This Vacant Paradise

by Victoria Patterson

  It was most difficult for Esther to be gracious with Mary, since Mary’s home had rightfully belonged to her, having once been her father’s. She remembered every detail but avoided the street, so that she wouldn’t have to see it or think of it as being occupied by someone as revolting as Mary. She imagined Mary smothering the wall with generic watercolor paintings—dull landscapes and seascapes—or, even worse, her framed psychedelic Grateful Dead posters, as confirmation of her hippie past. Mary covering the hardwood floors with thick cottony carpet and festooning the kitchen in some appalling theme, like ducks or pigs. An awful plaque hanging above the sink: WHEN MAMA AIN’T HAPPY, AIN’T NOBODY HAPPY.

  The women walked to the church auditorium, more like an office empire. Motionless clouds, thick and claustrophobic, loomed low. Mary, hair curly and loose at her shoulders, wore a floral-print dress, cinched at the waist with a conch belt, and as she walked beside Esther, her clogs made a sucking clop sound. She was always reading New Age books, talking as if she were some kind of guru, indulging her children with all sorts of diagnoses: sugar and wheat allergies and rare learning disorders. Mary feigned a motherly concern for Esther, and Esther’s resentment had been cultivated over the years with the understanding, reinforced time after time, that in truth Mary did not give a lick about her well-being.

  A divinity scene beside the parking lot, with life-size replicas of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, caused the women to pause. “Jesus is the reason for the season,” Grandma Eileen said definitively, before continuing toward the church. Grandma Eileen often used broad religious declarations, her most frequent being “The Bible is God’s word breathed.” Not long ago, she’d claimed Mikhail Gorbachev was the Antichrist—proof being the purplish birthmark on his forehead.

  Aunt Lottie tried to help Grandma Eileen up the stairwell with a hand to her shoulder, but Grandma Eileen shrugged her off. “Leave me alone,” she said. “I know how to walk.”

  “Why is it,” Mary asked rhetorically, so that only Esther could hear, “we reserve our worst behavior for those closest to us? We save the worst of ourselves for them.”

  Esther, watching the large upside-down heart shape of Grandma Eileen’s ass, didn’t answer. Aunt Lottie’s backside was a smaller version, and it gave both women an appealingly vulnerable quality.

  “One of the true signs of character,” Mary said, “is the ability to love a person regardless of differences.”

  “What’s that?” Grandma Eileen said, turning with a scowl. “What’d you say?”

  “I’m talking about the Golden Rule.”

  Grandma Eileen flapped her hand at Mary.

  The women sat in the second row; a special reclining chair had been set up on the aisle for Grandma Eileen, and Esther was chosen to sit next to her. The darkened auditorium began to fill with people, most dressed casually. The choir and band assembled onstage. Purple-bluish lights filtered through the auditorium, and two large screens lowered. The drummer, blue spotlight on his glass-enclosed drum set, started the service with a steady beat, and the lights filled the stage, revealing a smoky atmosphere.

  The choir was mostly women, three visibly pregnant, and they began grooving to the beat, their arms on each other’s shoulders. The only clear sign that Maritime was a church was the small wooden cross in a corner of the stage.

  Esther watched the video montage on the screen: African American children, smiling and happy. Some crazy Jesus actor making his way through his disciples. A shot of the Earth from space, and then the camera zoomed in on a throng of Chinese people walking down a street. Inadvertently, she felt as if she were part of one great cosmic Christian universe, but whatever small grains of belief she had were best cultivated in private. She didn’t trust spiritual showmanship.

  The couple in the seats ahead of her held their hands in the air. The man wore flip-flops and jeans and the woman’s hair was in need of a dye job, with silvery-gray roots.

  Pastor Ken walked to the center of the stage, smiling and holding a microphone. He wore khakis and a Hawaiian-print shirt, like the Parking Pastors.

  “There’s Ben,” Grandma Eileen said. She called him Ben and had done so for years. Esther wondered if Ken had tired of correcting her, or whether he allowed the name change because of Grandma Eileen’s financial contributions.

  Esther searched the faces, looking for Paul. She thought about how close he was to proposing. A few more months. She remembered her father saying, “You’ll do well. You’ll marry someone rich.”

  Ken’s sermons were affable and innocuous, making the audience chuckle. She didn’t believe in the church, but she pretended to. His voice provided a calming backdrop and her thoughts drifted. She remembered her father: his thinning hair, his half-crooked smile, a look of laziness. She remembered a cruise to Alaska when she was seven, her first taste of crab; a trip to Spain; excitement and travel and her tennis lessons and golf lessons and piano lessons. There was always enough money. And then the constant presence of Scott; she could see his lanky body in his shorts and Izod shirts, a windbreaker that he wore, his arms making a whispery noise when he moved. The skin separating his nostrils was chronically chafed; his cocaine habit was beginning to wear through the thin flesh. She could see him rubbing the skin, his fingers pressed there. And the quarrels. They took another trip to Europe, away from Scott. Scott, in retribution, paid a visit to Grandma Eileen, bribed her for money.

  Strange that what Esther remembered the most about the afternoon that Grandma Eileen had told them to leave their house was Grandma Eileen’s matching gray pantsuit. “Do what you have to,” her father had said, and then he’d put his foot on her coffee table. “That’s a polished surface,” Grandma Eileen had said.

  After her father’s death, Esther became fascinated by a photograph of him that Grandma Eileen kept framed on the mantel in the living room. With curiosity, she would study his competitive, leering grin. He had just finished a meal at the country club and was leaning back in his chair. He must’ve been in his late twenties. The picture seemed at odds with who Esther knew her father to be, and she wondered why Grandma Eileen kept it. His elbow was on the table, his jacket sleeve slouched down, revealing a hairy forearm, and he held in his fingers, pointed outward, a fat cigar. The image was potent with entitlement, self-mockery, outward mockery, satiation, and it contrasted with all those years as a child she had spent with him—cracking eggs with him into the big blue bowl, to make cookies; holding her face still while he applied her makeup on Halloween, so that she could be a princess or a cat or a clown, his face hovering over hers, gentle and patient; sitting with him in the big reclining chair (“our chair,” he called it), when he let her stay up late to watch Saturday Night Live.

  If she looked at the photograph long enough, her point of view seemed to shift into her father’s, feeling the situation, defenseless against himself, pretending to be someone else—a mockery of masculinity. She saw that shame lurked beneath his expression—close by, waiting—and she felt the protective motions of his mind and instincts as he hid, further away from himself. I’m not gay, the photo said. Fuck you. I’m not gay.

  The church schedule was at Mary’s knee, and Esther read what Mary had scribbled in the margin: “Don’t have the right to judge. God expects us to be loving. God wants us to know He is good all the time. You need to trust me. I’ll be good and you need to be loving. Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. Dear friends, never take revenge. Romans 12:17–21.”

  Grandma Eileen leaned forward, and Esther saw that her eyes were directed at a man and that she was agitated. The offending person had clipped his sunglasses at the back of his collar. With relief, Esther saw that the man had a really dark tan, and Grandma Eileen noticed as well, leaning back into her seat.

  Esther didn’t want to be racist, and of course she wasn’t homophobic, but when she was with Grandma Eileen, heterosexual Aryan Christian uniformity made life less problematic.

  After
the service, the congregation assembled with their steaming cups of coffee near the glowing lawn. Kids played inside a big hollow plastic whale in the middle of the lawn, and the grass was covered with giant balls and tubes for them to climb through.

  She saw Paul from a distance, near the bookstore and café, recognizing his baggy chinos, his dress shirt tucked in slackly at his waist. She knew that he bought his clothing by catalog from J.Crew.

  Pity warmed her, thinking of his shaking hand lifting the Styrofoam cup to his lips, coffee sloshing. She would make sure that he saw her at least once before she and her relatives left, but she wouldn’t force a conversation—her image would be more effective.

  The dark clouds had merged to a uniform gray, the sky dull. She saw that Brenda Caldwell was making her way through the crowd, her husband, Sean, close behind. Sean was a lawyer who specialized in corporate takeovers, and he and Brenda had married young, while sophomores at USC. Brenda had been pregnant, and their harried wedding had been arranged without fanfare but with the approval of both families, since their fortunes would merge. Three children and great financial success later, both were unhappy in their marriage, and Brenda was known to have engaged in at least two affairs, her last with Charlie. Everyone, including Esther, seemed to like Sean and sympathize with him. Sean had once told Esther that he secretly pined for her, and she appreciated the small power this gave her.

  A hand to the elbow along the way stopped Sean, but Brenda continued her course. Esther admired her beige slacks and white tailored blouse. Her clothing, her face—everything about her—spoke of money and privilege, of careful and exacting attention, in an effortless, carefree way. She was fulfilling her inherited obligations—to dress well and look beautiful. And her affairs were a family legacy, extending as far back as her great-great-grandfather, a well-known philanderer.

  Esther felt a smile come to her face as Brenda’s eyes met hers. After hellos and small talk, including affirmations of each other’s clothing and of Ken’s sermon, Brenda paused. Her hand was at her waist, fingernails filed in soft ovals and coated with a shimmery, translucent gloss; she seemed to be in thought.

  When she looked up, her expression was beautiful in its emptiness. “I’m not sure how to ask,” she said, “but I was wondering if you want to come by, and I can give you some of my things that I was going to pass on?”

  Things, Esther knew, included handbags, designer sunglasses and clothes, and all the other items she pined for while working at True Romance or window shopping in Fashion Island.

  She felt herself submitting to Brenda’s goodwill while at the same time chafing against it, understanding that there must be something behind the offer, some knowledge or gain for Brenda.

  “I’ll call you this afternoon,” Brenda said, instead of waiting any longer for Esther to answer, and her lovely fingers came forward and gently squeezed Esther’s forearm. “Same number?”

  Esther nodded, in a shaming admission that her domestic situation had not improved. Her forearm was squeezed again.

  “Okay,” Brenda said, releasing her grip.

  “Thanks so much,” Esther said, thinking that one day she would not live off the castoffs of others. One day she would be passing things down.

  EVEN UNCLE RICHARD, living at New Horizons Senior Care off MacArthur Street, was a lesson to Esther in what might happen if she was not vigilant. Without money, without power, without influence, he’d been relegated to a convalescent home, while Grandma Eileen would spend her final days in the familiarity and comfort of her house, nurses and doctors and caretakers at her call.

  “Where’s the bar in this place?” Uncle Richard asked as Esther entered his room, as if it hadn’t been a year since she’d last seen him. He was trying to be funny—it was the same thing he’d said to her last year before Christmas, but it made her feel worse, as if he’d planned the quip far in advance.

  “I’ve been looking all over for the bar.” He sat on his bed, his legs crossed at his ankles, his burgundy-colored socks matching his cashmere V-neck sweater. He looked sad and resigned, as if he’d been waiting for them all morning and now that they’d finally arrived, it was a disappointment.

  “Now, now, Richard,” Grandma Eileen said, smiling horribly. She clumped forward with her cane, a Christmas present clutched to her chest. She set the present on his bed, and he ignored it.

  Mary set a smaller present alongside the other, and Esther knew that inside the box was probably catnip or a wind-up mouse for Uncle Richard’s old cat, Captain Ahab, who had accompanied him to the pet-friendly convalescent home. Uncle Richard liked to tell the story—probably untrue—of how he’d rescued Ahab, finding him in the Mojave Desert, fending for his life against a rattlesnake.

  Esther glanced around the room, looking for the cat, but she couldn’t find him. The only visual clues were the wisps of cat hair that covered Uncle Richard’s sweater.

  Grandma Eileen paid for Uncle Richard’s care, as Grandpa Gurney had had to provide for him in life. He’d been happy to live off his brother, and he’d settled into old age in an alcoholic daze. Esther’s father had called him a useless drunk, and she’d grown up thinking of her great-uncle as expendable.

  Now, Uncle Richard’s liver was shriveled and decayed. His gaze was on the wall. “What is good for me,” he said cryptically.

  “Gurney,” Grandma Eileen said, “was good for you and to you, and don’t you forget it.”

  He ignored Grandma Eileen. With a pained, wistful expression, he turned his attention to Esther. “Did you know that you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my whole goddamn life?”

  Esther only looked back at him. Emptiness expanded in her stomach—a sad, empty nothing—and she cast her face down so that the others wouldn’t see. She sensed Mary’s eyes on her, and then she heard Mary’s voice: “Suffering comes from confusion, and its purpose is to awaken our true natures.”

  A silence fell over the room, and although Esther kept her head down, she had the appeasing sensation that Uncle Richard was glaring at Mary.

  Uncle Richard coughed, and it sounded as if he were clapping his hands. “Someday,” he said, “someday, someday.”

  “Don’t talk in riddles,” Grandma Eileen said.

  There was a silence, until finally, in a hoarse whisper and with his head down, he said, “I’m not.”

  “Riddle me this, riddle me that,” Grandma Eileen said.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting a piece of yellow lined paper at Grandma Eileen.

  “What’s this?” she said dismissively, passing it to Esther without a glance.

  “My roommate is crazy,” he said, a quick jerk of his head in the direction of another bed. “Get me out of here.”

  A man, his face extended from his tightly tucked-in sheets, skin yellow and withered, slept with his mouth open.

  Outside on the patio, Esther saw Captain Ahab—the size of a dog—sauntering toward his plastic domed litter box.

  “Don’t be silly,” Grandma Eileen said.

  As Esther silently read the paper, she knew that Uncle Richard was making a point to the others by watching her.

  Recorded Conversation of my roommate Jim talking to himself on 12/13/1994:

  They all love me.

  I didn’t want to yell.

  Let’s go home, Helen.

  I want to go home.

  Undecipherable mumbling—and suddenly he yelled, Take a shovel to his head!

  Esther looked up from the paper to Uncle Richard’s frantic eyes. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, but she understood that what he was really trying to tell her was, Whatever you do, whatever happens, don’t you ever, ever end up like me, in a place like this.

  6

  “I MEAN, HE’S just so obviously guilty. It makes me sick, absolutely sick. Do you know what I mean? Someone needs to take that man, tie him up, and kill him. That’s right—kill him. He’s a murderer and he needs to be punished.”

  They were at The Palms
, and Charlie had been listening to Jennifer Platt, his former pupil, fill him in on her life, post–community college. And now that Jennifer had finished telling him about her newest passion for sports medicine, she was expressing her obligatory outrage over the upcoming O. J. Simpson trial. Behind her was a tinted window with a view of the bay, and he found himself gazing absentmindedly over her shoulder.

  A side benefit of his profession: former admiring female students (between ages eighteen and twenty-two) who, postgraduation, nostalgically dug up their old notebooks and syllabi, his phone number placed squarely on the front page of his course outline; in a burst of impulsiveness, they called. All it took was a suggestion—“Would you like to meet for a drink?” His former pupils executing their student-professor fantasies. As far as he was concerned, it was an ethically evenhanded, win-win situation. The young women quickly understood that he had nothing more to offer than an escapist night or two, and he had the pleasure of their company.

  They usually came to him at a thought-provoking transitional juncture—after a breakup or before settling down into marriage—and he thought of himself as a conduit to their futures, a quick spark of connection, nothing more. No hurt feelings.

  But tonight as Charlie listened, he was ambivalent, knowing that it wasn’t just her choice of subjects or that she’d described a public lynching or that she talked on and on and on.

  He was trying not to think about Esther—she’d been monopolizing his thoughts. He’d even sought her out at True Romance, although she’d been on Christmas vacation, and her manager—a well-dressed, slightly bedraggled and masculine woman, probably in her late forties—didn’t appear too happy about it.

  The sky was black, freckled with stars, and a slim white moon looked like a backward C. Their plates had been cleared. Jennifer was on her fourth Corona; he was on his third Heineken. She was young and beautiful and willing; she smelled like jasmine and vanilla; she’d alluded to a roommate-free apartment. At a certain angle, she looked like a younger Esther, with fuller lips. She wore a low-cut, blue-and-white-striped jersey, and her breasts loomed above the cotton material in a pinkish-tanned m.