by Leah Stewart
“I know what you mean.” Theo shook her head. “You loved her, you know? What good did I think talking was going to do? I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “You were right. Maybe when someone else is making a terrible mistake it’s your duty to tell them. Maybe the problem wasn’t you talking but me not listening.” There was a silence while they both considered that. Josh said, “But then again I was pretty fucking mad at you.”
“I noticed,” Theo said.
“You did?”
Theo laughed. “I’m astonishingly perceptive,” she said.
“And always right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m always right.”
A couple hours later, Theo knocked on Wes’s door, even though he’d given her a key. He opened it frowning and stepped back to let her inside. “Where have you been? I thought we were going to brunch.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I went back to the house, and I ran into my brother.”
“Oh,” Wes said. “I thought nobody was living there now.”
“He’s been there since Friday,” she said. “He’s been writing songs.”
“Really? That’s awesome!”
She’d known this information would distract him. That was why she’d offered it. What a coward she was. “Yeah, I’m really glad,” she said. “He doesn’t know yet what he’ll do with them.”
“He should record a solo album is what he should do,” Wes said.
Theo made a noise of assent, moving past him into the living room. She felt a premature nostalgia for Wes’s indie-rock decor. “I really appreciate you putting me up all this time,” she said. “It’s been incredibly nice of you.”
“Nice of me?” Wes came up behind her and touched her arm. “What’s going on?”
She sat down on the couch and waited. He looked at her warily a moment and then sat beside her. “My brother thinks I should come back to the house, too, until some decision is made.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I like having you here.”
“I know, but, Wes, don’t you think this happened awfully fast? It’s like we’re living together.”
“We are living together.”
“But we barely know each other.”
He frowned. “Is that really what you think?”
“I mean we haven’t known each other long.”
“We’ve known each other nearly three years.”
“I’m not counting when you were in my class.”
“Why not?”
“Because that was different, obviously. That was a totally different thing.”
“We were the same people.”
“Look,” she said. “I just think we should take a step back.”
“You’re breaking up with me.”
“Breaking up?”
“Yes, Theo. We’ve been a couple these last few weeks, whether you realized it or not, which clearly you didn’t. So if you end things, people call that ‘breaking up.’ ”
“I didn’t say I was ending things.”
“No,” he said. “You said I’ve been ‘incredibly nice.’ You’re still wearing your jacket.”
She looked down at herself as if to confirm this. She hadn’t even unbuttoned the jacket. She’d sat down with her bag still on her shoulder. “I don’t think I want to end things.”
“But you don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know, and I told you that from the beginning! I’ve never made a secret of my lack of knowledge.”
Wes nodded slowly. “So this is about that guy.”
“No. Not really. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did something happen with him?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t even seen him since we ran into him. But, Wes, I still don’t know whether I’m over him. Don’t you want me to figure that out? Otherwise, aren’t I being horribly unfair?”
“So you want to figure that out, and then if you decide you’re over him, you want me to be waiting for you, and if you decide you’re not, you want me to get over you. Or are you hoping even if you decide you’re not I’ll be waiting for you? Just in case you ever do change your mind?”
She began to protest that no, that wasn’t what she was doing, but yes, it was. Wasn’t it? “That’s awful,” she said.
“Yes,” Wes said. “Yes, Theo, that’s awful. And no, I won’t wait.” He stood up, walked into the kitchen, then came back, holding his wallet and keys. “I am an actual person, not just the idea of one,” he said. “And I love you.”
“You do?”
“Are we ever going to get to a point where I tell you how I feel about you and you don’t act surprised?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m tired of you being sorry,” he said. “It’s time for you to be something else.” He picked up his coat from the armchair and thrust his arms into the sleeves. He looked around—for his phone, she knew—but didn’t find it. “I’m going out while you pack up. You can slide the key back under the door.”
“Don’t go,” she said.
He said, “Neither of us will like me very much if I don’t.” He gave up on the phone, heading for the door.
“Wes,” she called after him, and he stopped with his hand on the knob, but she had no idea what she wanted to say, just that she wanted to say something. “You’re too young for me,” she said. She meant it as a kind of apology, but of course he didn’t take it like that.
“Oh, Theo,” he said, yanking the door open. “Fuck off.”
After he left, she found his phone under a book of hers on the coffee table. She spent a long time thinking about where she should put it that he’d be sure to find it, finally choosing the kitchen counter. Then she packed up her things, as he’d instructed, and made his bed with more precision than she’d ever made a bed in her life. It looked like a bed in a showroom. It looked like a bed no one had ever slept in. She sat on it and bounced the mattress like she was thinking of buying it, and then she got up before the urge to lie down could overcome her. She had a lump in her throat, but she wasn’t going to cry. You could cry all you wanted when someone left you, but how ridiculous to cry when you left someone. How self-serving and foolish and unfair. She smoothed out the quilt again to erase all signs she’d been there.
She locked the door and then worked his key off her key chain and slid it under the door. A feeling of panic seized her, and she crouched down to peer under the door, but the key was gone. She couldn’t even see it. Even if she wanted to, there was no way to get back in. As she turned to go she thought about how happy he’d looked when he asked if she was moving in, the way it had seemed for a moment—for longer than a moment—that she could. But she couldn’t have stayed. Something so easy couldn’t possibly be right.
20
At dinner in downtown Chicago with Jason Bamber and two of his colleagues, Eloise had three glasses of wine and a wonderful time. Chicago at night! She’d forgotten. After the wine Eloise suggested they all go up to the Sears Tower. “I never did that when I lived here before,” she said. “I was too cool.”
Jason and his colleagues argued for a while about whether the Sears Tower or the Hancock Tower was best, and Eloise thought they really were going, and was disappointed when the colleagues begged off, saying they had to get home. “So,” she said, putting her palms flat on the table and looking at Jason. “Which will it be?”
He grinned. “My place or yours, you mean?”
She laughed, shaking her head. “Sears or Hancock?”
He groaned. “Are we really doing that?”
“Hell, yes,” she said. “I’m an out-of-town visitor. I’m a tourist! You’re lucky I don’t make you take me to the Navy Pier to ride the Ferris wheel.”
They went to the Hancock, because it was closer. They clambered into the cab laughing like college kids, and Eloise could have sworn that, glancing at the rearview mirror, she saw the cabbie roll his eyes at them. That just made her laugh harder. Jason p
ut his hand on her thigh. She looked down at it, then back at him, eyebrows raised. He raised his eyebrows back. What was going to happen here? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t deny that, even if nothing happened, she was enjoying walking up to the edge. She lifted the hand, patted it, and put it back in his lap. “Down, boy,” she said.
The elevator ride to the top of the Hancock Tower was shockingly quick, as advertised, and the view was amazing. Eloise felt fully justified in gaping like a yokel. She walked toward the windowed wall like a person hypnotized. Down below she could see the Navy Pier, the lights of the Ferris wheel in all their crass and gorgeous brilliance. Jason joined her at the window and she pointed. “That’s where we’re going next,” she said.
“I love it here,” Jason said, with feeling. “I couldn’t live anywhere else.”
“Shhh,” Eloise said, putting her finger to her lips. “Don’t jinx yourself.” She set off to walk the perimeter of the room, Chicago from all sides. What was it about this city that made it seem so much better than her own? Was it that it was bigger? That it was richer? That it had more buildings? That it just didn’t seem so goddamn sad?
On the way back to her hotel, Jason vibrated with anticipation, shooting her looks, and she debated what to do. Right at that moment, still a little tipsy, enjoying his desire, feeling some curiosity about being with a man again, she found herself inclined to sleep with him. But she was sober enough now to hesitate. If she did sleep with him he’d expect something from her when she came here, and she wasn’t so sure that if she did end up coming it wouldn’t be partly in pursuit of solitude. He might expect something from her whether she slept with him tonight or not, but if she didn’t those expectations might be more manageable. Also there’d be terrible guilt about Heather, who, no matter what Heather herself said, still had a claim on her. Eloise had gone on staying with her since their fight in demonstration of that claim. Eloise had apologized and apologized, and then Heather had been her usual warm and endlessly forgiving self. But a couple nights ago, Eloise had woken to find herself alone in bed and after a few moments registered the sound of Heather crying in the bathroom. She hadn’t knocked, though she’d hesitated a long time at the door. She didn’t know what to say. That the sound of Heather weeping broke her heart. That she loved her like she’d never loved anyone she’d ever been with. That she might leave her anyway.
So when Jason asked if he could come in, Eloise shook her head and said, “Big day tomorrow.”
“Ah,” he said, sinking back against the seat. “Interviews that aren’t really interviews.”
“Hey,” she said. “It’s your department chair and the dean.”
He made an impatient gesture. “Just a formality,” he said. “But I understand.”
She felt sorry for disappointing him, and annoyed that she was sorry. She almost said they’d still have tomorrow night, but for God’s sake, Eloise, don’t promise him anything! She went up to her room feeling she’d made a narrow escape.
The next morning before her interviews, she walked over to her old apartment building and looked at it from the outside. It was a fairly nondescript building, and she found that she’d misremembered many of its details, though she’d gotten the location right. The memory that visited her, as she stared up at the window that used to be hers, was of a party she’d thrown in grad school and then refused to attend. During this particular party, held during her exam year, she’d gone down to the coffee shop on the street and read one of the books from her list. She’d been really into the book and hadn’t felt like stopping to exchange chitchat and idle departmental gossip, which, in the mood of that moment, seemed like a colossal waste of time. She’d hoarded her time back then, refused to spend it on things that did not promise the maximum result, like, for instance, a social event that sounded only okay. She thought, with a benevolent smile at her younger self, that she’d probably come off as self-righteous and haughty. That was the thing, though—back then she hadn’t cared. When she watched one of those movies about the selfish painter or musician or scientist who chewed through everyone around him, she identified with him while everyone else cluck-clucked about how sad it was. For God’s sake—in high school she’d even identified with Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead, at least until that whole weird rape scene. To her the fact that her grad school classmates had teased her about her antisocial behavior and that to shut them up she’d agreed to have a party was a black mark against her as well as them. She remembered taking satisfaction in the exasperation on their faces before she shut her own door on them and went downstairs. It had been similar to the exasperation displayed by the men she’d dated, about whose disappointment and longing she couldn’t seem to care very much, maybe because she was unknowingly a lesbian, maybe because she just really didn’t care.
When had she begun to take other people’s feelings so to heart, to believe that she owed something to everybody she encountered? It was as if she’d been converted from The Fountainhead by The Giving Tree. Shut up, you stupid tree, she thought now. I don’t want to be a stump.
Her interviews went well. She thought so, and Jason said so, too. “This job is yours if you want it,” he said, dropping her at her hotel so she could freshen up before dinner.
She was still repeating that phrase to herself—mine if I want it—two hours later, standing in the hotel bathroom brushing her hair. She’d spent most of that time attempting a nap, too abuzz to sleep, turning the words over in her head. Now she had fifteen minutes before Jason would arrive to pick her up, doubtless expecting to hear that she’d take the job. She was looking at her pores in the magnified mirror when she heard her cell phone ringing. She went to answer but couldn’t locate the source of the sound. The phone was in her bag, but where was her bag? On the floor, as it turned out, where it had fallen off the bed and spilled some of its contents, though not the phone. By now the phone had stopped ringing, but she stuck her hand in the bag and felt around for it anyway. Hunting among loose change, pens, and scraps of paper, she wondered why she still ran for the phone, in these days of caller ID and voicemail, these days when no call was ever lost. It was a residual habit from childhood, when the phone rang and you didn’t know who was calling before you answered, when it could be anyone in the world on the line. She remembered busy signals. She remembered what a miracle call waiting had seemed. She remembered believing that she didn’t need a cell phone, which was like remembering an old love. You knew what you had felt but could no longer access that feeling, so that it didn’t quite seem to have ever belonged to you at all. Of course she needed a cell phone! She needed to be sitting on a bed in a hotel room in Chicago with it in her hand, frowning at the unknown number on the screen. A mysterious caller—that, too, was a relic of a long-gone age. Calling someone on the phone was now an act of either intimacy or marketing. She waited for the phone to announce a message, but that didn’t happen, so she called the number back, because these days every minor mystery could be solved.
The phone rang twice, and then a man said hello, his voice as wary as Eloise felt.
“You called me?” Eloise said.
There was a silence, and the man said, “Eloise?”
“Who is this?” she asked.
“It’s Gary. Gary Paula.”
Eloise froze. He was persecuting her. “How did you get this number?” she asked.
“It was in my phone, my landline, I mean. Claire must have called you from this number.”
“Oh,” she said and fell silent, as if all her questions had been answered. She wasn’t going to ask what he wanted, especially because she thought she already knew. He wanted her to be a better mother. He wanted her to help her little girl. He’d forgotten again that she wasn’t exactly a mother, and the girl wasn’t little, and it was his fault Claire needed help at all.
“I’m calling to see if you know where Claire is,” he said.
Eloise’s heart leapt into her throat. Yes, that was exactly what it did. From a distance,
she heard herself say, “What do you mean?”
“I take it that’s a no.”
“Yes, it’s a no,” Eloise said. “Could you explain yourself? Last I heard she was with you.”
“Well, she’s not with me anymore,” Gary said. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Eloise closed her eyes against her own instinctive alarm.
“She left, and I don’t know where she went.”
“When was this?”
“Monday. I came home and found a note. Hang on, I’ll read it to you.” She heard him rustling, and then he read, “Gary, I think you should go home to your family. I’m sorry. This was wrong. We shouldn’t be in touch. Claire.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He cleared his throat. “That’s it.”
“And that was four days ago? You lost her four days ago, and you’re just now calling me?” She was as angry as if he were a disastrously negligent babysitter, a person to whom she’d foolishly entrusted her child, though of course she hadn’t picked him to take charge of Claire and never would have, and hadn’t even realized Claire needed to be in somebody’s charge.
“I hesitated to call you,” he said. “First of all, you told me in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t your responsibility anymore. Plus I kept thinking she’d call. Or come back. I did not imagine that she’d really make such a choice so precipitously, without even speaking to me on the phone.”
“But she hasn’t called.”
“No.”
“And you don’t have any idea where she might have gone?”
There was a pause and then he said, “I don’t know anything about her life. Not really. That’s become clear to me in the last few days. I haven’t even met her friends. So, no, no, I have no idea where she might have gone, or why she left, or what the hell she could possibly be thinking. I’ve been reduced to waiting for her to update her status on Facebook. Frankly I thought she might have gone to you. I thought maybe you talked her into leaving me.”
“No, I didn’t,” Eloise said. “But I damn sure wish I had.” She snapped her phone shut, turned, and lobbed it toward the door to the hallway, where it landed hard and subsided. She turned toward the back of the room like she was headed somewhere, but there were just the windows behind her with their view of Chicago, utterly unhelpful. “Shit,” she said, about Claire, but also because she suddenly saw the lack of wisdom in throwing and possibly breaking her phone. She went to pick it up. The screen still glowed and everything looked normal. “Good, good,” she said, as if the phone needed soothing. The phone made no response. “What now?” she said to it. The person she imagined answering was Heather. But she could make decisions without Heather, couldn’t she? She’d made decisions on her own for years.
