She heard women coming and going from the bathroom, but, thankfully, no one entered this part of the lounge. A woman blew her nose three times, each consecutive blow louder, and then it was quiet again.
Her sleep deepened because, by this time, she believed that Paul and his parents had left the country club, left her life, gone for good.
She felt the physical sensation of allowing her mind to go further into a cavernous slumber—like a dark shadow moving across her, spreading over her—and then it stayed dark and quiet and still.
WHEN ESTHER FINALLY woke, her body was rested and her hangover was gone. She left the women’s lounge for the bathroom and turned on the faucet at one of the sinks, washing her face three times with cold water, as though somehow she could rinse everything that had happened off her skin.
She would have liked to continue sleeping: to not be so fully alive, with all the requisite emotions and situations and sensations that living and breathing—eyes open—entailed.
When she closed the women’s bathroom door behind her, she saw that Paul was standing by the bar, near a large window, staring out at the scene before him. And she knew that while his parents had left long ago, he had continued to wait. Briefly, she thought of exiting through a back door, avoiding him. But she owed him an explanation—he’d waited all this time for one, and she knew that he knew she was there.
She walked down the long hallway, past the portraits of the country club’s presidents, past the bar, glancing at the clock (3:14 PM), and stopped before the same window, with a small space between them.
The buffet had been cleared in the next room; there were no families left. The man was no longer playing the piano in the corner; instead, a generic jazz-infused instrumental came from the speakers. For some reason, it smelled like burnt toast.
Without looking at him, she sensed his anger—it radiated off his body. Because she’d washed all her makeup off, she had the sensation of being naked—without protection.
The view was of the first tee of the golf course, and she watched a man in patchwork golf pants bend over to tee his ball. In her peripheral vision, she observed Paul, her skin heating with her betrayal. How long had he waited? She’d been asleep for close to two hours. It had been around noon when she’d left for the women’s lounge.
Paul’s hands were hidden in his pockets, and she imagined them twitching. Then she saw the evidence: The material of his slacks rippled, trembling with the movement of his pocketed fingers.
“They didn’t deserve that,” he said, not looking at her.
The man in the patchwork pants swung his club, and his golf ball—a speck—disappeared into the blue of the sky. The sky was clear except for a single heavy cloud—a streak of grayish white in all that blue.
“They’ve been through enough,” he said.
She looked back to the golfers. The man’s golfing companions were smiling and nodding, as if telling the man that he’d made a nice shot, and he continued to stare in the direction his ball had gone in.
“Where were you?” Paul asked, continuing to stare out the window. “Were you in the bathroom this whole time? What were you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I felt sick.”
Paul said nothing.
Another man, wearing pale green pants, bent over to tee his ball.
“I thought you would have left by now,” she said.
“How kind of you,” he said, facing her. It was the first time she’d heard him use sarcasm, and it felt like a slap. They’d never quarreled; their relationship had been easy and relaxing—resistant to confrontations and arguments—and both were unaccustomed to the sudden burden of reality.
“Your parents scare me,” she said.
He bunched his eyebrows, insulted. He gave a disgusted head shake.
“I don’t know what happened.”
It made him repeat his head shake. And then his eyes raked her up and down, revolted. He looked back out the window, as if he could no longer stand the sight of her.
“I’m not sure what happened,” she said. She wanted the breakup to be over with, for her sake as well as for his. But for a terrifying moment, she was consumed by the loss—not of Paul, but of what Paul represented: legitimacy, stability, security, an end to financial ruin, and an end to her dependence on Grandma Eileen.
Paul stepped two paces back from the window, hands tucked safely in his pockets. He looked all around the bar, at the tables and lights and piano, at the moving bartender and busboy, seeming to consider his situation. Then he returned his eyes hard to Esther’s face and said, with an unhappy and mocking smile, “You officially and royally blew it.”
13
NORA HAD INFORMATION (care of Brenda Caldwell, one of her best donors) that she knew Charlie would want, but she had decided to keep it to herself. But she couldn’t hold on to it any longer, knowing that Charlie was depressed (she couldn’t stand him moping around, not wanting to do anything), so she decided to call him and come clean.
Clothing for Change usually received Brenda’s castoffs, but for some reason, this month there’d been no donation. Nora had called Brenda to make sure there wasn’t a problem, and Brenda, along with gossiping about Esther, had invited Nora to her annual New Year’s party, probably out of guilt for her lack of a donation.
“Esther and Paul aren’t together,” Nora heard herself say into the phone to Charlie, after a smattering of insignificant small talk. Her voice sounded remote. She imagined him leaning forward on his couch, taking in the information.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“Three days.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now,” she said, and she explained that she hadn’t wanted to participate in gossip.
By his silence, she knew that he wasn’t buying her excuse. She proceeded to fill him in on her phone conversation with Brenda, and as she continued to speak, she knew that his relief was overtaking any lingering anger over her not telling him sooner.
“Well,” she said, “what do you think?”
He didn’t answer, and she imagined him leaned back into his couch, a hand on his forehead, mouth open, as if in shock.
“I know,” she said, to break the silence. “Weird.”
“She left his parents?”
“I don’t know all the details,” she said, fighting irritation. After a pause, she added, “I think Brenda’s giving Esther my hand-me-downs.”
But he didn’t care about her loss of inventory. “She never wanted to marry him,” he said.
And as soon as she mentioned Brenda’s New Year’s party, she knew that he would be her date—so that he could see Esther.
They launched into a discussion regarding their plans. Even while she allowed herself to be engaged in conversation, she was questioning herself, upset at her cowardice for not confronting him. Was he even remotely aware of her feelings for him?
But he was ecstatic, his voice animated, and she conceded the reality: The mere thought of seeing Esther in a few days had helped him in a way that she could not.
14
ESTHER SAT ON the smooth leather couch, feet tucked beneath her, black satin pumps abandoned next to the marble table. In the main living room, she could see the huge riverbed boulder—displayed like a sculpture—harmonizing the house’s interior with the rocky-ocean exterior (Brenda had had the boulder steam-cleaned and sealed to avoid fungal growth).
A large picture window overlooked the ocean, and the floor was made of bluish-gray slate, designed to mimic the polished and glistening surface of the sea. Brenda’s guests—especially the women in their high heels—were treading carefully, hoping not to slip and fall. The caterers, wearing sensibly soled shoes, held silver trays of hors d’oeuvres and champagne and moved with discreet confidence.
Crystal vases of freshly cut flowers—rhododendrons, tiger lilies, amaryllis, and pale yellow roses—provided a sweet, clean fragrance. Beautiful surroundings usually grati
fied Esther’s sense of well-being, but she was immune tonight, demoralized and contemplative, unable to appreciate.
Lights had been dimmed, candles lit. The fire in the fireplace near her emitted little heat; its light flickered on the walls, glinted across the silver-framed family photos on the mantel.
Worn Oriental rugs suggested an inheritance from European ancestors, although Esther knew that Brenda, at the prompting of her decorator, had purchased the threadbare rugs from the Ralph Lauren catalog.
A banner hung from the ceiling above the fireplace, a navy-blue background with Cardinal red-and-gold letters—HAPPY NEW YEAR 1995!!!—and at the borders, USC Trojan–head emblems.
More than representing a new year, the first of January signaled Esther’s pressing need to pay her bills, the adjustments in her lifestyle that she needed to make. Her inability to shoulder her responsibilities, despite living rent free, was evidence of her incompetence. She could no longer summon faith that her debts would be met. Without income for small luxuries—comforts that others consumed easily, freely, without thought to consequences—life was tedious. Underneath all her emotions was the lingering bitterness that she’d been robbed of her $10,000 check.
She’d come over early to help Brenda make adjustments to the decor and to dress for the party. Brown-skinned gardeners were beautifying the front walkway. One wore a straw hat and clipped a bush, knifelike scissors click-clacking, and another, with a red bandanna across his forehead, raked foliage. The house was a Spanish colonial surrounded by palm trees, with archways and thick plastered walls. Loamy foam slapped the mud-colored rocks below. Beyond was the blue expanse of ocean and sky—fat dark clouds with the sun shining between them, and patches of light on the ocean.
But then it had turned gray and dull, the water steely dark. Sean was absent, Brenda complaining, “We had a horrible fight. He needs medication for his mood swings.” She handed Esther diamond drop earrings. “We’ll have a better party without him.”
From her position on the couch, Esther couldn’t see the deck below, but she knew that Brenda’s guests mingled there among the heat lamps, enjoying the same view.
Behind a dense base of fog, the crescent moon looked like a flat smear. She imagined using her thumb to rub the moon away, the same way a wayward ant might be exterminated.
She needed another strategy. Paul Rice was no longer a possibility, thanks to her actions at the country club, and Grandma Eileen was becoming progressively more eccentric and undependable.
Her family and friends were losing their patience. They were sick and tired of her problems (her poverty). She’d been enduring their disappointment, as if they’d been arranging her marriage.
“You’re self-sabotaging,” Brenda had said, with her familiar note of detached amusement. “You wait until the last second and then mess it all up.”
“Pure Being is pure God-ing,” Mary had said, in her typical nonsensical, self-indulgent New Age speak. “All you see and want in your life partner is the outcome of your ideas about yourself. You’ve sold yourself short, honey. You need to work on your self-esteem!”
“Paul Rice is a good man, a fine man, the best of the bunch,” Grandma Eileen had said. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
They’d gone out to dinner, Grandma Eileen upset because there was an Italian at a table near them (he didn’t even look particularly Italian), and then saddening, commenting on the death of Burt Lancaster (“One of the few men that could turn me on.”).
Later, with a direct and angry gaze, she said, “You blew it, Esther,” and lit a Pall Mall. She inhaled and smiled crazily, wickedly.
And then, as they were leaving the restaurant, “You’re not getting any younger, Esther”—skin loose and puckered at her neck, hand clutched at her cane. “Think about it. You’re not getting any younger.”
Worst had been Paul’s obligatory dry kiss on her cheek, his shaky handshake goodbye, and his look of disgusted grief: “Good luck, Esther; I wish you the best,” the tone of his voice and the way his eyes wouldn’t meet hers belying his message.
But no matter what, no one understood and bore the full magnitude as much as she did. Lonely, distrustful, desperate, she needed to look out for herself, before it was too late, since no one else would.
Yet she couldn’t follow through, as demonstrated by her brooding alone, as if a leaden weight inside her kept her at the couch—when she should be impressing potential husbands with her sad beauty. And not far from her thoughts was her desire to get back at her family. If she could just cross the hurdle of poverty.
Her last two shifts at True Romance, even with the occasional spirit-lifting pocketing of cash from the register, she’d been unable to fake the requisite enthusiasm and approval for the women who shopped, as her manager had pointed out.
She’d had to pass Shark Island on her way to the parking lot, missing the routine of her sour apple martinis but knowing it was best to stay away, since Paul frequented the restaurant. He was proof of her failure, and she couldn’t bear being near him.
The second time, she’d looked through the window to see Paul at the bar with his arm at the waist of a woman: younger than Esther by at least ten years, big-breasted, lips engorged like a duck’s bill. He hadn’t wasted any time (she’d assumed it would take at least a month to get over her).
On a cocktail napkin on the coffee table were Esther’s three half-eaten shrimp, like small pink ears. At the center of the tabletop was a crystal obelisk, and underneath, in an accommodating nook, were two art books: Christo: A Retrospective and Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life. Her eyes passed over a framed map of Nantucket on the wall, a glass display case of fishing lures and boating knots, and, beside the fireplace, a brass sculpture of a cowboy riding a flapping barracuda as if it were a bucking bronco, implying a jocular relationship with the ocean.
The sculpture had a moveable base, so that it could be turned to any angle. She liked the whirling sound it made when she swung the cowboy with her big toe hooked beneath the cowboy hat, her leg extended from the couch in her effort; after three spins, she tucked her feet back beneath her.
The only money Esther had received over Christmas had come from Uncle Richard, in a bribelike manner, requesting that she take Captain Ahab from the convalescent home, a payment of $1,000 as incentive. Apparently, Ahab had been harassing the other patients’ pets, getting into fights and making the cats and dogs live in a “ganglike atmosphere.” So the patients had met with the staff, and everyone had agreed that the only solution was for Ahab to go.
Esther didn’t like the cat. He was large, old, scary, his incisors displayed outside his mouth, his head the size of her knee, his fur a yellowing white. But she needed the money and so had driven to the convalescent home.
Uncle Richard, seemingly unemotional, had written out her check—“for cat food and vet bills”—and then poked and wiggled his finger inside Ahab’s cage: “Goodbye, Ahab. It’s been eleven good years we’ve had, but it’s time for you to leave.”
She’d figured Ahab would become an outdoor cat, hopefully take up somewhere else. But that first night, she’d put him outside and he’d made an awful noise, like a combination moan-cry-howl.
She threw the cheerful homeless-man sculpture at the door, breaking it into three jagged pieces. “Go away!” she yelled. She picked up the chunks of clay. All the while, Ahab continued howling.
After an hour or so, when she didn’t respond, he ran headfirst into her door—over and over—until she opened it and saw a snotty smear of blood below his nostril, a gash at his temple, the blood blending into his fur, making it orange.
She let him in and he kept his distance, coiled on her sofa, staring at her with his strangely masculine and oppressive gaze, mouth parted, tongue pillowed between his teeth. “I hate you,” she said; she was beginning to think of Ahab as a physical manifestation of her family’s abnormalities. An irrefutable and grotesque proof.
Finally, Ahab began to purr in a loud monotone hum, a
trickle of drool descending from the corner of his mouth, his eyes creasing shut.
Since then, they’d come to an agreement: Ahab came inside at night and wandered outside in the day, and they left each other alone.
ESTHER LEANED BACK into the couch and watched guests milling around the entrance hallway. They were arriving in a steady stream, fashionably late. Brenda, wearing her sequined red minidress and dark sheer panty hose, had taken her position by the front door to greet, while Maria, in her maid’s uniform of black dress and white apron, was passed jackets and purses.
Brenda’s hand went to the forearm of a man she wanted Esther to meet. (“Jim Dunnels is fat and old, been married twice, but so what, he’s loaded and likes women. Besides, you can’t be so picky anymore.”)
She recognized him from his photographs in the Orange Coaster that Brenda had showed her, celebrating his status as a “leader and innovator in real estate and business” and “his wide-ranging and generous support of local philanthropies.”
Brenda was pointing Jim in her direction, whispering in his ear.
Jim was interested, but Esther turned from his gaze. When she was sure he wasn’t looking, she studied him: a crease at his neck from where his fat folds pressed together. His suit was dark, he was stocky with a ruddy complexion, and he emanated a wealthy person’s casual nonchalance.
Brenda and Jim laughed in unison. From her conversations with Brenda, Esther knew that Jim owned the land that Fashion Island was built on (“So, in a way, he owns Fashion Island!”). He was in the mysterious business of making more and more money, and traveled often, all over the world.
He turned his head suddenly, and their eyes met. A smile crept across his face, and she turned her gaze for the second time.
She wore Brenda’s dress, embroidered with black and bronze sequins and swooped low at her back, exposing the curve at the base of her spine. The dark colors highlighted her skin tone, the shine of her hair. The communal appreciation of her beauty usually inspired her, but tonight, selfish and angry, she wanted to hoard herself from Jim Dunnels.
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