Always Chloe and Other Stories

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Is Ethel getting really fat? Or is it my imagination?”

  “She looks fine to me,” I say.

  I wondered how long it would be before somebody got the coincidence. Me getting thinner and Ethel getting fatter.

  “Just a bite of pie,” he says. Turning all that damned attention back onto me again.

  “Okay. A bite.”

  I’m thinking a bite isn’t asking very much. Anything less than a bite would be rude. Even for me.

  I take a taste. It tastes too rich and too sweet, like my throat wants to seal closed around it. Which is weird, because Kevin is right. It’s my favorite. Just for a second, I wonder if they’re making it different somehow, but then I know better. The pie didn’t change. I’m the one who changed.

  “Thanks,” I say. Like if I say it just right, that can be the end of it.

  He frowns, but he doesn’t push at it. Just stands up, leaving the boxes next to me on the couch.

  “I’m going to go change into my jeans,” he says. “Where’s Jordan?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “He didn’t tell you where he was going?”

  “Maybe I forgot to listen. Could be the laundry. But I’m not sure.”

  He takes a couple of steps into the bedroom and lifts the lid off the wicker clothes hamper. We never used to have a wicker clothes hamper, until Kevin moved in. We used to use a cardboard box.

  He nods into the hamper.

  “Okay. Maybe I’ll go down there and help him. I’ll go change.”

  “Okay. Maybe I’ll eat some salmon while you’re gone.”

  I hope he doesn’t notice that Ethel is leaning in close to me, staring at the takeout cartons, wagging her tail too much and drooling.

  The minute he closes the door, I open the salmon carton and hold it out to Ethel. She wolfs it down in about four bites. Never even chews, so far as I can see.

  Kevin comes out in jeans and a hoodie, about ten seconds after she swallows the last bite.

  Ethel is still licking her lips.

  I’m thinking, Why didn’t I wait until he walked down to the laundromat? I guess I forgot how fast boys get dressed.

  I’m thinking, Maybe he’ll be really stupid and not put two and two together.

  But he looks incredibly sad. So I guess he’s not that stupid.

  As soon as he walks out the door, I give Ethel the rest of the pie.

  When Jordy gets home, he sits on the couch with me for a little while. Kevin goes right into the bedroom, by himself. Like they worked this all out ahead of time.

  There’s this amazing moon shining through our big weird windows. I think the moon is about one day before full. It’s the only light in the teeny living room, but it’s enough.

  I keep thinking how there’ll be a bunch more amazing moons, but without our big weird windows, it will never, ever be the same.

  He doesn’t say anything at first.

  I can see his face pretty well in the amazing moonlight. I can see the two scars, the one on his forehead and the one near his eye. And I can see the sadness. All the things I wish I couldn’t see.

  Too bad you can’t turn off the moon.

  Then after a while, he talks.

  He says, “I was thinking tonight about that time just as we went on our big trip. How thin you were. I remember when we stopped in Niagara Falls, and we met that nice couple, and you were playing with their dog—”

  “Ginger,” I say. I never forget a dog.

  “Wow. Good memory. How can you remember that?”

  “You didn’t remember that the dog’s name was Ginger?”

  “No. How could I? It was so long ago.”

  “I never forget a dog,” I say.

  A quiet minute, and then he says, “The woman said something about how thin you were. She asked me if you’d been sick. And then her husband kind of stepped in and said something like, ‘Honey, we don’t even know them.’ Like she wasn’t supposed to say it. And I looked at you through her eyes, and it was almost like I didn’t really see the whole thing until I saw it through her. It was like the depression was eating you alive. From the inside out. But nobody was supposed to say it out loud.”

  “Adele,” I say. “And Fred.”

  So I guess I never forget a person, either. Which is new to me. I didn’t know that about myself until just now.

  “Okay. Adele. Adele was the only one who was willing to say it out loud. It was right there for everybody to see. But somehow, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to talk about it.”

  He stops talking for a while. I have no idea what the point was of all that. But usually if Jordy has a point, he’ll get to it as soon as he can. So I wait.

  “I guess there was no purpose in telling you how thin you were. Or how the depression was killing you. You knew that as much as anybody. More. So I guess that’s why we didn’t talk about it. It still seems weird for something that huge to be happening in silence. But I guess that’s how a lot of people do things. Seems crazy, but that’s how people are, I guess.”

  Still no point. But I decide to give him more time.

  “Anyway, back then I had an idea, at least. I had the idea that if I took you out on the road and showed you the world, things might get better.”

  “They did,” I say. “They did get better.”

  “For a while.”

  “Anyway, Jordy, it was a really good idea.”

  “Yeah,” he says. And then more silence. A real long one. “I don’t have any good ideas this time.”

  I knew he’d get there sooner or later.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’d do better if I could.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I just wish you weren’t wasting away like this. It makes me so sad.”

  “I’m sorry I’m making you sad.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry.”

  “But I am.”

  “That makes me feel even worse, when you say you’re sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel worse, Jordy. I’m sorry.”

  You know that feeling, like when you see a dog chasing his own tail? Like he just keeps going around and ending up back in the same place? It feels like that’s what’s happening to this talk. And I think it’s making Jordy tired. I can see it in his face. Amazingly, there’s enough amazing moon that I can see it in his face.

  He stands up. Like it’s a hard thing to do.

  “Are you going to be okay out here tonight? Will you get any sleep?”

  Never. Not in a million, billion years.

  “Sure,” I say. “You go to bed with Kevin. I’ll be fine.”

  I don’t really think he believes me. But he doesn’t have a lot of good choices. So he goes.

  I have a dream. Maybe I even dream it with my eyes open. I don’t know.

  I dream that I’m sitting half propped up on the couch, like I really am, but I can hear Blue Boat bumping against the dock downstairs. Like a boat wake came by and made it rock back and forth against the dock. Bumping. But it keeps bumping much longer than it takes for a boat wake to go by. And I feel like I can see it, too. I feel like I can see how it’s all alone down there in the dark. Like it’s calling me.

  There’s something a little spooky about it, and also it feels very lonely.

  I open my eyes, or maybe they were open all along. I’m not sure how I would know a thing like that. I hold very still and listen, in case it wasn’t a dream. In case it was real. But I can’t hear any bumping.

  But I can still feel how Blue Boat is all alone down there. And I still get the feeling that it’s calling me.

  I think it might be a couple days later when somebody knocks on the door. While Jordy is at work. Ethel barks like crazy.

  I don’t think anybody ever knocked on our door before. So I’m not sure what all to do about that.

  “Who’s knocking?” I yell through the door. I mean, from the couch through the door. I mean, as much as you can yell when you’re depressed.

/>   “It’s just me. Mr. Magnusson.”

  “Who?”

  “You know. The owner. The guy you work for?”

  Oh. It’s The Humanist. Did I know his name was Mr. Magnusson? If I knew, I didn’t know I knew.

  “You can come in. The door isn’t locked.”

  He opens it, really carefully, because Ethel is still barking. She’s lunging in and out at the door while he opens it, and he holds it like a shield to stay safe from her. But then, as soon as she gets a sniff of him, she stops barking and starts wagging her tail like crazy. Her whole body, actually.

  Ethel likes The Humanist. A lot of times, I let her stay outside the kitchen while I work, and then every time somebody sends back a plate with leftover meat on it, he puts it out back for Ethel to eat. He always makes a face when he’s carrying a plate with meat on it.

  I don’t think he knows he does that. It’s kind of funny.

  He said Ethel is a carnivore by nature, so it’s not so bad when she does it. I have no idea what that means about Ethel, but The Humanist is a pretty nice guy, and I don’t think he’d insult her. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt about that.

  He comes in. Holds his hands out to Ethel, so she can see he didn’t bring her anything. She looks hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “But I really came here to see Chloe. Not so much you this time. Besides, you don’t look like you miss too many meals.”

  It’s a good thing Kevin’s been taking her for walks. Think how fat she would be if she just sat on the couch with me all day, in between eating all the food I’m wanting to get rid of.

  I’m figuring he came up here to say we can’t live here anymore. Because I’m not coming in to work. But since we can’t live here anymore anyway, I don’t figure I’m making things any worse by just sitting here.

  Sometimes things get so bad that you can pretty much do nothing at all and still not make them any worse. A tiny bit of comfort, I guess.

  He sits down next to me on the couch. Brushes hair out of my eyes.

  “Oh, Buttercup. You don’t look well at all. You look very tired and thin.”

  “Why do you call me Buttercup?”

  “Because of your lovely blonde hair.”

  “Oh. That’s what Jordy said. But I didn’t believe him. I figured there must be a better reason than that.”

  Then I wonder if that sounded rude. I didn’t mean it to.

  Ethel is standing on her hind legs, sniffing him all over.

  “If you don’t want me to call you that, I’ll just call you Chloe.”

  “No. Don’t do that. Everybody calls me Chloe. You’re the only one who’s different. I sort of like it, even though it doesn’t really make sense. I mean, to me. But then, lots of things probably make sense to other people but not to me. So don’t worry about that. That’s really not your fault at all.”

  Then it’s quiet, and I don’t know anything to say, and I don’t think he does, either. It feels weird.

  Finally, he says, “We miss you a lot down at work.”

  “I guess the health department doesn’t love you now, huh?”

  “No, I don’t mean we miss your cleaning. Well, we do. We miss that, too. But I meant, we miss you. We want you to feel better.”

  Too bad, because I know I never will. But I don’t tell him that.

  It would be mean.

  “Well. I won’t bother you anymore. I just wanted to see that you’re okay.”

  I almost say, “But I’m not. I’m not okay.” I come pretty close to saying that. But I don’t. But it feels like we’re both hearing it anyway.

  “You take care of yourself. Get a lot of rest.”

  He slips out the door, walking backwards the whole way.

  After he closes the door, it hits me. He didn’t exactly try to talk me out of it. And it’s too late to thank him now.

  Some more days go by, but I don’t know how many. I don’t even try to count.

  The less I know about days, the better.

  It’s afternoon, right around the time Jordy comes home from work.

  Kevin is in the bedroom, lying on the bed and reading.

  I asked him once what he was reading, but the answer was very long and complicated, and I didn’t understand more than two or three words of it, so now I don’t ask.

  I can see him through the open bedroom door.

  I say, “Remember when you had to go home to Connecticut so you could talk to Mark?”

  He puts the book down. Just closes it up and lays it on the bed without even marking the place where he was reading. Like all of a sudden it gives him indigestion or something.

  He says, “It’s not the kind of thing I’m likely to ever forget.”

  “So it was hard?”

  “Oh, yeah. Very hard.”

  “What was hard about it?”

  “Everything.”

  “Name one thing.”

  “He cried.”

  “Oh. Ow. Yeah, that would be hard.”

  I hate to make people cry just about more than anything else in the world. I made my mother cry once when I was four, and I still haven’t gotten over it. But I don’t say that to Kevin, because it’s personal.

  “Why did you ask me about that?” Kevin says.

  “I don’t know. I’m just always interested in things that were hard.”

  “You like hard?”

  “No. I don’t like it. I’m just interested in hearing about it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I used to think all the stories about things that were hard were my stories. But now I’m sort of getting it that other people have hard stories, too. It’s not that I want you to have a hard time. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just interesting to hear about it.”

  He picks up his book but doesn’t open it again. I think he doesn’t even know yet that he lost his place.

  He says, “Jordan has been through a lot. You knew that, right?”

  I’m thinking, Yes and no. Like I knew he had a big split on his head when I met him, but not that it was from his very own father.

  But I don’t get to answer.

  Because the door opens, and Jordy is standing in the doorway. Letting in a blast of air that feels too cold for an afternoon in the spring. It’s windy.

  He says, “A friend of yours is here to see you. Actually, two friends.”

  I do a quick count in my head. Jordy and Kevin and Ethel are already here. The Humanist came to see me already. What other two friends do I have?

  He moves out of the way, and then I see Old Ben standing in the doorway. He’s holding a fishbowl in his hands. In the fishbowl is Arnold the Crab. Not that I’ve ever met Arnold the Crab before, or know what he looks like. Except that I always pretty much figured he would look like a crab. And Ben said he had one pet, and it was a crab named Arnold. So what other crab can this be?

  Jordy goes and sits in the bedroom with Kevin to stay out of our way. Only, in this little place, it really only puts them about ten feet out of our way.

  Old Ben sits on the couch near my feet, the fishbowl in his lap.

  Ethel tries to stick her nose in to sniff Arnold the Crab, but Ben puts his hand on her chest and pushes her back a split second before she gets her nose squeezed into a crab claw.

  “Better hold onto Ethel,” he says. “You have no idea how strong those pincers are.”

  “Does he live in this little bowl his whole life?”

  That would seem sad.

  “No, he lives in a great big aquarium. But there was no way I could carry it all the way up here to see you. I went on a B.L.T. run today, because I hadn’t seen you paddle by for weeks. You weren’t there, but I met your friend Jordy. And he said I could come up and visit.”

  “You can’t talk me out of being depressed,” I say.

  That keeps things quiet for a minute.

  Then Kevin and Jordy come through the living room and say they’re going out for a walk. And then they’re gone, and it’s just th
e four of us. Me, Old Ben, Ethel, and Arnold. I guess the apartment got too small for six.

  Ben watches the door a minute after they go. Like he expects it to say something.

  Then he looks back at me.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t try,” he says. “Arnold might, though. Arnold goes out of his way to cheer up pretty young ladies. I guess it’s harder to stay depressed around a nice crab. Some would say that’s a contradiction in terms. A nice crab. But Arnold is the exception to almost every rule.”

  Silence.

  Then I say, “You know, Ben. I really like you a lot. But I don’t understand hardly anything you say.”

  I think I’m feeling unusually honest today.

  “Sorry. What I meant was, crabs are usually crabby. But Arnold is generally civil.”

  “Civil?”

  “Nice.”

  “Oh. Okay. That makes sense, I guess.”

  Then we sit for a while and don’t say anything at all. Ethel is twitching. Really wanting to take her chances with those crab claws. I’m trying to get a sense of whether Arnold really can make me feel better.

  After all, I never had a visit from a crab before. And I think it’s important to be open to new things.

  But then after a while, we’re all just still sitting there. And nothing seems very different.

  Ben says, “You want to tell somebody what’s wrong?”

  I say, “You mean somebody like you?”

  “Or Arnold.”

  “No,” I say. “I know you better than I know Arnold. I think I’d rather tell you.”

  Then nobody says anything, and I’m thinking, What did I just do? Why did I say that? I mean, it’s one thing to choose Ben over Arnold. Arnold being a crab and everything. But I could have said I don’t want to talk about it at all, period, to anybody. And now I’m wondering why I didn’t.

  “Jordy and Kevin are getting married,” I say.

  “Oh. Well, that sounds like a happy turn of events.”

  “It’s supposed to be. This is supposed to be the happiest time in Jordy’s whole life. But it isn’t. And do you know why it isn’t?”

  “No. I don’t know. How about if you tell me why it isn’t?”

  “Me. That’s why it isn’t. Because of me. I’m what keeps getting in the way. I keep getting between Jordy and happy.”