by Leah Stewart
“Yes, but that was before I understood the kids’ position. I can hardly give it to you to sell knowing how they feel, can I?”
“I don’t make all my decisions based on how they feel,” Eloise said. Her mother laughed, and Eloise, taken aback, inadvertently said, “Do I?” She never liked to give her mother an opening—not just to criticize or tease but even to express love or sympathy. She never liked to give her mother an opening of any kind.
“Eloise, sweetheart, that’s a subject for another day,” Francine said. “I just wanted to let you know I’ve set this up.”
“Set it up? Like a legal arrangement? Or, no, more like a competition.” Eloise could feel her anger growing. “You should pitch it as a reality show. Matriarch pulls the strings while relatives race to the altar to win the family house.”
“It’s not a competition,” Francine said, managing to sound wounded. “Getting married is just a good measure of whether people are ready to settle down in life.”
Was this Francine’s elaborate way of getting at Eloise for being, as far as she knew, single? What was Eloise if not settled down? “That’s bullshit,” Eloise said.
“Is it?” Francine said. “Look at history.”
“Are you kidding?” Eloise asked. “Are you kidding me? I wrote a book—Never mind. You’ve got to be kidding about this whole thing, right? No one’s even close to getting married. This is just yet another way to avoid keeping your promise. If you didn’t want to give me the house, Mom, why the hell did you ever tell me that you would?”
“Don’t be selfish, Eloise. I’m trying to think of everyone here. I’m trying to see the big picture.”
“The big picture is that I need the house now and they don’t. If you’re assessing based on need, my need is greater.”
“Your financial need, maybe,” Francine said. “But there are all sorts of need.”
Two blocks from Heather’s house, Eloise pulled the car over to the curb and stopped. She closed her eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“This is not just about you. I’m thinking of those children. When Theo called, she was practically in hysterics. She begged me not to let you do it. I don’t think you’ve really considered how much that house means to her. It was what gave her a sense of security after she lost her parents.”
“It was the house that did that, huh?” Eloise said. “I don’t suppose it had anything to do with me.”
“You did your best,” Francine said, and the implication that her best clearly wasn’t good enough hung in the air. Eloise had no idea why this should sting her like it did, when Francine’s best was a damn sight less adequate than hers.
“You left me with them,” Eloise said. “I gave up my life. You told me you were going to give me that house.”
There was a pause before Francine spoke. “When you put it like that,” she said, “it sounds like you took them because you thought you were going to get paid.”
Eloise pulled the phone from her ear and looked at the screen. She watched ten seconds of the call tick by, heard her mother’s tinny voice say her name. Then she pressed End.
She called Jason Bamber’s hotel and asked for his room.
“Hey,” he said, “are you coming back?”
She hesitated. “I shouldn’t,” she said. “I can’t. But, tell me, were you serious about that job?”
“You mean was I just trying to get into your pants?”
“Were you?”
“Well, obviously,” he said. “But, no, I was serious. I think you’d be great. Are you saying you’re interested?”
She didn’t want to live anymore in her house, where there was water damage in the basement and enough cracks between the bricks that a multithousand-dollar tuck-pointing job couldn’t be put off much longer, where there was an astonishingly ungrateful niece. She could live at Heather’s, though, where, like tonight, there’d be music and laughter and wine. There’d be Heather waiting for her, waiting like she was right now. But. What was the but? The talk of dilation and meconium and the bloody show? Not those topics, not exactly, but the fact that the topics were always exactly the same. Here in Cincinnati her life returned and returned again to the same moments, and not just in repetition of the same meetings, the same classes, the same turn onto the same road, but in what defined her, what she thought about. Here every pain of childhood and family came back again and again, here she felt over and over the same goddamn things. This aspect of her life more than any other went on reminding her that the person she was now would be completely unrecognizable to the person she’d once been.
The person she’d once been had had Rachel. Rachel to make it better, to make it funny, to imitate their mother saying, “I’m thinking of those children,” in a fluting voice, striking a pleased-with-herself pose. But now there was no eleven-year-old Rachel to choreograph elaborate dance routines in the playroom. No twenty-two-year-old Rachel insisting on reprising one of those routines, laughing, then serious, then laughing again. No Rachel—pregnant, three weeks away from Theo’s arrival, hugging Eloise over her belly before Eloise went back to college, the baby moving between them and Rachel holding on a long time while the baby kneed and elbowed them both. Or maybe Eloise holding on a long time. Or both of them holding on. Sometimes Rachel’s absence was all Eloise could see in that house. Signs of her everywhere. Her bedroom still the blue she’d painted it. Her voice emerging from Theo’s mouth. The forsythia she’d planted going unpruned in the backyard. But never Rachel herself. Rachel would never stop being gone.
“Eloise?” Jason prompted. “Are you interested?”
“Yes,” she said. “I guess I am.”
10
Theo walked through the parking lot toward the Museum Center with the sun blazing in her eyes and her heart hammering in her throat. She was meeting Noah. She’d enticed him there under false pretenses, telling him she wanted his advice on the job search process, since he’d been through it so recently. He’d suggested a drink, but she’d panicked at the thought of something so overtly date-like and suggested they meet in the Cincinnati History Museum, which he should see if he never had. He’d agreed, amiable as ever, without any inkling of the real reason for her call. On the phone after she’d unveiled her plan for the house Francine had said, “Do you know what your prospects are?”
“Not exactly,” Theo said. “I mean, I’m not sure.”
“Well, you’d better start figuring it out.”
The word prospects had made her think of Noah. That made no sense, of course, but there it was, and she’d ridden her illogical impulse all the way through calling him.
From childhood Theo had loved the model of the city in the Cincinnati History Museum, with its neighborhoods captured in different eras. She liked the fact that there were buildings she recognized in the 1940s downtown, the way the model illustrated the city’s longevity. She showed her membership card to the nice old man at the door and made her way down the ramp that led into the body of the museum, passing models of hilly neighborhoods along one side. Noah was midway down the ramp, leaning over Mount Adams to watch the model streetcar climb an incline, signaling its rise with a tiny blinking light. He seemed engrossed, so she took the opportunity to look at him closely, something she normally didn’t allow herself to do. Eye contact with him felt charged with significance to such a degree that she could barely meet his eye at all. Why did she like him so much? Any answer she thought of—his sense of humor, his rumpled good looks—seemed so banal as to be useless. It was incredibly frustrating to feel something so strongly and be unable to explain it. And if the feelings he engendered resulted largely in disappointment, guilt, and self-loathing—if she knew that—why was she nevertheless made so happy by the sight of his chaotic curls, his well-worn concert tee?
He turned and saw her before she could solve the problem. “Hey,” he said. “This is cool. I can’t believe I’ve never been here.”
“I love the little streetcars,” she said, joining him at
the display. “I wish we still had the real ones.”
“Well, there’s that campaign to bring them back, right? Though not to Mount Adams, which is too bad. Imagine riding one up that hill.”
“I know,” she said. “The view is incredible.”
“For some reason I thought Cincinnati would be flat.” He started walking down the ramp toward the rest of the diorama, his eyes turned up to the model planes whirring in a circle above the model downtown.
“City of the Seven Hills,” she said.
“I thought Midwest and pictured, like, Kansas or something. Wizard of Oz Kansas. Prairie lands and tornadoes.”
Theo laughed. “In black and white.”
“Exactly,” he said. “The first time I drove up into that neighborhood that looks like San Francisco, it blew my mind.”
“Columbia-Tusculum,” Theo said. “I love those houses. I wish I lived in a purple house.”
“Really?”
“Is that surprising?”
“You never wear purple,” he said. “More like dark greens, or browns.” He pointed at her shirt. “Or gray.”
She looked down at herself and felt dismayed to see that he was right. She wore a denim skirt and a loose gray tank top. “I dress in camouflage,” she said. Only then was she struck with the realization that he’d paid enough attention to her clothes to know what colors she chose. She felt a sudden need to look at the model and hurried ahead of him a few steps, to the edge of the miniature downtown.
“I know some of these buildings,” Noah said.
“Don’t you love that? My dentist’s office has an old photo of downtown on the wall, and those two buildings are in it.” She pointed. “And a ton of people on the streets, too, way more than you ever see downtown now unless there’s a Reds game or a concert on Fountain Square. I stare at it every time I get my teeth cleaned. Where are all those people going? What are they doing?”
“Wouldn’t you love to be a time-traveling mind reader?” Noah asked.
“My God, yes,” Theo said.
“I love that Cincinnati is such an old city. For the U.S., I mean.”
“Me, too,” she said. “I like thinking about what came before in the parts of the city I know. You know? I like the idea of all the layers. New places don’t have layers, just surfaces.”
“You should go to Latin America,” he said. “Try standing in a Mayan ruin if you want to feel some serious awe.”
“I have to do that. Have you driven by the oldest house here? It’s no Mayan ruin but it is from the late 1700s. It’s near Columbia-Tusculum.”
“You should take me on a tour,” he said. “Show me the historical highlights.”
“Definitely!” she said. “We have a great park system, too, you know. I bet you’ve never explored Alms Park, or maybe even Eden Park.” He said nothing to that, and she worried she’d gone too far, been too open in her enthusiasm. And why had she brought up the freaking park system? That was a total non sequitur. She’d probably weirded him out, implying she wanted a romantic stroll under the trees.
After a moment Noah asked, “Would you live here? I mean if you got a job. Would you stay?”
“Yes.” Theo sighed. “I want to live here.”
“Really.” He laughed. “I don’t hear that a whole lot. But then I don’t meet many people who are actually from here.”
“A lot of my high school friends couldn’t wait to get out.”
“That’s typical.”
“Not if you live in New York, though, right? How many teenagers are, like, ‘Get me the hell out of Manhattan?’”
“That’s true,” he said. “But with New York I sometimes think: Is it the place, or is it the idea of the place? Because the idea is great until you’re paying a thousand dollars a month for a one-room apartment.”
“It’s both, don’t you think? New York is one of those places that is an idea. Where people go to live out an idea. And then a lot of them are satisfied by the idea. Or I assume they are.”
“You’re absolutely right.” He seemed excited now, waving his hand in expansive agreement. “L.A. is the same way.”
“Well, yes and no,” Theo said. “If you go there it’s because you want to be in show business. So it’s a much more specific idea.”
“True.” He sounded disappointed. “Maybe San Francisco is closer to what you mean.”
“And Austin.”
“Portland.”
“Paris.”
Noah laughed. “If we’re leaving the country all bets are off.”
“Where would you go?”
“Mexico City, baby.” He smiled at her. “What about you?”
“I don’t know.” She looked around at tiny Cincinnati. “I really do like it here.”
He stopped walking to look her full in the face. “Seriously, I like hearing that,” he said. “Since I might end up staying, whether I want to or not.” He sighed.
“The Midwest,” she said. “It’s like quicksand.” He laughed a gratifying laugh.
They’d made their way past downtown and the headquarters of Procter & Gamble, and now they were standing before a model of Over-the-Rhine in the 1800s. The museum itself, built in what had once been the grand train station, was on the edge of this neighborhood, which abutted downtown. Now it was largely a poor black neighborhood with a huge vacancy rate, site of an ongoing debate about gentrification, with all its impossible questions about race and class and the value of historical buildings and the reasons for crime and what a city should be and who it was for. Music Hall, a gorgeous Victorian building that still hosted the symphony and the opera, had an enclosed bridge between it and a nearby parking garage, so, Theo had always assumed, suburban music lovers could avoid any encounter with the actual city. Theo could very easily work herself into anger at the people who lived on the edge of the city while still depending on it, yet feared and avoided it and resented any use of their tax dollars to improve it. But that wasn’t the mood she wanted to be in, so she focused on the tiny nineteenth-century neighborhood of German immigrants, a riot of saloons and beer gardens, everybody stuffed with hops and sausages. Noah leaned in, too. “I wonder who built this,” he said. “The detail is incredible. So intricate.”
“I know,” Theo said “I like to imagine someone working so hard to perfect something so small.”
“I wish I could go to this place,” he said, looking at the beer garden. “It looks like a rockin’ good time.”
“The whole neighborhood was a rockin’ good time,” she said. “You know how the ballet’s right near here? It’s built in the footprint of an old brewery. They store the costumes underground where the beer barrels used to be. The conditions are as perfect for the costumes as they were for the beer. Isn’t that funny?”
“That’s cool,” he said. “If I say I’d take beer over the ballet, can we still be friends?”
She pretended to ponder this question. “Maybe,” she said. “But you’re on probation.” She looked at the model again. “I just want to get in there and rearrange them like a kid, you know? See that lady there, in the yellow skirt? I’d hurry her up. She’s forever missing the oompah band.”
He nodded, grinning. “You don’t want to miss the oompah band.”
She laughed, and as she did she swayed toward him a little, and then caught herself and took a big step back. Did the odd look on his face mean he’d taken note of that? She couldn’t read his expression but she imagined he was amused by her, that he could sense the adolescent flutterings of her heart.
“What’s this way?” he asked, and then turned abruptly before she could answer, like a soldier on the march. She followed him to the vintage streetcar in the middle of the next room. At the door to the streetcar he turned and offered her his hand, and she took it automatically and stepped inside. He raised his hand a little as she moved, as though he was lifting her in, and absurd as it was—the step was no more than six inches off the ground—she felt like he was lifting her. She wanted to keep h
olding his hand, so she made herself let go so abruptly she practically snatched her own hand away. She walked to the front of the car and slid into a seat, and he slid into the one behind her. He sat with his back against the wall and looked up at the old advertisements above the windows: DELICIOUS COFFEE . . . EVERY TIME. She could still feel his hand on hers, but it struck her that the anxious desire he inspired was for his company more than his touch.
Her phone rang, vibrating her bag, and she reached for it automatically and glanced at the screen. It was Claire.
“Do you need to get that?” Noah asked.
“No,” she said, though she’d been trying to reach her sister for three days, missing her, wanting escape, thinking that escape might be a visit to Claire in New York. She dropped the phone back in her bag. “It’s my sister. We talk all the time.” True enough, though increasingly less true.
“I envy you guys being so close,” Noah said. “I don’t have much in common with my sisters.”
Theo wasn’t quite listening, her mind still on Claire, who had been, in their recent conversations, even less forthcoming than usual with the details of her life. “No?”
“Not like you guys anyway.”
“Do we have a lot in common?”
He feigned astonishment. Or maybe really felt it. “Do you have a lot in common? Are you kidding?”
“Well, I’m in history, Josh is a musician slash whatever he is now, Claire’s a ballet dancer . . . ”
“Arts and academia,” he said. “Esoteric, low-paying, high-minded pursuits.”
She laughed. “Maybe not high-minded.”
“Plus, you and Josh have a very similar sense of humor.”
“Mmmmm.”
“You guys are lucky. Seriously.”
Theo nodded, not meeting his eyes. Change the subject, she thought. Say something. The best she could come up with, looking around the streetcar: “Don’t you feel like it’s sixty years ago?”
“Except for the cell phone,” he said. “But yes. I’m glad you called.”
“You are?” she said and wanted to smack herself for the pleasure so obvious in her voice.