Property of / the Drowning Season / Fortune's Daughter / at Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  Up in the bedroom, Cohen sighed. “Nothing’s changed,” he said. “What’s the difference if I talk to you across the bed, or across the kitchen table.”

  Esther the White was silent; she wished she could cry, but the sadness never seemed to reach her eyes—it stuck in her throat, unable to be moved. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Cohen lit another cigarette, his hands shook. Dummy, he said to himself. After waiting all these years to get close to her, what do you do but argue? Argue when you should kiss. “No,” he told Esther the White. “Don’t be sorry, I’ll be sorry. There’s nothing that could make me sorrier than you leaving for Miami. Nothing could make me sorrier than if you turn away now,” he whispered.

  Esther the White concentrated. Slowly, as Cohen smoked his cigarette, as the moon grew higher, and the frogs began to call at the sea wall, she remembered other lovers. She remembered Mischa, when he was young, when he was her lover—how he seemed afraid of a kiss, how she often had to reach for him and place him inside of her; how both Mischa and Esther the White felt they were being watched in the act of love—first by the horses behind the blankets in the stable in Marseilles, and later by memories of the village of their childhood, of their parents, of Max as he stood beside the circus manager, his dark eyes wet and accusing. She thought of the taxi driver in London; she had to think for a while before she could remember his name; but she did remember his touch. And she wondered now, as she held on to the blue sheets, if she had ever known how to love.

  Esther asked Cohen for a cigarette; she leaned back and rested her head on two feather pillows, and remembered the tattooed man, Solo.

  They had stood in the cold, dark rooming house in Marseilles, and beneath his shirt were the colors of his wonderful tattoos, like some painted secret moving in the dark. For such a very long time she had tried not to imagine Solo; it took quite a while before she could picture the talons of the parrot which rode on his skin. She had known him for only weeks, but had hated him for a lifetime. It was the tattooed man Esther cursed at the moment Phillip was born; it was his name—Solo—she screamed when she first dug in the Compound earth to bury the earrings along with the jade pendant—the stone she might have sold, the stone that might have kept Max from the circus, and Esther the White from taking the tattooed man as her first lover. Phillip might have been his child; Esther the White might have gone off with him to Spain, if only the tattooed man had asked. And so, many years later, Esther still remembered the tattoos as if they had been etched onto her own skin just from their touching. As if she had caught something.

  With him she had given everything up, she had let go, for a moment. With the tattooed man, she forgot standing in the snow in the village, wandering over the ice to stare at her face in the river; she forgot slipping the jade pendant into her apron pocket. Maybe it was only the way he moved inside of her, maybe it was because it was the first time, or because she saw a vision of his tattoos when she closed her eyes, but Esther the White had felt something. And between cold sheets, as the frogs called, and the bulldozers drove through the dark morning, Esther the White remembered. She reached out for Cohen and remembered.

  Later that morning, Max and Mischa finished their packing. When Mischa looked at his empty closet on the morning he was to leave the Compound, his suits and shirts and winter coats were now being carefully moved by Railway Express, he let his cane drop to the floor; and while Max waited on the porch for the limousine which would take the brothers to the airport, Mischa dragged a wooden chair into the closet, and there he sat, beneath one unlit bulb. The cord of the lightbulb danced across his forehead, and he brushed it away, as if he were waving off flies. He worried about the poachers, he worried about Solomon Rath, he could not imagine the hot sun of Miami no matter how hard he tried. He lit a cigar; after a while the ash fell onto his pants leg. The houses in the Compound were abandoned, the poachers were official squatters. What could he do? He was tired; he considered himself a dead man. In fact Mischa would not die for some time; he would not have a final heart attack for years, and then it would be after eating blueberry pancakes in Junior’s, as two elderly women from Detroit affectionately watched his teeth turn purple with berries. But on that morning, Mischa brushed the light cord away, and sighed. When he heard his brother call out that the limousine had arrived, Mischa went to the open window and looked down.

  “A minute,” he said. He picked up his cane and walked down the hall. “Esther,” he said, tapping against the door. “It’s me.”

  “It’s Mischa,” Esther the White whispered. Cohen was still asleep, so Esther the White left the bed and dressed quickly. She went out into the hallway and closed the door behind her. “Mischa,” she said, “it’s so early.”

  “You’re not ready?” Mischa asked. They stood in the hallway like strangers. “When we left our village together you were ready first, it was your idea, you’ll remember. I, personally, never thought we’d make it through the ice.”

  Esther the White hooked her arm through Mischa’s and helped him down the stairs. The entrance hallway was littered with suitcases; Esther the Black and Rose waited solemnly at the door. Rose held a drink in her hand.

  “Well, we have this house,” Rose whispered to Esther the Black. “We should be thankful for that. We should be thankful that your grandparents didn’t kick us out on the street the day after your father died.” She sipped gin. “But I’ll be damned if I’m staying here.” She looked around at the hallway and the parlor nervously. “Not here,” she said. “I’ll sell off all the furniture, all the silver—they’ll never know.” She gestured with her head toward Mischa and Esther the White as they walked together down the stairs. “I’ll sell off everything, and then you’ll see how quick I’m out of here. I’ll be on the first plane to Las Vegas.”

  Esther the Black nodded, but she did not listen to a word her mother said. She had the jade pendant and the money it would bring—she was free to leave the Compound—but she no longer had to flee—the Compound was falling away, the fishermen had it now, the light which always shone from Esther the White’s bedroom would be gone. The sea wall itself would probably be washed away before long; and Esther the Black wondered if she would be the only one to see the sandstone fall away in large, uneven blocks.

  At the edge of the stairs, Esther the White stopped. Her granddaughter was huddled in a corner of the hallway, her back against the wall. Esther the White was certain that the girl would be taken care of—Mischa would send allowance checks from Miami, and Esther the White would continue writing monthly checks to the electric company and the fuel company. And the girl had the jade pendant—she was free to make her own decisions. She was old enough, and free. Still, she looked too young standing in the hallway, edged up against the wall. Esther the White turned to Mischa; he looked like an old man, like a stranger; upstairs the man she loved turned in his sleep, and when he reached out he touched only air.

  “I’m not going,” Esther the White said.

  Esther the Black looked up; Rose spilled a bit of gin on her blouse.

  “Of course you are,” Mischa said.

  Esther the White shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”

  The movers came for the suitcases in the hallway, and Esther the White asked them to leave hers behind. “I don’t want to,” she told Mischa.

  Max stuck his head in the door. “Time,” he said. “It’s time.”

  “We’ve been together a long time,” Esther the White said to Mischa. “We’ve been together forever. But now I want to stay, and Max will take care of you.”

  “I’m going to get a condominium right near Max’s place. You’ll like it,” Mischa said, wondering why the woman he spoke to looked nothing like the girl from his village, the girl he had married.

  “Max will take good care of you,” Esther the White repeated.

  Rose’s eyes lit up; she placed her drink on the telephone table. “Max doesn’t know how to take care of a sick man,” she said. “Taki
ng care of a sick man is an art.” She reached for her purse, which rested on the telephone table, next to the glass of gin; she adjusted the shoulder strap and smiled. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” she told Mischa. “I’ll take care of you,” she said.

  “Oh, no,” Mischa said. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “Nonsense,” Rose said. She turned to Esther the Black. “Darling, you can pack up my clothes and mail them down to me. Until I get them I can just pick up a few things in Miami. Little blouses and bermuda shorts—I really don’t have the wardrobe for the kind of heat they have down there.” She smiled.

  “Mother,” Esther the Black said. “What about Nevada?”

  “Oh, Esther,” Rose said, “one hot climate is the same as another.”

  “Let her go,” Esther the White said to Mischa. “You won’t be alone. And let’s face it,” she lowered her voice, “we haven’t shared a room for years.”

  Mischa swallowed; all his suitcases were packed. “You’re sure?” he said to Esther. And when she nodded, he shook his head. “I have to go,” Mischa said. “Max is waiting for me.”

  “Of course,” Esther the White agreed, and she walked with him to the doorway. Rose ran out to the limousine Max had ordered to drive them to the airport. “Miami should be lovely this time of year,” Esther the White said. “Hot.” Mischa nodded, and when he turned to say goodbye Esther the White kissed his lips and patted his shoulder. Esther the White watched as Max and Rose helped Mischa into the limousine; she stood at the door until the limousine had disappeared through the iron Compound gate.

  Esther the Black had not moved. Her heart hurt; she had begun to dream each night of rescuing people who refused to be rescued.

  “So,” Esther the White said, after she had closed the front door, “what do you do now?”

  “Could I have some privacy?” Esther the Black said coldly. “I’d like to make a phone call.”

  Esther the White wanted to tell her granddaughter not to slouch; she wanted to say, Don’t be a fool, sell the jade pendant and you’ll have enough money to do whatever you like. She wanted to tell Esther the Black that if an old woman could make love in the gray morning beneath blue sheets, a young one like Esther the Black could do anything she wanted.

  Esther the Black dialed Pagan Rath’s number. She did not know what she would do now; but she knew that she did not love Pagan—she could not go with him to California.

  “We could help each other,” Esther the White began to call from the stairs; but when she reached the landing she could no longer speak. She had to stop. Her hand was on the banister, her granddaughter stared rudely from the hallway, and Esther the White held a fist to her ribs.

  “Do you mind?” Esther the Black called, as she held her hand over the phone receiver.

  “Not at all,” Esther the White said. “Everyone’s entitled to privacy.” She forced her feet upstairs; each time she moved her legs the pain shot across her abdomen. When she reached her room, she wished that Cohen had somehow disappeared. But he hadn’t; he was still in bed smoking a cigarette and dropping ashes on the sheets. “You didn’t go with him,” Cohen said. “I knew you couldn’t.”

  “Of course I didn’t go,” Esther the White said. “What made you think I would?”

  Cohen reached out for her from the bed, but Esther the White ignored him. She walked to her night table, and searched for her pill bottle. Maybe they’re not here, she thought. Maybe the blue-jays came through the open window and picked out the Demerol. She threw bottles of aspirin and Darvon onto the rug.

  “Esther?” Cohen said.

  It’s a punishment, Esther the White thought. It’s a punishment for not going to Miami, for thinking of myself. So now I’m getting this; now they’re giving me the pain.

  Cohen sat up. “What is it?” he said.

  Esther the White found the Demerol; she dropped the pill on her tongue and swallowed. She sat on the edge of the bed and rocked back and forth. Cohen moved toward her and touched her shoulder. Only a few minutes, Esther the White thought. Soon the Demerol will take over; I can wait till then. Cohen was holding her by the time the medication had begun to wipe out the pain; Esther the White lay back and imagined that she was covered by the quilts of her childhood, heavy red and white cotton filled high with goose feathers.

  “I want you to call that doctor,” Cohen said. “I think you should go to the hospital, even though I know you don’t believe in anything modern.”

  Esther the White pulled herself out of the ice, so that she could answer him. “Modern?” she said. “What’s modern about death? Everyone knows once you go into the hospital you don’t come out.”

  Cohen was insistent; Esther wanted him to shut up, she wanted him to hold her and let her fall asleep between the blue sheets and the heavy quilts whose geese had once run across the frozen river of her childhood. “Just as an outpatient,” Cohen was saying, as the geese dropped their thick white feathers onto the ice. “You’ll never have to sleep in the hospital. I’ll wait for you in the parking lot, you’ll sleep with me every night. Just go for treatments.”

  Esther the White was falling asleep; she shook her head no.

  “Listen,” Cohen said, “don’t decide to die.” The sun was falling through the open window as if reflected by drifts of bright snow. “And, anyway,” he said, “why don’t you wait around to see what Esther the Black does when she sells the pendant?”

  Esther the White imagined that nameless woman’s carved face, the cheekbones of polished jade, the unnamed eyes gazing carelessly from the stone. And as she did, Esther the Black hung up the phone in the downstairs hallway after talking to Pagan Rath, after giving her regrets; she walked into the parlor, sat in a cushioned chair, and stared at that same carved face beneath a sixty-watt bulb.

  “Esther the Black?” Esther the White said. “She doesn’t care about me or the pendant. She doesn’t even know me.”

  “Give her a chance,” Cohen said. “Do you want to die and still be a stranger to her?”

  “You’re right,” Esther said softly. “As usual.” She thought for a minute. “I want to make certain that she does whatever she wants with the jade pendant. I want to tell her how I first got it. She should know something; she should know me. Cohen,” Esther the White’s voice rose, “tell her I want to talk to her. I have to.”

  “Only if you make me a promise,” Cohen said. He was not about to lose her now.

  Esther the White was hearing the wolves; they howled when she was beneath the deep quilts, when the fire in the kitchen burned to ash.

  “Promise,” Cohen said, “you’ll go to the hospital.”

  Esther the White closed her eyes and ran her fingers across the veins which lined Cohen’s wrists. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “I will.” Outside the day was white with the last of summer’s heat, outside the bluejays in the mimosa grove called, and the wolves they said lived above, in the mountains, howled; and Esther the White lay back on two feather pillows and thought about Cohen’s kisses.

  Chapter Four

  THEY sat together in the dark. Fishermen on their way to the night harbor passed them and nodded. Esther the Black swung her legs nervously. She had promised Cohen she would meet with her grandmother, but neither of them spoke. Esther the White had just awakened from the deep sleep her dosage of Demerol brought on; her clear eyes were clouded in the night, and, if she listened very carefully, she could almost hear the breathing of the horses who had lived on the other side of the heavy wool blanket in the stable she and the brothers had shared in France.

  They were sitting by the black sea wall, listening to the slow-moving tide, and the scratching of the scuttling hermit crabs. The voices of the fishermen rowing slowly out on a night’s work echoed from the harbor. Esther the White’s scarf moved softly, like feathers around her face; she felt no pain. Instead she drifted—in the haze her painkillers offered—from one time to another, one memory to the next. Yet she always came back
to the sea wall where she sat in the damp evening air with her granddaughter. She always remembered that she was there to talk to Esther the Black.

  “I could never sleep at night,” Esther the White said.

  “I know,” Esther the Black said. “I used to see your light at night. I saw it for years.”

  “Oh,” Esther the White said. “I didn’t think anyone noticed.” Her granddaughter was silent. “Now I shut the light off. I sleep well at night for the first time. A little bit because of Cohen. A little bit because of the drugs that I have to take now that I’m sick.”

  Esther the Black stared at her grandmother’s half-closed pale eyes; the old woman’s blue scarf fell over her forehead. Esther the Black wanted to know why her grandmother kept her here in the dark now that she had talked about her illness. There was something more, and Esther the Black was curious. And she was also afraid—the old woman might want something. There was no one else left—perhaps Esther the White only wanted pity because she was ill. Or maybe the return of the jade pendant, which Esther the Black planned to sell as soon as possible, now that she had told Pagan that she would not fly to Los Angeles with The Quick and the Mad. Pagan Rath had promised that Esther the Black’s name would be listed as a guest at the desk of the Normandy Hotel, so that she could join him whenever she decided that she loved him. And she would, Pagan had insisted, decide just that.

  “I’ve written a song for you,” he had told Esther the Black when she telephoned him.

  “How does it go?” she had asked.

  “Come to Los Angeles and you’ll hear it,” Pagan said.

  “No,” Esther said.

  “Well, you’ll hear it on the radio all the time as soon as we record it, and every time you’ll think of me.”