Being Esther (16 page)

Esther remembered the way Helen gripped her hand as they approached the top. And when they plunged back toward earth Helen shrieked and laughed like she was drunk on champagne. She was eager to ride again, but Esther felt light-headed and woozy. For days, she kept running to the bathroom, checking for blood. A week had passed when she reported to Helen, “Nothing. Not even a speck.”

“In that case, you're stuck,” Helen said. “Stuck is stuck.”

Esther never breathed a word of this to anyone, not even to Marty. Still, over the years there had been times when she'd wondered if somehow Ceely knew. There was that time when Ceely ran away, though Esther had secretly blamed Marty for their daughter's rebellion. Now, Ceely has been touting that assisted living joint, as if it were her turn to try and get rid of Esther.

Esther loved Ceely. She'd loved her from the moment the nurse placed the swaddled infant in her arms and said, “Esther, here's your baby.” Esther's love never wavered, not even when Ceely disappeared to that commune in Vermont and returned all of Esther's letters unopened. If anything, Esther's love bloomed in those days, expanded to fill the void created by the pain of her daughter's rejection. Oh, how she'd loved her. But had she ever said so? How easy it would have been to whisper I love you while kissing her daughter good night, or ushering her out the door on a school morning. I love you. Yet it was possible that in all these years she'd never said so, not in so many words. But Ceely knew. She had to know. A mother loves a daughter, even if you can't say so out loud.

Isn't that what Esther had learned from her mother, who warded off the evil eye by rapping her knuckles on the table three times, or muttering “poo, poo, poo,” whenever she spoke her children's names? Keep your good fortune to yourself or you'll invite disaster. Say anything good to or about your children, and the evil spirits will find them. That had been Mrs. Glass's motto. How different from today's mothers, showering their children with praise for every little effort. Even breathing! Esther is certain that nothing good can come from such unrestrained veneration.

Esther's mother, on the other hand, had been as blatant with her disapproval as she was withholding and stingy with her praise. Not that she articulated her disdain. Mrs. Glass had other ways of expressing displeasure. Pursed lips. Narrowed eyes. Silence.

Her silence could be deafening. Especially when it came to the coat. During the long stretches that she was in Florida, Mrs. Glass stored her mink with her son and daughter-in-law. Upon her return visits to Chicago, before Esther had pulled out
of the airport parking lot, Mrs. Glass would say, “Tomorrow, we'll go for the coat.”

The next day, Esther and her mother would drive to Harry and Clara's to pick up the coat, and for the duration of Mrs. Glass's visit, the coat moved in with Esther and Marty. Then, on the day before Mrs. Glass returned to Miami, the coat went back to Harry and Clara's.

It was on one of those drives to return the coat that Esther heard herself saying, “What does her closet have that mine doesn't?” The words, brittle and harsh, caught Esther off guard. Though a cold rain was falling, she cracked the window open, hoping to rid the air of all her hurt feelings and anger. But her words loomed in the silence, hovering like the gray November clouds that dampened the day.

Mrs. Glass, unruffled by Esther's outburst, sat erect, her gaze fixed straight ahead, as if she'd been assigned to scout the horizon for marauders and took her job to heart. The coat rested on her lap, cocooned in a garment bag left over from the days when her husband ran a dress and fur shop. Her gnarled hands, freckled with age, were planted firmly on top of the bag.

The women rode in silence, the only sound coming from the rain, which earlier in the day had been forecast as snow.

At a red light, Esther broke the silence. “I asked you a question,” she said, her voice sounding eerily controlled. She glared at her mother's profile, willing her to turn and address her.

“What was the question?” Mrs. Glass asked, her eyes fixed on the road.

“You heard me,” Esther snapped.

“Oy, please. What do you want from me?” Mrs. Glass shifted in her seat, then ran her hand across the garment bag, as if she were stroking a cat.

“Look at me, Ma,” Esther pleaded. “I'm talking to you.” But
her mother stared steadfastly ahead, stiff as the mannequins in her husband's dress and fur shop.

Esther's favorite had been the ginger-haired model, which looked like a replica of her mother. When she was very young, she loved to run up and hug it. Once, she nearly knocked it off its stand, and her father scolded her. Then he laughed and patted her behind and sent her to the back room, where Mrs. Rothstein, the seamstress, gave her scraps of fabric to play with. Esther loved the store. Then one afternoon—she must have been in the fourth grade—she came upon her father undressing the ginger-haired mannequin. He spoke in hushed tones as he unbuttoned her blouse. “Wait till you see what I've got for you,” he murmured. “Something red with navy-blue piping. You're going to love it,
tsatskeleh.
” Tenderly, he stroked the dummy's cheek, then ran his hand over her ginger hair. Esther, sensing that she'd stumbled upon something too dark to comprehend, fled and avoided the store for weeks.

At the next light, Esther turned to her mother, searching for the woman who'd held such erotic sway over her father. Then, like pentimento, the young, glamorous Mrs. Glass emerged through all the layers bestowed by age. Once again, she was that pretty woman with a labile mouth and the springy, ginger hair that enjoyed straying from its tortoise barrette.

“Green light, Esther,” Mrs. Glass barked, breaking the spell. “You should look where you're going.”

Esther stepped on the gas and, in her frustration, shouted, “Did you hear me?” She had dinner to prepare. And Barry's teacher had scheduled a meeting, something about stolen hall passes. Or was the last meeting about the passes? Barry was always in trouble. But first, Esther had to transport the coat.

She felt like tossing it out the window. She wanted to beat it with her mother's handbag, which rode on the seat between
them like another passenger. Instead, she repeated the question that had already poisoned the air. “What does her closet have that mine doesn't?”

“Close the window, Esther,” Mrs. Glass said. “People will hear.”

“Nobody can hear,” Esther shouted and rolled down the back windows, letting cold mist spray into the car. “Besides, nobody's listening. Nobody cares. Just please answer my question.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Mrs. Glass drummed her fingers on the garment bag. “What is this closet you talk about? I don't understand.”

“You know perfectly well what I'm talking about!” Esther hated the desperation in her voice, but she couldn't stop. “I just want to know what's wrong with my closet?”

The light changed and the car behind Esther's honked. “Hold your horses!” she yelled. Over the shouting she thought she heard her mother say, “You can eat off her floors.”

It was true. Clara's floors sparkled. Her beds were made before breakfast. Her well-appointed rooms were cool in the summer, warm in the winter. The bathroom towels were always fresh. Clara never ran out of Saran Wrap or paper napkins or rice. Clothing hung in her closets on cedar hangers, arranged by color and function, as they might have appeared in Esther's father's dress shop all those years ago. Twice a year Clara went through her closets and made a pile for Goodwill.

Clara was the daughter that Mrs. Glass would have raised. If it bothered Mrs. Glass that Clara never invited her to spend the night, never offered to pick her up at the airport, never invited her to dinner more than once per visit, she didn't let on.

As soon as Esther pulled up in front of Clara's place, her mother unfastened her seat belt and reached for her handbag. “Wait,” Esther said. She was gripping the steering wheel, afraid that if she let go her hands might do something regrettable.
Staring straight ahead, she said, “I asked you a question.” Again, her voice registered eerie control. “Please say something.”

“Oy, Esther.” Her mother leaned over and pressed a hand on her daughter's arm. “What do you want I should say?”

Esther looked down at the hand that had flown through a kitchen restoring order, baked bread, chopped onions, diapered babies. Now it was crooked and spotted with age. She averted her gaze, only to catch a glimpse of her mother's feet. They barely touched the floor. Esther reached across the seat to lay a hand on top of her mother's, but Mrs. Glass turned and pressed her nose against the window, as if yearning for whatever lay beyond. “What do you want from me?” she whispered.

Tell me you love me, Esther wanted to say. At least let the coat hang in my closet. Tell me my closets are good enough.

Esther's mother never relented. For as long as Mrs. Glass made the trip from Miami to Chicago, her visits began with the same instruction. “Tomorrow, we'll go for the coat.”

“I
bet you enjoy dancing.”

Esther looks up from her magazine and follows the voice across the room to where Dr. Levenson's receptionist is stationed. “Were you talking to me?”

The receptionist scans the empty waiting room to suggest the answer is obvious. “I asked if you dance.”

“'Fraid not. I lost my dancing partner not so long ago.” Esther shrugs and holds out her hands, as if they might at one time have held the lost partner.

“Oh.” The receptionist frowns.

“Besides, I'm not so steady on my feet anymore,” Esther confesses. Then she looks down, hoping to be proven wrong, hoping that her feet might spontaneously burst into a fandango. But there they sit, two swollen lumps of unmolded clay, cosseted in old brown leather pumps. It's hard to believe that they ever had danced, that they'd ever tripped lightly after Marty onto a dance floor. Cha-cha. Rumba. Waltz. They'd done it all.

Esther extends her legs and lifts her feet a few inches off the floor, as if the receptionist might want to see for herself. “My feet are swollen,” she says.

“That's too bad,” the receptionist replies. She begins filing her nails and Esther returns to her magazine. After reading and rereading the same paragraph, she realizes that she has been tapping her feet—one, two, cha cha cha. She smiles. Her old feet remember. But when she glances down, she sees the same homely
wallflowers, and unless her eyes are playing tricks on her, the flesh is beginning to spill over the edges. Why hadn't she worn a softer shoe? And why hadn't the receptionist, still fussing with her nails, kept her questions to herself? Do you dance? Look at her, with that tiny gemstone winking off the side of her nose. And those hands! So smooth and competent, wielding an emery board with such ease. Do you dance? She wouldn't even know the dances that Esther's feet had burned up the rug with. Burned up the rug. She wouldn't know that, either. Suddenly, Esther feels as if she is seated on the other side of an impossible divide. She's drowning. How would she describe this feeling to Lorraine? How would she measure the space that engulfs her? What would she say? If you took all the people in the world and laid them end to end . . . yes, something like that, something so implausible, yet vivid enough to convey the enormity of it all, the feeling that she could never make it to the other side where the receptionist sits shaping her pearly nails into perfect ovals. Esther glares at the young woman. If she hadn't been so nosy, Esther could be finishing that article about some town in Oklahoma that was rebuilding after a tornado. Instead, she is sitting here obsessing about the condition of her swollen feet.

The phone rings. Esther pretends to read while the receptionist confirms an appointment and issues directions to the doctor's office. She repeats the directions so many times that Esther feels like grabbing the phone and telling the caller to take a cab. But the receptionist appears animated by her task, eager to help. She has a pretty face, not unlike Esther's grandson's girlfriend, the one with the heart-shaped face and the messy hair. The receptionist's hair is held back with a pink barrette. It brings to mind all those new shampoos infused with the essence of herbs. Esther imagines it smells of rosemary or lavender or chamomile tea.

When the receptionist hangs up, Esther says, “I know someone who sees flowering trees with pink blossoms. Even in winter.”

The receptionist stares across the gulf at Esther, an eyebrow raised to convey interest.

“Clara, my sister-in-law, thought she was going crazy, but it turns out it's her macular degeneration acting up. I'm sure Dr. Levenson knows all about it. ‘Phantom vision,' they call it.” Esther is enjoying the sound of her own voice. It is the voice of a woman who might not have tired feet, a woman who might still have a dancing partner, a woman who commands respect. “It's not as uncommon as you'd think,” she continues. “Clara's doctor told her that people see all kinds of things. Little monkeys with red hats. Teddy bears. Windmills. Sometimes Clara sees flowers in the bathroom sink. She says they're always pleasant images. But she won't tell anyone except me. She hasn't even told Harry, her husband. She's afraid people will think she's crazy.”