Being Esther

by Miriam Karmel

  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.”

  The receptionist starts to speak, then the phone rings. Esther, grateful for the interruption, sinks back in her chair and reflects on their exchange, pleased that she spoke with such authority. The air no longer rings with her pitiful confession of bloated feet.

  The door opens and an elderly couple enters. They make a beeline, as if they’d been here before, to a pair of chairs arranged on either side of an end table. Esther tries guessing which one of them is here to see Dr. Levenson.

  The man helps the woman with her coat and hangs it on a hook near the door. Esther’s coat—single-breasted black wool with a shawl collar—lies in a careless heap on the chair beside her. Once, it had been quite stylish. Quickly, she turns it over to hide the fact that it is missing a button, which she’s been meaning to sew back on. She looks to see if she’s been observed, but the man is handing a magazine to his wife. “You’ll like this,” he says.

  She is trying to remember if Marty had ever been so solicitous—he certainly wouldn’t have hung up her coat—when the receptionist pipes up. “Well, I’m sure if you tried, you’d enjoy it.”

  For a second, Esther thinks the receptionist is urging the woman to accept her husband’s offering of the magazine, but then she hears her name. “Mrs. Lustig?”

  “Yes?”

  “I said, ‘I’m sure you’d enjoy it.’”

  “Seeing things?”

  “No.” The receptionist smiles, as if Esther were a child who’d just mixed up the letters of the alphabet. “Dancing,” she says, with an infantilizing emphasis on the first syllable. Then brightening, she adds, “It will probably help with your balance, too.”

  Before Esther can suggest that they put their conversation on hold now that they are no longer alone, the receptionist tells Esther about an aunt who lives in Florida and loves to dance. “She’s kind of like those gals on that TV show. The four of them share a house? You know the one.”

  “Golden Girls,” Esther says, glancing nervously at the couple. But they appear unperturbed by the conversation. The woman is engrossed in her magazine, scanning it with a magnifying glass, reminding Esther of Ceely when she was learning to read, the way she sounded out each word so that by the time she’d strung together six or seven words it was a wonder she could make any sense of the whole. So it’s her. She’s the one with the appointment, Esther is thinking, as the receptionist exclaims, “That’s the one! Golden Girls. Ever watch it?”

  When the show premiered, Esther had been sure that one day she’d move to California and share a place with her sister. Until the day Anna died, she pictured the two of them, old widows, sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean. She and her sister would spend hours on that bench, reading newspapers, tossing bread crumbs to pigeons, taking in the sun. They’d share tidbits from the news, like the man across the waiting room, who is leaning into his wife, pointing to something in his magazine.

  Esther considers telling the receptionist, The golden years don’t last forever. Or perhaps she should raise her arthritic hand and say, Try writing a funny script about this. Instead, she says, “You sound like my daughter. Ceely’s always trying to improve me. Now she thinks I should join a book club.”

  The receptionist perks up. “A book club would be nice.”

  “I like to select my own books,” Esther says. “I’m reading one of Oprah’s books at the moment.” She doesn’t have the heart to explain that she has few friends left, and most of them have moved away. To Florida. Arizona. Shirley Levine and her husband are in Santa Fe. Once a year they visit Chicago, she with her turquoise and silver, he with his leather vest. There is Lorraine, of course. But two hardly constitutes a group. If she counts Helen Pearlman, that would make three. But Helen is tucked away at Cedar Shores talking nonsense.

  The man looks up from his magazine and Esther fears he is about to tell them to pipe down, but then he retreats to his magazine. Marty used to hide behind the newspaper when Esther was talking. If she kept on with her stories, sometimes he’d hold out his hand and pretend to be hitting the mute button on the remote control. She flinches at the memory, surprised at its power to sting after all these years. Then, as if in opposition to the memory, she raises her voice. “Last week, my daughter told me about a tai chi class for seniors.” She looks at the man, but when he shows no sign of irritation, Esther wonders if he’s hard of hearing.

  “And she’s trying to get me to move,” Esther continues. “But I like it where I am. I tell her the neighbors are good to me. And she says, ‘You’ll make new neighbors.’ Then she shows me a brochure.” Esther imagines the silver-haired couple on the cover twirling around a dance floor, dipping and diving. Showing off. But nobody at Cedar Shores looks that good. “You know what they call it?”

  “Call what?” The receptionist plucks a moist paper towel from a plastic container and begins wiping down her phone.

  “The place where my daughter wants me to move.”

  The receptionist shrugs as she works the towel into the phone’s nooks and crannies.

  “They call it ‘a concept,’” Esther says, with an ironic smile. “‘A new concept in senior living.’ That’s what the brochure says. There’s a picture of a couple with silver hair. They’re on a sofa. Just the two of them. They’re drinking wine. Nobody in the brochure is shuffling around in walkers, or slumped over in wheelchairs.”

  The receptionist nods. “Maybe your daughter has a point.”

  “So you think I should be in that place?”

  “No!” The man leans forward, as if he’s about to fly out of his chair. “Don’t go. Trust me. They put my brother in one of those places. His daughter showed him all the brochures.” He waves his magazine in the air, as if it were the very brochure that had caused his brother’s undoing. “She took him there for a tour, and after he got back he called me and said he’d rather die. Before he moved in, they held some shindig for newcomers. Everybody got a bottle of champagne.” He turned to his wife. “Remember, Millie?” She holds out her magnifier as if it might possibly double as a memory aid. Then she slips back into her magazine. “It was all smoke and mirrors,” the man says. He leans over and taps Millie on the knee. “Remember, that baloney about a concierge?” Millie nods, but Esther can tell she doesn’t have a clue. And then, visibly dispirited by Millie’s inability to corroborate his story, the man sinks back into his chair without finishing his tale.

  Esther is about to encourage him to continue, when the recept
ionist, sounding annoyed that their conversation had been hijacked by the man, says, “I meant the tai chi, Mrs. Lustig. Or that book group. Maybe your daughter has a point about that.” Brightening, she says, “Or dancing.”

  Esther glances down at her feet and thinks of the house slippers awaiting them at the side of her bed. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”

  By the time Esther arrives home she has forgotten her intention to sew the button back on her coat. Instead, she changes into her blue dress, then lies down on top of the chenille bedspread and tries recalling the yoga pose Sophie taught her. The corpse pose. What a name. Esther places her arms loosely at her sides, lets her legs relax, and closes her eyes. If she’s lucky, this is how she’ll appear when they find her—faceup, arms at ease, inert but composed. “Still life on chenille bedspread,” she whispers. “Still life.”

  But what if she lingers like Miss Smaller, who will be remembered at Devonshire Arms by the stench of decay she left behind? She consoles herself with the thought that Miss Smaller died in August, during the dog days. Perhaps Esther will make her exit in January, with the heat turned low. She read once that a famous impressionist, she can’t remember which one, had worked in a cold studio to extend the life of the fruit he was painting. Now his canvases fetch millions. What was his name? Marty would remember. He remembered things like that, the things she did not. And she remembered for him. Together, she supposed, they’d made a whole person.

  She runs her hand across the silky blue, amazed at how much pleasure it still gives her. Mrs. Singh did a beautiful job with the alterations. Alberta, at Ziegler’s, couldn’t have done better. Before Esther’s hands—what useless claws!—betrayed her, she could have fixed the dress. Mrs. Rothstein, her father’s seamstress, had taught her well. Oh, how she’d sewed! Pinafores for Ceely. Sailor suits and rompers for Barry. Nightgowns and beach cover-ups. Halloween costumes. Ceely’s prom dress. Esther fell asleep trying to recall all the fabric that had sailed through her hands.

  She dreamed she was altering her blue dress but couldn’t find her tailor’s dummy. After a frantic search she realized Ceely must have taken it, assuming Esther, in her dotage, would never know it was missing. Or perhaps Sophie donated it to the Museum of Science and Industry. She’d roll her eyes and say, “Nobody sews anymore, Nonna. That thing belongs in a museum.” Esther had to get to the museum before it closed. But she couldn’t find the car keys. She tried to remember where people leave their keys when they start to lose their marbles. She looked in the freezer, the microwave, the medicine cabinet. Then she called for a taxi, but got a recording in Spanish. She hung up, and thought of calling Mr. Volz for the number of his cab company, but she couldn’t remember his number. Then she redialed and again got the Spanish recording. She should have learned Spanish. Her parents spoke Yiddish, which she understood but never learned to speak. Esther never wanted to speak anything but English. When she was angry, she mimicked her mother, corrected her pronunciation. “What!” she’d cry. “Wa. Wa. Wa. Wa. Wa. Not vhat!” Oh, she was a monster child. After the museum, she’ll go to the cemetery to apologize. Where was her mother buried? She needs to find her mother, tell her that she loved her. Me too, her mother will say, and then Esther will tell her about the Yiddish revival. “People are writing books about Yiddish. They study it. There’s even a Yiddish museum on some fancy New England college campus.” Esther has to find her mother. Suddenly, she spots the grave, but before she can reach it, she trips on Marty’s headstone. “You’re here!” she cries. “But where’s my plot?” And he tells her, “Don’t you remember, Essie? You wanted to be burned.” She tells him she was only joking. “Where’s my mother, Marty? Where is she?”

  A noise startles her awake. Even after she opens her eyes, it takes her a minute to realize she’s no longer dreaming. Her granddaughter is standing over her, a look of concern on her face. Esther smiles up at her. “Sophie, darling. I must have fallen asleep,” she says, reaching for her granddaughter’s hand.

  “Nonna.” Sophie leans over to kiss Esther’s cheek. “Why are you wearing your dress?”

  Esther smiles and reaches for Sophie’s hand. “What time is it? Is our dinner tonight?”

  Sophie shakes her head. “It’s tomorrow.” She strokes Esther’s hand. “I was just driving past and decided to ring the bell. When you didn’t answer . . .”

  Esther looks at her granddaughter, standing there, her spine easily and beautifully straight. She has hair of ear-lobe length and her father’s surprising eyes—one blue, one brown. Yet she has none of Lenny’s strong features; she’s been spared his myopic eyes. She is a beauty. “It’s all right,” Esther says, drawing Sophie’s hand closer to kiss it. “One of these days it’s going to happen. And when it does, you’ll see. Everything will be all right.”

  “I’m glad you’re not in such a hurry,” Esther says.

  “I’m sitting.” Ceely sounds peeved. Dramatically, she rises from her chair, then settles back down with a thud. “Now stop complaining.”

  Esther dunks a teabag in Ceely’s cup before placing it in her own. “I’m not complaining.”

  “Then why did you say that? And why, if this is such a red-letter occasion, don’t we get our own tea bags?”

  “My mother did the same. You’ll see,” Esther replies. “We’re wired this way.” She wraps the tea bag around a spoon to extract any remaining flavor before setting it on her saucer. “Is it possible,” she says, “that you’re afraid to sit with your old mother?”

  “Don’t start,” Ceely says, with an impatient wave of the hand.

  “Maybe.” Esther pauses, then stands her ground. “Maybe you’re afraid if you sit long enough, I’ll ask questions.”

  “Like what?” Ceely’s eyes widen with curiosity. They’re pretty eyes, hazel with flecks of green and gold that sparkle in the light.

  “I don’t know.” Esther shrugs. There’s so much she could ask. So much that she doesn’t know about her daughter. “For starters, I could ask why you ran away.”

  “Jesus, Ma. That was a million years ago.” Ceely purses her lips, like Esther, like Esther’s mother. Three peas in a pod, and she doesn’t even know it. “Besides. I didn’t run away. I just didn’t come home for a while. There’s a difference.”

  “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.