Esther Stories

by Peter Orner

  Rhoda prances over like an excited colt. She’s dragging Arthur by the hand. Her face is plump and cherry and maroon and pink from lipstick kisses. “Mother, I want you to dance with Arthur. I’ll whirl Daddy.”

  Sarah closes her eyes and lets this giant sway her. His big hands grip her waist, and Lord, she feels things she shouldn’t. She whispers, “Hurt a hair on her head and I’ll pry out your eyes with a shrimp fork.” Arthur cackles and squeezes her tighter, and she loves it, the squeezing. The husband of my daughter only an hour. She’ll take this to the grave, but right now, Sarah lets it ooze through her like the champagne. She’s exhausted and lusty, and what else is there in this world? Someone digs a long nail into her shoulder and whispers, “Congratulations, Mrs. Mother-in-Law,” and without opening her eyes she sees everything. Those snoots, the in-laws, hiding at their table, wishing they were back in Rhode Island; Walt hamming, doing his strange version of the rumba, while the rest of the room slow-dances to “Love Me Tender.” So many cars in the Elk’s parking lot people had to park over at the Al Mac’s. The bandleader’s shoulders, tight in a tuxedo three sizes too small for him. The wiggle of the chandelier tears. The way they swing light. She created this. She never wanted an island. She wanted this.

  Arthur’s steamy chocolate breath on her neck, his limp and his bad eyes that protect him from people who want to send him away to get killed. And he will take Rhoda up in these arms tonight, but he won’t smother her, even though he’s so huge his Abraham Lincoln feet don’t fit on the bed. She can hear his big shoes thump and the tink tink of Rhoda’s white heels landing. And she can hear Rhoda sigh. Like her father, she’s always been melancholy. All of this will finally make her sad, and Arthur will know this but not understand. And Rhoda won’t explain it to him because she doesn’t know enough to explain. He will accidentally knock the clock over with a klutzy elbow, and Rhoda will grab him as he leans over and order, Leave it, the clock, leave it. And they will leave the clock on the floor and the light on, too, and they will love and push and grip and pull and wander and twist and love it and love it, and maybe hurt, too, in each other’s bodies until finally exhaustion creeps and overtakes. But their sleep will not be peaceful, because in it they will leave each other. And before dawn they will wake up tired in the flood of lamplight, and for too many moments they will be wretched and wonder why silently, without telling the other, because they won’t understand, because they’re too young to understand, because it takes years to understand—she thinks of Walt, who will hide in the Men’s and wheeze after this dance—why the morning will always be harder than the nights.

  At the Conrad Hilton

  WALT. Mesmerized by Uncle Alf Dolinsky’s feet. Dolinsky is lying on his bed in his newly polished brogans, enjoying himself. What’s there not to enjoy? It’s summer and they’re at the Conrad Hilton. Walt and Alf Dolinsky in Chicago for the National Furniture Retailer Association’s annual convention. Yet there’s a glitch. Walt’s standing again for vice president. Nobody ever runs against anybody, the votes are a formality, only this year he’s facing a challenge from an upstart barely out of his twenties, sells period furniture in Cincinnati. Alf says the kid’s a maggot, sells antiques, for Christ sake, and hasn’t got a Good Humor’s chance in hell of getting elected. But Walt knows better. He’s been around long enough to know that the only thing left to become after making it anywhere in this world is a has-been, and he’s already served on the association’s board ten years—was even president from ’57 to ’59—and now there’s this pimple-face telling every buttonhole in the hotel lobby about the need for new blood. And the old blood? It’s another death knell, the bell that’s been donging in Walt Kaplan’s ears for more years than he wants to remember. Walt Kaplan? What ever happened to him? Guy could sell you the hole in a doughnut.

  “Period furniture,” Walt says finally. “New stuff, just looks old. If he sold antiques, he wouldn’t be a retailer.”

  “Only you could find a way to worry in Chicago,” Alf says.

  Walt doesn’t move, only stands there bending back his thin, pale fingers—his father once said he had a woman’s hands because they were so small and always cold. He’s still entranced by Alf’s clodhoppers. Dolinsky’s greatest joy, lying on a bed in his shoes. Maybe this is why he comes on these trips in the first place, because if he pulled this at home, his wife, Doris, would bust his jaw. Uncle Alf, a real uncle once, to his nephew Gary, Charlie’s son, the one who died exercising. Walt always knew that stuff would kill you.

  “It isn’t that.”

  “Not what?”

  “The kid from Ohio.”

  Now it’s Alf who turns silent, who stares at the ceiling, then the window. The city’s below them, crawling lights and honks. Even up here they can hear the doorman whistling for cabs. The window’s open, and a breath of damp wind grazes Alf’s cheek. He watches it toss the drapes, billow them, and he thinks of a dress that once did that, furled as it turned away from him. A dress he once called Eva Pearlmutter.

  “We’ve been friends how long?” Alf says.

  Walt murmurs, “Long time.”

  “Gimme a figure.”

  “I don’t know. Since McKinley.”

  “Thirty-four years and a month and a half. It was June your brother beat up my brother.”

  “All right, thirty years.”

  “So knock it off.”

  Walt paces. The room’s got red carpet and white walls. They say every room at the Conrad Hilton’s different, but his room is always the same: red carpet, white walls, brass bed. Not decorated like the kind of place for two wash-ups to be alone together, but being with Alf is almost the same as being by yourself, only slightly smarter. Besides, there’s lots of times he’d rather be alone with Alf Dolinsky than Sarah, hotel room or no hotel room. Doris calls Alf the Flabby. She says, Where’s the Flabby today? Oh, the Flabby wants another piece of salami, doesn’t the Flabby? He works for Dave Rubin’s cookie company, but his toughest job is being Walt Kaplan’s best friend. They’ve already bought graves, side by side, in the newer old Jewish cemetery across from the Arco Station up President Avenue.

  Alf cradles the back of his head and watches Walt clomp across the room, from the window to the door and back again. Alf talks to the ceiling: “Long time since we had one of these. A what’s-it-all-for night! All right, Walt. You want the inventory or the philosophy first? I think we started with philosophy last time, so why not the inventory tonight?”

  “Knock it—”

  “Number one, your beautiful daughter Rhoda, cream of everybody’s crop. Number two, your beloved wife, roaring Attila that she is; number three, your store, the grandest furniture palace this side of the Narragansett.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the kid from Ohio.”

  “Then don’t stand. Step down, retire, give a speech, let them give you a watch.”

  Walt notices the lampshade on the night table’s been burned by the bulb. Some maid turned it around so nobody would see it, but this place is crawling with furniture guys.

  First thing we’re going to do is inspect the accouterments. Classy operation. This place is world-famous? Still, he likes the way the frayed edge scallops the light on the wall.

  Still pacing he says, “Like something in my brain’s a little off. I got these ghosts in the corners of my glasses.”

  “Huh?”

  “They follow me around. They’re not anything I can see, they’re empty. And they’re not in the room, they’re in my glasses.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “What’s not to get? I see things and I don’t see things.”

  “You’re melancholy, Walt. Lots of guys are melancholy. Why don’t you clean your glasses?”

  “So much I feel like I miss, Alf.”

  “Like what?”

  Without stopping, Walt shrugs. He reaches the window and spins. His face lightens. “Hong Kong.”

  “What about it?”

  “I want to go there.”
>
  “So go.”

  “You don’t want to go to Hong Kong?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “See, there’s your problem. You lack imagination.”

  Alf adjusts his pillow, sighs. “It isn’t Sarah? These ghosts in your glasses?”

  Walt stops pacing. “Who said anything about Sarah?” He stands in front of the bed and looks down again at Alf, now into his face and also at his big ears, ears that have stuck out like a monkey’s since he’s known him. “Maybe I’ve got a girl,” Walt says, “Porta-geese girl. Maybe I’ve got one in New Bedford.”

  Alf sits up, keeps his feet straight so that to Walt he looks like a fat mummy in expensive shoes. They’d planned to have a drink in the bar downstairs, go someplace for dinner, maybe take a walk down State Street and see the Marshall Field’s windows. They’ve always gotten a huge kick out of Chicago, where selling’s more of an art than it is in Massachusetts. Forget art, it’s religion here, kill or be killed, and the old rules don’t apply, and your name and pedigree don’t matter a hoot to anybody. Christ, they let the Jews own half this city, including Sears Roebuck, although they keep Julius Rosenwald’s name out of the name. Every other year the convention’s in Chicago, and Alf, though he sells cream-filled cookies, not dinette sets, always joins him. Last time they gave Alf an honorary NFRA lapel pin. They’ve been friends how long? How many trips like this have they taken? But Walt’s moody, always has been. Not that many people know it.

  “If it’s bothering you this much, take it to Jordy Tomason. He’ll rig it. Jordy’s not going to want that piglet yammering anyway. Never seen you so worked up about something like this. What do they give you, anyway? Some free magazines? Some wholesale discounts you’d probably finagle even if you weren’t on the board?”

  “How do you know I don’t have a Porta-geese girl in New Bedford?”

  In the room, it’s getting hotter. Both men’s hats are on the radiator. They look like big mushrooms. Alf watches Walt with the old sympathy, but also with bitterness. This happens sometimes—he sees his friend with his wife’s eyes. Doris, who’s never been satisfied. With the money Alf’s father never had to leave them, with Alf never amounting to anything more than one of five vice presidents, with his not-so-secret lust over women long dead or who are so far away they may as well be. And now here’s Alf with Dorry’s eyes spoiling things at the Conrad Hilton, making him wish he’d had a better, stronger friend all these years, a man with more gusto, a man with more take charge, a man with—

  “If it was a girl,” Alf says, “it would be easy. If it was a girl, I’d cure you for nothing.”

  Walt breathes and steps back, lets the wall catch him. He slumps. Rambles on more to the carpet than Alf: “Not even twenty-one. Still lives with her mother and swears like a sailor. Got a little black mustache soft as the whiskers of Rhoda’s dead cat. And legs, Alf, you should see her legs. Legs enough to make dead harpooners try to scratch out of their graves. Because she loves, Alf, swear to God, to dance in the old marine cemetery out near Pancher’s Nursery. Her name is Edna, but she doesn’t look like an Edna. Her parents wanted her to be an Edna, but she’s no Edna. She’s got spiff. She blazes. She’s like the sun, Alf. The sun! ‘A fair hot wench in flame-colour’d taffeta!’ ”

  Alf looks at the floor, where there’s one black sock. It could be either his or Walt’s—there’s no way to tell—they both shop for their socks at Pffaf’s. To hell with Horseneck Beach, you can drown on Michigan Avenue, in nonsense, in Ednas who never breathed. Guy as big a walrus as I am, sinking into the fancy carpet. Alf would give him a hand if he could reach him from the bed.

  Instead, he only pleads, begs, “Damnit, Walt. Chicago. We’re in Chicago.”

  Awnings, Bedspreads, Combed Yarns

  EYES SAUCERED by blue-gray half circles, Walt Kaplan watches them knock down City Hall in the name of progress. September 1971. The day is cloudless, the sky white. A helicopter dive-bombs like a horsefly and snatches the great gold eagle from the top of the dome and the crowd hollers, whoops, and the ball attached to the crane swings, the ball swings, and like a flatfoot man defenseless against a sidelong punch from nowhere, the old granite eyesore begins its inward crumble. The roar after each hit like the loudest bowling Walt’s ever heard. The men beside him on the sidewalk, in front of the post office, slap their hands and cheer and stomp their shoes and whoop some more. Nobody’s seen anything like this. The ball swings toward them, a freakish pendulum, and everybody takes a couple of steps back.

  Murder is what this is. In fifty years of being alive and walking these streets, how many times a day did he look at this building? Though Walt’s known the worst times, he’s always been one to climb the rungs of the pit. During the hurricane of ’38, though he was young then, he’d laughed as trees took flight and roofs and chimneys landed in neighbors’ yards. Even now, they still call him a crack-up, the genuine article, a real Wisenheimer. At the annual masked poverty ball at the Legion, who knew what he’d show up in. A couple of years ago he went as Salvini the Elder and Salvini the Younger at the same time, painted two extra eyes on his cheeks—all the women were screaming. Last year he somehow jammed himself into his sister-in-law’s tutu. A man with half a million useless stories, Sarah says. (His favorite being how his father, dirty-faced Jewish kid from Lithuania, gets off at the wrong train station, fifteen years old, and thinks he’s in Boston, wanders around Fall River looking for Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester. And what doyouknow? By the mid-twenties, Kaplan’s Furniture’s got the biggest showroom in Fall River by five thousand square feet. Branch stores at 344 Columbia and the corner of Pleasant and 4th.)

  Beloved store that was his, Walt’s, until ten days ago, when they knocked it down, too. Then there were no photographers, no police, no cheers, no helicopter swooping, only Walt, sweat-furious hands in his pockets, watching. “Exercising the state’s right of eminent domain,” the Department of Public Works lawyer had said slowly, as if the words were too difficult for a shopkeeper to understand. But he’d fought them for two years before he lost, in court, the right to own his own property. Then—because the law so ordered—they gave him a quarter of what the store was worth in the name of the good of the Commonwealth. In this country! You’d think Khrushchev was governor. And the idiot mayor proclaims Fall River will be a champion again. A return to the greatness of Spindle City, the Textile Capital of the World. That the new I-95 extension will be the greatest boon since Colonel Durfee opened his first cotton mill at Globe Corners in 1811.

  The ball strikes, and the twin sets of pillars that lorded the front door crack and topple.

  Of course he’s not the only sap who knows that nothing they do is going to reopen a single mill. That a highway’s so people can drive through Fall River, not to it. He doesn’t corner the market on detecting bull when it froths out politicians’ mouths. But others who know the truth, his brother, Leon, for example, gave it up. Leon, who is where right now? On a beach? The government’s going to build what the government wants to build. You forgotten the pharaohs? May as well dig up F.D.R. and blame him. May as well go fishing in the Taunton with your pinkie.

  But today, if nothing else, Walt insists on being up close to the destruction. This wafting of a hundred-some-odd years of undisturbed dust. He breathes it in, almost enjoying it, like sniffing the sweet rot at the back of Sarah’s refrigerator.

  And it goes far beyond the killing of his livelihood. That the route the DPW and the city council finally agreed upon went smack through Kaplan’s, but somehow, like some miracle of Jesus, avoided Nate Lyons’s Furniture Warehouse not a quarter mile away on Granite Block. Not to mention all the banks in town, and Sharder and Nolte’s, Small Brothers, L. D. Wilbur’s, Boyko Typewriters and Adding Machines…Mr. Kaplan, be reasonable. All citizens, at one time or another, must make sacrifices for the sake of the common achievement…That they forced him, a self-employed man, to go to work for Sarah’s fascist cousin Morris, the broker. Broker of what? A
nything you can stick a price on, honey. That they turned him into a lackey with hardly an office, a peephole with a desk crammed in—with that little Führer speeching at him all day about how he’s never met less of a striver than Walt Kaplan. (“That’s how you lost the branches, kiddo. You’re slow on your feet. Don’t forget the highway didn’t take away your daddy’s branches. You lost them long before.”)

  The ball smashes the clock below the dome, the clock that was always slow. Everybody in town adjusted their watches to it, and Fall River was known as the town that was seven minutes off. How fast it takes to kill. There’s an explosion followed by a loud sucking noise as the dome, screeching glass and grinding, caves in.

  The joke is that nobody loves this city more. When he was a kid they’d say their pledge of allegiance, and then Mrs. Gerstadt would ask in singsong, Now, children, what makes our city so wondrous special? He can still chant the chant: Awnings, bedspreads, combed yarns, curtains, knitwear, shirts, sweaters, bathrobes, handbags, corsets, drapes, mattresses, braids, roll covers, sport clothes, thread, raincoats, plastics, furniture, luggage, underwear, industrial textiles!

  Nearly blinded by the dust, sneezing, he finally turns away, and the clack of his shoes is empty defiance. But he’ll take it. He laughs, and it scalds his throat. A funeral now, and I’m a mourner. Our fair City Hall. Born in 1845. The mother, a Flemish architect. Mrs. Gerstadt’s toothless grinning: Not from Flemland, but from where? Children? Where does a Flemish person call home?

  And didn’t his father walk him through the long corridors, fingering portraits of dead old turkey-throated mayors as though the Buffingtons and Fozzards were Washingtons and Jeffersons? The echo beneath the dome. The way a whisper became a murmur became a shout.