Being Esther (8 page)

Esther would prefer a silk scarf, perfume, even a box of chocolates, or that old cliché—flowers. She imagines telling Ceely that though she is old, she hasn't lost her capacity for the sensual. But then Ceely would coo, as if Esther were a child who doesn't understand that what she really wants is the whole-wheat fig bar and not the chocolate cupcake with buttercream frosting.

Ceely pours the All-Bran into Esther's favorite blue bowl, and as she slices banana on top she lectures her mother on the benefits of potassium.

Esther, who doesn't recall asking to be fed—she's already eaten—says, “I'll bear that in mind. And by the way, nice haircut.”

“Thanks,” Ceely says, sweeping her bangs back with a forearm.

Ceely has thick auburn hair, cut short, at odd angles. Esther
once had hair like that, hair she could do something with. Then one day, she couldn't. Now every time she looks in the mirror all she can see is a woman well past her prime, with hair that resembles a collapsed soufflé.

As she sets the bowl in front of Esther, Ceely reports that her in-laws have just sold their house for over three hundred thousand dollars. “They paid eighteen for it in 1954.”

“I remember when gum was a nickel,” Esther says.

“You remember everything,” Ceely snaps, then suddenly brightens as she seizes the opening her mother has unwittingly provided. “You remember everything,” she repeats, “except where you left your purse, your glasses, and . . .” She pauses, picks up an empty bag and, skillfully as an origami master, begins pressing creases into it. “And your keys,” she says, as she creates another fold.

“Oh boy,” Esther mutters. Then she considers the bowl Ceely set in front of her, never mind that she'd been in the middle of a game. “First I'm moving. Now it's the keys.”

“Yes, the keys,” Ceely says. “We need to talk about that.”

“What's there to talk about?”

“You don't want to end up on a guardrail?” Ceely's voice rises. Her speech is halting, deliberate, like Esther's when she speaks to Milo, who studies English for Newcomers at the community center. “Do you?”

Esther wishes she had a hearing aid to turn off, but despite the other infirmities of aging that plague her—glaucoma, arthritis, and slightly elevated blood pressure—her ears are in good working order. “People die when they give up the keys,” she says. She picks up her spoon, eyes the cereal, and sets the spoon down. “But don't worry. I'm not driving.”

“You could kill someone, Ma. Remember the man who stepped on the accelerator instead of the brakes and drove into
a pedestrian mall?” Furiously, she creases the bag. “Eight people dead.”

“I'm not driving,” Esther lies. She looks down and considers the cereal, which even in her favorite bowl resembles kibble.

“Then sell the car. Get rid of it.”

Ceely holds out her hand, as if she expects Esther to fork over the keys this very minute. Ceely is as sure of herself as Dr. Levenson. The two of them are probably in cahoots.

At her last appointment Esther could tell, by the nutty brown dome of his head, that Dr. Levenson had been somewhere warm. “You've been traveling,” she'd said.

“Acapulco,” he replied, as he peered into her eyes. “Next winter we're going to the Galapagos. To see the turtles. The kids are old enough now.”

After switching on the light, he cleared his throat and looked down at his tasseled loafers. “Esther.” He cleared his throat again, paused, and still looking down at his feet, he said, “You shouldn't be driving.”

When Esther replied that she didn't drive much, and never at night, he said, “That's good. That's good.” He let a few seconds pass. “But I'm talking about the daytime, too.”

There he was, the picture of health, full of pronouncements and sunshine. His tan would fade soon enough, but next winter he'll swim with the turtles and acquire a fresh glow. Dr. Levenson was a good man. Still, Esther resented the assurance with which he spoke of the future. What's more, he knew nothing about her past.

The day Marty brought the car home he tooted the horn until she had to go out front and see who was making such a racket. There he was, sitting behind the wheel of a silver convertible, sporting dark glasses and a fedora. “Come on Essie.” He tapped the horn in a syncopated riff. “Let's go for a spin.”

He drove for miles, hugging the lakeshore, winding down
Sheridan Road, snaking through the ravines all the way to Winnetka, where he pulled into a spot overlooking the beach. After shutting the engine, he pulled her close and kissed her. Seventy-something years old, and he was taking her to a lovers' lane.

“We couldn't do this when we were teenagers, Essie.”

“Who had cars?” she said, then kissed him back.

After Ceely leaves, Esther dumps the cereal into the garbage and rinses out the bowl. Then, as she crosses to the refrigerator, she imagines hearing Marty's critical voice. How many times had he warned her? “That's the first place burglars look.”

It's as good as any, she thinks, as she opens the freezer door.

Yet as she reaches into the back of the freezer she pauses, afraid that her husband was right. But then her hand finds it. It's there. She pulls out the ice cream carton and sighs, satisfied that no burglar would ever think to look here.

She shuffles to the table, holding the carton as if it were filled with quails' eggs. She sets it down, pauses. Still spooked by her husband's ghost, she glances quickly over her shoulder, then chides herself for being ridiculous. Gingerly, she lifts the lid. The ring is there. A star sapphire. A gift from Marty the year he lost his way. “Men stray,” her mother had said, as if she were reporting some immutable law—gravity, relativity, the orbit of the planets around the sun. Esther has never felt comfortable wearing the ring.

The pearls are there, too. She fingers the strand, recalling how they'd looked around her mother's neck, the way they rested just above the cleavage that she didn't try to conceal.

She fishes out the keys. They're cold. She wraps her hand around them and squeezes hard, relishing the feeling as they dig into her flesh. She squeezes harder, until the cold metal cuts into her, awakening her senses, like pinching herself to be sure she isn't dreaming.

O
ne morning, while Esther is reading the obituaries, Ceely phones to say she's running out to the supermarket. “I don't need a thing,” Esther says. “I'm going to the desert.”

“The desert!” Ceely has a way of repeating Esther's statements as if she were pacifying a child with an overactive imagination. “The desert.” She whistles.

“You'd think I just announced a trip to the moon,” Esther snaps. She straightens the edges of the newspaper, which is spread out on the table before her. “I want to see the desert. Once more.” Her voice trails off. “Before I die.”

Ceely sighs impatiently. “You're not dying.”

“Then why are you pushing me into that place?”

Impatiently, Ceely says, “It's not a dying place. And I'm not pushing you.” She pauses. “It will be easier,” she says, her voice softening. “That's all.”

“Easier than what? Easier for whom?”

“Why do you do this?” Ceely whines, her voice rising.

“Do what?”

“Twist everything.” Now she is shouting.

“Nobody lives forever,” Esther declares, slapping her hand on the newspaper. Then she begins reading aloud from the obituaries, like the rabbi intoning the names of the dead before reciting the mourner's Kaddish. When she is finished, she says, “I'm off to the desert. Four nights at the Doubletree Inn. Plus a day trip to Mexico. A bus picks you up at the hotel.” With each assertion,
the lie blooms. Had she known how easy it was, she might have started lying sooner.

“I'm going with you,” Ceely blurts.

“Maybe I don't want you to go,” Esther says, quickly regretting the careless remark.

“How can you not want me to go?” Ceely is whining again, the way she did when Esther imposed a ten o'clock curfew.

“I don't need a babysitter,” Esther says, sitting taller in her chair. “And besides.” She pauses. “You can be unpleasant.” She presses the newspaper with her hand, which is so contorted she appears to be clawing the pages. Frightened by her body's insubordination, by her inability to direct it as she wishes, she dismisses the offending hand, sending it straight to her lap. Then she hears herself saying, “Do you really want to go?” But before Ceely can reply, Esther says, “Good. Then it's settled.”

Esther makes all the arrangements. She wants to visit the Desert Museum and a place where they reenact the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. She wants to ride the tram in Sabino Canyon and behold the giant saguaro. She has read about the best place for margaritas. She hopes green corn tamales will be in season. And she signs up for a day trip to Mexico.

The bus for the trip to Nogales picks them up at their hotel after breakfast. Four people have boarded by the time Ceely and Esther get on. An older couple, sporting baseball caps and fanny packs, are seated toward the front. Water bottles in mesh holders dangle from their necks. They remind Esther of the smiling couple on the Cedar Shores brochure. Seated behind them is a pair of older women who could easily be Esther and Lorraine. At the next two hotels, six more people get on, all of them considerably older than Ceely.

The driver pulls into a McDonald's parking lot about two
hundred yards from the border, and before the passengers disembark, he hands out maps of the Nogales business district. Then he holds up a map and with his finger, traces a route from the border crossing to Calle de Obregon, the street where all the pharmacies are clustered. “Hey!” The man with the water bottle interrupts. “I thought you're supposed to be our guide.”

Esther elbows Ceely in the ribs and through clenched teeth whispers, “Don't make trouble.” For Esther, survival has always depended on blending in, as if the next pogrom were about to sweep through the village and her only hope was to lay low. No coughing, no sneezing; not a peep until the marauders take off. This instinct is as ingrained in Esther as if she'd been born not in Chicago but in the Polish shtetl from which her parents had fled a lifetime ago. So while the rest of the group murmurs agreement with the provocateur, as the chorus of dissent swells, Esther's elbow remains firmly lodged in her daughter's ribs.

“But we signed up for a tour,” the man persists.

The driver stares the group down and waving the map, says, “This is the tour. So listen up.”

At the
frontera,
they push through a metal turnstile, and though Esther has traveled to Mexico many times in the past, she has never walked across the border. Entering the country is as easy as passing through a revolving door. “Mexico!” she cries triumphantly and waves her cane in the air, as if she has just circumnavigated the globe and is staking her claim to the New World.

Despite the fact that she is traveling with a cane (at Ceely's insistence), Esther leans on her daughter for support, and Ceely doesn't resist. Arm in arm they make their way along the rutted sidewalk. They pass women crouched against dusty stucco walls, clutching babies in one arm while reaching out with the other in a gesture of permanent supplication. They pass vendors selling their wares from blankets spread out on the gritty sidewalks. Other
vendors carry merchandise in trays yoked around their necks with colorful woven straps. The more prosperous merchants hawk their goods from the narrow doorways of cinder-block shops. They scrape and bow, feigning respect for the women. In sing-song English, they call out, urging them to enter. “Enter!” they cry. “Take a look. Is cheaper than K-Mart.”

“Don't look,” Ceely whispers, pulling Esther closer.

The two women stroll past one store after another, their wares spilling out onto the sidewalk: piñatas, papier maché avocados, a lotion purportedly made from the sebaceous glands of giant sea turtles. They continue on, as if the real Nogales will present itself around the corner or on the next block. All the while, Ceely reins Esther in as the mocking cries trail after them. “How much you want to pay? How much? It's free! Lady, for you, it's free.”

Suddenly Esther stops. “I think we're lost,” she declares as she rummages through her straw bag for the map. She and Ceely are consulting it when a man approaches and offers to take their picture. He is short and wiry, with a pencil-thin mustache and jet-black hair slicked down and parted in the middle.