Being Esther (18 page)

“A difference? You could have fooled me.” Esther wants to lean
across the table, brush her daughter's cheek, pat her hand. They've never spoken about Vermont. Confrontation has never been Esther's style, though she always had plenty of lip for Marty. Pursed lips. That's how Esther dealt with disappointment. And once Ceely returned, came back and lived with them for a few months before doing what all the other young people did, getting her own apartment—once she returned, Esther couldn't raise the matter for fear her daughter would take off again. Instead, she threw herself into proving to Ceely that she was right to come home. She baked Ceely's favorite granola cookies, made pots of her favorite lentil soup, carried mugs of herbal tea to her while she camped out at the dining room table translating that inscrutable poetry.

The years passed. Never again did Ceely give them cause for detectives, for tears and recrimination. Yet Esther is always on guard, anticipating another round of the silent treatment, phone calls that go unheeded, mail returned to sender, not that she mails letters to Ceely across town. In all this time, not once has she asked: What happened? Did we do something? Did I do something? What was it? That's four questions. But really, they're all the same.

Now here they are, two women sitting at a kitchen table over cups of tea. Then Esther had to go and break the spell. Why couldn't she keep her mouth shut? Why couldn't she navigate the conversation to safer ground? And why was it so easy talking to other women? Even Mrs. Singh, the other day, stood chattering at the mailbox like a mynah bird. She showed Esther her arm, where it was still tender to the touch, and how it bowed slightly where it hadn't set right in its cast. She informed Esther that Mr. Singh was doing much better. It might be the new medication he was taking; whatever it was, they were planning a vacation. “Maybe we'll go to California this winter.” An entire branch of the Singh family lives in Sherman Oaks. Then Esther
revealed that her sister had lived in Santa Monica. “I didn't know you had a sister,” Mrs. Singh said, and when Esther nodded and explained, Mrs. Singh's eyes welled up and she patted Esther's back as if Esther were just setting out for Anna's funeral. They stood talking like that, one word flowing after the other.

Esther looks across the table at Ceely, wondering what word, if any, might trigger such a flow. Or perhaps they will be locked forever in this uneasy détente, and Esther will never know why Ceely ran away all those years ago. Or why she returned. Or anything else about her life that really matters.

“You know.” Esther's voice cracks. She pauses and starts over. “You know.”

“Yes?” Ceely leans forward, cocks an eyebrow.

Esther stares into her cup, as if it contained the words that elude her. She recalls telling Lorraine, just the other day, how Ceely and Sophie end their phone calls with, “Love you!” Ceely and Josh, too. “They say it, like I might say to you, ‘Tomorrow is your turn to call,'” she told Lorraine. “It's so automatic, I wonder how much it can mean. But it's nice the way they talk to each other. I realized I'd never said that to Ceely. Maybe she thinks I don't love her.”

“Maybe revelations of love are not your style,” Lorraine told Esther.

“Ma!” A look of concern crosses Ceely's face. “You were saying something?”

Esther, startled into the present, says, “I was going to tell you about Lena. Milo's wife. You've seen her. Long legs. Big red hair. She wears those tall leather boots and big gold earrings?”

Ceely shakes her head. “Milo has a wife?”

“I was sure you'd met her. Anyway, she's moved back in. I saw her from the window. I was looking out and there she was, lugging a suitcase toward their apartment.”

“That's what you wanted to tell me?”

Esther nods, but is unable to meet her daughter's gaze. “She moved out about a month ago. Ella Tucker, in 3A, the one I avoid, got hold of me at the mailboxes. She'd heard that Lena had left Milo and moved in with the man who teaches English at the community center. Ella blamed it on Milo's mother. She said, ‘That old woman drove Lena right into the arms of another man.' I told Ella I wouldn't know, that I thought I'd seen Lena earlier that day. Ella said, ‘No. You wouldn't know.'” Esther looks up, gives her daughter a rueful smile. “Anyway, now you know why I listen for Ella to go down for her mail. Then, when she's done, I go and get mine.”

Esther catches Ceely checking her watch. “What's wrong?”

If she'd told this story to Mrs. Singh, the two women would be lost in conversation for the longest time.

“Nothing.” Ceely rises and carries her cup to the sink.

“I said something, didn't I?”

“No.” Ceely runs the water, then stops. “That's just it, Ma,” she says, her voice bristling with frustration. “You didn't say a thing.”

“But I just told you a story. What do you want me to say?”

Ceely shrugs. “Listen. I'm late.”

Esther holds up a hand. “Wait. Don't go. I have something to show you.” She rises and heads slowly to the living room. When she returns, she is clutching an awkward-looking object, which she sets on the table.

“What's that?” Ceely asks.

Esther, surprised, says, “You don't recognize it?”

Ceely considers it through narrowed eyes and shakes her head. “Not really.”

“You made it. You must remember.”

For a moment they both stare at the mottled brown mug, as if it might suddenly perform a trick or start talking.

Suddenly, Ceely cries out. “Where did you get this!” She reaches for it, turns it over in her hands, runs her fingers over the initials she'd carved into the bottom. “It's pretty awful, isn't it?” She smiles at Esther, then hugs the mug, as if it were the family cat that showed up on the doorstep weeks after everyone thought it had been eaten by coyotes.

Ceely's eyes shine with delight as she turns it over and again runs her fingers over her roughly hewn initials. “I don't understand. How did you get this?”

When Esther carried the mug into the kitchen, she remembered the heat it had given off when Jack handed it to her all those years ago. Jack. She hasn't thought about the detective in ages. She looks at Ceely and understands there are things her daughter doesn't know about her, either.

“It's from the time you ran away,” Esther says.

“I told you, I did not run away!” Ceely glares at Esther, the glint in her eyes turning cold.

“When you were away, I drank my tea from it. Every afternoon.” Esther holds her daughter's stony gaze. “I'd think, ‘Ceely made this with her own two hands.' Holding it was like holding a part of you.”

Ceely's face softens. “I can't believe you saved this.” She lets out a short laugh, shakes her head. “This may be the ugliest mug I've ever seen.” She laughs harder. “I can't believe you ever used it.”

“You can believe it,” Esther says. Then she checks her watch. “It's getting late. Lenny will be home soon. And Josh. Now get going. You've got things to do.”

O
ver coffee one morning, Esther runs across the obituary of a woman writer who, at the age of seventy-seven, left behind a simple note: I've lived long enough.

Esther, who has already lived eight years longer than the writer, tries the idea out for size. “Enough is enough,” she says. But who is there to listen, to argue, to talk her down from the ledge? Certainly not the sugar bowl or the vitamins—what an unlikely pair!—standing mute, like Marty all those years, her words washing over him while he read the paper. The bird isn't much better. Mickey. Dumb bird. Though she is grateful for his chatter. She named him for the parrot that lived in the courtyard of that old hotel in San Miguel. Saint Michael.

Esther wonders if that writer ever sat alone at her table waiting for a sign, for a bird to cry, No!, or for the vitamins to say, Don't be ridiculous! Enough is never enough! And would the sugar bowl nod in agreement?

She laughs at the thought. Sometimes that's all it takes. One laugh and she's down off the ledge. Or Sophie calls to shoot the breeze. Or Lorraine reminds her that they have matinee tickets for a new production at Steppenwolf. And then Esther wants to stick around and see how things turn out.

Yet she can easily imagine the alternative, a day when nobody calls, or she can't laugh at her own jokes, and even the sound of the bird's incessant chatter isn't enough to fill the void.

In the obituary, a friend reports that in recent years the writer
had pared down her life. She stopped hosting dinner parties, going to movies, attending the theater, traveling. She stopped fussing over clothes. She tossed out her lipstick; cut her own hair. “Taken all together,” the friend observed, “she lived in a room that was too empty.”

Esther surveys her kitchen, crammed with stuff: tea tins, an old portable radio, a flashlight, matches, digestive biscuits, cutting board, electric can opener, and a wooden block holding knives she once wielded with a familiar fluency. Potted plants jockey for space on the divider that separates the living room from the kitchen. The room isn't empty at all, but Esther knows that's not what the writer's friend was suggesting. “Maybe it's good to have to go to the grocery store,” the friend remarked. Suddenly, Esther remembers the All-Bran that Ceely brought over the other day, though she'd distinctly requested Lucky Charms.

Esther checks her teeth in the rearview mirror, running a finger over them to erase any lipstick smudges. Slowly she pulls away from the curb.

At the first intersection, she turns right to avoid crossing against oncoming traffic. At the next light, she turns right again, and suddenly recalls the year Marty gave her a tennis racket for her birthday, along with a short white dress and socks with pink pom-poms at the heel. She took lessons. She practiced hitting against a backboard. She drove balls into the net, over the baseline, into the next court. “Home run!” she'd cry. “Out of the ballpark!” When Marty accused her of running around her backhand, she said, “Tennis just isn't my game.” And for once, he didn't put up a fight.

The Jewel is up ahead on the right. Esther slows down, signals, pulls into the lot, and after cutting the engine, she lets out a sigh. “I made it,” she whispers, then sinks back and rests her head on
the seat. When she closes her eyes she sees Ceely's importuning hand, waiting for the keys. She sees Dr. Levenson, glowing with sunshine, shaking his head. They want to take away the keys, but she did just fine.

She opens her eyes, sits up straight, but still can't shake a growing sense of unease. What is she doing here among all these cars, all these people dashing into the store, then rushing back to their cars, their carts brimming with groceries, their days just as jammed with plans and obligations? She feels haunted by a failure of imagination. She could have gone to the Art Institute to admire the impressionists, or to Marshall Field's to linger at the perfume bar, spritz her wrists with the latest scent. She could have walked to the park and sat on a bench.

Esther is about to drive off, when there's a tap on the window. A woman, about Ceely's age, is peering in, her hand shading her eyes as if she were scouting intruders on the horizon. She's wearing a severe black suit and pearls. Her haircut, like Ceely's, is expensive. Tentatively, Esther rolls down the window, letting in a rush of perfume.

“Are you all right?” The woman crouches, bringing herself eye level with Esther.

“I'm fine,” Esther says, without conviction.

“Oh.” The woman frowns as if to convince Esther that she might not be fine. “You were sitting there for such a long time, I just wondered.” She cocks her head to one side, the way one might express sympathy to a child who has just scraped her knee.

“I appreciate your concern,” Esther says. “But I'm okay. Really. Thank you.” She pulls the keys from the ignition and when the woman shows no signs of leaving, Esther says, “I was just making a shopping list.”

At that, the woman presses closer and peers inside the car.

“A mental list,” Esther says, defensively.

“Oh.” The woman, her good intentions thwarted by this obstinate woman, sounds disappointed. “Well, do you need any help?”

“With a list?” Esther smiles ruefully at the stranger. For years, she scoured the newspaper ads, clipped coupons, made lists of all the specials. Even when she no longer needed to economize, she went from store to store for the door busters. It was a game and she was good at it. The ball always went over the net. She never had to run around her backhand or plot a route that avoided left-hand turns. It's what she did. “I should say not,” she declares.