This Vacant Paradise

by Victoria Patterson

  He continued to smile.

  “I want you to,” she said—but it came out like a croak.

  “I don’t think you should be mean to Esther,” he said. “She made mistakes, but she wants to apologize.”

  “Drop it,” she said, anger spiking, causing a sharp flash of pain in her chest. A black void of grief lurked, having to do with Esther and Richard and the cat and her dead parents who weren’t really dead and the whore whom Gurney said he loved and on and on, and she let Rick see it in her eyes.

  “Okay,” he said. “Dropped.”

  She saw that he was about to make his way to the door, that hesitation he gave when he was through with her. “No,” she said. She felt her face go small and weak. “Stay. Please.”

  “Now, now,” he said. But he came back, sat beside her, and stroked her cheek. “Poor little nose,” he said, barely tapping a finger against the tip. “All broken.” And she knew that he’d stay there until she fell asleep, which wouldn’t take long, God bless the Ambien.

  “You’re a mean old bird,” he said affectionately, smoothing hair from her face.

  She was a little girl. Her eyes were closed; it made his presence more glorious.

  “Meany-beany,” he said.

  “I know, I know,” she said, her words blending together so that they came out as “Agnowagnow.” And then she felt his fingertips on her forehead, against her cheek. He was touching her all over her face.

  5

  CHARLIE MURPHY HAD earned a reputation at Orange County Community College, not among his colleagues, but among his students (particularly the young women), who encouraged each other to take his sociology courses to fulfill those irritating humanities/social science requirements. It wasn’t that his classes were easy (because they weren’t), but that Charlie was entertaining, handsome, and tall.

  His dark, slightly curly hair was a little too long for a man, and when he was nervous, he used his hand to flip it from his eyes. But he was masculine, his thighs and stomach and arms defined and muscular. His eyes were a pretty brownish-hazel color—serious and sad, as if he suffered a special burden. His students could tell that he experienced life deeply. Yet he made an effort to be light and breezy, and they were appreciative. They wondered about his personal life, and unimaginative rumors spread: He’s gay; he’s straight; he’s bisexual; he’s married; he’s divorced; he lives alone; he has a girlfriend in another country. And they often felt as if they were making a complicit agreement, in a strange way, to help him.

  He said things like, “I’m not telling you when to do your homework—you’re adults and don’t need a babysitter—but I’m telling you when to have it done. It’s pretty straightforward, right? I really like attendance, and when you’re not here, I miss you: It’s as if we made a date and you didn’t even show up.”

  But what really impressed them was when he said, “If you come out of this class and do your work, I personally guarantee that you will become not only better educated, but also a better person.” They doodled in the margins of their notebook paper, and then scribbled over their doodles. They leaned over and whispered to each other:

  “He’s so cute!”

  “I love his corduroy jacket.”

  “How old do you think he is?”

  CHARLIE WAS AN adjunct professor, and a movement was gaining momentum to raise his position. His most-talked-about course, Social Class & Inequality, had been canceled due to its controversial subject matter, only adding to its buzz. Brought back by popular student demand, enrollment had tripled, requiring the largest auditorium at Orange County Community College.

  A letter was being passed among his students, initiated by a core group of female supporters, to nominate Charlie for an award for most influential professor. If he won, it would be the first time in the history of OCCC that an adjunct had received the honor, which included a monetary stipend of $2,000.

  The letter was a blend of admiration, sincerity, bluster, and juvenility:

  Dear fellow students,

  Charlie Murphy would never ask us to nominate him for anything—he’s too modest. But we know that many of our faculty aren’t as shy or modest (we’ve been asked to do this kind of shit more than once!), and this kind of stuff really looks good on their files or whatever (which is great for Charlie when he gets to be a full professor—ha! ha!). The other profs are jealous and he hasn’t gotten the recognition he deserves, but it’s time for that to change! And we can be the ones to change it, because that’s the only way it will happen.

  Which is why we think we should all really sit ourselves down for more than ten minutes and write him the best fucking letter of rec. we’ve ever written any prof, because, at least in our opinion, he truly dedicates his time and effort and makes us think. So let’s sharpen our pencils and blow the dean away, shall we?

  6

  ESTHER HAD NEVER taken her job at True Romance that seriously, but now it was purely out of routine that she showed up to work. And when she walked past Shark Island, glancing at the singles mingling at the bar, along with the familiar pull of disappointment, she felt a sense of invulnerability.

  Esther wasn’t even that jealous when she heard that Paul Rice had proposed to the woman with the duck lips at Shark Island. The most expedient courting ever. Right at the bar, where they’d met. A ten-carat, radiant-cut diamond ring, rumor had it, hooped around a red-striped straw, and pierced through a pineapple slice garnishing Duck Lips’ piña colada.

  Esther’s confidence was connected to Charlie. She wore a type of armor—what she came to think of as Charlie Armor—against Grandma Eileen’s silent treatment and disapproval, against Brenda, Aunt Lottie, and Mary, possible only because she saw Charlie almost every day, and when they weren’t with each other, they talked by phone.

  None of her difficulties had changed. Her problems had not been solved. In fact, in the course of recent events, more problems had emerged to attach to the old ones. But now it was easier to pretend that they didn’t matter.

  Grandma Eileen hadn’t handed her back the keys to the BMW, so Esther was forced to borrow Rick’s Grand Marquis, with its coughing-stuttering engine, its tilting to the left, while Rick was allowed his choice of Grandma Eileen’s four vehicles.

  Rick’s relationship with Grandma Eileen was perverse. For example, just last week, after her personal massage, meant to alleviate her arthritis and increase her blood flow, Grandma Eileen had come staggering through her bedroom door, slick with body oil, hair wild and robe loosened, hand gripping her cane.

  “How do you feel?” Rick asked, with his customary cheerfulness.

  “I feel,” Grandma Eileen answered, a demonic look coming to her eyes, “like I could throw you down on the floor and fuck your brains out right now.”

  “Now, now,” Rick said, blushing.

  “Does she say that kind of stuff to you all the time?” Esther asked later. “She acted like I wasn’t even in the room.”

  “She doesn’t mean it,” Rick said, his fondness for Grandma Eileen displayed openly on his face. “She just really, really, really likes her massages.”

  Does she know you’re gay? she wanted to ask. Does she know that you’re Jewish?

  “Oh, please,” he said, as if reading her thoughts, “like I even care what she thinks.”

  A new female companion was accompanying Brenda on her errands, dining with her, shopping and going to the nail salon, and they were spreading malicious rumors, blaming Esther publicly for being a “homewrecker.”

  And to make matters worse, Sean continued to call Esther, leaving messages, sometimes alluding to his proclivity to ponder the benefits of suicide, claiming that she was the key to his salvation. He was also sending tulips, fueling rumors.

  Once, she’d answered the phone accidentally (she had a code with Charlie: two rings, hang up, and then call back), and as soon as she heard the heavy breathing, she knew that it was Sean.

  “Esther,” he said, “I need you. I can’t go on like this.”


  “Stop calling,” she said. What bothered her the most was that he wasn’t interested in her—he was interested in how she benefited him. “Where are you?” she asked, hearing a roar of applause.

  “What?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m on my cell phone.”

  “No,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “At the high school football game—we’re ahead, second half.”

  She imagined him sitting in the stands, teenagers around him, the brilliance of the field’s lights. He’d been a football star in high school.

  “I’m no good without you. I miss you. I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

  “I’m seeing someone,” she said.

  She heard another roar from the crowd.

  “Touchdown,” he said.

  Despite everything, she missed her friendship with Brenda, and it soured her that she could be replaced so easily.

  “Don’t hang up,” he said, and she did.

  Rick assuaged her loneliness at home. She confided in him to a degree, insisting he swear himself to secrecy. And she trusted him, especially after he confessed that he’d been stealing (“a little here, a little there”) from Grandma Eileen. (He felt “awful” but now had accumulated enough money for a vacation.)

  Esther had trouble imagining her future, but Charlie had a vision, connecting her to him, though not in the matrimonial sense, and including options such as living in Spain or France; and when he was visibly and audibly present—in his words, with his assurances—she believed in such possibilities.

  Charlie made her understand that she was a woman and not an object, with complexities and flaws. Listening to him, she would sometimes close her eyes, and no matter what he said, the sound of his voice soothed her. But they didn’t even have to talk. Silence could gather for long intervals, and it was as if they were communicating without words.

  Charlie believed in her, and that was the only thing that mattered. By surrendering to her feelings, she was able to overcome her doubts. She abandoned herself to a love that would not make her rich.

  Every night before she went to sleep, Charlie entered her mind and fell asleep with her. There existed for her a greater worth, beyond her looks, beyond her family, and she floated on hope, far away, where all those materialistic people and their trivial expectations didn’t matter.

  There began a time of relief: Wearing Charlie Armor, she was no longer as anxious about how to apportion her measure of wealth. Her constant failure to do the socially appropriate thing, her designation by Mary as an “enigma,” all of it was thwarted by her ability to see through the hypocrisies, to acknowledge her allotted role as only a sham in a larger sham.

  The fact that she was considered a failure didn’t press on her with the same devastating weight. Instead of falling into the void of despair that constituted her grief, she avoided thinking about her father. And Uncle Richard.

  All her previous worries—bills with their red FINAL NOTICES, Eric, her stunted educational background and lack of professional skills, Grandma Eileen’s declining affection—were muffled and blurred by a sweeping euphoria.

  She had led, for as long as she could remember, a superficial life, with no idea of what she might truly want.

  She still didn’t know, but now she might figure it out. Uneducated and ignorant about many things, she was open and aware and willing to learn. And she was reading books that Charlie gave her. She’d finished The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (eh), and now she was reading The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (zzzzz . . .), and Why I Am Not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell (fun!). All her thoughts and feelings were connected to Charlie, as if his wisdom and strength might pass into her. She was lit up with him.

  Who am I? she wondered. Who am I, really? Instead of the usual vacuous pit of fear, these queries excited her.

  Even if she continued to play her part, to walk and talk and dress like Esther, she was consciously estranging herself from Grandma Eileen and from everything safely familiar. There had been instants, gleams of hope, before, but never an extended amount of time like what she now had with Charlie.

  She would think back on the last few weeks as having lived in a haze of carelessness, a fitful optimism—and the day that would come into sharp focus was the one when Jim Dunnels visited her at work, because she would think of it as the first chink in her Charlie Armor.

  She was late to work that day, and as she rode the escalator, she watched the Catalina Express in the distance, slicing through the ocean, creating a V-like wake of foam. It wasn’t until she was with Charlie that she was truly alive, and she went through her days in pleasant anticipation. Then came the heady discussions, the intensity of a love affair in bloom. Everything around her was more profound: Her desire had given rise to deeper yearnings and an aching, boundless curiosity.

  How artificial and small-minded the other women looked, riding the escalator. In an hour or so, they’d be sitting at the outdoor tables of restaurants, pecking at low-calorie salads, avoiding starches, and discussing their small dramas under the immense dome of an indifferent sky.

  Then it occurred to her that these women had sorrows and confusions, just as she had, but she let the realization slide because it cut through her epiphany, left her less energized.

  They were everywhere, hurrying through Fashion Island, buying more and more, acting out their dumb roles, living to impress, constantly upgrading their appearances to compete with each other. It was as if they had all made an agreement to live in a state of selfish and self-centered vanity.

  All of it—the superficiality, the materialism, the desperation to stay young and attractive—she wanted to excise from her life like a cancerous tumor. And the only way to rid the ingrained reality would be all at once, in some violent, irreversible manner—like death. The drama of her observations made her keenly awake.

  She walked swiftly past Shark Island, allowing a sidelong glance through the window—a glimmer of her reflection, her houndstooth miniskirt and platform pumps: the gamine look, like a young Julie Christie or Jean Seberg.

  And past her reflection, she saw the singles at the bar, and a television screen showing waves rolling on a white shore.

  She almost ran into an older, squat Mexican woman (or was she Dominican, Guatemalan, Puerto Rican? Esther had never really thought about these things before), inconspicuous in her dun-colored vested uniform with red trim, pushing a cart with her cleaning products, a broom poking out at the side.

  “Sorry,” Esther said.

  “Is okay,” the woman answered.

  Esther made a point to say, “How are you?”

  And the woman was so polite and grandmotherly, with her broken English and strangely bulging eyes—“Bien, gracias. Very good, thank you”—that Esther wanted to hold her hand and speak to her longer.

  And she knew that Charlie would be pleased when she told him about it later. (“She’s so sweet and kind, and everyone just ignores her while she sweeps up their trash. I wonder how she came here—what her story is. Maybe she sends money back to her family, maybe she’s illegal, maybe she has three jobs.”)

  For the first time, she was paying attention to people on the sidelines of wealth. (“The defects of a ruthless society,” Charlie had told her, “will always be shown clearly in the plight of those who are disempowered. Much can be learned by observing those who live at its margins.”)

  The love that had exploded in her soul had made her more generous. She was magnanimous, ignoring physical flaws (the fat people waiting at bus stops, even Nora, with her beaky face). The dimness of their existence would normally frighten her, as if their dour-seeming lives were contagious, but she was open to another perspective now.

  Esther was connected because she was different. And when she thought about it, weren’t we all connected in a great cosmic sense? How had she not recognized this before? And these people were everywhere—how could she have ignored them?

  Und
erneath was a benevolent gratitude for her higher status. Whatever she’d been doing year after year, she could hardly say that her life was tougher than theirs. They couldn’t afford the price of admission to her lifestyle.

  By the time she arrived at True Romance, even when her manager, Debbie, pointed out that it was the third time this week that she’d been late, Esther didn’t get upset.

  In her midforties, Debbie was the slightly haggard single mom of two teenagers. A masculine-looking woman, she was also a Lauren Bacall impersonator, paid to attend corporate events and flirt and entertain the businessmen, but her age was beginning to catch up with her. Debbie was a warning of what Esther might end up like at forty, if she wasn’t careful.

  True Romance was decorated preemptively for Valentine’s Day with blinking red hearts strung along the ceiling and across the shelves, scented candles, and hanging cutout paper Cupids.

  A crystal vase of snow-white tulips was near the cash register. Esther pretended to read the card while Debbie watched. She knew that Debbie was too proud to ask whom the tulips were from, and that she pined for flowers of her own.

  Unfortunately, they were from Sean (“Give me the word, I’m yours”). When Debbie wasn’t looking, Esther ripped up the card, imagining what could have been written had the tulips been from Charlie: I want to take care of you. Forever. I love you. Always. Love, love, love. You are my love.

  Debbie was walking up the aisle of dresses, moving toward a customer—a good candidate, with her stocky figure and shoulder-padded business suit. She small-talked the woman, setting her up for her sales pitch: “First, I’ll visit your house and evaluate your wardrobe, establish an understanding of your personal style and the image you’d like to project. Next, I’ll edit your current clothing strategy and introduce new pieces. This will revitalize your look and bring you up to date.”

  “I’ll think about it,” the customer said, and she left the store, proving that Debbie had spooked her and that she would do her best not to think about it.