Chloe responds to Eli’s criticism with a gasp. She reaches out, knocks over her glass, maybe deliberately, maybe not. A sprig of mint floats like a raft in a puddle of tea. “I knew you’d find a way to turn him against me.” She flees the room, pounds up the stairs, which squeak loudly with her passage. A door slams, but she can still be heard through it, sobbing on her bed. She’s waiting for Eli to follow her.
Instead he stands, catches the mint before it falls off the table edge, wipes up the tea with his napkin.
“You’re not making my life any easier,” Jude tells him.
“I’m truly sorry about that part,” he says. “But love is love.”
Jude gives Eli fifteen minutes in which to go calm Chloe down. God knows, nothing Jude could say would accomplish that. She waits until he’s up the stairs, then follows him, but only as high as the first creaking step, so that she can almost, but not quite hear what they’re saying. Chloe’s voice is high and impassioned, Eli’s apologetic. Then everything is silent, suspiciously so, and she’s just about to go up the rest of the way even though the fifteen minutes isn’t over when she hears Eli again and realizes he’s in the hall. “Let me talk to your mom,” Eli is saying and Jude hurries back to the table before he catches her listening.
She notices that he manages the stairs without a sound. “She’s fine,” Eli tells her. “She’s on the computer.”
Jude decides not to finish her drink. It wouldn’t be wise or responsible. It wouldn’t be motherly. She’s already blurred a bit at the edges though she thinks that’s fatigue more than liquor. She’s been having so much trouble sleeping.
She eases her feet out of her shoes, leans down to rub her toes. “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve just put the children to bed?” she asks.
Eli’s back in his seat across the table, straight-backed in the chair, looking soberly sexy. “Forgive me for this,” he says. He leans forward slightly. “But are you trying to seduce me? Mrs. Robinson?”
Jude absolutely wasn’t, so it’s easy to deny. “I wouldn’t date you even without Chloe,” she says. Eli’s been polite, so she tries to be polite back. Leave it at that.
But he insists on asking.
“It’s just such a waste,” she says. “I mean, really. High school and high school girls? That’s the best you can do with immortality? It doesn’t impress me.”
“What would you do?” he asks.
She stands, begins to gather up the dishes. “God! I’d go places. I’d see things. Instead you sit like a lump through the same high school history classes you’ve taken a hundred times, when you could have actually seen those things for yourself. You could have witnessed it all.”
Eli picks up his plate and follows her into the kitchen. One year ago, she and Michael had done a complete remodel, silestone countertops and glass-fronted cupboards. Cement floors. The paint was barely dry when Michael left with his new girlfriend. Jude had wanted something homier—tile and wood—but Michael likes modern and minimal. Sometimes Jude feels angrier over this than over the girlfriend. He was seeing Kathy the whole time they were remodeling. Probably in some part of his brain he’d known he was leaving. Why couldn’t he let her have the kitchen she wanted?
“I’ll wash,” Eli says. “You dry.”
“We have a dishwasher.” Jude points to it. Energy star. Top of the line. Guilt offering.
“But it’s better by hand. Better for talking.”
“What are we talking about?”
“You have something you want to ask me.” Eli fills the sink, adds the soap.
That’s a good guess. Jude can’t quite get to it though. “You could have been in Hiroshima or Auschwitz,” she says. “You could have helped. You could have walked beside Martin Luther King. You could have torn down the Berlin Wall. Right now, you could be in Darfur, doing something good and important.”
“I’m doing the dishes,” says Eli.
Outside Jude hears a car passing. It turns into the Klein’s driveway. The headlights go off and the car door slams. Marybeth Klein brought Jude a casserole of chicken divan when Michael left. Jude has never told her that Jack Klein tried to kiss her at the Swanson’s New Year’s Party, because how do you say that to a woman who’s never been anything but nice to you? The Kleins’ boy, Devin, goes to school with Chloe. He smokes a lot of dope. Sometimes Jude can smell it in the backyard, coming over the fence. Why can’t Chloe be in love with him?
“If you promised me not to change Chloe, would you keep that promise?” She hears more than feels the tremble in her voice.
“Now, we’re getting to it,” Eli says. He passes her the first of the glasses and their hands touch. His fingers feel warm, but she knows that’s just the dishwater. “Would you like me to change you?” Eli asks. “Is that what you really want?”
The glass slips from Jude’s hand and shatters on the cement. A large, sharp piece rests against her bare foot. “Don’t move,” says Eli. “Let me clean it up.” He drops to his knees.
“What’s happening?” Chloe calls from upstairs. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I broke a glass,” Jude shouts back.
Eli takes hold of her ankle. He lifts her foot. There is a little blood on her instep and he wipes this away with his hand. “You’d never get older,” he says. “But Michael will and you can watch.” Jude wonders briefly how he knows Michael’s name. Chloe must have told him.
His hand on her foot, his fingers rubbing her instep. The whiskey. Her sleepiness. She is feeling sweetly light-headed, sweetly light-hearted. Another car passes. Jude hears the sprinklers start next door sounding almost, but not quite like rain.
“Is Eli still there?” Chloe’s pitch is rising again.
Jude doesn’t answer. She speaks instead to Eli. “I wasn’t so upset about Michael leaving me as you think. It was a surprise. It was a shock. But I was mostly upset about him leaving Chloe.” She thinks again. “I was upset about him leaving me with Chloe.”
“You could go to Darfur then. If petty revenge is beneath you,” Eli says. “Do things that are good and important.” He is lowering his mouth to her foot. She puts a hand on his head to steady herself.
Then she stops, grips his hair, pulls his head up. “But I wouldn’t,” she says. “Would I?” Jude makes him look at her. She finds it a bit evil, really, offering her immortality under the guise of civic service when the world has such a shortage of civic-minded vampires in it. And she came so close to falling for it.
She sees that the immortal brain must be different—over the years, certain crucial linkages must snap. Otherwise there is no explaining Eli and his dull and pointless, endless, dangerous life.
Anyway, who would take care of Chloe? She hears the squeaking of the stairs.
“Just promise me you won’t change Chloe,” she says hastily. She’s crying now and doesn’t know when that started.
“I’ve never changed anyone who didn’t ask to be changed. Never will,” Eli tells her.
Jude kicks free of his hand. “Of course, she’ll ask to be changed,” she says furiously. “She’s fifteen years old! She doesn’t even have a functioning brain yet. Promise me you’ll leave her alone.”
It’s possible Chloe hears this. When Jude turns, she’s standing, framed in the doorway like a portrait. Her hair streams over her shoulders. Her eyes are enormous. She’s young and she’s beautiful and she’s outraged. Jude can see her taking them in—Eli picking up the shards of glass so Jude won’t step on them. Eli kneeling at her feet.
“You don’t have to hang out with her,” Chloe tells Eli. “I’m not breaking up with you no matter what she says.”