The History of Us

by Leah Stewart

  Praise for The History of Us

  “Stewart is a wonderful observer of family relationships, and she adroitly weaves the stories of Eloise and the children she’s raised—their work, their loves, their disappointments and dreams—while focusing on what ties families together, and what ultimately keeps those ties from breaking.”

  — BookPage

  “A poignant exploration of the meaning of family.”

  — Booklist

  “Leah Stewart plunges deep into questions of home and heart. The History of Us is a lovely novel. Just lovely.”

  — Ann Hood, author of The Red Thread and The Knitting Circle

  “Domestic fiction fans favoring strong, intelligent characters will be intrigued by Stewart’s introspective examination of a family.”

  — Library Journal

  “Stewart’s novel is an intimate exploration of a family in crisis and the different ways in which people cope with grief.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “A genuine and heartwarming story about the complicated thing we call family, and what it means to be home. I laughed. I cried. And I was very sorry to turn the last page.”

  — Meg Waite Clayton, author of The Wednesday Sisters

  “The History of Us stays the course and shows how a family negotiates through a particular crisis. Leah Stewart seems to love her characters even when they are not especially lovable, and gives them space and time enough to grow and change.”

  — BookReporter.com

  Praise for Leah Stewart

  “Leah Stewart’s brilliantly written novel Husband and Wife is a deeply human book: funny, tender, smart, self-aware. When you read it you will laugh, you will cry, you will recognize others, you will recognize yourself.”

  — Elin Hilderbrand, author of Summerland

  “Stewart in her guileless, plainspoken style, makes her protagonist neither an avenging woman scorned nor a blameless angel. Sarah’s pain . . . never for a moment feels untrue.”

  — Entertainment Weekly

  “This narrative voice is so alive and specific that it moves past the idea of ‘narrative voice’ to become a human woman speaking to you. Sarah Price tells the story of how her life cracks open one day and of how she has to consider each piece of it in order to know which parts of herself she wants to keep, which parts she wants to reclaim, and what to do next. I cherish this wry, funny, aching, intelligent character and this book!”

  — Marisa de los Santos, author of Falling Together

  “Stewart’s book does what real life doesn’t always allow: It gives the woman a voice.”

  — Raleigh News & Observer

  “Stewart creates a crisis of faith where adult reality collides with youthful dreams. The writing is tactile, elemental, even comical, providing readers with a situation that could so easily be their own.”

  — Library Journal (starred review)

  “An unflinching look at what happens when one’s identity is shattered, and ‘what-ifs’ and past choices come back to haunt the present. . . . Stewart’s graceful prose and easy storytelling pull the reader into caring about what happens to the struggling heroine while exploring the many gray areas of life and marriage.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “Hilarious, heartbreaking, and wise, Husband and Wife is a novel to savor. Stewart’s bright heroine is faced with an impossible choice—and I couldn’t put the book down until I’d followed her story to the end.”

  — Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Close Your Eyes

  “Heartbreaking and darkly humorous . . . [Stewart] is an acute social observer.”

  — BookPage

  “The Myth of You and Me deftly exposes the passionate and particular bonds of female friendship, from adolescence to adulthood. Poignant, fierce, and compelling, this is a story all women will recognize, and one all too rarely told.”

  — Claire Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children

  “A smart, exceedingly well-written story about the mysteries at the heart of even the most intimate friendships between women. You’ll be reading into the wee hours.”

  — People

  “Leah Stewart captures, as few other writers do, the passions and pains and pleasures of friendship. Anyone who has ever lost or found a friend will respond to this beautifully written and suspenseful novel.”

  — Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

  “The Myth of You and Me is an intricately constructed, heartfelt story about the death of an intense friendship.”

  — The Boston Globe

  “Stewart uses an honest and effective narrative style. . . . The Myth of You and Me is a bold and compassionate novel. Her utterly believable portrayal of friendship unflinchingly illustrates the harsh ugliness of betrayal and love’s power to transform and define us.”

  —The Journal-Standard

  “Full of genuine feeling—and gripping, too—this book about friendship between two women announces that Leah Stewart is a marvelous writer.”

  — Ann Packer, author of Songs Without Words

  “Stewart’s writing is sharp and observant, making this tale of the complexities of friendship affecting and genuine.”

  — Booklist (starred review)

  “Stewart’s spare, elegant prose . . . [captures] the bittersweet complexity of their mutual platonic devotion. . . . Stewart beautifully delineates this complex relationship.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Thank you for purchasing this Touchstone eBook.

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  Contents

  Epigraph

  Map

  Then & There

  Part One: Here & Now

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Two: Elsewhere

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About Leah Stewart

  For Eliza and Simon

  The City is, indeed, justly styled the fair Queen of the West: distinguished for order, enterprise, public spirit, and liberality, she stands the wonder of an admiring world.

  —B. Cooke, in the Inquisitor and Cincinnati Advertiser, May 4, 1819

  “Why has he not done more?” said Dorothea, interested now in all who had slipped below their own intention.

  —George Eliot, Middlemarch

  Then & There

  1993

  Eloise Hempel was running late. She was forever running late, addicted to the last-minute arrival, the under-the-wire delivery, the thrill of urgency. That morning, unable to find a parking spot less than half a mile away, she’d jogged most of the way to campus in her painful high heels, slowing as her building came into sight in hopes that her breathing would normalize, the sweat at her hairline somehow recede, before she took her place at the front of the classroom. She was the professor. For two months now, she’d been the professor, and still she found it hard to believe that anybody believed that. Couldn’t they see, these shiny
young people who filled her classroom, how nervous she was? Couldn’t they hear her heart’s demented flutter? Hadn’t they noticed the time she misspelled hegemony on the board? Didn’t they think twenty-eight was ridiculously young to be teaching them anything?

  No, because she was the professor, the one imbued with the mysterious authority of knowledge, the power to humiliate the students whispering in the back row. As she climbed the stairs inside her building students broke around her like water around a rock. Or maybe they were fish, spawning fish in casual but expensive clothes, and she was . . . what? She was the one trying to look older in a black blazer and a bun. Saying the word professor to herself made her smile in a way that people noticed, made them ask, “What are you thinking about?” and when that happened she had to concoct something amusing, something profound, because “I’m a professor at Harvard” would sound either arrogant or childish, depending on her audience.

  She was hustling past the History Department office, her classroom visible, when she heard someone calling her name. She took a step back to stick her head inside the office door. Redhaired Kelly at the front desk was holding the phone, her hand over the mouthpiece. “This is actually for you,” she said. “I was just about to transfer the call when I saw you go by.”

  Eloise hesitated, glancing at the clock on the wall behind Kelly’s head. Only two minutes left before class.

  “I think it’s family-related,” Kelly said, and Eloise sighed and approached with her hand out, prepared to tell her mother that not only could she not talk now but she had to stop calling her at school, for God’s sake. Eloise lived nearly nine hundred miles away and couldn’t help her mother with her grandchildren, who were staying with her while their parents were on an anniversary trip to Hawaii. It was no surprise that her mother, who was best suited to life in a sensory deprivation chamber, couldn’t handle the three kids, even for a few days. But what did she expect Eloise to do about it?

  She took the phone and flashed a pained smile at Kelly, who lifted the phone cord over her computer, adding length to Eloise’s leash. “Mom,” Eloise said, skipping hello, “I’ve got two minutes.” She rolled her eyes at Kelly. For some reason Kelly shook her head.

  “Hi, Aunt Eloise,” a child’s voice said.

  Surprised, and embarrassed by her mistake, Eloise raised her eyebrows at Kelly, who shrugged and then made a point of looking at her computer screen. “Theo?” Eloise asked. Theo—Theodora—was her sister Rachel’s oldest child.

  “It’s me,” the girl said. “Francine asked me to call you.” Her voice was oddly flat.

  Eloise frowned. It still irritated her that her mother had her grandchildren address her by her first name. Of course she didn’t want to be a grandmother; she’d barely wanted to be a mother. She was a woman for whom the word overwhelmed was equivalent to abracadabra. She said it, then she disappeared. “Why’d she have you call?” Eloise asked. “Not that I’m not happy to talk to you.” Theo was a remarkably adult eleven-year-old, but still it was a bit much to delegate the responsibility of complaining about the children to the children. Come on, Mom, Eloise thought. Keep it together for once in your life.

  “My parents,” Theo said.

  Eloise turned away from Kelly, hunching into the phone. Something in the child’s voice made her feel a need for privacy. “Your parents?”

  “My parents,” Theo said again.

  Eloise heard her swallow. “Theo?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Theo said. “I’m trying not to cry.”

  “Why?”

  “Francine’s in bed. Somebody has to look after Josh and Claire.”

  “Theo, please,” Eloise said. “Tell me what’s happened.” Or don’t, she thought. Please don’t. The whole world had gone quiet. Her students were in her classroom. They waited in neat rows for her to arrive.

  “My . . . ” Theo abandoned the phrase. She tried again. “They were in a crash. They were in a helicopter. It was a helicopter tour, and it crashed. It crashed into a cliff.”

  In Eloise’s mind, a helicopter bounced off a cliff and kept on whirring. “Are they all right?”

  “Aunt Eloise!” Theo’s voice was full of pained impatience. “They crashed into a cliff!”

  The girl was trying not to say they were dead, that her parents were dead. Eloise understood that. But the fact that they were dead, that her sister, her sister—oh, Rachel! That she couldn’t understand. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Theo took a breath. “Francine wants you to come home,” she said.

  Her sister was dead. No, no, no. Eloise couldn’t think about that. She would think about that later. Here was the thing to think about now: her mother, her selfish, helpless mother, and the burden she’d placed on this child. “How could she, Theo?” Eloise asked. “How could she make you be the one to call?”

  Theo didn’t seem to understand the question. “Somebody had to,” she said.

  Eloise closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She gripped the phone hard. “All right, Theo,” she said. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll be home as soon as I can get there.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Eloise,” Theo said. Her voice shook just a little as she said goodbye.

  Eloise hung up the phone. She tried to smile in the face of Kelly’s curiosity like nothing was wrong. “Family stuff,” she said. Then she went to class. Her feet just took her there. She walked in and said, “Sorry I’m late,” as usual, and she arranged her books on the desk at the front of the room and her notes on the podium, and then she smiled at them, her students, and said, “So.” They waited for her to begin. What was she supposed to talk about? Their faces were blinding. She dropped her gaze to the podium and noticed with detachment the way her hands gripped it, as if the room was shaking. How odd—her hands were beginning to recede. Were her arms getting longer?

  “Professor Hempel?” someone said, and she looked up, startled to be called by that name.

  Rachel had always been good in a crisis. Rachel had always taken care of her. Rachel would not have let her go to class. Rachel would not have chosen an eleven-year-old child to break the news, forcing Eloise to behave in this calm and unnatural way. Rachel would have let her go to pieces. Rachel would have expected her to. Instead Eloise taught her class, if not particularly well, and then when she got home she called the airline and booked a ticket for the last flight out that day, and then she packed. How long to pack for? She had no idea, so she took her biggest suitcase and stuffed it full. Then she made more calls—explaining, canceling classes. She used the phrase family emergency. All the while she watched herself with a bewildered combination of admiration and fear. She’d been possessed. Some other self controlled the movements of her body, the words that came out of her mouth, while her actual self trembled in a small and darkened corner of her mind. “You need to call a cab,” she said out loud to herself, and then she went to the phone and dialed.

  Cincinnati sprang itself on you all at once. Eloise forgot that, in between trips home. As you headed up the interstate from the airport in Kentucky, the view was nothing but hills, and then you came around a bend and—ta da! There it was, place of your birth, past-its-prime Rust Belt queen of the Lower Midwest, with a skyline and everything, just like an actual city. And then the house—for a while it had looked smaller than she remembered, but now, coming straight from her tiny Cambridge apartment, she saw it as huge. Gargantuan. Obscene. She stood on the sidewalk with her bag for a few minutes after the cab pulled away, staring at the house, her house, feeling an old, familiar urge to flee. Her father was dead. Her mother was self-involved, self-justifying, selfish, any variation you could imagine of self, self, self. Her sister was the one she came home for. Her sister who’d married young, had children, bought her own house in her hometown. Her sister’s firm embrace, that shared look of amused recognition when their mother announced, after half an hour with the children, that she needed a drink. Her sister’s calm and soothing voice, her sister’s understanding
and reassurance, her sister’s love of exotic skin products, her one real indulgence, the jars and bottles arrayed in her bathroom, the way she’d smooth cool, thick, sweetly scented cream over the circles under Eloise’s eyes. There. That will fix everything.

  Eloise still had a key. Her rolling suitcase rattled over the front walk. She yanked it up the steps, bump, bump, bump, as reluctant as she was. The front door was ornate and beautiful and totally useless for keeping out the cold. Her mother talked every winter about having something done and then forgot her plans as soon as it was warm. Inside it was so quiet, Eloise closed the door as gently as she could, trying not to disturb. All the lights were off, all the blinds down. She started to call out, then thought better of it. She stood for what felt like a long time in the entryway, gazing up the grand staircase into the dimness of the second floor.

  Even after all these years living elsewhere she knew where to step so the stairs wouldn’t creak. Her mother’s door was closed. Eloise knocked, heard a rustling from inside, and opened the door. Her mother lay on the bed, on her back, an arm thrown over her eyes though the room was dark. “Mom?” Eloise said from the doorway.

  The arm came slowly away. Her mother blinked at her. “Eloise?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Oh, thank God,” her mother said. She didn’t sit up. “Thank God.” She pressed both her hands to her face. “The children need you.”

  “They need you, too,” Eloise said, but her mother didn’t respond. Eloise could sense, trembling just on the edge of the moment, how good a tearful rage would feel. But none of this was her mother’s fault, was it? For once her mother had good cause to come undone. “Where are they?” Eloise asked.

  “They’re upstairs. I don’t know what they’re doing. They pretty much stay up there all the time.”

  “Even Claire?”

  “She should be sleeping,” Francine said. “Theo said she’d put her down.”

  Eloise said nothing.

  “What?” her mother said. “She knows the routine. I don’t. I don’t know the routine.”