The History of Us (11 page)

Except Claire didn’t understand. She sounded distracted, preoccupied by New York City, by making it there, making it anywhere. She said, “I don’t know, Theo. Her reasons do make sense.”

“How can you say that? We’re talking about the
house
.”

“It’s not like she wants to sell
you
.”

“Yes, it is,” Theo said, feeling both ridiculous and completely justified. “It’s like she wants to sell our childhood.”

“You didn’t even live in that house until you were eleven.”

Why did this statement of fact hit Theo like a slap? “I know that,” she said, her voice trembling. “That’s exactly the point.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” Theo said and got off the phone before Claire could press her to explain. The house was a map of her memories. In this room, I cut my finger with a bagel knife so badly I had to get stitches. In this room, I made out with a boy. In this room, I said goodbye to my parents for the last time. In truth she could barely remember what had happened in what room. Had she said goodbye to her parents in the kitchen? In the living room? On the stairs? Had she yelled goodbye from her bedroom, too absorbed in a book to come downstairs? She didn’t know. There was no one she could ask such a question. She had only the house to help her remember. If she lost it she’d be exiled from her history.

She’d reached the business district. A family emerged from Graeter’s, licking ice cream cones. Theo turned away from their happy faces and called her grandmother. “It’s Theo,” she said.

“Hello, Theodora.” Francine was the only person who ever called her that, out of perversity, Theo assumed, as she’d once overheard her grandmother say to Eloise that she still couldn’t understand why Rachel had saddled her with that name. “It’s like she wanted her to be from 1910,” Francine had said, and Eloise had snapped back, “I like it,” but there was no way to tell whether Eloise had meant that, or just instinctively contradicted her mother the way she always did. Theo’s own perversity was to be jealous that she had no mother to contradict, no mother to drive her crazy, no real-life woman to diminish the ideal one in her head, the one who would have always made her feel better, always known exactly what she should do.

When Rachel had been alive she had been the dispenser of both justice and comfort. Few things had felt better to Theo than the moment she unburdened herself of a problem by telling her mother about it. Her mother, who would listen with her serious, sympathetic attention, pull her close, say, “Don’t worry, little worrier, we’ll figure it out.” After she died, Theo had struggled to see Eloise in that role. Eloise had always been the fun aunt, the one who took her to movies she was a little too young for, who told her secrets of adulthood and then exacted promises that Theo wouldn’t repeat them to her mother. It had seemed strange to go to Eloise as she had her mother, so mostly Theo had tried to solve her own problems. She tried to behave. The thought of Eloise, who had always made her feel so grown-up, reprimanding her like a child was intolerable. So Theo never gave her reason.

Then when she was sixteen she got drunk for the first time, and drove home in a state that she knew was less than sober. She woke a groggy Eloise in the middle of the night and tearfully confessed.
“How much did you have?” Eloise said. She was sitting up in bed, wearing a Lucinda Williams T-shirt, her long reddish brown hair a crazy mess around her face, as though instead of sleeping she’d been standing in front of a wind machine.

Theo had collapsed on the end of the bed by Eloise’s feet. Her nose was running, and she pressed it with the back of her hand. “Two beers,” she said.

“Oh,” Eloise said. And then, to Theo’s surprise, she laughed. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “I mean, absolutely if you felt drunk you shouldn’t have driven. You should always call me to get you in a situation like that. You know I’ll always come get you, right?”

Theo nodded, and then said, “I know,” struck for the first time with the fear that by not calling she’d insulted her aunt, suggested she didn’t trust Eloise with her secrets and mistakes.

“But two beers, for a sixteen year old . . . I mean, by that age I was an old hand with liquor and pot.”

“Really?”

Eloise yawned as she nodded. “Your mom, too. I’m afraid we weren’t always such good girls.” She leaned forward across the bed and smoothed Theo’s hair back from her face. “But I know I don’t have to worry about you, honey,” she said, her voice gentle, even sad. “You’re just so heartbreakingly committed to doing the right thing.”

Theo’s relief at not being in trouble had been tempered with disappointment, though she hadn’t really understood why. There was no one she could count on to stop her from doing things she shouldn’t. There was no one to disappoint but herself, no one to rebel against. If Eloise had combined her consolation with
remonstrance the way her mother would have, grounded her for a week, Theo would have felt better. Punishment would have allayed her guilt. All would have been right with the world. But Eloise was not, and never had been, her mother, and this latest incident was further proof of that. Her mother would never have sold the house.

“I was hoping to talk to you,” Theo said to her grandmother, constrained by the formality the woman always inspired, the danger of hurting her sensitive feelings, of saying something that would make Francine retreat to brood over the offense. Eloise always said her mother was a woman who collected grievances like treasures. In this she wasn’t wrong.

“Of course, honey,” Francine said. “I’m glad you called. Is it about Eloise?”

Relieved that she didn’t have to introduce the difficult subject, Theo answered in a rush. “She told us you’re going to give her the house and that she wants to sell it, that she wants to put it on the market right away, even though Josh and I are still living there.”

“I know, honey. I know.”

“But how can you let her do that? It’s your house.”

Francine hesitated. “Well, yes, that’s true, but your aunt has put a lot into the house. I haven’t lived there in a long time.”

“What about us?” Theo said. “We live there. I always assumed we’d keep it in the family, that someday . . . ” She stopped, accustomed to repressing her daydreams of someday owning the house herself, raising her own children there, turning half the third floor into her library. But now wasn’t the time to repress that. This was a battle. Now was the time to bring all her weapons out. “I imagined my own kids there,” she said. “We have all this history in that house. How can we just let it go?”

“Oh, Theodora,” Francine said, “do you really want to live there someday?”

“Yes,” Theo said firmly. “Or if it doesn’t work out for me, then I want it to go to Josh or Claire.”

“Eloise tells me you kids won’t stay in Cincinnati.”

“Well, what does she know?” Anger flashed through Theo, the particular kind of indignant anger you feel when someone levels an accusation that might be true. “She has no idea what we’ll end up doing. No idea at all. She only cares about what
she
wants me to do.”

“And what does she want you to do?”

“She wants me to get a job at someplace like Harvard and never look back. She wants me to have the life she should have had. But I’m not her, Francine. I can’t be her, and what’s more I don’t want to be.”

“No, no, of course you don’t,” Francine said. “You have to live your own life, honey, and I don’t want to do anything to hurt you, or your brother and sister. It’s good to know you feel this way. I won’t do anything rash, I promise. Let me just think about things.”

“Thank you,” Theo said.

“You’re very welcome,” Francine said. “I’m glad I could help.”

After she hung up, Theo had a few moments of relief, when the bright street seemed a cheerful place, lively and welcoming. Then the guilt hit her. She heard again the pleasure in Francine’s voice at Theo’s outburst, at being appealed to, at the opportunity to put her judgmental daughter in the wrong. All those years ago, Theo had been the one to say, “I think we should stay here.” Even now she remembered saying it, and not just because once, during the one huge fight Theo could remember ever having with her aunt, about her decision to come home for grad school, she’d
said to Eloise, “If you hate it here so much, why did we stay?” and Eloise had said, “Because you wanted to.” She had wanted to stay. Everything had hinged on her wanting to stay. Theo had been the cause for the radical shift in her aunt’s existence, for the fact that Eloise’s own academic career had been derailed. Now here she was trying to derail her again. The worst part was, she wasn’t going to call Francine back and say she hadn’t meant it. She
had
meant it. She was sorry, but not sorry enough. She felt so wretched with guilt and grief and a terrible gripping fear that soon the house really would be gone that she walked into the first bar she saw and proceeded to get very, very drunk.

Three vodka gimlets in, Theo could feel herself listing on her stool, but
still she caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for another one. The bartender obliged, and just as the drink landed in front of her a voice behind her said, “Hey. Professor Clarke?”

Theo turned on the barstool to see who had spoken, and only as she did so did she realize how very drunk she was. “Whoa,” she said, in the general direction of a pinkish face surrounded by brownish hair. The face had a mouth, and the mouth smiled. Why was it smiling like that?

“Wes,” the mouth said. “I’m Wes.”

“Are you?” Theo asked. It was an attractive face. A very attractive face, now that her vision had cleared. Brown eyes, nicely shaped nose, generous mouth. Kind of a familiar face. “I’m not a professor yet,” she said.

“But you were my teacher,” he said.

“Oh,” Theo said. “Oh, fuck.”

“Why fuck?” He climbed onto the stool next to hers. “Was I that bad a student?”

“Were you that bad a student?” Repeating the student’s question bought you time to think of an answer. A handy tip. Had she gotten that from Eloise?

“You gave me an A,” he said. “My only A that quarter.”

“Did you deserve it?” she asked, even though she knew who he was now, and she knew that he had. He’d been a good student, although at this moment the main thing she remembered about him was that he had a tattoo on his upper arm—some kind of circular design she’d seen poking out of the sleeves of his T-shirts and had assumed was some other culture’s symbol for peace or deep thinking or a similar high-minded concept with which an idealistic college boy would want to decorate himself. She couldn’t see the tattoo now, because he was wearing a long-sleeved tee, but she knew it was there. His shirt was the one with the wishful-thinking map of a Cincinnati subway. She had one too, in her collection of T-shirts that proclaimed her hometown pride. “I hate myself,” she thought, and then realized she’d said it aloud.

“Why?” the guy—Wes—asked.

“I’m making an ass of myself in front of one of my students,” she said.

“How so?”

She shrugged. “Being drunk.”

“I’m drunk, too,” he said.

“You are? Why are you drunk so early?”

“It was an accident. My friends wanted to play pool, and to play pool you have to go to a bar. What about you?”

She hesitated. What reason could she give? “All teachers are heavy drinkers,” she said. “Our students drive us to it.”

“Good thing I’m not your student anymore.”

“I’m still sorry you’re seeing me like this,” she said. “I hate for the illusion to come crashing down all at once.”

“What illusion?”

“That I’m wise and in control of myself and don’t have a personal life.”

He laughed. “Is that what you think people think? Or just what you want them to think?”

“Both, I guess. It’s what I always thought of my teachers. I’m kind of an authority person.”

“You’re, like, a Fascist?”

“Authority, not authoritarian,” she said, and then realized he was teasing. “Did that sound teachery?”

“Very,” he said. “But explain.”

“I’ve always had automatic respect for authority,” she said. “If anything I have to fight the urge to do what I’m told. When necessary, you know. It was kind of a puzzlement to me to discover how many students aren’t like that at all. I didn’t realize I’d have to prove I deserved authority.” She took a sip of her drink. “Maybe I
am
a Fascist.”

He was looking at her with a funny expression.

“Are you about to agree with me? Are you going to say I was a Fascist as a teacher? I think you’re supposed to contradict me now.”

He said, “I had a huge crush on you.”

“What? I’m sorry, what now?”

“I had a huge crush on you.” He leaned back on his stool and spread his arms wide. “Huge.”

She gaped at him. “No way.”

“Wow, you are really surprised,” he said.

“Yes! Yes, I am really surprised. You were, like, the boy all the girls in the class liked.”

“Was I?”

“Oh, come on, you didn’t notice that? They practically all swooned every time you answered a question.”

“I only had eyes for you,” he said and grinned. “I thought you guessed.”

“Me? No, I had no idea.” She leaned back and studied him. He’d cut his hair since he’d been in her class, when he’d worn it shaggy but not too long—a length that said, I’m cool and open-minded, but within reason. Over that hair—the sort of golden brown that had probably in childhood been blond—he’d frequently worn a purple knit cap, even in warm weather. Once, she’d asked him about this cap, and he’d told her reading Chekhov in his creative writing class had made him think about the importance of details in creating characters, so he was trying it on himself. This was both ridiculous and adorable and had caused her to be unable to look at him. “Huh. So the popular college boy finally had a crush on me, several years too late for it to matter.”

“Hey,” he said. He sounded genuinely injured.

“What? I’m sorry, what did I say?”

“That my crush didn’t matter.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean your feelings were meaningless. I meant it was too late for me to do anything about it.”