minuscule, precise cursive letters that filled the margins of her books, the pages of her journals.

  After it happened, Clio stayed at home for a week. She and her father went to church on Christmas Eve as the three of them had always done. Over the years, her mother had grown deeply religious, more and more inclined to speak of Jesus and the devil and whether the three of them would be saved, all of this starkly inconsistent with her longtime devotion to Darwin and his theory of evolution. Clio sat in a pew at the back of the church last year and thought of her mother and wondered where she’d gone. They had heeded her wishes and buried her body at the Grove Street Cemetery near campus.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” her father says now. “I’ll leave you the car. The site’s not too far; I could use the walk.”

  “Thanks,” Clio says, and nods. Her father still works as a supervisor for a construction company. When her mother was alive, he often worked several jobs at once just to make up for her mother’s destructive spending. There were weeks when he would barely sleep, juggling construction shifts and stints at Yale–New Haven Hospital disposing of medical waste.

  Clio watches him go, wishes he wouldn’t leave, though; it’s unsettling to be here alone. She walks through the house, empty room by empty room. Memories flicker like fireflies. In the living room, she recalls that afternoon sitting with her mother on the beige couch as Eloise lectured her on the principles of natural selection. She was only six or seven and found it pretty boring, but she knew her mother would quiz her, so she paid close attention.

  In the kitchen, she recalls so many silent and strained meals, the three of them sitting around, the air dense with things they couldn’t say.

  Her parents’ bedroom. The bed in which Eloise spent the bulk of Clio’s childhood. The bed Clio would climb into when she was feeling lost and brave. The bed where her mother had loud sex with her father. And with other men, too. Promiscuity, Clio would learn when conducting her obsessive research, is a hallmark of the disease. She opens the closet door and there they are, all the beautiful dresses her mother wore when she was feeling well enough. Clio would walk through the door after school each day and brace herself. Would Eloise be in a bathrobe or one of these ethereal frocks? She reaches out and touches them, one by one. Silks and laces and wool. She holds the rust-colored gown up to her nose, inhales. She can almost smell the cinnamon from her mother’s Christmas apple pie. She steps back, closes the closet door.

  Clio’s bedroom is just as she left it. Books spill from the shelves. The birds she carved out of wood with her father rest on the windowsill. Stuff everywhere, cluttered and dusty, and she doesn’t know where to begin.

  She calls Smith.

  “Hi. I’m walking through the house and I don’t know what to do. Talk me through this. Please.”

  “Okay. First, breathe. Remember: they are just things. It is up to you what you keep and what you toss. You’re going keep things that are associated with memories you want to have. If something makes you feel negative, leave it behind and don’t feel guilty about it. Keep books you read and loved, but you don’t need to keep everything. It’s not a betrayal to throw things out. Grab a garbage bag and a box. The bag gets the junk. The box gets the treasures. I wish I could be there to help. If not for this Thanksgiving/wedding double punch . . .”

  “Me too,” Clio says. “I’m scared, Smith. Henry’s coming. He’ll be here soon. He’s going to see this place. I’m going to tell him.”

  “Clio, he wouldn’t be coming there if he didn’t care about you already. It will be fine and I’m proud of you for opening up to him, for showing him your past. It’s a giant step.”

  It is a giant step. Clio remembers how nervous she was to bring Smith here for the first time. Smith is the only one other than Jack who’s been in this home, and it took Clio a long time to muster the courage to invite her. What would this shiny girl with her fancy designer dorm-room sheets and silver-framed photographs think of her depressing and decrepit childhood home? It turned out that she was silly to be worried; Eloise was on her best behavior that day and Smith came and marveled at the trinkets from Clio’s childhood.

  When she hangs up with Smith, everything feels slightly less sinister. Smi
th’s words ring in her ears. They are just things. It is up to you what you keep and what you toss. Nothing revolutionary, but hearing her voice helped. It always does. She pulls open a drawer. It’s filled with pencils that smell like fruit, sketches of birds, loose-leaf papers with bubble-letter doodles of her name.

  She grabs the big black garbage bag and dumps the contents of the whole drawer in. Only dust remains. She runs her fingers along its surface, feels a sense of satisfaction. She begins to attack the rest of the room. She finds all of her old chapter books—paperbacks of The Baby-Sitters Club and Nancy Drew—and decides she will give them to Jack’s girls.

  There are some books she will take with her. Books she read with her mother and alone, almost all of them about birds. She places them gingerly in the box. Scribbles her name on the outside.

  Her phone rings again. That number. She picks up and hears a man’s voice.

  “Is this Clio?”

  “Yes,” she says, but then she loses the call.

  She texts Jack.

  Clio: Did u just call from a blocked number?

  Jack: No. Why? When do I get to see you?

  Clio: Getting strange calls. Tonight?

  Jack: Looking forward! The girls can’t wait to see Auntie C.

  Hours pass. She loses track of time and realizes with a start that she must get Henry from the train.

  1:02PM

  “We never do know about anything, do we?”

  At the New Haven station again, people wait and mill about, most of them lost in their smartphones. It’s hard to remember life before these things. Clio keeps an eye on the time, waits at the top of the stairs just as her father did this morning. Her pulse quickens and a fluttering fills her. She spoke to Henry just this morning and felt pretty good about things, remarkably calm about his impending visit, but now she’s a tangle of nerves. When her breath grows shallow and her chin starts its tingling, she fishes in her pocket for the Xanax. She swallows it without water, the powdery residue leaving an awful taste in her mouth. She hates to take these pills—they remind her grimly of Eloise—but this afternoon is too important to have it derailed by another panic attack.

  Soon it’s clear a train has arrived from the sudden throng of people riding up the escalator, hefting bags up the stairs. She doesn’t see him. A wave of panic pummels her, but then there he is at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her. He wears his favorite sweater again, and jeans, and his hat. He looks young.

  “I’m here,” he says when he reaches her, and wraps her in a hug. “On your turf.”

  “My turf,” she says, the two words strange, stiff on her lips. She walks him to her dad’s Ford, and as they approach it, the dusty rust-colored car her parents have had forever, she feels ashamed of it. It’s not just a car. It’s more. As if he can tell where her mind is going, he says something.

  “Look at this charming relic,” he says.

  “I learned to drive in this car, you know.”

  They get in. Clio sits in the driver’s seat and looks at him. Her throat tightens and she’s aware of the thinning of her breath. She can’t do it yet. She needs more time. “Have you eaten? Why don’t we grab a bite? And then we can walk around campus and head back to the house. My dad doesn’t get off work until six, but he will race back to say hello before I take you back to the station.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Henry says, shooting her a quizzical glance and then casting his gaze out the window. “What a lovely ride that was. I haven’t been on a train in an eternity. Something wonderfully soothing about traveling that way.”

  Clio drives, that word he always uses on a loop in her head—lovely, lovely, lovely—and he puts his hand on her knee and squeezes. In her mind, she goes over her plan. They will eat. She will tell him everything. She will not get overly emotional. She will be matter-of-fact and cool in her delivery. It will be fine. They will share dessert, something chocolate and rich, and then go for a walk around campus.

  At Union League Café, a brasserie on Chapel Street, the maître d’ shows them to a sun-blanched table by the window. They sit.

  “I haven’t been here since graduation,” Clio says, draping her napkin on her lap, looking around. “I came here with my parents and Smith’s family. I think we drank four bottles of champagne between us.”

  She remembers how painful that night was, how awkward. Smith’s perfectly polished parents presented their daughter with a glossy brochure for the pristine San Remo apartment, her graduation gift. Clio’s parents just sat there, nervous, quiet and stunned. She felt it too, out of her league, in the fine restaurant with its glorious beaux arts atmosphere and endless wine list. These kinds of places don’t intimidate her as much now; she’s had plenty of time to grow accustomed to them, particularly since Henry.

  Today it’s not the restaurant that makes her anxious but what she has brought him here to say. She sips her water, spills some of it down the front of her shirt. He blots it with his napkin.

  “Are you okay, Clio?” he says, genuine concern plain in his eyes. “Deep breaths, darling.”

  The waiter comes. Hands them menus. The words are blurry on the page. Confit de Canard. Homard Roti. Bouillabaisse. Her head feels light. Her chin tingles. Her tongue feels leaden in her mouth. She wills the Xanax to kick in.

  “Are you okay?” Henry says again.

  She nods, squints at the menu. He takes her hand, lifts her chin to look at him.

  “I’m going to ask you once more. Are you okay?”

  Met with his unyielding gaze, she answers. “I don’t know, Henry. That’s the thing. That’s what I haven’t been able to tell you. I don’t know if I’m okay. That’s what I’ve been worried about all these years, whether I’m okay, whether I’m sick like she was, what’s going to happen.”

  Words are just spilling from her and it’s clear that he’s confused.

  “Okay, slow down. Why are we at this restaurant?” he whispers, then stands. “I don’t need an elaborate meal. I’m here to see you.”

  Henry takes charge, talks with the waiter, puts a protective arm around Clio and guides her out of the restaurant and back out to the street.

  “Take your time,” he says. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She looks at him and suddenly she knows she must tell him everything. She wants to tell him everything. It’s time.

  “Do you mind if we walk?” she says. “I want you to take you somewhere.”

  He takes her hand and they walk. She just starts talking, the floodgates opening. She tells him everything.

  That she was thirteen when she found out her mother was sick. That Eloise fell into a depression soon after Clio was born and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. That her parents hid the diagnosis from her, or tried to. Clio always knew something was wrong. She told herself that her mother was just moody, but she was a smart kid and she knew it was more. But then Eloise disappeared one day. She was gone for days and she finally turned up in a hospital in England. They got her home and she was in the hospital for weeks while they figured out her meds and gave her electroshock therapy. Eloise didn’t believe anything was wrong with her. No, it was all a conspiracy hatched by the big bad pharmaceutical companies and her depressions were the work of the devil. Clio’s father told her about Eloise’s illness and Clio spent those weeks researching this disease she’d never heard of. She learned everything she could. Including that she could be sick one day too. That her chances were pretty high. Are pretty high.

  Jack was the only person she told. She told him the very day she found out, racing over to his house, letting herself in through the kitchen door, settling down next to him on the couch. He looked up from his comic books and listened as she talked and then as she cried, and he told her that she would be okay. Their talks became ritual, true medicine; this is where Clio went when she couldn’t be at home, which was often. Clio also confided in Jack’s mom, Katherine, who worked at the Planned Parenthood in town not far from them and had some fluency in medical
speak.

  Henry squeezes her hand. “But you’re fine, right?” he says, smiling. A question. “Look at you. You’re fine.” Now a statement.

  She hears his words, but they don’t sink in. They are wispy, almost imaginary. Is he minimizing what she’s been through? Doesn’t he understand the gravity of what she’s saying? Her mother was very sick and she might be too. This is no small thing, but she can’t expect him to understand. Just because she looks fine doesn’t mean she is. To the outside world, Eloise managed to hide her illness pretty well; everyone was always remarking on how beautiful and intelligent she was. You couldn’t always know from looking at her that there was so much turmoil under the surface.

  “It was pretty awful. She was either in bed for long stretches or flying around our house in a rage, completely manic. I learned how to navigate, when to hide, but it wasn’t easy. The summer before I went to college, she tried to kill herself. It didn’t work that time.”

  “That time?” Henry says, and she watches the shock register in his face.

  Clio doesn’t answer. She gets an idea. She will take him.

  Her body begins to tremble as she walks him down Chapel Street. They turn right at High Street. She leads him past Elm and Wall until they hit Grove and the entrance to the cemetery. She looks over at Henry and his face remains calm. He looks down at her and smiles.

  “The Grove Street Cemetery,” she says, her head light, leading him in. “My mother used to bring me here as a girl and I thought nothing of it. She often talked about death but didn’t make it scary. She was always pointing out dead beetles and spiders and she brought me here and we’d just walk around and she’d give me little history lessons on all of the famous people who’ve been buried here. All these famous Yale and New Haven folks. Eli Whitney and Samuel Johnson and Timothy Dwight. She had an odd fascination with this place. She left instructions to call the superintendent here and we learned that she’d purchased a plot. She had even picked out a quote for her headstone.”