Being Esther (12 page)

Esther sets down her pen and wonders if Ceely will ever sit like this and wish things had been otherwise. Perhaps she should warn her daughter. “Let's talk. Now. Before it's too late.” But Ceely is too busy, even for a cup of coffee.

Esther runs her hand over the page, over the image of her mother on hands and knees, vigorously shaping her world. Then she picks up her pen and absentmindedly starts listing all of the other kitchens she's inhabited, stopping when she reaches the room in the house where she and Marty had started their days over ever so many cups of coffee.

On one such morning Esther recalls setting a plate of rye toast beside Marty's orange juice before trying to tell him about a dream. Though most of her dreams got away quicker than those thousand-legged bugs that scurry down the bathtub drain before she could catch them, she couldn't shake this one.

Marty, who had been reading the morning paper, looked up and regarded her as if he might be considering the implications of her dream. Esther, meanwhile, bustled about the kitchen, waiting for her husband's reply. She waited while he ate a slice of toast, wiped his mouth, and carefully set the napkin back on his lap. She waited while he buttered a second toast triangle. As he reached for the jam, she could no longer contain herself. “It was the strangest dream,” she confessed.

He set down the knife, picked up his cup, took a sip of coffee, and nodded, as if pondering his reply. With great deliberation, he returned the cup to its saucer. Finally, he said, “Do I look like Dr. Freud?”

Marty looked nothing like the distinguished headshrinker. Dr. Freud was a regular mensch, with that lean, intelligent face and neatly cropped beard. Marty's face was round as the beets Esther boiled for borscht, and when he was angry, it turned just as red.

At last, satisfied that he needed nothing else, Esther sat down. She considered the toast, which had turned stone cold. She straightened her place mat. She picked up her juice glass and set it down again, as she struggled to speak to her husband, who was skimming the sports page. When she could no longer hold her tongue, she said, “What's the matter with you, Marty? Why are you always so angry?”

He turned the page and without looking up, muttered, “What do you want from me, Esther?”

“Nothing,” she sighed, as she plucked a slice of cold toast from the basket.

But it wasn't nothing. In her dream, Ceely was a child again, sitting at the kitchen table cutting hearts out of red paper and doilies while Esther put the finishing touches on dinner. Glitter, which Ceely sprinkled on the valentines, the way Esther dusted
sugar on the tops of poppyseed cookies, had caught like fairy dust in the dimples of her rosy cheeks and in the folds of her thick, auburn braids. Ceely was wearing a yellow cardigan with a starched white Peter Pan collar peeking out at the neckline. Esther, overcome by this angelic vision, wiped her hands on her apron, floated across the table and wrapped her arms around the child. She pressed her face into Ceely's braids, which smelled of Breck shampoo and Elmer's glue. She nuzzled deeper, inhaling huge gulps of the child's sweetness. Suddenly, she was sailing through the air and when she landed, her head hit the stove. Esther opened her eyes and saw Ceely standing over her, all in black, from the tips of her dyed hair to the toes of her steel-tipped boots. “I told you to stay away!” Ceely shrieked. Then she stormed out of the kitchen, leaving a trail of scuff marks on the freshly waxed floor. A few minutes later she returned, her arms piled with garments that Esther had sewn over the years: party dresses with smocking across the bodice; plaid schoolgirl jumpers; pleated skirts; seersucker rompers. She dropped the pile at Esther's feet, then stomped on it and hissed, “Return to sender.”

“But I thought you liked them!” Esther cried.

Esther didn't need Marty, sitting there with the newspaper, or Dr. Freud, to tell her that the clothes in her dream represented the many letters that Ceely had been returning unopened. Esther would never forget the first one—a red envelope stuck between the junk and the bills—and her excitement at being the recipient of such an intriguing piece of mail. Then she saw that the letter was addressed to Ceely, and next to the address, scrawled in Ceely's loopy script: Return to Sender. Thinking there must be some mistake, Esther stuck the valentine into a fresh envelope, along with a ten-dollar bill and a note to buy something special.

When that envelope came back, too, Esther marched to the phone and in the middle of the day dialed long distance, as if she
were the president of AT&T. A cheerful voice on the other end announced that Ceely wasn't in. “But I'll tell her you called.” It was always a different cheery voice. Ceely is at work. Ceely went to a movie. Ceely just ran out for a carton of milk. They all promised to inform Ceely that Esther had called.

In the beginning, Marty refused to get involved. “Leave her alone. She's busy.”

But Esther stood her ground. “Too busy to return a call? Too busy to talk for five minutes? I even told the girl . . . listen to me, I don't even know the girl's name. We don't know who Ceely is living with. I told the girl, ‘Have Ceely call collect.'” Esther paused to catch her breath, then pleading, said, “What's the matter with you, Marty? She's eighteen years old. She can pick up a phone.”

Six months later, Ceely wrote and told them to stop trying to make contact. There was no return address on the envelope, only a faded postmark from Vermont.

It was Marty's idea to search for Ceely.

Esther, who had been chopping onions for a mushroom barley soup when he announced his plan, put down the knife and turned to face her husband. “Vermont's a big place,” she said.

“We'll hire someone. He'll find out what's what.”

“Who, Marty? Who are we going to hire?”

“A detective.”

“This isn't like the movies,” she said, turning back to her work.

A few minutes later Marty plunked a phone book on the kitchen table. “Take a look,” he said.

Esther wiped her hands on her apron as she shuffled to the table. “What is it, Marty?” she sighed. “I don't have time for games.”

“Look,” he said, jabbing a yellow page with his stubby finger. “It says here, ‘Private Investigators.' There's an entire page of
them. See for yourself. We're not alone, Esther. There must be lots of people like us. People looking for somebody.”

Silently, she returned to the chopping board. As she set to work on a carrot, which, through her tears, resembled her husband's thick finger, she wondered what kind of heartbreak all those other homebodies might have caused.

Three weeks later, Esther and Marty were seated on hard wooden chairs, staring across a cluttered desk at Jack Kolner, the detective they'd picked from the Yellow Pages because Esther liked the sound of his name.

When Jack reported that he'd found Ceely and she'd threatened him with a knife, Marty's face turned so red that Esther thought her husband was having a stroke. She reached over and stroked his hand, but Marty, ignoring her touch, leaped from his chair and shook his fists at the ceiling. Then Jack was on his feet waving him back down and speaking in reassuring tones. “That sort of thing happens in this line of work,” he said. But Jack didn't strike Esther as the sort who was accustomed to having knives pulled on him. He wasn't much younger than Marty; a little old to be running around spying on people.

After Marty calmed down, Jack tried to assure them. “It was one of those Swiss Army knives. And it wasn't open.” He paused. “I suppose I should have been clearer about that.” Then he informed them that Ceely was living on a commune outside of Burlington.

“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.

T
he 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.