The History of Us

by Leah Stewart

  Eloise scrolled to Claire’s number and pressed Send. One ring. She exhaled a ragged breath into the pause. Two. Three. Four. Then the mechanical click of voicemail answering, and Claire’s voice saying, cheerfully, that she couldn’t get to the phone. Eloise hesitated a millisecond after the beep and then hung up. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know how she wanted her voice to sound.

  She walked back into the bathroom and observed her own indecision in the mirror, then remembered texting, and felt a rush of gratitude for the modern age. She wrote: Can you please tell me you’re alive?

  Waiting for an answer, she listed possible actions and inactions: Waiting. Calling Claire’s friends. Checking with Theo and Josh to see if they knew where Claire had gone. If her impulse was to run after Claire, did that mean chasing her was what she should do, or even what she wanted? Maybe it was just like running for the phone—a residual trait from an earlier time. When your child ran out the door you followed her, unless your child was nineteen, and it wasn’t your door she’d run out of, and you had no idea where she’d gone.

  Claire might have told Josh where she was, but she wouldn’t have told Theo. Theo would judge her, just like she’d judge Eloise if Eloise told her she’d once again let Claire get away. Eloise could picture the look of mingled reproach and worry on Theo’s face, and if she talked to her over the phone instead of in person she’d still hear the judgment in her voice. Funny that she wasn’t picturing the adult Theo, wearing that very familiar expression, but the girl. It was how she’d looked when Eloise was late to pick her up, or said shit in front of Claire, or refused Claire her bedtime book when the child wouldn’t pick her up her toys. Eloise could still see four-year-old Claire sprawled facedown on the floor, crying in gulping sobs, saying, “I want a bedtime book.” She remembered how it felt to stand over her saying, “I told you what would happen,” how she’d had to combat the powerful urge to give in with the frustrated anger of being constantly and stupidly defied. Because a child had to be made to follow the rules, even if your enforcement of those rules caused that child pain. If you never let a child be upset, you might think you were loving her in the purest, most generous way possible, a way that would keep her feeling safe and secure and compassionate in equal measure to the compassion she’d been shown. But in reality you’d be creating a little monster who thought nothing mattered in the world but her feelings. And yet Theo would appear in the doorway of the bedroom—her own bedroom, since Claire insisted on sleeping with Theo—and look at Eloise like she was cruel, like she was incompetent, like she’d failed. After Eloise left, her rule enforced, Theo would hold Claire and comfort her, and tell her a story in defiance of the idea—if not the letter—of the law. Eloise never tried to stop Theo from doing this. In truth she wanted Claire to get what she wanted, too.

  Her phone buzzed. Claire had written: I’m alive. Eloise wrote back, Where are you?

  Elsewhere, Claire wrote.

  Eloise wrote, Where is that? But Claire didn’t answer. At the airport that day Eloise had pretended not to remember how she’d answered that question herself when Claire was a child. But she remembered. Of course she remembered! She’d said it over and over, like a prayer, like an incantation: As far as you can get from here.

  It was time to meet Jason in the lobby, so she headed down, feeling both utterly uncertain and strangely calm. She didn’t know what she was going to tell him. She’d have found it difficult to explain why, after everything else—the fights with Heather, the fights with Theo, the interviews—this felt like the moment when she had to decide. Here or there. Then or now. What life would it be?

  The elevator doors opened. She stepped out and saw Jason—waiting, full of longing and promises—and she knew for sure she was going back home. She knew it as soon as she spotted him, and the knowledge grew heavier and more certain as she crossed the room to meet his happy, anticipatory smile. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but I have to stay in tonight, and go ahead and drive home tomorrow.”

  He flinched with surprise, then looked at her speculatively. “Are you joking?” he said. “I don’t remember you joking this way.”

  She shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. She explained, using the words child and disappeared, against which little argument could be made, though she could see in the mulish look on his face that he was hard-pressed not to make it.

  “Do you still want me to keep you in mind for the job?” he asked.

  She noticed how his language had changed: from it’s yours if you want it to keep you in mind. She did, she did want him to—oh, the idea of it! But she knew, without wanting to know it, that she was never going to take the job. She couldn’t bring herself to do all that would be necessary, and whether that was a failure of nerve or an acknowledgment of what really mattered she couldn’t say. That was in the eye of the beholder. “No,” she said.

  “Eloise,” he said, “come on. You’re entitled to your own life.” On his face was the exasperation she remembered from the night of that grad school party, the inability to understand why she thought some new pursuit, some act of self-indulgent self-discipline, was more important than what they’d had planned.

  She didn’t try to explain any further. There wasn’t any explaining it. She could have made different choices, but all that mattered were the ones she’d made.

  She got back to Cincinnati in early afternoon, but then she couldn’t decide where to go. She’d cleared her schedule, canceling classes and rescheduling meetings, to accommodate the Chicago trip, so no one was expecting her. Not even Heather—Heather had left for work early on the morning of Eloise’s departure, not waking her, not leaving a note. In the days leading up to the trip Heather had made a point of not asking a single question about it, not even when Eloise was coming back. The kids didn’t know she’d gone to Chicago. Now, as she drove without purpose along the river, not a single person knew where she was. It didn’t take long to leave Cincinnati, to find yourself in the country, or a small town whose old and impressive and empty buildings suggested a long-gone prosperity. She could keep driving and in a little more than an hour she’d be in the land of the Amish, another world, another time, a place where she could never live, because she’d be foreign and useless and wearing all the wrong clothes.

  It was funny, when something happened to make you think about it, what a small piece of the world you actually lived in. Eloise would have said she lived in and was from Cincinnati, but really she lived in and was from the neighborhood of Clifton, and hardly ever even went into certain parts of her neighborhood. That street tucked back in the woods she’d seen once, in high school, when she’d gone to a party there—it was a half mile away from her and in thirty years she’d never been back. And on other streets, where the houses were smaller and more run-down and the crime higher than on hers—could she really be said to live in the same place as the people who lived there? There were so many lives to be led in one city, in so many different neighborhoods, on so many different streets. Claire could still be here and yet be elsewhere, as the last few months had made clear. She might be living in a split-ranch in the suburbs, or above a tattoo parlor in Northside, or across the river in small-town Kentucky. She could be shacked up with a frat-boy investment banker in Mount Adams, or hanging out at a gay bar on one of the gentrified strips of Over-the-Rhine, or staying in one of the many guest rooms of the house of her rich friend in Indian Hill.

  Cincinnati. Queen of the West, City of the Seven Hills. Eloise had left and she had come back. She turned the car around and drove until she saw the skyline—and wasn’t there relief as well as regret in that familiar sight? What would she really lose if she finally admitted that this was her home, if she allowed herself to belong?

  She drove through downtown into Over-the-Rhine, letting impulse guide her left and right, and then when she reached the ballet she let that same impulse take her into the parking lot. The woman at the front desk recognized her, and they exchanged pleasa
ntries, then Eloise strolled down the hallway toward the studios like she belonged there. Several of the male dancers were in one studio, and Eloise paused at the glass wall to watch as they leapt and spun in unison. Really, it was easy to believe that they could fly. Across the hall were the female dancers, Adelaide among them. Eloise stood there watching. What they did was even more impressive up close than it was on the stage, because up close they were real, actual human beings making those impossible leaps.

  They took a break and Eloise watched Adelaide walk to the back of the room, her hands on her hips. She was breathing hard, but not a single hair had escaped from her bun. They were so severe with their hair. They were so severe with their bodies. They were very, very hard on themselves. Perfection required that. And Adelaide was perfect, she was beautiful, there were tears in Eloise’s eyes. What an amazing thing it was to sacrifice your body to bring such beauty to the world. To focus your life so narrowly, to believe with your whole self in a singular importance. Like being a nun. Like being a revolutionary. Like running away from home.

  Sometimes Eloise had worried about Claire’s devotion to ballet, about what it was doing to her poor little feet, about the early onset of this kind of singular passion. But it was hard to think that Claire working so hard was wrong when it was such a pleasure to watch her dance. Out of the studio she was quiet in a way that sometimes suggested confident reserve, sometimes withdrawn insecurity. But when she moved she embodied certainty. The life she wanted was incredibly difficult to achieve and yet so appealingly simple in its clarity. You didn’t strike out on your own to become a ballet dancer. You tried to belong, doing what they asked you to do and hoping for admittance. You took classes and learned steps and auditioned for companies, every stage of the process neatly labeled with a number or a name. Children’s Division 1. Academy Level 2. Trainee Program. Now a pas de bourrée. Now a soutenu. Ballet was a well-laid path marked out through the messiness of life, and it was very easy to want for Claire what Claire wanted for herself. And now what did Claire want? What should Eloise want for her? She had absolutely no idea.

  She had a strong desire, now, to talk to Adelaide, so she went back out to the lobby to wait. She sank into a leather love seat and tried not to notice the way the woman at the front desk kept sneaking looks at her. She wondered, if Claire never came back to ballet, what her niece could possibly find to replace it. It was one thing to grow up without faith, the way Eloise had, and so never miss it, and so be baffled by other people’s evocations of it, the praying and the weeping and the sincerity. It was another to lose, or even to vanquish, faith, the way Heather had. Once you’d had it, you knew what you were missing. Last Christmas Eve, Heather had cried, not because she believed but because she missed believing. In the absence of God, she’d made a religion of her work, and of her politics, and on those foundations she’d built a faith-based community. Maybe Eloise hadn’t been able to sustain her own career because what she’d had was not faith but ambition. Or maybe because inheriting the children had divided her, and faith is not something the divided self can sustain. Was that what had happened to Claire when she fell in love with Gary? Or had she just wanted to quit ballet, and so looked around for something else to believe in? Poor Claire—you can make a religion out of love, but not forever and ever, amen. At least not if you lack the capacity for devotion, for nothing in the world but that person and your belief in that person, like women were once upon a time, and even now, supposed to offer up to men. If Claire had been unable to do that, Eloise was glad, but it was no wonder the girl had panicked. In the absence of devotion, there was nothing but the self.

  The dancers began to emerge, and after two or three clumps of them went by, Adelaide appeared, walking with two other girls. She carried a heavy bag on one shoulder. She wore sparkly gold slip-on shoes, like a genie, or a harem girl. The woman was an athlete, doubtless much stronger than Eloise despite her small frame, and yet it was so easy to think of her as a particular kind of incarnation of the female—the yearning, graceful body, the supplicating poses, the fragility and lightness of a woman that a man could lift into the air.

  As she neared, Eloise stood to catch her eye, and Adelaide saw her and looked first surprised, then wary. Eloise couldn’t blame her for the wariness. She lifted her hand and held the girl’s—the woman’s—gaze so she’d know Eloise wanted to talk to her. Adelaide turned to say a smiling good night to her friends, and then, slowly, she approached.

  “Hi,” Eloise said.

  “Hi,” Adelaide said back. She waited. She was probably much better than Eloise at waiting. She’d spent a lot of years perfecting stillness, as well as its opposite.

  “I wondered if I could talk to you about something,” Eloise said.

  Adelaide looked at the floor. “Is it about Josh?”

  “No,” Eloise said. “Why? Is something wrong?” Adelaide hesitated, and Eloise asked, “Did you break up?”

  “Not exactly. I’m really not sure.”

  Eloise took a step back and sank down into the couch again. She was surprised by how badly she was taking this news. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Would you mind if I asked what happened?”

  Adelaide hesitated, then perched on the edge of the cushion beside Eloise. “We had a fight,” she said after a moment. “Because I have an audition I didn’t tell him about, and he had a band he didn’t tell me about.”

  Eloise raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t know about Blind Robots?”

  Adelaide shook her head. “I don’t know why he didn’t tell me.”

  “I can guess,” Eloise said. “Do you want to hear my guess?”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s embarrassed that he quit.”

  “Really? That’s not what he said.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d had plenty of girls like him just for that, and he wanted me to like him for him.”

  “Well, there might be truth in that, too. But I think he didn’t want to tell you because he didn’t want to explain what happened, which is that he quit the band for the woman who was his girlfriend at the time, and every time he thinks about that choice he feels ashamed of himself, and he didn’t want you to be ashamed of him.”

  “Why would I be? I mean, why is he?”

  “Oh, because she was awful. Truly awful. She emotionally abused him, if you want to know the truth. She made him feel small and worthless, and he stuck around anyway, and he gave up the other things he cared about in pursuit of affirmation he was never going to get. And I bet he took a look at you, somebody whose whole life is devoted to this incredibly difficult art form, and he just couldn’t bring himself to tell you that he’d given his own art form up. He’s been trying very, very hard to think of himself as someone who never was a musician, and never wanted to be. He doesn’t want you to think he’s a quitter, or a loser. He’d rather you assumed he’s content with his life as it is.”

  Adelaide frowned. “And you don’t think he is?”

  “You know,” Eloise said, “I really don’t know. Josh is quite good at hiding what he actually feels in the interest of harmony. He’s good at hiding what he actually feels even from himself. I think it’s a family trait.”

  Adelaide sank back into the couch now. “I wish he could have told me these things.”

  “Can I ask—why didn’t you tell him about the audition?”

  “I don’t even know if I’ll get the part, and if I do I don’t know if I want it.”

  “And you want to make that decision on your own.”

  “I guess so.” She looked away, across the lobby toward the studios. “I get Josh’s point—I’ve had plenty of guys be interested because I’m a dancer, and then when that interest wears off there’s not much left. They figure out what that really means, and they don’t want to deal with it. It’s a weird life I lead. I can’t have kids before I retire, really. I can’t be normal. And, you know, I’m twenty-nine. I won’t have options much longer—I won’t
be able to dance much longer. I can see retirement coming and it scares me.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “But then, if you postpone everything else for dancing, when you quit dancing you might not have anything else.” She gave Eloise a rueful smile. “So I’m afraid of retirement. And I’m also afraid of ending up alone.”

  Eloise nodded. “I just don’t think normal is what Josh wants.”

  “I don’t know what he wants,” Adelaide said. “He hasn’t told me.”

  “You could ask.”

  Now Adelaide grinned, a goofy, broad grin that transformed her face. “You make it sound so easy,” she said.

  “I do, don’t I?” Eloise said. “I make it sound like the easiest thing in the world.” She had an urge to touch the girl, pat her shoulder or smooth her hair, though of course it didn’t need smoothing. But she didn’t, because Adelaide didn’t seem the type to welcome unsolicited touch. Although it was hard to tell, wasn’t it? Who wanted what, and from whom, and who needed comfort, and who was just afraid to ask for it, and who genuinely wanted to be left alone. “I hope you two work it out,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Adelaide said. “That’s really nice. I hope so, too.” She hesitated. “I actually had the impression that you didn’t like me.”