Being Esther (5 page)

Safely back in her own apartment, Esther bolts the door and fastens the chain, and thinks that if Ceely ever gets wind of the mugging she'll put her in that place where Helen Pearlman is stashed away. Esther can't find the silver lining in what happened to Mrs. Singh.

Shortly after Mrs. Singh was mugged, a sign went up near the mailboxes in the foyer announcing a meeting in the courtyard near the statue of Saint Francis, on Wednesday at five. A police officer will be on hand to answer questions and address concerns about neighborhood safety. The sign says: “Bring your own chair.”

Esther plans to bring one of the lawn chairs that she and Marty had found on sale at Walgreens alongside a jumble of rubber flip-flops and tanning oils. When Marty suggested that they buy two, she'd pictured the patch of dirt between the sidewalk and the curb that Milo rakes and waters to no avail. “What will we do with lawn chairs?” she asked. Marty paused, jingled the change in his pockets, and said, “You never know.” Then Esther pointed to a spot where the plastic webbing was starting to fray and said, “They won't last a season.” Now five summers have come and gone. The chairs have lasted longer than Marty, who'd hung them from a hook on the wall in the basement storage room.

When Esther goes downstairs to retrieve her chair she wonders whether Mr. Volz, who lives in the apartment one flight up from hers, can use the other one. She isn't sure why she thinks of Mr. Volz, except that he doesn't own a car, and while that doesn't preclude him from owning a lawn chair, she regards him as a man with deliberately few possessions. It also occurs to her that this is an opportunity to get to know her neighbor better. She already knows, from the sounds he makes padding around in the
rooms above hers, that he is an early riser with regular habits. She knows, from Milo, that he does something at the university involving rare books, though she can't imagine what. Perhaps he has girlfriends? Or not. There is something in the way he tosses his scarf as he slides into a taxi each morning that suggests she might want to tread lightly where that is concerned.

Milo carries the chairs upstairs, setting one in Esther's foyer and leaving the other propped outside Mr. Volz's door. Then Esther phones her neighbor to explain. The answering machine picks up and she realizes she's never heard his voice, for whenever they pass in the hall Mr. Volz simply nods.

“This is Esther Lustig. From downstairs,” she tells the machine. She considers describing herself so that Mr. Volz won't confuse her with Mrs. Singh or with that boorish Ella Tucker in 3A. But what could she say? I'm short and appear to be getting shorter. I have blond hair, though I've noticed that in a certain light, it looks pink. I wear eyeglasses with silver frames. My husband used to say that I look like Judy Holliday. If we were at a party, he'd wrap an arm around my shoulder, smile, and say to anyone within earshot, “She's a dead ringer for that broad, don't you think?” People would nod and look down at their feet. Once, to relieve the tension, I joked, “He's only saying that because I beat him so badly at gin.” But that merely added to the discomfort, so I described the scene in
Born Yesterday,
where Judy Holliday beat Broderick Crawford in gin. People coughed and studied their feet again. Later, I told Marty that if he ever pulled that stunt again, I'd leave him.

Finally, Esther finds her voice. “I live downstairs in 2B. I left the chair for you. In case you're going to the meeting tomorrow evening.” The machine cuts her off before she can say that she'll understand if he doesn't use it. She dials again, but as soon as
she hangs up, she realizes that she's forgotten to leave her phone number. Then she writes a note.

Dear Mr. Volz,

Perhaps you can use this chair for the meeting tomorrow. It's been in storage for too long. I'm glad to share it.

Sincerely,

Esther Lustig, 2B

She rereads the note, puts it in an envelope, seals it, and on the outside, in her best Palmer script, writes: Mr. Volz. Then she trudges up the stairs, holding tight to the railing. After pausing for breath at the landing, she tapes the note over a part of the webbing, which, as she'd predicted, has come undone.

The next morning, Esther discovers the chair propped outside her door. Taped to it is an envelope with MRS. LUSTIG printed in neat block letters.

When Esther makes the call to Lorraine that morning, she describes how her hand shook as she opened the envelope. “I felt like one of those stars at the Academy Awards. The paper is thick,” she says. “Real quality.”

“Esther! Please, just read the note,” Lorraine insists.

“Hold your horses.” Esther presses the paper to her bosom. “I'm getting there. You know,” she says. “You weren't always so impatient.”

“And how would you know?”

Esther is silenced by this truth. She and Lorraine had gone their separate ways after high school. All those years Esther was busy raising a family in the suburbs, Lorraine was here, sharing an apartment with her mother. For thirty-five years, Lorraine rode the el to an office on LaSalle, where she worked as a legal secretary.
Mrs. Garafalo kept house. Lorraine has told Esther that every Saturday morning she had her hair done at a salon on Montrose, after which she and her mother went to Marshall Field's for lunch. On Sundays, they went to church. And in the evenings? But Esther has learned not to press Lorraine about life with her mother. She has never found a way to ask, Didn't you want to strike out on your own? Instead, the two women picked up where they left off, on graduation day at Von Steuben High, all those Junes ago. Recently, Lorraine said, “When I'm with you, Esther, I forget that we're no longer in high school. It's as if all those years in between never happened.” The confession, so unexpected, so out of character, stopped Esther from turning the moment into a joke, from suggesting that a mirror would help bring back all those years.

“Okay,” Esther sighs. “So you were impatient. I didn't know. Now, do you want to hear the note?”

“Go ahead,” Lorraine says.

Esther clears her throat, holds the letter out at arms length, and reads:

Dear Mrs. Lustig,

Thank you for the kind offer of your chair. Alas, I have a prior engagement and am unable to attend the meeting.

Yours truly,

Timothy Volz

“Timothy,” Esther says. “You don't hear that very often.”

“Well, you don't see him very often, either. Odd man,” Lorraine replies.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm not going to spell it out for you, Esther. And do you really think he has a prior engagement? Prior engagement! Who says things like that? ‘Busy.' He might have said, ‘I'm busy.'”

“People get busy,” Esther snaps.

She hangs up and thinks about Timothy Volz and his prior engagement. When was the last time she had to decline an invitation because she was busy? She is beginning to feel like an old Eskimo drifting away on an ice floe, passively observing all the busy people back on shore. There are so many ways that people keep occupied. Perhaps Mr. Volz is traveling. Then she wonders if she is too old to travel and if not, where would she go?

S
hortly after Helen Pearlman's move to Cedar Shores, Esther decides to pay a visit. She has in mind taking Helen out to lunch, perhaps to that sushi place her friend enjoyed so much. But by the time Esther pulls into the Cedar Shores lot a heavy rain is threatening to put a crimp in her plans. One mishap on a rain-soaked road and Ceely will take away the keys quicker than Esther can say Bingoville.

Helen's door is ajar as if she were expecting a visitor, though Esther hasn't called ahead. “She won't remember that you're coming,” warned Helen's daughter, Fanny.

Helen stands gazing out the window, where a pair of cardinals, oblivious to the rain, dance around a feeder. Her white hair sticks out in wispy tufts, sprouting haphazardly to expose patches of baby-pink scalp. Her faded muumuu has slipped off one shoulder, revealing a bone structure as delicate as a prepubescent girl's. She isn't wearing a bra.

Esther, dressed in a navy-blue pants suit with a polka-dotted silk blouse, feels like an officious staff social worker or a volunteer delivering magazines and good cheer rather than a childhood friend who can show up wearing any old thing.

“Yoo hoo!” Esther taps on the open door. “Anybody home?”

Helen turns and regards her friend.

Fanny told Esther that recently her mother painted her eyebrows with lipstick. Today, however, Helen's pale face is a blank
slate, static and impassive. Yet beneath the wreckage, Esther detects the outlines of a beautiful woman.

“Helen?” Esther utters her friend's name, as if she's just run into someone she might have known, but isn't sure.

Helen turns back to face the window. Her spine is beautifully straight and as Esther lets herself into the room and crosses to the window she reminds herself that her friend's mind, not her body, is giving out.

Esther places a hand on her friend's narrow back and kisses her papery cheek. Once Helen had returned from France smelling of lavender; she'd discovered a new perfume.

“How are you feeling today?” Esther asks.

Helen presses her nose to the glass and mutters something Esther can't understand.

Esther remembers her plans for lunch. What had she been thinking? Tentatively, she touches her friend's arm. “So you're feeling all right?”

“Rude bird,” Helen says, as a jay dive-bombs the cardinals. “Dumb, too, out in the rain like that. Never did like them.”

When Fanny reported the lipstick incident, she also mentioned that the Cedar Shores staff was threatening to move her mother to a more secure part of the building. Apparently Helen had been speaking in a French accent, and though Fanny didn't understand why that was a problem, she was told that it was a sign of some sort of disorder affecting her brain—Fanny couldn't remember the name—and that her mother's behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. Recently, Helen had accused Consuela, a uniquely competent aide, of stealing one of her boxes of cherry Jell-O. Helen buys the Jell-O on outings to the supermarket and lines the boxes up on a bookshelf, as if she were assembling a set of encyclopedias, one volume at a time.

The next day, when Consuela knocked to remind her about breakfast, Helen said, “I don't want to go to ze dining room.”

Now Helen turns to Esther and, sounding like the girl who'd shared a locker with Esther for four years at Von Steuben High, says, “I had a sneaking suspicion you'd show up. It's good to see you, Esther.” She smiles and strokes Esther's cheek, peering into her eyes with a knowing look. She points to an easy chair, gesturing for Esther to sit, then perches on the edge of the bed.

“Wait!” Esther cries. “I'll get you a chair.” Quickly, she sees that other than a straight-backed wooden chair tucked under a small dining table, she and Helen have exhausted all the options. Dejected, Esther settles back down. Helen's cramped room looks nothing like the pictures Ceely has been pushing. The narrative set out in the glossy brochure invites Esther to imagine sipping coffee on her patio while watching golfers tee off on the third fairway. Esther is meant to believe that she will spend her days hitting golf balls on the Cedar Shores links, or riding the shuttle to the mall. In the evening, she'll sip wine before dinner with a sleekly handsome, silver-haired man. There is a strong presumption of sex. Nothing in the brochure hints at the pungent aroma of beef broth and Lysol that assailed her when the sliding glass doors parted open to the lobby. The smell followed her all the way down the hall to Helen's room, where it has worked its way into the curtains, the bedding, the walls. Helen's home had smelled of lavender and fresh-cut flowers. Her living room was cluttered with books and magazines and there was always plenty of seating, even if some folks had to sit on the large, brocade pillows Helen stored under the piano. She was a generous hostess and didn't mind experimenting with new dishes on her guests. Nobody ever left her home hungry.

Now she apologizes for not having anything to offer Esther.
“Not even tea or coffee.” She smiles ruefully. “Or a drink. Wouldn't that be fun!” She claps her hands in delight. “Remember Sonia's margaritas?” Her eyes light up, as if their old friend has just handed them a long-stemmed blue glass with a salted rim. “But I'm out of tequila.” Helen holds up her empty hands and frowns with regret. Then her face lights up; her blue eyes sparkle. “Maybe we'll run out and get some. The good stuff.”

Esther nods and wonders if lunch is a possibility after all, though perhaps a Mexican restaurant would be more fitting.