Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  Pagan Rath leaned across the table and whispered to Esther the Black, “Does this mean our plans are finished?”

  Esther the Black nodded. “You can thank your father,” she said. “He’s stolen everything. He doesn’t give a damn if the sale of the beach means my father might try to drown himself again. Blame your father,” she said to Pagan, as she went to call a taxi. “And if you ever need money, don’t come to me or my family. Go to your father. He’s the one who’s rich.”

  Pagan stood up and smiled. “Well, thank you for dinner,” he said. But the family did not answer, they were locked in silence, as if they had been caught in a frieze. “The lemon mousse was particularly delicious,” he said.

  As Esther the Black left to walk Pagan back to the Compound gate, Mischa rose and went to the liquor cabinet. “Why are you sitting here like this?” he said. “What is this, a funeral? It should be a celebration. We’ll make some money from Rath’s sale.” He brought out a decanter of apricot brandy and poured five small glasses full to the brim. “To the sale of the eastern section,” he said.

  The family raised their glasses and drank a toast with Mischa. All but Esther the White, who sat huddled beneath her blue silk scarf. She did not even hear Mischa when he asked if she would rather have whisky than the sweet brandy. She did not hear because she was struggling; her feet would not remain steady, for under the soles of her shoes, Esther the White felt the Compound slipping, as if the sand moved in circles beneath the dining-room table.

  Part Three

  BLOODLINES

  Chapter One

  ESTHER the Black and Cohen had the same impulse after Mischa’s announcement; and so both eventually found themselves on the path to the fishermen’s encampment. But before he crossed the Compound, Cohen had to search his lighthouse for the stolen jade pendant and diamond earrings, which he planned to turn over to the fishermen so that they could fight against the family. He searched through dusty shelves and cluttered drawers; and it was some time before he remembered to rip out the lining of the old sheepskin coat where he had long ago hidden the jewelry, so Esther the Black reached the encampment first. It had been such a long time that Esther the Black had nearly forgotten which way the path turned; and when she appeared in the clearing she felt like a stranger—but nothing had changed, not one grain of sand.

  No one seemed to notice her, no one looked up. The fishermen mended fish nets or played cards; only the youngest children, born to women Esther the Black had once played with on the stone beach, stared at her; to them she was a stranger. Esther stood in the shade, beneath a large pine tree; she had no time to lose. When the eastern section was sold, the encampment would be filled with houses and neat yards, and the fishermen would be scattered, to the welfare office, to cheap apartments over the Laundromat in St. Fredrics, the only line binding them together would be the thin blue headbands they wore across their foreheads. Esther the Black refused to be a part of a family that would do such a thing to the fishermen, that would sign the paper allowing every tree, even the one Esther stood beneath, to be leveled.

  And she wondered, too, if she was really ready for Phillip’s reaction, once he discovered that the beach had been sold. Even though Esther the Black had always longed for the key to the sea wall, she did not want to step over the stones to find her father’s imprint in the sand; she did not want him to drown. And so, she searched for Terry; though he had not trusted her when they were lovers, and it was unlikely he would choose to trust her now. She knocked on the screen door of his trailer; inside the table was littered with fishing hooks. Esther the Black felt like crying; but she had no time for anything like that, and she walked right in the door when Terry’s wife answered her knock, even though she was not certain she would be able to speak at all. “Listen,” Esther the Black said, ignoring Terry as he began to introduce his wife, his words slow and purposeful, letting Esther know, from the start, that there would never be anything between them again. “There are problems,” she told him. “My family has just sold this part of the Compound.”

  Terry looked at his wife, and then back at Esther. “So?” he said, opening both his palms. “What does it matter to us who owns it? Your family or someone else’s family?”

  Us, thought Esther the Black; he separates himself and all the fishermen from me right away. “This is different,” she said. “This sale is to a land developer. Sam Gardner. He’ll knock everything down. You won’t be able to stay unless you stop it.”

  “He’ll try,” Terry laughed, and he tugged at his blue headband, his talisman, his luck.

  “He will,” Esther the Black insisted.

  “Esther the Black,” Terry said, and he offered her a cup of coffee, “you’re much too anxious. Relax.”

  Esther the Black waved Terry’s offers away; she turned to his wife. “Believe me,” she said, “I want what’s best for you.”

  The woman smiled. “That’s hard to believe,” she said. “And it would be stupid of you, if it was true. They’re your family. You should think about them.”

  Esther the Black felt guilty; she didn’t bother to protest—because it was true, she was thinking about her own family, her father, herself. But it was also true that she thought about the mimosa trees that would fall, the campground that would be leveled, the sea that would never be used for anything more than bathing. She shrugged her shoulders and reached for the trailer door.

  “Have some coffee,” Terry called to her, but Esther the Black shook her head, and walked down the trailer steps; and as she left she heard his wife call her the Drowned Man’s daughter—and it was true, that was who she was. She could not save the eastern section without the fishermen’s help, but she might be able to save her father. If she could get hold of enough money to free both her parents from the Compound before the devastation began, Phillip might never know that his beach was sold, he might never care, he could walk along the strip in Las Vegas with no thoughts of water or drowning at all. Esther the Black crossed over to her side of the Compound; she quietly went up the stairs in her parents’ house. When she reached her second-floor bedroom, she went to her window and watched the movements of the night harbor, for she could not sleep that night, and each time the tide moved she imagined she could hear Phillip’s cry.

  Soon after Esther the Black left the fishermen’s campground, Cohen arrived dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt and baggy gray work pants; he waved his arms like a screaming scarecrow in the center of the encampment. A few children turned to stare at him, but Cohen was a familiar figure in the campground, and the fishermen ignored him. The landscape artist had made an anguished decision; he would sell the pendant and earrings, and do whatever he could to stop the sale of the eastern section, he would do it for Esther the White. And so, when his entrance was ignored, Cohen dropped his arms and hiked up his pants. “What’s wrong with you people?” he said. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Old man,” a boy of fifteen said to Cohen, “be quiet. There’s a Bolo game being played.” He pointed to a group of gamblers.

  “Don’t call me old man,” Cohen said. “Don’t you hear me?” he called to the Bolo players. “They’ve sold the eastern section.”

  Cohen stood there, amazed that there had been no reaction to his announcement; without the fishermen he was lost; the jewels would not bring enough cash to buy back the land, but it would buy guns, ammunition, and perhaps enough fear to scare Gardner away forever. Cohen was silent until an old fisherman, a Bolo expert who was now waiting his turn at the game, motioned the landscape artist to join the circle of players. “Listen to me,” said the old man, who was no longer able to fish, the outdoor work and winter salt had turned his fingers scaly and hard with arthritis. “That family can’t steal this land from us.” As the old man spoke, he didn’t move his eyes from the Bolo game; he watched only his opponent’s hands as pieces of the white skeleton came together. “This place is ours.”

  “Maybe you’re too old to hear right,” Cohen said. “It’s not y
ours. They’ve sold it.” He clapped his hands together. “Poof. Like that. Gone.”

  All the players heard Cohen, they couldn’t help but hear him; but no one answered, no one spoke.

  “Feh,” Cohen muttered. “Cowards,” he said.

  The old man who was waiting his turn said, “You don’t understand. When the family is dead and buried, when they’re in the earth, we’ll still be here. We’ve always been here.”

  “This time it’s different,” Cohen insisted. “It’s not another family who’s buying the land. It’s a developer.”

  The old man’s opponent fumbled with the bones of the gill. The fisherman smiled; but, before he took his turn at the game, he placed a stiff hand on Cohen’s bare arm. “We’re still here,” he said.

  Cohen was disgusted. With the fishermen, with the family, with himself. He left the Bolo players to get a cup of coffee from a large pot simmering on a kerosene stove in the center of the campground. He wondered what he really had; everything he wanted belonged to Mischa. With only a few words and his signature, Mischa could make the eastern section disappear, he could turn Esther the White ashen at the dinner table, he could even decide to take her away. It was as Cohen was drinking hot, black coffee, as he was wrapping his despair around him like a mohair blanket, that he saw a group of young men and women gathering outside a metal trailer. Youth: he thought. He narrowed his eyes, and sucked on his upper lip.

  “Hey, you,” Cohen called to a man who spoke to the gathering. “You,” Cohen repeated. “What’s your name?”

  “Terry,” said the fisherman, who was now repeating what Esther the Black had told him.

  “And you?” he pointed to another young man.

  “Daniel,” the fisherman said. “What’s it to you?”

  Cohen sat on a weather-beaten log. “I’m just interested,” Cohen said. “I’m interested in whether or not you want to stay here, by this harbor.”

  “What’s your point? Get to the point,” Daniel said.

  “The eastern section has been sold by the family,” Cohen said, and he wondered what sort of reaction he would get this time.

  “So what?” Terry called to him. “It’s been sold before.”

  Cohen shook his head; young men had no fire anymore. But a young woman, who was not much older than Esther the Black, spoke to him. “What are we supposed to do?” she asked. “We have no legal rights.”

  Cohen nodded; he should have known to address himself to a woman. “All you have are moral rights,” he said.

  “What good are moral rights against bulldozers?” the woman asked.

  Cohen smiled. “Guns are good against bulldozers,” he said. Men and women began to leave Terry’s trailer door; they gathered around Cohen’s log. But he did not speak; he lit a cigarette and waited until there was quiet, until pulses were waiting for him to continue. Cohen shook off his blanket of helplessness; before him was the image of Esther the White’s face, the high cheekbones, the arch of her neck when she strained to see the harbor from her window. He could win her, he thought, if he presented her with the eastern section. And, if Mischa was ruined without the sale of the land, what would prevent her from leaving her husband? And she would leave with Cohen, only with Cohen.

  “All you have to do is leave it to me,” Cohen said. “I can supply you with the money for guns.”

  “Why should you listen to him?” Terry called from his trailer. “Someone can get murdered, and it will probably be one of us who is that someone.”

  “Who said murder?” Cohen answered. “Aggravation, trouble. Resistance doesn’t mean murder. Bullet holes in the tires of the bulldozers, that’s resistance.”

  “All right,” the young woman near Cohen said. “I’m ready.”

  Cohen imagined himself parking the Caddy at the door of the gun shop on Route 16. He would leave the engine running, the young woman would be at the wheel, and he would wear suspenders and glasses, no one would suspect him of being a revolutionary; he would look like an old man. And outside, the woman would be waiting in the car, the engine would be running, gas would rise in the dark air.

  Cohen threw his cigarette on the ground and stamped it out with his work boot. Idiot, he thought to himself. Don’t even imagine that, he thought. That’s how they all get caught even before the revolution gets going, they’re caught stealing a sock or a shoe, cans of soup in the market, or guns and bullets. He was an old man, too old to run around with stolen ammunition. He would pawn Esther the White’s jewelry, and buy the guns outright. Not romantic, Cohen thought, but effective.

  “Tell me,” a young man asked. “How do you come by enough money for guns?”

  “Don’t you worry,” Cohen said, as he rose. “How I get the money is my business, and then I leave the rest to you.”

  Cohen walked away, down one of the paths which led from the eastern section to his lighthouse. After he left, the young men and women of the camp continued arguing and dreaming of their revolution under the mimosa trees, under the stars. Cohen himself was dreaming of a woman’s face. In the lighthouse, he balanced the sheepskin coat on his knees and slit the lining with a carving knife. The jade pendant which Esther the White had stolen years before fell with a thud onto the hard wooden floor. Even in the gray twilight and dust, the red gold shone like a woman’s heart.

  Esther the Black, up in her dark bedroom, had no way of knowing what Cohen planned to do; she could not see how he reached down and picked up the pendant, how he stroked the cold jade and gold until the stone was warm. Cohen stared at the carved image in the stone until he had erased all of the jeweler’s original lines, until the image was his own. And then, as if imagining alone could exhaust, Cohen placed his head on the table and fell asleep, his fingers holding tightly to the pendant, his head resting in dust.

  By morning, Esther the Black was nearly frantic; she hadn’t slept, she had no plans, nowhere to turn, and no friend, save Ira Rath. So she hunched over the telephone in her grandparents’ hallway, and she dialed Solomon Rath’s number—he was a traitor to her family, but Esther the Black swallowed her pride, and when the accountant answered her call she asked for his son.

  Solomon Rath sighed heavily. “Don’t mention that stinker’s name to me. In fact I don’t know what his name is anymore. He tells me he changed it. I think he calls himself Savage.”

  “All right,” Esther the Black agreed. “But just let me talk to him.”

  “Why should I?” the accountant said. “Wasn’t it you who convinced him that I ruined your family’s fortune? Even though the truth is your family could have ruined themselves quick enough without me—your grandfather should go down on his knees to thank me for finding a buyer for that piece of sand he calls the eastern section. If I take my cut—why shouldn’t I? I’m a professional.”

  “Please,” Esther the Black said. “Ira has always been my friend—I would like to talk to him.”

  “Well, that’s impossible,” Solomon Rath said. “Because he’s not here. He moved into a tenement on Tenth Avenue this morning, and I hope he stays there. I thought you were a sensible girl, Esther. I thought at least you would realize that whatever money I take from the sale of the eastern section would have gone right back to you if you had married my son. But, no. You couldn’t see that far. I’m not one to accuse—but now you have forced a young boy to leave his beautiful home for the streets.”

  “The streets?” Esther asked. “But he has an apartment.”

  “A slum.”

  Esther the Black pleaded, and finally Solomon Rath told her where his son now lived—she jotted down the address and thanked the accountant.

  “He says music is his life,” Rath said. “He says I would never understand. But tell him, tell him, Esther, that he would never understand me either.”

  Esther the Black hung up the phone, understanding only that Solomon Rath had disrupted every member of her family—and that by selling the land he might be driving her father to another suicide attempt while the beach was still
empty enough for him to race over the stones. So, she forgot Rath’s plea to his son, and she grabbed the extra set of car keys from the table drawer in the entrance hall of her grandparents’ house. She had no time to lose—she ran—and she felt that she was still racing when she started the Caddy and drove through the Compound gates.

  Esther’s foot was heavy on the accelerator as she drove down Route 16; the tires bounced off curbs as she turned corners. She parked the Caddy at the docks, near the entrance to the ferry. Esther’s fingers clutched the steering wheel; and when she finally turned off the engine, she was tired, suddenly tired from racing through the Compound, through town, racing toward a man who might not be able to help her, who might not want to. But she got out anyway; she didn’t bother to stop at Woolworth’s and report her absence—there was no longer the time to earn money slowly. She had to move quickly—even if she moved toward Ira Rath to beg for money, to beg for a plan. So, Esther the Black left her grandfather’s Cadillac in the ferry parking lot; the keys were still in the ignition when she bought a one-way ticket to Manhattan.

  When Esther the Black stepped onto the ferry, she was not certain if she would ever be able to return—she was not certain that she could bear to walk beneath her grandmother’s cold gaze one more time, or that she would be able to stand by when they finally told Phillip that he would have to remain locked in his cottage all season long. And when the whistle blew, when the ferry’s ropes were loosened, and then dropped from the dock’s railings, Esther the Black set off for New York City, and territory as foreign as she could find.

  Chapter Two

  SOON after the St. Fredrics police discovered the abandoned Cadillac, they began to peer into parked cars on deserted roads and lanes; they questioned transient sailors drifting through town. After they had dragged the harbor and still had not found Esther the Black, Mischa decided that it was time for Phillip to be let out of his cottage. It was time for him to face reality—Phillip’s daughter was missing, and his wife was frantic, for Rose had convinced herself that if Esther the Black had not been murdered or kidnapped, then she was surely fighting for her life and breath on some empty beach.