Being Esther Read online

  “Commune?” Marty and Esther sounded confused, so Jack explained that everyone pitched in as best they could to help support the group.

  Esther, annoyed, said, “I know about communes. I just didn’t think Ceely was that kind of girl.”

  Jack informed them that Ceely was making pottery, which she sold at street fairs in the summer.

  “And in the winter?” Marty asked.

  “Shush, Marty. Let the man speak,” Esther said, patting her husband’s hand.

  But Jack didn’t have much more to say. He tipped back in his chair and rolled two steel balls in the palm of his hand, as if it were now Marty and Esther’s turn to offer some vital piece of information.

  Before leaving, they asked Jack to find out more. Anything. How was Ceely’s health? Was there a boyfriend, perhaps? Did she have enough money?

  Three weeks later, they received a letter from Ceely. She was aware that they had hired someone to snoop on her. She threatened to sue them.

  That’s when Marty announced that as far as he was concerned Ceely was dead, and for the next week he sat shiva for their daughter.

  Esther still remembered the way Marty’s hand shook as he phoned Greenberg, his assistant, and told him to look after the store for a few days. “I’m fine, Abe. No. Just a little vacation.”

  Then, in accordance with tradition, Marty lit a candle, covered the mirrors with pillowcases, ripped his best shirt in the spot opposite his heart, stopped shaving, and for the next seven days moped around the house in worn slippers, mourning the death of a daughter who was very much alive—in Vermont. Meanwhile, Esther went about her business with pursed lips, steering clear of her husband as she made the bed, dusted, prepared dinner as always. She played solitaire and sewed new curtains for the kitchen. She finished the book that had been on her nightstand for weeks, and read the newspaper from cover to cover.

  Sometime during that morose week, Esther cut an ad from the paper. Someone was seeking an apartment sitter. Though she didn’t feel qualified for much, Esther figured she had the skills to look after a home. For the rest of the week, while Marty moped, the ad rolled around in her mind like the butterscotch candies she sucked on while doing the housework.

  Esther waited until Marty returned to work before calling to inquire about 1 BR near shops and el. Lots of light. She let the phone ring three times before hanging up and tucking the ad away in her jewelry box. She could go weeks without thinking about it. Then something would happen—like the morning Marty stormed off before breakfast because he couldn’t find his argyle socks—and she’d remember the ad, nestled beneath her mother’s pearls and the Lady Bulova that Marty had given her on her fortieth birthday.

  On those occasions when Esther started to dial the number, she’d remind herself that nobody in her family had ever left, not until death did them part. And then she’d hang up. Divorce was for movie stars, blues singers, jet-setters, for the class of people who exchanged partners as easily as their neighbor Manny Kaufman traded his Oldsmobile every fall for a new model. Divorce was for that woman down the street, Mrs. Gordon, whose daughter Susie had played with Ceely. The ex-Mrs. Gordon worked nights singing torch songs at the Palmer House. She dyed her hair blond, freshened her lipstick in public.

  In time, the ad became so yellowed Esther feared it would crumble at the slightest touch, like the wings of a dead butterfly or moth. Meanwhile, the apartment bloomed in her imagination. She envisioned walls the color of vanilla custard, rooms that smelled of lemon and roses. There would be just enough space for a narrow bed, her books, a radio, the dressmaker’s dummy upon which she’d fitted so many of Ceely’s garments. Only the plush voice of her favorite radio host and the ticking of the clock above the stove would breach the silence. Occasionally, when the el rumbled by, strangers would try and peer through her windows and wonder about the life inside.

  The first time Esther showed up without Marty, Jack looked confused. She sat across from him, on the edge of the wooden chair, snapping and unsnapping the clasp on her purse, which rested stiffly in her lap. She kept her coat buttoned up. “My husband must never find out that I’m here,” she said.

  Jack had little to offer, yet Esther found him oddly reassuring, like the rosary Ella Tucker, in 3A, fingered all day. Ella had those beads to soothe her spirits; Esther had Jack, with the messy desk and the clanging radiator.

  Jack reported that Ceely was working in a hardware store. “Dunnaway’s.”

  “Well, that’s good. At least it’s not your everyday Ace,” Esther replied. “Dunnaway’s,” she said, trying it on for size.

  In the silence that followed, her eyes settled on Jack’s desk, on the litter of paper, Styrofoam cups, stale Chinese carryout, empty Coke cans. How could she trust anything that emerged from that mess? Yet she did. Perhaps it was Jack’s voice that kept her coming back for more. It was as calm and reassuring as his handshake. The first time they’d met she hadn’t wanted to let go. Or perhaps it was the easy way he rolled those metal balls.

  “Qigong,” he explained, when Esther finally got up the nerve to ask. “They’re Chinese. The object is to roll them without letting them touch. They clear the mind, circulate life energy. They’re even good for my arthritis.” Jack shrugged, as if even he didn’t quite believe all that he was saying.

  “So you’ve been to China?” Esther realized how little she knew of Jack.

  “Nah. They sell these in Chinatown. Between the paper fans and the mah-jongg sets.” He reached across the desk. “Here,” he said, his arm outstretched, the metal balls nesting firmly in his cupped hand. “Give me your hand.”

  Stubbornly, Esther tightened her grip on the purse and thought of Ceely, four years old, refusing to hold her hand as they crossed the street.

  “Come on, Esther. Hold out your hand.”

  Jack’s hand was steady. His nails were clipped and, given the condition of his desk, surprisingly clean. A gold band flashed on his left ring finger. “Come on,” he coaxed, grinning at her. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she muttered, her gaze fixed on the glinting ring. She looked away. He’s a detective, after all. Could he sense her fear that one touch and she might never let go?

  Nervously, she extended a cupped hand, managing to hold it steady as he slipped the balls into her palm. They were warm. Jack’s warmth. She rocked them gently in the palm of her hand, as if she were handling robin’s eggs. Ceely once carried an egg around in a box lined with cotton balls and satin scraps from Esther’s fabric pile. She’d enrolled in an after-school babysitting class, and for one week was expected to look after that egg, guard it with her life. Midweek, Ceely abandoned the project. “It’s boring,” she said, when Esther urged her to stick with it. Ceely slouched and grimaced and called it stupid. “I don’t want to babysit!” Then she stormed outside, smashed the egg on the sidewalk, and sashayed back into the house as if she might earn a merit badge for insubordination.

  Esther’s cupped hand started to shake and then the balls crashed to the floor and rolled under the radiator. “Look what I’ve done!” she cried. “I broke them.”

  Jack, on hands and knees, grinned up at Esther as he fished them out, and assured her they didn’t break. “It’s harder than it looks,” he said, flopping back into his chair. “But you’ll get the hang of it.”

  After that, Esther trusted everything Jack told her. At one visit, when she asked if Ceely might have been brainwashed by one of those groups that takes all your money, he threw back his head and laughed. “No, Ceely isn’t party to anything like that.”

  Ceely changed jobs often. After the hardware store, she worked in quick succession at the A&P, a bookstore, and a coffee shop in Burlington that sold her mugs.

  “Odd jobs,” Jack said.

  “So she wasn’t fired?”

  “Not as far as I can tell.”

  “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “To be able to tell.”

 
He shrugged. “I suppose it is.” Then he rummaged through a drawer, pulled out what appeared to be a mug, handed it to Esther, and told her to turn it over. The letters CL had been scratched into the rough bottom. Esther traced the surface with her finger, as if she were caressing her daughter’s auburn hair. The mug, cold and awkward, reminded Esther of the Mother’s Day gifts Ceely had brought home over the years—crocheted pot holders, picture frames made from popsicle sticks, spindly plants in Dixie cups.

  Esther drank her afternoon tea from the mug, always returning it, before Marty got home, to the mahogany breakfront where she stored the Passover dishes and china teacups. She drank her tea and wrote letters to Ceely, every one of which came back unopened. We had our first crisp fall day today. I had to put on a coat when I ran my errands. I needed things for our new place. This and that. Nothing special. Our new apartment is much smaller than the house, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of room for you.

  Sometimes Esther reported what she’d read in the newspaper. She knew that Ceely received the same news in Vermont, just as she knew that she and Mrs. Singh read the same Sun-Times every morning, though that didn’t stop the two of them from clucking over one story or another as they passed on the stairway.

  Esther bought cards for Ceely on all the holidays. Rosh Hashanah. Chanukah. She found a Thanksgiving card that unfurled into a crown of turkey tail feathers. Sometimes she included a swatch of fabric from a garment that she was sewing. She even offered to make something for Ceely. I found some fleece the other day. It comes in jewel tones. I imagine you can use warm clothes in Vermont.

  Esther slipped a twenty-dollar bill into a birthday card. Buy yourself something special. A box of chocolates, perhaps.

  She thought of Marty, who never brought her chocolates. “You’re always on a diet,” he would say. But that wasn’t the point. Flowers, Marty. You could bring me flowers, if you’re so concerned about my weight. To Ceely, she wrote, Or if you prefer, treat yourself to flowers.

  She never wrote about Marty, not even when he started taking pills for high blood pressure, because it was Marty, she was sure, who had driven Ceely away. Esther never breathed a word of her theory to Marty, not even the morning he stormed out over the mismatched argyle socks. Where did blame get you? Look at the Tuckers in 3A. After their daughter died of that rare bone cancer, Ella told anyone within listening range that her husband Manny’s cousin had died of the same disease, at the exact same age. The mailman, the checker at the Jewel, the young girl who worked at the dry cleaners, all heard about Manny’s defective gene pool. Then one day, Manny didn’t come home.

  Esther and Ella used to go down for the mail at the same time every day. How many times, standing there in the foyer, had she lent a friendly ear after Manny took off? And when Ella cried about her dead daughter, Esther clutched the woman’s hand or patted her fleshy back. Then one day, trying to console Ella, she said, “You know, there’s more than one way to lose a child.” Ella turned and spit on Esther’s slippered feet before stalking up the stairs. After that, Esther started to listen for Ella; she waited until she heard Ella’s door click shut a second time before tiptoeing downstairs for her mail.

  Esther set the mug on Jack’s desk, held his gaze, and thanked him. Smiling regretfully, as if she already knew this was to be their last encounter, she said, “You’ve done all you can. But you can’t bring Ceely back.”

  “My door’s always open,” Jack said. He set the metal balls on his desk and escorted Esther to the door. He started to open it, but when he hesitated, Esther recalled that once she’d gotten close enough to smell licorice on his breath. One more step and they’d be that close again. Nervously, she reached for the handle, but he stopped her and she felt her heart race, the color rise to her face. Was this the reason she’d kept returning to Jack? Had she been waiting for a moment like this?

  She was imagining the licorice she might taste on his lips when Jack interrupted. In his soothing, familiar voice—it sounded like woodwinds—he said, “Listen, Esther, people leave for all kinds of reasons. Reasons that make sense to them.” He paused. “But not to anybody else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  She nodded, then proudly tilted her chin. But she did not understand. Ceely had gone away to that small college in Vermont, dropped out after the first year, and didn’t come home. Where was the reason in that?

  One day, over lunch at Wing Yee’s, Lorraine says to Esther, “Where are we going to put all the bodies?”

  “All I know is, cremation isn’t right,” says Esther, who intends to be buried in the ground, wearing her blue silk dress with the dyed-to-match shoes. She is leaving nothing to chance. From time to time, she reminds Ceely and Sophie (there’s no point involving Barry) about the folder labeled, My Funeral. “It’s all there, in black and white. In a drawer in the breakfront, just below the china teacups.”

  Esther’s mourners are to be ushered in to the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon and file out to “Stranger in Paradise,” the Tony Bennett version. The postburial menu is to include cheese blintzes, minibagels with lox, and bite-sized rugelach from the German bakery on Montrose. Lorraine has agreed to prepare a chopped-liver swan and promised to use pimento olives for the eyes, as Toots Lustig had done. Should she predecease Esther, Sophie will step in, but without all the fanfare. Sophie is also in charge of the flowers. Bougainvillea. Esther has threatened to haunt her granddaughter should a single carnation be on display.

  After the waitress sets down a pot of tea, Esther reminds Lorraine about the chopped-liver swan. “And don’t forget the parsley tail feathers, or my mother-in-law will have a fit.”

  “Your mother-in-law is dead,” Lorraine says, giving Esther a baleful look. “And besides, we were talking about cremation.”

  Impatiently, Esther says, “You know I already have my plot.”

  What Lorraine doesn’t know is that Esther and Marty fought over the plots. At some point during their row, Esther recklessly suggested cremation, which was practically unheard of back then. They’d been heading to the cemetery to check out the plots, which some loudmouth from the temple brotherhood had been pushing. “Maybe we should consider cremation,” Esther said. The idea popped into her mind unbidden. The mere concept was exotic, foreign, remote as India. Cremation had nothing to do with their life.

  “Cremation?” Marty slapped the steering wheel; his face turned red. He accused Esther of wanting to use their burial money for a new refrigerator.

  She denied it, but agreed that he had a point. “All that money, Marty. For what?”

  “So I’m right!” he crowed.

  When she stood her ground, he argued that he didn’t want to be burned.

  “You won’t know the difference,” she said, not certain she was correct. All she knew of cremation came from pictures in Life. Giant funeral pyres. Bodies strewn with flower petals, before the flames consumed them.

  “So now you’re an authority on the afterlife?” Marty was shouting.

  “Then you buy a plot, and I’ll be cremated,” she snapped. Briefly, she felt cheered by the thought. The possibility of spending eternity away from Marty, no more quarrels followed by difficult silences, buoyed her spirits. But then she turned and caught a glimpse of his profile, his round, ruddy cheeks, the irregular bump at the bridge of his nose, which she sometimes caressed. She observed the way his hands gripped the steering wheel, at ten o’clock and two, the same way he’d taught her to drive. There he sat, hunched over the wheel, heeding the traffic, guarding against oncoming cars, defending them against impending disaster. She leaned back in her seat and sighed, content to let him steer them safely to their destination.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, and most of the way home, until Marty said, “Come on, Esther. I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  “Are you crazy? We just spent all that money on plots.”

  She asked him to stop at the Jewel, where she ran in for milk and cheddar cheese and English muffins. She got a rain
check for the butter that was on sale. She smiled at the thought of telling Marty that on a day when she’d been planning her death, she asked for a rain check. But when she got to the car, he was pounding the steering wheel, demanding to know what took her so long.

  Now she’s grateful for the plot, which is what she tells Lorraine. “It gives me peace of mind, knowing exactly where I’ll be.” Then she points out that Lorraine still hasn’t dealt with her mother, still on the mantel with all the stuff that gets left there during the course of a day: coffee mugs, books, old newspapers, yesterday’s mail. Lorraine’s mother has been there for as long as Esther can remember, packed in the kind of decorative tin that might otherwise contain English toffee or fancy tea.

  Esther has no intention of hanging around collecting dust like that while Ceely and Barry dither over how to dispose of her remains. Or worse, they’ll forget she’s there, or lose her. “Have you seen Ma?” Ceely will say, to which Barry will reply, “Ma?” Charges and countercharges will fly, accusations and recriminations will be set loose, and Esther won’t even be able to intervene, as she’s been doing all her life. Quiet! Both of you. I’ve had enough. The thought that her own children won’t find the time to properly dispose of her remains fills her with sadness.

  When Marty died, Esther was in such a state that everything was over before she knew it. Only after he was in the ground did she learn that he’d been buried in his brown tweed jacket and a pair of ordinary slacks, the ones he wore when they went to the movies or to the Pearlmans’ for an evening of bridge. At least Ceely and Barry, who’d made all the arrangements, remembered his tallis.

  A light snow had started to fall as they buried Marty. Several inches had accumulated by the time they reached Ceely and Lenny’s home. It snowed all afternoon, but the people who crowded into the house to pay their respects were too busy filling their plates to notice. Esther filled a plate, too. Then she put on her coat and boots, and with Marty’s astrakhan hat and gloves in one hand, the plate in the other, she headed outdoors. But before she reached the foot of the driveway, Ceely was calling to her and then Lenny was at her side leading her back inside. She tried to resist, but he was persistent and strong. When she tried to explain that Marty needed something to eat, and she’d never sleep, not as long as she thought of her husband in the ground without his hat and gloves, Lenny tightened his hold on her. “His hands used to get so cold,” Esther cried.