Being Esther Read online

  Ceely screwed up her face. “What?”

  “Humpty Dumpty. You know. He fell off the wall.”

  “You’re weird,” Ceely said.

  Esther held out a pile of folded laundry. “Get up,” she said. “Take these and put them away in your drawer.”

  She sets the picture back on the end table and consults Marty’s old Timex. The watch is too big and the way it flops on her wrist is mildly annoying. But it’s easy to put on and it keeps good time. “Like Marty,” she says to the bird. “Annoying, yet dependable.”

  The bird chirps and Esther checks the time. A few more minutes and the Pearlman girl will ring the bell.

  When Esther is buckled up (Fanny refuses to start the car until her passenger is securely fastened), she starts talking about her old friend Sonia Markel. “Your mother knew her.” Fanny nods, and Esther continues. “I’d been meaning to call, but something always got in the way, though now I can’t tell you what. Then one day, I started calling all the names in my address book. A to Z. When I got to the M’s, I couldn’t wait to speak to Sonia. But I got Buddy instead. For some reason he thought I was in San Diego. When I told him I was in Chicago, he said, ‘Ah, Chicago. I hear it’s wonderful,’ as if he’d always longed to visit.”

  Speaking to the back of Fanny’s head is getting on Esther’s nerves, but Fanny refuses to let her passengers ride up front. “The suicide seat’s off limits,” she said the first time she steered Esther to the backseat. Esther has known Fanny from day one. She was an easy baby who became a large-boned girl with sturdy hands and a strong laugh. She played field hockey in high school and became a serious golfer in college, which Esther remembers because she used to wish that Ceely, who had been so morose in those days, would take up a sport. Fanny never gave Helen any trouble, though she never married, which caused her mother some distress. In the old days, Fanny would have been labeled a spinster or old maid, but Esther knows that such phrases have gone out of style. For some reason, they no longer apply, perhaps because girls like Fanny (would she ever get over thinking of them as girls?) were no longer the exception. Many of Esther’s friends had daughters—bright, pretty, capable young women, with successful careers as teachers, doctors, lawyers—who for one reason or another appear to have forgotten to marry.

  Fanny bounces from job to job. She cobbles together a life. On weekends, she plays piano with a band that gets gigs at weddings and bar mitzvahs. Recently, she began a driving service that involves transporting older women with disposable income and lapsed drivers’ licenses to the hairdresser, airport, doctor’s office.

  “What kind of job is that for a Jewish girl?” Esther had said when Clara first recommended Fanny’s services.

  But Fanny is cheerful and conscientious and surprisingly good company. She maneuvers through traffic with a kind of skill and determination she might have honed on the hockey field.

  “You’ve got to understand,” Esther continues. “Buddy’s no stranger to this city. His father owned the old Rialto on the West Side. Buddy worked the concession stand, even on school nights. While the movie ran, his parents played chess in the lobby and he sat on a stool behind the candy counter doing his homework. The next day, he’d come to school smelling of popcorn. Now he pretends not to know Chicago. That’s what people do. They forget where they came from.”

  Fanny nods and a sprig of her unruly mane escapes the grip of a thick plastic barrette. Before Helen went gaga (recently she hit a woman who remarked that she liked the rain), she had a standing appointment at a hair salon in Evanston. Esther considers saying something to Fanny about her mother’s hairdresser. Or perhaps she can drop the name of the fellow who cuts Ceely’s hair.

  “Where was I?” Esther says, as she opens her purse and fishes out a box of Tic Tacs.

  “They forget where they came from,” Fanny says.

  “That’s right.” Esther leans as far forward as the seat belt allows. She wants to rip it off, park herself up front beside Fanny and say that when her time is up, it’s up. But she stays put as she tells Fanny, “Sonia wouldn’t forget her origins. Sonia is Buddy’s wife. Or was. I suppose that’s more accurate. We met in high school, around the same time I met your mother.”

  Esther leans forward again and taps Fanny on the shoulder. “Stick out your hand.”

  “I’m driving, Mrs. L.,” Fanny protests.

  “You can drive with one hand. For a second. Now do as I say.”

  Reluctantly, Fanny obeys, letting Esther shake a few of the tiny mints into her sturdy palm. “There!” Esther chirps. “Isn’t that better?” She clasps her purse shut and settles back for the ride. “Now where was I?”

  “Sonia’s origins.”

  “Sonia. Yes. I missed her by six months. All those times I’d thought to call, and I missed her by six months. I know you’re wondering how the news could have escaped me. I wondered the same thing, until I realized, who would tell me? There’s hardly anyone left.”

  “People lose touch,” Fanny offers.

  “But we’d been so close.” Esther pauses. “She taught me to smoke. I talked her into bleaching her hair one summer. Sonia served me my first drink, not counting the kiddush wine my father set out on Friday nights.” Esther laughs. “We got our periods on the same day.”

  “Like nuns!”

  “Nuns?”

  “Go on, Mrs. L.”

  “Anyway, when Buddy told me about Sonia, I was so rattled, I blurted, ‘I’m so glad you’re alive!’”

  Fanny nods, unleashing another tangle of curls, and again Esther wonders again if there’s a way to work a good hairdresser into the conversation. Maybe she’ll even suggest a little color to brighten things up. Fanny’s not too old to find someone. For years, she had a boyfriend who managed a restaurant on Rush Street. Helen once confided that she suspected Ned sold drugs on the side. Helen never approved of Ned, especially after he’d been in the picture for too many years without proposing marriage. Then one day Ned was married to a yoga instructor from the East Bank Club.

  Esther continues, “I was mortified.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Lustig.”

  “Oh, is right. It was an odd thing to say. But I am glad that Buddy is alive. And I’m glad that he’s coming to Chicago. He called back the next day and said he’d like to come for a visit. He hasn’t been here in years. He’d like to go to the cemetery to visit his parents. His sister’s there, too.”

  “You’re meeting Buddy at the cemetery?”

  Esther glares at the back of Fanny’s frizzly head. “No! What an idea. Buddy invited me to lunch. But first, I need to speak to Marty. I need him to understand that I want to be out in the world. For a while longer. Then Ceely can stash me away in that mauve-colored joint.”

  The red leather and warm woods come as a welcome relief from the damp, gray early November day. The Coq d’Or isn’t stark, stainless, or cool, like so many of the restaurants that have sprung up around town. Esther took Sophie here after their last visit to the cemetery and throughout the meal endured her granddaughter’s sarcastic observations. “You realize we’re having lunch in a museum display, Nonna. Like those recreations of old Indian villages? Or cave dwellings? One day, they’ll pack this place up and reassemble it at the Museum of Science and Industry.” Sophie rolled her eyes and, smiling at her own cleverness, continued. “They’ll put it somewhere between the old nickelodeon and Colleen Moore’s dollhouse.” For the rest of the meal, a dispirited Esther saw everything through her granddaughter’s jaundiced eye: the discreet waiters, the long-stemmed water goblets, the crisp napkins, the heavy cutlery, even the tiny cruet of sherry meant to be poured over the restaurant’s signature clam chowder. All the little touches that ordinarily brought Esther pleasure had appeared off-kilter. Today, though, she intends to enjoy it all. This restaurant, tucked away below the bustling lobby of the Drake Hotel, is her kind of place. Esther feels as if she’s come home.

  As her eyes adjust to the muted light, she scans the room for a silver-haired
man in a navy-blue blazer. Of course, half the diners fit that bill, but Buddy, lean and tall, good-looking in a Cesar Romero kind of way, is sure to stand out. She remembers that he could wear a mustache without evoking thoughts of Hitler or looking as if something had died on his upper lip.

  Suddenly, the maitre d’ appears and spirits her to a banquette in a dimly lit corner of the clubby room. He leaves her standing beside a table where an old man is perusing a menu. Esther is about to call out to the maitre d’ when the man looks up from his menu and stares at her with the most familiar blue eyes. He studies her intently as if she were a painting he doesn’t quite understand. Then he breaks into a smile, and with effort steadies himself on the table and like a long-legged wading bird, unfolds his lanky frame.

  “Esther! Esther! It’s so good to see you.” He moves toward her, arms outspread, like a toddler taking fledgling steps. Esther takes him in. He is wearing a navy-blue blazer, tattersall shirt, and striped tie. Then her eyes travel to his feet, and after seeing that he is wearing gym shoes with Velcro closures, she looks away. Seeing those childish shoes feels like an invasion of this man’s privacy.

  “Buddy! Buddy Markel!” Cheerfully, she returns the greeting. An awkward exchange of air kisses follows, before he ushers her to the booth and they both settle down.

  “There!” he exclaims, beaming at her from across the table. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  She shakes her head and smiles uncertainly. For days, she’s practiced saying, “I’d recognize you anywhere,” but with the exception of those dazzling blue eyes, there is nothing familiar about this man. She can’t think of a thing to say.

  Fortunately, the waiter arrives and Buddy orders a martini for himself, and over her modest demurral, “A glass of chardonnay for the lady.”

  Then Buddy launches into a tale about his recent hip surgery, and Esther allows that she dislocated her shoulder after tripping on a cord in her living room. “I’m much better,” she quickly adds. “But now my daughter has ramped up her campaign to move me into one of those places where you get all your meals. And if you want, they have organized activities. Sing-alongs. Bingo. That sort of thing,” she says, dismissively brushing a freshly manicured hand through the air. “I suppose Ceely means well,” Esther continues. “She says it’s like a cruise. Or maybe I said that.” Nervously, she laughs. “Listen to me. Anyway, I’m all right. And,” she pauses, scrutinizing Buddy’s face, thinking that she detects, beneath the wreckage, the man she would have recognized anywhere. “And you look all right, too,” she declares.

  The drinks arrive, short-circuiting their confessions of debility. Buddy holds up his glass. “Here’s to being all right.”

  Esther returns the toast and sinks back into the cozy booth, glad to be here with someone who can appreciate a place like the Drake, with all its creature comforts.

  Then an awkward silence descends upon them. Esther is wondering whether they’ve exhausted their conversational bag of tricks when Buddy says, “That’s a lovely dress, Esther. Blue becomes you.”

  She blushes and almost blurts out her plans to be buried in it. But suppose he takes offense or finds it ghoulish that she chose to meet him in her funeral attire? To avoid any misunderstanding, she’d have to explain that it’s the best dress she ever owned, that she’d bought it during her svelte phase, and that recently she’d had it altered in accordance with her body’s latest revision. But that might lead to a confession of her fantasy double life involving that good-for-nothing Hank Stammler, who left his wife for some hotsy-totsy, long-legged girl who sold cigarettes at the Chez Paree. And that, in turn, might remind Buddy of the time he’d followed her into the kitchen. There are so many landmines lurking here between the heavy cutlery and white table linens.

  Their food arrives and after the waiter finishes hovering with his pepper mill, Esther leans across the table and playfully asks, “Whatever happened to pepper shakers?”

  Buddy, struggling with his club sandwich, doesn’t reply. Esther stifles the urge to reach across and rearrange the sandwich for him, then wonders if she could have managed any better? Seeing Buddy is like holding up a mirror to her own infirmities. She’s glad she ordered the mushroom risotto, to which she turns her attention.

  “Pepper shakers?” he says, and Esther perks up, ready to fire the next volley across the table.

  “Why, I don’t know,” she says. “I suppose they’re just one of those things that have gone by the wayside. Like black-and-white TV.”

  Buddy looks up at Esther. “Or typewriters,” he says. “When was the last time you saw one of those?”

  Esther tells him about the old black Royal with pearly keys that she still can’t part with. “We used to haul it out of the front hall closet and set it up on the dining room table. My father dictated letters and I typed.” She pauses, watching Buddy try to stuff a tomato back into his sandwich, before admitting defeat. After he sets the whole thing down, she continues. “They were complaint letters mostly. He had this need to set the record straight. Once, after biting into a chip of wood in a peanut cluster bar, he wrote to the head of the company and received a box of candy. Then his waterproof watch conked out when he wore it in the tub, but I’m not sure he received a new one. He even wrote to the head of Winnebago, offering to drive one of their vans across the country.” She laughs. “As if he’d be doing the company a huge favor. He offered to give free tours to anyone who asked. People would marvel at it. The company’s stock would soar.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Marty returned home early one day and saw what we were doing. I didn’t hear the end of that for a long time.”

  “Sonia,” Buddy says, as if it were his turn to bring up the name of a deceased spouse. “She, too, has gone by the wayside.” He fishes an olive from his drink, slides it off the toothpick with an ease that eluded him with the sandwich. He has nice hands. She can almost remember their touch, and wonders if it’s regret she’s feeling, regret that she didn’t get to know them any better.

  “I suppose we could put together quite a list,” Buddy says, before popping the olive in his mouth. He proceeds to tell Esther about a developer near Denver with plans to turn a vast stretch of grassland into vacation condominiums. “He wants to build an indoor ski slope. Or an auto-racing theme park.” Buddy shakes his head. “You know, there’s a certain owl that spends time on that land every year.”

  “Who ever heard of such a thing?” Esther debates whether to say more, but the thought of so much loss, both real and potential, is too dispiriting. Then, brightening, she says, “But the Drake is still here. And this charming restaurant. Don’t you love it?” she says, gesturing with a wave of her hand. “It’s like the dowager of Chicago hotels. The Grand Dame. The Queen Mum. When I walked in here, everything felt so familiar.” She smiles. “Even the sign on ladies’ room door brought me back. Powder Room. You don’t see that anymore.”

  She’s become voluble on a few sips of wine. “Listen to me, going on.” But Buddy, who is attempting to cut a potato chip with his knife and fork, seems lost again. It’s hard to believe this is the man who enjoyed a bad boy reputation. Once, when hosting a dinner party, Esther had gone to check on the roast and as she bent over the oven, she felt a hand on the small of her back. Something in the way that hand inched down to caress her bottom told her it wasn’t Marty’s. After shutting the door, she turned to confront the owner of the offending hand. Before she knew it, he was kissing her. And she kissed him back.

  In the following weeks, she had trouble eating, and once, when she spotted Sonia pushing her grocery cart toward her, Esther turned, went the other way, and hid out near the frozen foods until she was sure Sonia had left the store. Later, on a whim, she stepped inside the Catholic church down the block. With the exception of an older woman kneeling in the second pew, the place was empty. Esther walked around the cool, dimly lit sanctuary, not knowing what she was looking for. Then she spotted something that resembled an ornate phone booth. Her heart pounded as she approac
hed. She had no idea how this worked. Was someone sitting behind the velvet curtain waiting for her confession? What would she say? A dinner guest, the husband of a close friend of mine, grabbed me while I was checking on a standing rib roast. He kissed me and I kissed him back. I kissed him long enough to know that he tasted of gin. I’ve never done that before, not since I married Marty. And then she burst out laughing, the sound reverberating off the cold stone walls. It was the “summer of love.” Young people were running naked at Woodstock. They had sex in the mud, in the open, in front of friends, strangers, cameras. What did they care! Young women burned their bras. They took the pill. Marty’s assistant, that lazy mooch, Greenberg, had a wife who was fooling around with her tennis instructor. Still laughing, Esther ran out of the muted church, into the bright daylight. From then on, she steered clear of Buddy Markel.

  These thoughts rattle Esther. Her hand flies to her blouse, checking to see that the buttons are secure. She looks down at her plate, pushes the rice around with her fork, hiding out from Buddy the way she once hid from his wife. What if Buddy has read her mind? But Buddy is still struggling with his knife and fork, attempting to cut a potato chip.

  At last, Esther picks up the thread of their conversation. “I didn’t mean to suggest that anything—not even this glorious hotel—could compensate for the loss of an owl,” she says.

  “Of course you didn’t.” He sets down his knife and fork. “And I agree. This place is grand.”

  Then they begin listing all the things that had gone by the wayside. “Price stickers on grocery items,” Esther says.

  “Milkmen.”

  “Thank goodness for that, or we’d be forced to say milk-persons,” Esther jokes.