by Cai Emmons
“It’s hard to stop thinking about her,” Morna agreed.
“Do you bring the poem?”
Morna’s palms in Esther’s capacious hands began to slicken. “I’m so sorry. I forgot.”
The skin of Esther’s face, unhinged from its underlying bone structure, slipped a little. “Oh well, not today. Another day.” She withdrew her hands and shored up a sagging section of her hair, gazing at the carpet, absorbing the disappointment. When she looked back up she seemed to be pitying Morna, as if she understood Morna’s pathetic life precisely.
“When you read that poem you break my heart. Then you put it together. You know Isabel. If someone is known—what more can there be?”
“I won’t forget next time,” Morna said, miserable in her failure, on the verge of tears and finding it unbearable that she would cry in Esther’s presence for all the wrong reasons.
“I have prepare us some lunch. First—an aperitif? I show you photos of Isabel I think you have not seen.”
Morna excused herself to the bathroom to regroup, and when she came out Esther had laid out two delicate glasses on a small doily-covered table. On her lap was an open photo album, and she leaned against the couch back, her face awash in a cascade of silent tears that brought with it snail trails of eyeliner. Morna wondered if she should offer a gesture of comfort, or if Esther preferred to ride it out alone. After a moment of internal debate she extended a tentative hand to Esther’s lap, squeezed the soft navy skirt and the womanly thigh beneath.
Esther regarded Morna gratefully, almost lovingly, and Morna was relieved that, for once, she had made the right choice. With the back of her hand, Esther swabbed her tears. “With her sister—she make things difficile, you know.”
Morna lifted her eyebrows. She had identified the sister at the funeral from a distance. She was smaller than Isabel and Esther, with more pointed features. Morna didn’t even know her name, let alone how she might be making things difficult.
Esther lifted her glass. “A ton santé.” She drank with a considering, possibly warning eye on Morna. “I think I understand why Isabel keep you to herself.”
The photo album documented the activities of a young family: birthday parties, backyard picnics, sailing in Maine, a family trip to Washington, D.C. Esther pointed to Isabel in each photograph. At nine or ten she’d been lanky and long-haired, orb-eyed, face always angled to the camera and painted with her signature, full-lipped, captivating smile.
“She is born to joy. Some people are that way—from babies.” They gazed at a sequence of images that captured Isabel doing a cartwheel, wearing a white skirt and white tank top. In the final picture her arms were raised in a triumphant V, her smile goofy, the image of an endearing entrepreneurial show-off, someone who might, as an adult, be either scorned or admired.
Morna’s mother did not keep photograph albums, so Morna could not say how the summer vacations of her childhood had been spent. So many days, so many hours, it was scary to tally them. Swimming at the local pool was all she could remember, coming home in the evenings dizzy and slightly nauseated after so many hours in the water, waking up in the mornings still smelling of chlorine, but was there a single picture recording those days of swimming? If so, she’d never seen it.
Esther skipped over the pictures of the other three children—the sister, Philip, and one other brother, Peter—but Morna noticed that there weren’t as many photos of them. Isabel was clearly favored. Even in the group photographs she showed up most clearly, always in the center, always smiling, her fierce focus on the camera’s lens burning through the fourth wall. Was Esther aware of feeding Isabel’s ego, of making her feel more important than the others?
“Oh, there’s Dimitri,” Esther said, laughing quietly. “You remember that story? I always wonder what happen to him.”
Morna had not had any breakfast, and after a few sips of the sweet white wine she was light-headed. Alcohol in the afternoon was surely stronger than at night, she thought, but Esther had almost finished her glassful, and it seemed to have energized her. She rose suddenly, as if she could un-wilt herself at will.
“Viens. À table! You tell Isabel stories. Bring your glass.”
Sunlight streamed into the dining room, flirted with the polished silver, the water and wine glasses, the hand-painted china. “We have a bit of soup, a bit of sandwich.”
Esther would not allow help, made Morna sit, pour the wine if she insisted on doing something, and soon they both sat with bowls of white bean soup, plates of ham and cheese sandwiches on crusty bread, glasses of chilled white wine, less sweet than what they’d been drinking earlier. Did they always dine this way, Morna wondered, or was her visit an occasion?
“I am alone many days. Everyone is back in their life. Henry, he lose himself in work. He take off days, but he must go back now. I am terrible company. The sadness, it comes in like the wind. But you know this.” She sighed. “I talk too much. Eat. Drink. Then perhaps you talk.”
Morna thought of her own days as an unemployed person, treading a rail of loneliness, her efforts to find work erratic and made more difficult by her tendency to sleep until mid-afternoon. Esther took up her spoon and slowly stirred the dollop of pesto into the sea of steaming white beans. A tear plunked into her bowl, rolling slightly before dissolving into the soup. She began to laugh. “My life, you see. Cry in the sugar bowl. Cry in the soup.” She laid down her spoon and took up her glass. “Merci.” She drank, chuckled, drank some more.
Morna was on a high wire, aware she would soon have to speak.
“You come to the church without anyone. You have a husband? A boyfriend?”
Morna stirred her soup in the same contemplative way Esther had, the pesto swirling out into patterns like tea leaves, spelling obscure meanings, possibly lies, the one true thing microscopic, and for all practical purposes, invisible.
“My boyfriend dumped me.” The word dumped, spoken aloud, embodied her humiliation perfectly. Tyler, boring Tyler, had given her the boot. Tyler, who had worshipped her for over a year, begged to move in with her; now, only six months after moving down from Boston, he was gone. He said Morna was too cynical for him, and he left her in the weeds to decompose.
“Oh, no!” Esther was indignant. “This man knows nothing. That is what I tell Isabel in high school when her first boy, as you say, ‘dumped’ her. Does she tell you? Heartbroken.” Remembering, Esther laughed, eyes floating in tidal grief. “I let her stay home from school. We eat ice cream together. But it is good for her, it make her tough. A beautiful redhead like you who can read a poem so beautiful—this man is no good for you.”
“Thank you,” Morna said.
“In the end she is lucky with Thomas. From the beginning he is so broken, but he always loves her strongly. She is fragile, but he is more fragile. He does not call. Do you think he is all right?”
Thomas, robust and beloved by all, had never been fragile. Morna couldn’t stand to think of the way he’d used her in his mourning as he’d always used her. Nor could she stand to think of how he’d once sat at this table, sucking up to Esther and earning her adoration. “He’ll be all right,” Morna said. She wanted to steer the conversation to Esther’s own life, her years in France, but any subject other than Isabel seemed disrespectful.
“I cannot stop thinking of her feet. In the end they hurt so much, you know? And there is nothing to do. Not a thing to do.”
“Was I a happy child?” Morna asked her mother on the phone.
“Oh, Morna, what’s the problem now?”
“No problem, I’m just curious. Was I mostly happy, or mostly unhappy?”
“You had tantrums.”
Morna didn’t remember tantrums.
“That black watch coat you hated when you were in second grade—remember? You cut off its collar so you wouldn’t have to wear it.”
Morna didn’t remember. Wel
l, she remembered the coat, not the cutting.
It rains this afternoon. I make a fire. Like winter and I am bear in a cave. I pour myself a glass of wine. I think about our lovely visit. Thank you. You come again soon.
Morna spent a long time crafting an energetic response, creative and comforting, trying to inhabit the lovely girl that Esther saw her to be instead of the snarky one who had once, momentarily, wished Isabel out of existence.
Morna hadn’t thought much about feet before Esther’s gnarly left extremity lay in her lap. The toes were exceptionally long and skinny, their tips small eraser heads, the nails tough and dappled with red specks of months-old nail polish. The foot itself was lean and arched, its gently spatulate bones and tendons visible, an enormous red bunion skewing the angle of the big toe.
Morna had planned this in advance. She had brought oil and towels with her, had suggested the massage. Esther was game for anything. “You do this for Iz, no?” She had removed her prescription pantyhose right there in the living room, had adjusted the pillows on the couch, and had lain back with surprising alacrity. Whatever Morna had in mind would certainly be to her liking.
But now Morna was stymied. She had never actually done this before and hadn’t entertained the delicacy of feet. With so little flesh to grab how was she to proceed? She squirted oil on her palm and lifted the foot, cupping the bulb of the heel, her other hand taking the weight of the spotted calf. She worked the crusty heel, the bony ankle, advancing slowly toward the high arch. The oil was scented with lavender—which she thought was Esther’s favorite—and it mingled with the musty, footy smell, noticeable, but not disgusting. Esther moaned with pleasure, so Morna felt encouraged and applied more oil and used her knuckle to rake the entire length of the sole. The regular rocking and kneading brought on speech.
When they were both unemployed they frequented the cheap afternoon movies, favoring old French movies with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anouk Aimée, Simone Signoret, actors who understood how to penetrate the hidden surfaces of things. She and Isabel would duck from the day’s accusing work-a-day brightness into the dim lobbies; the velveteen seats; the dreamy worlds of hope and wish fulfillment; the fantasia of beautiful bodies, witty words, harrowing love affairs.
They emerged at dusk, blinking and sighing, knowing how reprehensibly lazy they were, but weren’t they finally happier than most, sucking the marrow of life as they did?
Esther, grief-worn, wine-filled, had drifted off. “Iz?” she said suddenly, opening her eyes, seeing her oiled feet, then noticing Morna and gradually remembering.
Morna returned to Port Authority at dusk. Altered by the wine, slowed by the massaging rhythms still in her fingers, she decided to walk downtown. The city gleamed. She veered to the Hudson where the leaden water glowed a pearlescent pink from the sun’s final rays. A few people walked toward her on tender, overworked feet and, though it might have been too dark to see, she smiled. Hadn’t she strolled here with Isabel, sharing a bag of Licorice All Sorts, discussing the children’s book they would write?
When she had left that day Esther gripped her tightly. They were both tipsy. “You have your way with me,” Esther said. “You are a bit of a devil, I see.”
Behind the wheel of Esther’s cream-colored Cadillac Morna had to pay extreme attention. She had never driven such a huge car, hadn’t driven at all since moving to the city. Beside her Esther was quiet. She wore no makeup today, and she’d pulled her hair into a seedy ponytail. Her outfit seemed to belong to some other kind of woman—black athletic pants with a matching jacket all fashioned from some shiny fabric that chattered with her movements. She told Morna she’d had a few days that week when she couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t find a reason for doing anything. She was glad Morna had come. They would be meeting Isabel’s sister Adrienne at the cemetery where Isabel’s ashes were buried.
The New Jersey towns they drove through were all deserted. It was the kind of summer day for a beach trip, a day of languor accompanied by tuna fish sandwiches, deviled eggs, popsicles. Esther’s quiet was frightening, and Morna’s ineptitude billowed beyond the length and breadth of the outsized Cadillac. Until now she had only seen in Esther the funeral’s giddy aftermath and now some truer, more intransigent state of mourning had set in.
“When we couldn’t sleep we would go to the cemetery,” Morna said. “We’d walk and talk and sing. ‘Good Night, Irene’—do you know that song?” Morna sang a few bars. “Sometimes, if it was warm enough, we’d take off our clothes, just to see if we could get away with it.” Isabel thought she heard something and darted for the safety of a thick-trunked maple, forgetting her clothes. What a sight she was, surprisingly nimble, bare ass swaying and glinting, only emerging from the tree when Morna began laughing.
Esther touched Morna’s forearm.
A web of narrow roads afforded access to all the cemetery plots. Morna drove at five miles an hour past stately, broad-leafed trees. Esther leaned forward, peering through the windshield, instructing Morna to turn, turn, turn again. They went up hills and down, circled, found themselves in the same place they’d begun.
“Mon dieu. I am lost. I am so sorry.”
Morna turned off the engine, and they were both stricken with a harrowing case of inertia. Esther withered against her seat back. It was wrong for Morna to have come here with so many spirits at large.
Adrienne drove up in a red Ford Fiesta and they followed her.
“I should stay in the car,” Morna said when Adrienne had parked and was leaping from her car, frowning. Unlike the other Barrett women she had short hair, and a lean body that, in its tight-fitting jeans and black T-shirt, suggested a spear.
“Oh, no.” Esther looked stricken. “Please. I am so afraid.”
The heat was shocking again after the air-conditioned car. Adrienne had taken off through the grass, winding around trees and headstones; Esther hooked Morna’s arm and they followed, Esther’s suit rustling irreverently.
Isabel’s headstone was a rectangle of white granite, substantial but simple. Wilted white roses lay at its base. Isabel Picard Barrett. Adorée.
“Ta-da. The angel,” Adrienne said.
“You remember Isabel’s friend Morna?”
Adrienne blinked. “Thomas’s friend.”
“She and Isabel do naughty things together. Très méchantes.” Esther chuckled and patted Morna’s forearm, her arm still linked in Morna’s.
“Really?” Adrienne’s gaze was trenchant as the rest of her body. “I never heard her mention you.”
“Some things we keep to ourself—we must have secrets,” Esther said. “They write books together. At night they dance naked.”
“Woop de doo.”
Seeing Adrienne’s niggardly smile, Morna’s heart raced. “Aren’t you sad?” she said.
“Of course I’m sad. I can do sad in Philly perfectly well on my own. Sad isn’t some performance you do for an audience to get them to clap.”
Morna nodded, but Adrienne’s attention was on other things, far from here.
“Everyone thinks they own her. Who’s got the right to the biggest load of grief.”
Morna said nothing and Adrienne, playing the moment, scanned the cemetery where hazy sun and heat clung like lint.
“She and I always had issues. Just as we’re maybe getting a teeny tiny grip on things, she had the audacity to die.” Adrienne wiped the air. “Boring old business that only concerns me. Okay, are you satisfied, Mother? Can I go now?”
“You come back to the house? I make some crème caramel for you.”
“I have to get back,” Adrienne said. She spun. “I’ll call.” She retraced her steps to her car and drove off.
“You see,” Esther said.
“Is she driving back to Philadelphia now?”
“It is possible.”
They stared at the headstone, and Esther bent to coll
ect the desiccated roses. The stone itself was inert and unsatisfying. Morna felt sorry for Adrienne, stuck with that anger. “She could—” Morna began.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Please,” Esther begged. Her fingers were beaded with blood, but she didn’t seem to notice.
Morna hesitated. “Isabel just gave people the brush-off sometimes, as if they weren’t as important as she was.”
Esther blinked. She looked down at her fingers, suddenly noticing the blood.
Morna sat at Veselka alone in front of a pile of soy-sauce-soaked noodles for which she had no appetite. She’d brought a book of Neruda poems, but she couldn’t get into them. Some man who was sick of being a man, another who was looking at blood, daggers and women’s stockings—who the fuck cared. Since the firing she’d felt tainted. Her friend Gina, who was a film student and terminally busy, had canceled tonight at the last minute, verifying somehow that Morna was a loser. Around her students bent toward one another, talking endlessly, endlessly animated. Many of them were film students, talent-less but still thick with prospects. She hated their easy access to parental funds—the huge tuition and beyond that money to make their navel-gazing films. Isabel’s family had money too, she thought. Their house was nice, and her father had one of those money-moving jobs. Maybe it was the money that made her sometimes unwittingly cruel though she’d never been cruel to Morna.
Thomas was the one who’d been cruel. She remembered too acutely the time when things began to go wrong. After months of communicating daily by phone calls and e-mail, spending at least every other night together, Thomas was suddenly incommunicado. All her e-mails and phone calls went unanswered. Three days passed, then five. She was furious. She learned that Thomas had spent several nights in his studio, crashing on a mattress he’d dragged there. Just because he was lost in his work didn’t mean he couldn’t pick up the phone once or twice and call her. After a week she stopped leaving messages. It was spring break. She went home to her parents’ house and tried to forget him. Back on campus a week later she torpedoed the final text, crafting neutral words about needing to move on, though in her heart it was pure fuck you.