She felt herself nod and grimace.
“I want the person to see me,” he said. “I try so hard.”
His revelation was absurd, and she chose her next words so as not to indicate sexual preference: “When was your last relationship?”
“The last one”—he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on his heels, his eyes narrowing—“was a long, long time ago.” He brightened. “It was the kind of love that takes four to five hours a night to take care of. You know what I mean? I’m still getting over it.”
She wasn’t sure she knew what he meant, and she found herself thinking about Charlie.
“It must be hard for you,” he said. Her head went back; her eyes squinted in irritation. “To be so pretty,” he continued, and then, as if sensing her confusion, he launched into a long-winded explanation: “I was working out at the gym,” he said, “watching Phil Donahue on male sexual hang-ups and insecurities, and then I came home and watched Oprah’s fortieth-birthday special: a surprise party and even her boyfriend—I can’t ever remember his name, can you? Sted-something. Stedwall? Stedly? Well, that’s not the important part. He carted out this big cake.” He paused, set a stack of towels in the hallway cabinet. “Oprah’s guests were all past forty,” he continued. “They were singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ passing around a microphone, and it got passed to Cheryl Tiegs, and you know what she said? You’ll never guess what she said.” Esther shook her head and shrugged, admitting that she didn’t know. Rick took on his version of Cheryl Tiegs’s voice: “‘I’m sorry, I don’t sing; I just look pretty.’”
She didn’t know what to say, but then a blare of noise came from behind the door to Grandma Eileen’s half of the house, and she followed Rick to Grandma Eileen’s bedroom.
Grandma Eileen sat against the pinewood headboard of her king-size bed. The Southwestern decor appeared to have climaxed in glory all over the walls of her bedroom: a glass enclosed feathered-arrow display; paintings of horses and sunsets and cacti in chalky grays and oranges and blues; an exhibit of antique rifles; and a large plaster gecko hanging clock, purple tongue flicking in and out, in time to the ticking seconds.
Grandma Eileen was watching television, the bluish-colored lights from the TV floating over her. She had a remote and a cigarette, and there were four Heineken bottles on her bedstand dresser, next to three vials of prescription medicine and a glass of some kind of murky cleansing liquid that contained her dentures.
When Rick reached for the remote, she clutched it against her nightgown, near her floppy breasts.
On the screen, a televangelist raised his hands (“Let us praise Him! Let us praise Him! Let us praise Him!”), and his wife cried beside him, orange hair piled on her head, tears and mascara streaming down her cheeks.
“I’m wathing a movie,” Grandma Eileen said, lisping without her dentures; the lower half of her jaw continued to move, as if she were rubbing her gums together.
Rick reached again, but she hugged the remote tighter. He managed to take her cigarette from her fingers and extinguished it in one of the Heineken bottles.
“Mothsly,” she said, remote hidden under her breasts, “Eileen Marie Wilsthon liketh the movie.”
Esther went to the television and lowered the volume.
“She’s loaded,” Rick said, and then he directed his words more loudly at Grandma Eileen. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m wathing a movie,” Grandma Eileen said, but this time she was defeated. Her lips were slightly parted and tucked over her gums, so that her mouth looked like a small black hole.
Rick sat beside her and stroked her arm.
“Last time,” he said, looking away from Grandma Eileen to Esther, but continuing to stroke her arm and managing, at the same time, to dislodge the remote from her grip, “she was watching the BET channel. A rap video.”
He looked back to Grandma Eileen with what looked like affection and pride. “You remember?” he said, his voice sweetening. “You said that was a movie, too. God, it was so loud. Thumpa, thumpa, thumpa—boom boom. You wouldn’t even let me turn it down. You’re just a little bit confused, aren’t you? But that’s okay. That’s perfectly fine. Because Rick is here now. And Rick is going to take care of everything.”
Grandma Eileen blinked, slowly.
12
A MAN QUIETLY played the piano in a corner of the country club, as if hoping to fade into the background. The buffet brunch was set on eight tables, with an ice sculpture of a swan at the center, and the display made Esther queasy, contributing to her hangover. In a slim white vase at the center of the table where she sat with the Rice family were three waxy red tulips. At the other tables, families chatted amicably, and she noted that they didn’t have tulips, confirming that Paul had brought them.
Certain habits of Paul’s genuinely bothered Esther, although she did her best to hide it. Paul had slim fingers with neat nails, and his hands fluttered madly but steadied when he picked the skin behind his ears, along his hairline. He then examined his bunched fingers, close to his eyes, looking for what? At first she had believed this to be an infrequent habit, but the more time she spent with him, the more she understood that whatever bothered him behind his ears—imagined or real—was a continuing ailment, and that she’d better get used to it. Also, there was the way he tried to communicate with the waiter and busboys that he was the same, as if he didn’t have money, which only amplified his differences.
She was panicked now that she’d finally met Mr. and Mrs. Rice, mainly because Mr. Rice was the type of male over whom her beauty held little sway. She’d been aware that this kind of grim man existed: one oblivious to her, armored against her appeal. A man with tunnel vision. Mr. Rice cared about business; he was a serious man. After he made a point, he smiled, not a real smile, but a lips-only smile. His eyes remained dead.
His Canadian bacon was gone; he only picked at his French toast. He had the same albinolike coloring as Paul, same flaking along his sideburns.
Esther wasn’t able to flatter Mr. Rice or flirt with him; her knowledge of business was limited, and while she faked interest and improvised, listening intently and asking questions, she knew that what he wanted was to be alone at his desk, expanding his empire.
“Miguel,” he barked across the room. “My wife needs more water.”
Mrs. Rice was an extension of her husband, business partners more than companions or (God forbid!) lovers, and as she sipped at her Bloody Mary, celery stalk on her bread plate, she contributed little to the conversation. Her plate was stacked with honeydew melon and cottage cheese and a side of unbuttered wheat toast, but she had focused her attention on the finger-size sausages, cutting them into niblets and then eating the pieces one by one. She had a postmenopausal and sexually neutral appearance, with her boxy figure in a dark blue pantsuit and her hair sensibly coifed, pepper gray. Her only signs of femininity were a string of pearls wrapped tightly around her neck and her sturdy fingers decorated with diamond, ruby, and emerald rings.
When Esther had first entered the country club, while Paul and his father had stood to greet her, Mrs. Rice had continued to sit, her eyes traveling over Esther’s sandals, dress, shawl, ring, necklace, and purse (in that order) before landing at her face. Unimpressed.
Then Esther had caught Mrs. Rice staring at Paul, hard and searching, taking him in from inside to outside and sparing nothing, and in observing Mrs. Rice’s staggering stare, Esther had shuddered, understanding that Paul had to habitually and continually face his mother’s scrutiny—that he was always having to live up to her expectations, every hour, every day, and that by bringing Esther to the brunch, he’d disappointed in some fundamental way.
Esther used her fork to cut tiny fragments off a crab-and-Gruyère cheese omelet, made for her by the chef as she had waited by his table in the buffet line. She set her fork on the plate, prongs entwined with yellow egg matter. She clutched her shawl tight, drew it ’round her body, as if huddling for security, and sipped her mimos
a.
Despite Paul’s tulips, thoughts of her future crowded in her head, intolerable: married to a man who picked at his ears and would not once surprise her. A father-in-law who cared nothing for her; a mother-in-law who despised her.
She watched Paul’s coffee being refilled, a brown syrupy arc issuing from the thin spout of a silver coffee pitcher, steam rising from his glass mug, and the smell was unbearable. For a fleeting instant, she thought she would throw up, but she swallowed the rising tide.
Paul’s eyes met hers from across the table. She attempted a smile, but her mood was dark and foreboding, and she wasn’t successful.
Paul’s condition, what he called Essential Tremors, worsened in response to strong emotions. His hands were under the table. His knife and fork were crossed over his plate, although he’d barely eaten his mushroom-and-cheddar omelet. There was a blush to his cheeks—two pink streaks, as if he wore makeup.
In high school, Paul’s twin sister had died in a drunk-driving accident, and the tremors had developed soon after. Paul had explained that his parents continued to grieve, as if a shroud had been placed over them; Esther hadn’t quite understood the gravity until meeting Mr. and Mrs. Rice, and now she was convinced that there was no chance of light cracking through.
What had seemed nobly sad in theory—a family forever in mourning—was in reality disturbing.
She took a bite of her omelet while thinking of death. And then, against her better judgment, she imagined performing the sexual act with Paul while his parents and twin sister (an exact replica of Paul, but with long hair and breasts) watched like referees, and she felt the egg matter turn both rubbery and liquid in her mouth. She could neither chew nor swallow. Saliva pooled in her mouth.
She forced herself to swallow, and then she washed everything down with her mimosa. But the food and drink wanted to climb its way back out. She set her napkin to her lips, swallowed again. Her skin was hot, prickling.
She excused herself to the restroom, and when she stood, Paul half-stood, his chair dragging against the carpet. He crouched before the table, hands shaking, his linen napkin crumpled at his thigh like a small white animal pausing on its way up his leg. She implored him with her eyes to sit back down, and he complied.
Mr. Rice—grimly engaged with his fork, extracting crescents of oily onions and red peppers from a side plate of grilled potatoes, and then setting them on the rim of another plate—ignored her, but she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Rice, who was staring at her with obvious dislike.
Walking the long hallway to the women’s lounge, she observed the hanging portraits of the country club’s presidents, from its founding (1932) until now. The faces—white, male, old, grimacing—blended together, and by the time she arrived at the women’s lounge, she was convinced that they were a horrific conglomeration of Mr. Rice; she didn’t want to return to the table, much less marry into the family.
Her queasiness released itself into the toilet, prompted by two manicured fingers down her throat, bits of crab and egg and pulp from the orange juice, until she was left with a few last nasty dry heaves and some floating bile.
She heard a woman coughing near the sinks, as if to alert her that it was rude to vomit at the country club, and she wiped her mouth with toilet paper. The piano music was being piped into the bathroom through hidden speakers, barely audible, a melancholy interpretation of “My Favorite Things.”
The bathroom door opened and closed, whoever had coughed her disapproval thankfully leaving. Esther’s body had a coldsweaty and tingling relief after vomiting, but the panic would not leave. She flushed the toilet twice more, appreciating the aggressive sound of the water swirling and rushing down the porcelain bowl, carrying away any last filmy evidence of her sickness.
At the sinks, along with the black combs in the blue-sanitized water, hairbrushes, a large wicker basket with folded hand-drying towels, and the various hand soaps and body lotions, were tiny bottles of Scope mouthwash, and she rinsed her mouth. She spat the greenish-blue into the sink and watched it run down the drain. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she had the sensation that she was observing someone else—a woman with a stunned expression, skin pale.
She sat on the couch in the women’s lounge, in a separate room, near where the old women played poker and bridge; but this morning the peach-colored, womblike, windowless room was empty, the wall lined with yellow lockers, little padlocks on each one. The piano music was shut off from the room, making it strangely peaceful and stagnant.
In a numb stupor, Esther breathed deeply, knowing that she was decreasing her chances of marriage with each passing minute—but she sat and sat, until what seemed like an hour had passed. During this time, she thought about many things, including how her father had told her that she was an “easy” child.
“You’d float in the pool for hours,” he’d said. “I’d put you in the pool so I could read. Yellow floaties on your arms, and your ducky inner tube. Your fingers tapping at the water. Humming a little, singing a little. I had to make a conscious effort to remember you.”
“Was I happy? Was I smiling?”
“No, not really. But you weren’t unhappy.”
She tried to remember the feeling: her feet swirling beneath her, float-drifting. Hands flapping against the surface, bumping against the tiled edge of the pool, drifting back to the center, like being nowhere and everywhere at once.
She thought about how when Eric was twelve or thirteen, she saw him at the balcony, pressing a lit cigarette into the palm of his hand.
“Stop!” she said, and he seemed to wake up, pulling his hand back.
How long would he have continued if she hadn’t seen him? At the center of his palm, a blister formed, surrounded by a bright red circle. When it popped and deflated, he showed her the wrinkled, saggy pouch. A scar remained, a perfect concentric outline, and Eric claimed he could tell when it was going to rain by the way it reddened beforehand.
She remembered seeing her father cry when she was a kid. Only once. She heard him first. A low moaning noise coming from the kitchen. When she walked through the door, he wiped at his face and turned away from her. She saw his spine shuddering, seeming to collapse a little.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
She was wearing her pajamas with footsies, and he turned and hugged her, lifting her so that her padded feet left the floor for a second.
And while she sat and remembered, there came to her images of Paul’s parents waiting at the table. She saw them discussing her rudeness, her strange behavior, her lack of a college education, her job at True Romance. And she could feel Paul’s mother feeding off his shame, refusing to look for Esther in the women’s lounge, to make sure she was okay (“She’s a grown woman, Paul; she can take care of herself.”).
She knew that Paul’s father would be contemptuous, his cheek quivering with disgust as he summoned the waiter for their check.
The image of Paul waiting was too painful—but she could feel him pulling at her, urging her to return. Please, Esther. Don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me here. Come back, Esther. Come back.
But the part of her that remained herself, that part that she had tried to submerge when she was with him, would not disappear, and she felt that it was this small and nebulous part that kept her body weighted on the couch.
As time passed, her despair, anguish, and panic dissipated. She sank further and further into nothingness. Once, she imagined she heard the ocean thundering—but it was her own blood in her ears.
At one point, panic threatened to return, but she decided that it wasn’t real, and because she decided this, she wasn’t as afraid. She was pleased by this ability to see through her fear, to gauge it as a nonthreat.
Instead of fear, she discovered a great unwillingness to participate in the life that waited for her beyond the lounge door. The part of her that dreaded the consequences was stilled, until she felt that she could take a long nap. She was wea
k and tired, as if the emotional labor she’d been through had been physical as well.
She felt like she had been awake for days. When she turned off the light, the room was filled with an amniotic darkness. She made her body comfortable, using the couch as a bed. Her shawl became an improvised blanket.
ESTHER DOZED AND woke and dozed again. Images came and went. She was half-present, aware of her surroundings and then unaware, as if drifting through space. In this dreamlike state, she composed excuses for Paul—varying from the self-flagellating to the humorous to the charitable to the long-winded and psychological, and to the purely factual—but none was satisfactory.
Briefly, she imagined Paul kissing her, and while she allowed herself to be touched and kissed in her imagination, she was filled with revulsion, detesting his tongue, his teeth butting against hers, the smell of his breath, and she wondered whether he had ever guessed what was going on inside her. How could she continue to fake it? She understood that she could not force herself to love him.
Already through the youthful portion of her life, she had decided that any intelligence and thoughtfulness and philosophizing on her part had only hampered her achievement. But she continued to ponder. It was a curse.
For women like her, ambition was a series of self-denials: not to be with a man if he wasn’t wealthy; not to be unpleasant; not to be loud or opinionated; not to be indecent; not to be promiscuous; not to be unfeminine; not to get fat; not to get old; not to have wrinkles; not to be poor; not to end up childless; not to pursue an identity separate from her family; not to be different; not to be herself; not to question; not to think too much; not to be too educated; not to be too smart; not to be stubborn; not to be defiant.
She decided that hers was the worst deception: pretending to desire Paul—the worst shame. A flare of self-hatred and self-disgust rose inside her, and then, just as quickly, it died back down.
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