The History of Us

by Leah Stewart

  She had no idea what she was doing. She had no idea what to do. The feeling plunged her back into her early years with the kids, with Josh and especially with Theo, when she felt like the substitute teacher, making herself look foolish by failing to know the real teacher’s method, fucking up the lesson plan. Growing up, Claire had been willful and defiant—prone to tantrums and claims that she didn’t love Eloise anymore—but these rejections had been more affirming than Josh’s agreeable acceptance or Theo’s stunned obedience. What Eloise did really mattered to Claire. Claire was the only one who remembered nothing but Eloise. Claire was her child. Not the most like her—Theo was the most like her, because of genes, or happenstance. Claire was the one whose personality Eloise helped form. Claire was the only one whose mother Eloise really was.

  Eloise had told Josh and Theo about the dinner, and she’d told Heather she was having it, but otherwise she’d been in a state of denial for the last several days, from the moment she hung up the phone. For God’s sake, the last thing she wanted was a family dinner! She and Theo could barely look at each other; she had no idea how she wanted to behave with Claire, and less idea why she’d suggested they stage a false display of togetherness and normalcy. Why, why, why was she forever agreeing to things she had no desire to do? And not just agreeing but instigating. Once upon a time she’d been a person who just said no.

  Now she swigged her wine, and made a face. “I don’t want this,” she said. “I want a martini.” Heather stopped mincing and looked up. “Not just a regular martini. A huge martini. In one of those joke glasses.”

  “No liquor,” Heather said. “In the mood you’re in, wine is bad enough.”

  “But I want it,” Eloise said. “It will change the mood I’m in.” Heather ignored her, the way you might ignore the mulish, futile protests of a small child. She set the knife down so that she could pull Eloise’s head forward and kiss the top of it, an offer of comfort that made Eloise’s eyes fill with tears. “Don’t be nice to me,” she said.

  “Okay,” Heather said and gave Eloise’s cheek a painless smack. Then she went back to mincing. Eloise hadn’t asked Heather to come cook. Heather had just shown up, and seemed unsurprised to find Eloise in a state of sedated panic, a glass of wine in her hand, not a single thing done. Sometimes it drove Eloise insane, how much Heather seemed to know. Sometimes she wanted her quirks and failings to go unobserved. Sometimes Heather’s air of businesslike amusement about those quirks and failings made Eloise want to up the ante. To be even later. To be even more dramatic. To just take the roof off the place. “Ugh,” Eloise said, closing her eyes. “I hate myself.”

  “Well,” Heather said. “That happens sometimes.”

  “I want my sister,” Eloise said. Again the sounds of the knife stopped, and Eloise opened her eyes to find Heather looking at her with such openhearted sympathy she felt she’d collapse under the weight of it. My God, of course she wouldn’t take that job. How could she even think about doing something that might mean leaving Heather behind?

  “I love you,” Heather said.

  “I know,” Eloise said. “Hey, here’s an idea—let’s move in together.”

  “Really?” Heather’s voice held a carefully controlled excitement.

  If she said yes and then changed her mind, Heather wouldn’t forgive her anytime soon. To say yes was a commitment. Heather had come over to cook for her, to cook a meal she wouldn’t be eating, for people who had no idea how important she was. “Yes,” Eloise said.

  Heather smiled. “That makes me happy,” she said.

  Eloise laughed. “I’m glad.”

  Heather resumed mincing, a new energy now in the tap-tap-tap of the knife. “Oh, that makes me very happy,” she said.

  “Let’s just do it now,” Eloise said. “Forget this dinner. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Maybe it won’t be that bad,” Heather said. She picked up the cutting board and used the knife to sweep the garlic into the bowl. She stirred, then dipped in a spoon to taste.

  “You think?” Eloise said.

  Heather turned, holding out a spoonful for Eloise to sample. “No,” she said.

  “It smells really good in here,” Theo said, coming into the kitchen. Heather had taken her knives and gone home, leaving Eloise to wait, with increasing dread, for the children to appear. Theo was the first. She wore a skirt with a cute top Eloise recognized from the catalog of a rather expensive store. Theo looked like she’d actually taken the time to blow-dry her hair. So Eloise wasn’t the only one treating this like a dinner party, one to which they’d invited some important and barely known guest. Eloise herself coveted the clothes from the store that had sold Theo her shirt, and sometimes went there and walked around looking at the clothes and touching them, but she hardly ever allowed herself to buy something. Theo was living here rent-free. Eloise hoped she’d bought that shirt on sale.

  “I didn’t do shit,” Eloise said. “It was all Heather.”

  Theo cocked her head. “Heather? Is she eating with us?”

  “Nope. She just came over to cook.” Eloise studied the look of puzzlement on Theo’s face, noticing that she took pleasure in her own failure to explain. Her anger at Theo over the house was a flavor added to every thought about her niece, every interaction they had.

  “That was nice of her,” Theo said.

  “She’s a nice person,” Eloise said, bending to pull the last tray of Heather’s brown sugar cookies from the oven.

  “Yes, but that was unusually nice of her.”

  “She’s a fucking nice person.” Eloise said this with her back to Theo, and when she turned from the oven she found that her niece had left the room. The sight of the empty kitchen brought tears to her eyes, even though she knew she’d been behaving badly, acting like she wanted Theo gone. She ate a hot, crumbly cookie, chased it with another swig of wine, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and picked up the platter of bruschetta to carry it into the dining room.

  She found Josh at the bar making two vodka tonics. She placed the tray on the table—already set with the good china, which was also Heather’s doing. “Where’s Theo?” she asked.

  “I think she’s watching for Claire,” he said. He sipped one of the drinks and made a face. “Though I doubt she’d admit that.”

  “Too strong?” Eloise asked.

  “Not strong enough,” he said.

  “I’m kind of drunk.”

  He turned to appraise her, his expression falling somewhere between amusement and concern. “Really?”

  “It was an accident.”

  He nodded. “I think I’m about to have a similar accident.”

  “I have no idea why I suggested this.”

  Josh shrugged. “You have to see her sometime.”

  “Maybe,” Eloise said. “Maybe not. Heather made bruschetta.”

  “That was nice of her.” Josh came over with one of the drinks and took a piece.

  Eloise watched him take a bite. For some reason it was important to her that he comment on how good it was, and because he always seemed to sense what was important to her, he said, “This is delicious.”

  “She cooked the whole dinner.”

  “Wow.” Josh studied her face, wearing a vertical crease in his forehead, like he knew she cooked the whole dinner was code for something. Was he going to ask what? “That was nice of her,” he said again.

  Theo appeared in the doorway. Her gaze bounced off Eloise and landed on Josh. She pointed with her chin at the drink sweating on the bar. “That mine?” He said it was, and she retrieved it. Her reluctance to look at her aunt filled Eloise with guilt. Eloise darted into the kitchen for her wineglass and then walked back toward the kids with it raised. “Cheers,” she said.

  “Cheers,” they said in unison. The three of them clinked glasses, and then the doorbell rang. They all looked in the direction of the sound, and then at each other. “She rang the doorbell,” Theo said. For a moment no one moved to answer it, and then Josh—of cour
se, Josh—set his drink down and went.

  Theo and Eloise stood side by side facing the door, clutching their drinks to their chests, their hips touching. “I’m sorry, Theo,” Eloise whispered, and Theo said, “For what?”

  Then Claire walked in the room. She’d cut her hair. Eloise had an absurd notion that her niece had become a flapper—bobbed her hair, taken up jazz—and that she herself was a 1920s matron shocked at the decline in today’s youth. “Hi,” Claire said.

  “Hi,” Theo said, and Eloise echoed her. The hesitancy visible in Claire was so strange, so startling. Her weight shifted as though she meant to approach and embrace them, and then she didn’t. She checked herself. How odd to see her make a movement she hadn’t intended. How odd to see her body betray her mind.

  “Let’s eat,” Eloise said.

  They never ate in the dining room except on holidays. Only then did they spoon food from serving dishes instead of straight from the pot. Only then did they use this china, which had belonged to Eloise’s great-grandmother and was one of the few family heirlooms she’d kept, all fussy and floral and Victorian. But even on holidays they didn’t sit around the table in near silence, asking each other politely to pass the salt. Eloise was determined not to be the parent, not to be the teacher, not to be the one who talked. And then she heard herself saying, “So.” She had no follow-up.

  After a moment, Claire said, “I guess I should say something.”

  “Okay, great,” Eloise said, in the encouraging voice she used on students. Wow, she was losing track of what was going on here. She really was drunk.

  “I’m really sorry,” Claire said. “I’m sorry about how I did this. I’m sorry I let you all think I was gone.”

  Theo and Josh looked at the table. Not even Josh was going to say, “That’s okay.”

  “I guess I was afraid of telling you. I was afraid of how you’d react. So I postponed it. I shouldn’t have done it like that.”

  Eloise wanted to say that she shouldn’t have done it at all, and she thought Theo probably wanted to say that, too. She waited for Claire to go on, but the girl just took a sip of her water. Was that really, truly, all she felt she needed to say? “So what are your plans now?” Eloise asked. “What about the company?”

  “I finally called the company yesterday and told them I couldn’t come,” Claire said. “They’re replacing me.”

  Eloise nodded. Her voice was surprisingly steady as she said, “So you’re giving up dancing?”

  “I think so. For now.”

  “And what will you do?” Why were Theo and Josh so silent? Why was it her job to interview the prodigal child?

  “I’m not sure. I have to think about that.” Claire moved her water glass around on the table, then looked up from it to meet Eloise’s gaze. “Right now I’m planning the wedding.”

  “I see,” Eloise said. “You’re planning the wedding.”

  “I know you don’t approve,” Claire said. “And I know, Theo, that you don’t approve either. But I love him. I know this is the right thing for me. I hope you’ll get to know him. I hope you’ll be in the wedding.”

  “Of course,” Eloise said, without meaning it at all. None of this was happening, so what did it matter what she said?

  Claire flashed her a relieved smile. “I even thought maybe we could get married here. In the yard. Like Mom and Dad.”

  Her voice faltered on Mom and Dad. Maybe from shame. Eloise thought it should be from shame. There was a silence, and after a moment Eloise realized they all expected her to fill it. “I don’t know that the house will still be available, Claire,” she said, in her best approximation of a neutral tone. “I am hoping to sell it.”

  “But I thought . . . ” Claire shot a look at Josh. “I thought Francine said it would go to the first of us to get married.”

  “Well, sure, but—” Eloise stopped, understanding. “Oh,” she said.

  “Oh,” Theo echoed, in an angrier tone, and Josh, barely audible, whispered, “Oh, no.”

  “You think she’ll give you the house,” Eloise said.

  “I just . . . Yeah, I guess so.” Claire shrugged. “Gary’s wife will get their house, and he doesn’t have the capital for a new one right now. We could use it.” She looked at Theo. “You wanted it to stay in the family,” she said. “I’m the only one even close to getting married, aren’t I?”

  Capital, Eloise thought. A Gary word.

  Theo said, “I don’t think you should be rewarded for this. You don’t get to behave this way and then snatch the house out from under us.”

  Claire was flushing. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

  “But if you take the house, you will have,” Theo said.

  “Why?” Josh said. “Because the house should obviously be yours? You’re getting so righteous that Claire assumes she’ll get it, but that’s exactly what you’ve been doing.”

  From a long distance away Eloise watched the kids squabble over the property that should belong to her, as though none of them had even the slightest sense of responsibility toward her, even the slightest care about whether she would ever be able to retire, or what she might live on when she did. They’re not even really my children, Eloise thought. The pain and sorrow that children visited upon their parents, anticipated generally and yet somehow never particularly, were the price for the joy of the homemade card addressed to Mommy, the pleasure of your eyes looking back from someone else’s face. She hadn’t had those things, not really, not exactly, but, more important, she hadn’t sought them out. She hadn’t asked for the joy, and so she didn’t deserve the pain and sorrow. Imagine she had no investment in this house or who lived in it or whether it sold. Imagine Claire had never been anything to her but her niece. Imagine Rachel had called her, sobbing, on the phone, and Eloise could have sympathized from her apartment in Cambridge, sitting at her desk in her study, the shelves lined with her published books. Maybe Rachel would have asked her to talk to Claire, because Eloise would have been the cool aunt, the one the kids felt like they could talk to when their mother was being too much a mother, predictable and patronizing and not realizing that they were, like, adults now, and needed to make their own choices. That might have been the extent of Eloise’s responsibility: to call Claire and say, “Your mother’s really upset, Claire. Are you sure you’ve thought this through?” She would have cared—of course she would have cared—but she wouldn’t have cared like this. She was not a mother, and yet the world insisted that she suffer like one.

  These children are not mine, she thought. This fact, which at times had come with a pang of sorrow, now brought her comfort. She was just their aunt. If the world had turned as it should, she’d be nothing but a voice on the phone.

  Eloise looked at them, noting her own state of puzzled detachment. It was as if they were not her flesh and blood but strangers claiming to know her. “Why do you want to live here, any of you?” she asked. “Why do any of you live here?”

  “This is where we’ve always lived,” Claire said.

  “But you don’t live here, Claire,” Eloise said. “You’re the only who doesn’t.”

  “I just meant . . . ” Claire said and then looked down at her plate.

  “And you haven’t always lived here. You moved here when your parents died. I’m the one who’s always lived here, or almost always. It should be my house.”

  “But you want to sell it,” Theo said.

  Eloise looked at her. “That is what I want to do. Do none of you believe I should ever do what I want? Am I supposed to be the only one who thinks about how my actions affect everyone else?” She looked at Josh. “Aren’t you doing what you want?” She looked at Theo. “Aren’t you doing what you want?” She looked at Claire, though she didn’t want to. “Aren’t you?”

  Claire’s eyes were so solemn. They’d always had that quality, even when Claire was two years old, and thus she’d managed her entire life to give the false impression she was older than her years. She said, “You’r
e not giving me a chance.”

  “A chance to do what?”

  “To show you why this is right for me. You haven’t even met him! You wouldn’t even let me—”

  “I don’t want that man in my house,” Eloise said, and as she spoke, she felt a cold rage overtake her. Claire was a favorite and favored student who’d turned out to be a plagiarist and still, inexplicably, wanted an A. Eloise rose, as if she were in the classroom, and said, “Do you really—is it even possible that you really—fail to understand what it says about that man that he left his wife and child to marry a nineteen-year-old girl?”

  “He loves me.”

  “He wants to be the dominant one. He wants someone to look up to him. He wants you for your youth and beauty.”

  “Aunt Eloise,” Claire said. “He loves me.”

  “Oh, Claire,” she said. “Get a fucking clue.”

  “Please, can you just meet him? I’d like you to meet him.”

  “I don’t want that man in my house,” she said again. “At least as long as I pay the bills. Choices have consequences, Claire. What did you expect?”

  “Not this,” she said.

  “Well, this is what you got,” Eloise said and then stopped talking, because her throat was swollen with every cruel and hurtful thing she could think of to say. You’re not mine. I didn’t want you. I never wanted you. She couldn’t say those things, so she smacked the table with her palm, over and over, until it stung. Then she straightened up and looked at them, her hand throbbing, and saw that they were frightened. Frightened and wide-eyed like children might have been. My God, she was so angry. She hadn’t realized she was quite so angry. She frightened herself. Better to return to shuffling around like a weary old lady, avoiding eye contact, keeping her voice low, rather than unleash that anger again.

  She dropped back into her chair. “The house is mine,” she said, “until Francine does whatever fucked-up thing she’s going to do. Everybody will have to move out. Everybody’s on their own.”