“I’m going to sort through inventory,” Debbie said to Esther, not without hostility, and she left for the back room.
Leaning against the register table, Esther looked at the list of debts she’d scribbled on a notepad: “1. Brenda’s dress $300 + 2. Towing bill to Grandma Eileen $150 + 3. Visa $14,672.” This was enough to discourage her, and she turned the notepad over.
She watched the only customer: an older woman, hair parted down the center of her scalp and fastened in a bun at the back of her head, indifferently fingering a dress. She’d worked long enough at True Romance to recognize that customers were essentially the same: the same insecurities, the same wants, the same hesitations; they were all the same. She felt a belligerence, knowing she might quit whenever she wanted. Anything was possible, as long as she was with Charlie. If the woman asked for help, she could say no. Does this look good? No, no, no. Go find someone else. I don’t want to talk to you.
And so it was that the door chimed and Esther saw Jim Dunnels, fat crease at his neck. The older woman was leaving, Jim holding the door open for her. He wore a dark suit—probably for its slimming properties—and when he came toward her, she straightened.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
He laughed, the flesh on his neck wobbling.
“Can I help you?” she repeated.
He stood before her with his hands behind his back and his legs a little apart. And then he inclined toward her, as if rising on his toes, and then back down. “Oh,” he nodded his head gravely. A line appeared on his forehead. “Hmm. Yes. I think so. I think you can help me.”
He stepped close and she took a step back, but she couldn’t help considering: When you close your eyes and kiss a man—even let him enter you—with your eyes closed, it could be any man. Why does it matter? Why not pick Jim and then close my eyes? (“So, in a way, he owns Fashion Island!”)
She turned away toward the cash register and he moved behind her. She felt his stomach and then, as he pressed into her, the outline of his penis, like a roll of coins against the back of her thigh.
Then he moved away. It was over so quickly, she was already pretending it hadn’t happened.
“I’m seeing someone,” she said, facing the cash register.
“That’s okay.”
Her face burned and she turned to him. When she met his eyes, she knew that the shame that showed in her face was exciting him sexually.
Debbie came from the back room, aiming her usual disgruntled expression at Esther, but her mouth morphed into a smile when she saw Jim. And then Esther could see Debbie connecting the dots incorrectly, a slight glance in the direction of the tulips and back to Jim—a clenching in her jaw.
THAT SAME EVENING, instead of going over to Charlie’s, Esther had a sudden urge to confront Grandma Eileen. Something about her meeting with Jim Dunnels had set her off track. A terrible pall of futility had settled over her. How hard it was to escape from certain feelings. Her earlier rejoicing over her physical and spiritual communion with Charlie and with the larger world was overshadowed by the supremacy of her financial situation. A future of servitude loomed over her, no matter which way she looked. She needed an assurance of a future that did not include destitution. She couldn’t trust Charlie, even though she wanted to.
She was startled to find Captain Ahab’s dead body on the sidewalk, near the steps to her door, and she couldn’t help but interpret it as a symbol of something, but what?
Ahab was nestled peacefully, so that at first she thought he might be napping in the hazy sunlight. But then, as she came closer, she saw that the hair around his head was mottled with red-black blood, and that near his ear was a tiny black hole, probably where Grandma Eileen had shot him with the pellet gun.
His hindquarters were bent inward, misshapen, like a corkscrew. Had a car hit him? Had he lived on, for weeks, with a pellet in his head, only to come back to her doorstep to finally die?
His back end was soiled, either from dirt or from his own excrement, and flies were buzzing there. His tail was gone, but then she saw that he was lying on it. There was a fly on his lip and another fly at his eyeball, which was open and staring vacantly up at her.
She went inside and called the Humane Society, and as she spoke into the phone, she felt the tears collecting at her lids. One slid down her cheek, pooled at her upper lip, and she took it with her tongue.
For some reason, she felt a welling of tenderness for Ahab. And guilt pressed at her, knowing that Uncle Richard had envisaged a long life for Ahab, and that she had let him down.
She remembered her father’s telling her how Uncle Richard had tried to work for his brother Gurney: He’d drive into the parking lot of Gurney’s offices, park his car, and just sit there with his head bent over the steering wheel.
“Would he come inside?” she’d asked.
“No.”
“What would he do?”
“He’d stay in his car, sometimes for hours, with his head hanging. Finally, he’d drive away.”
Why had he loved Ahab so much? Where’s the bar in this place? she heard him say. I’ve been looking all over for the bar.
She put a white kitchen garbage bag over Ahab’s carcass and waited for the Animal Control people to come and dispose of his body.
To her surprise, she found she wanted to pray for him, to say a few words on his behalf. She fought the impulse but finally gave in, knowing that no one was there to judge her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, staring at the lumpy white garbage bag. “You were a good cat. You just wanted to be loved. You were scary. You can be with Uncle Richard now.” The tears were moving freely, and she felt foolish but relieved.
The smell bothered her—she was sure now that it was excrement and not just dirt at his back end—but she knew that she had to deal with it only temporarily.
“I don’t understand anything,” she continued. “I don’t know.” Her grief was turning self-indulgent, so she stopped.
When the small white Animal Control truck appeared, she waved for them and went back inside. She didn’t want to watch them scoop Ahab away. Besides, there was nothing she could do for him now. But she decided not to tell anyone. Partially, she was ashamed, implicated, and she didn’t want others to know.
But the main reason was that she didn’t want Grandma Eileen to know that Ahab was dead. She had a defiant sense of vindication imagining Grandma Eileen imagining Ahab continuing to live, or, at the very least, Grandma Eileen questioning Ahab’s existence, never knowing for sure whether he lived or had died. She was sure that this was what Uncle Richard would have wanted, and she owed it to him.
For a long time, she stood at her balcony and watched the ocean. It began to rain. Big drops fell on her shoulders; the part in her hair became damp. She watched the rain pucker the ocean until it became steady, and then she went back inside. She called Charlie and told him that she had a headache and wouldn’t be coming over.
“Look, Esther,” he said. “If I thought there was anything I could do, if you want me to come over right now and talk to your crazy grandma—”
“No. Well, maybe. Well, no. There isn’t anything you can do.”
“Have you ever seen Planet of the Apes?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It’s like they’re all apes and you’re the only human.”
She smiled, knowing that he was pleased on the other line, envisioning her smile. She wished to halt time and then backpedal to the past, and then stay there with Charlie, forever, believing that the present and the future promised grief. Jim Dunnels and Captain Ahab had thrown a bright spotlight on her circumstances. She knew that what she felt for Charlie was love and that it held all sorts of consequences. Over the phone, there was the reality of their not being able to touch, and it lessened her confidence.
“I had lunch with the dean today,” he said.
“How was it?”
“Fine; I’ll tell you about it when you’re feeling better. Listen: The
important thing is that you stay strong.”
“All right,” she said. “I will.”
She sat on her bed for the longest time and went over what she would say to Grandma Eileen. (“You see, I never meant to disappoint you. I need you to believe in me.”) Most of the time, she ended up giving in to Grandma Eileen—the most convenient way to live—becoming the version of herself that met with her grandmother’s approval. But it was becoming more and more difficult to bend herself to Grandma Eileen’s will.
Her hopes and dreams revolved around her—she felt she could touch them with her fingers. She thought about how Charlie liked to tilt her head back, feeling for the curve of her throat below her ear, tracing with his fingertips and then kissing her there.
The memory strengthened her, and she began to form in her mind exactly what she needed to say to Grandma Eileen. Surely she could reason with her grandmother. She decided to take notes; she could look at her list to help. She kept it short and to the point:1. I’m sorry about what happened with Captain Ahab.
2. It was wrong of me to leave the cat.
3. I’m sorry that your BMW was towed.
4. I don’t want to disappoint you.
5. Please understand.
6. I need to make sure that you don’t cut me out of your will.
7. I need your blessing.
8. I’m sorry I threw away the sculpture—I know it was a gift.
She crossed out the references to Captain Ahab, and then rewrote the list without mention of the cat.
When she knocked on Grandma Eileen’s bedroom door, it was Rick who answered. With exquisite control, Rick managed to send Esther a welcoming and affectionate signal without jeopardizing his allegiance to her grandmother. The room was cast in a bluish light from the television. They were watching a show called I Should Be Dead that, through dramatized reenactments, chronicled near-death experiences.
Grandma Eileen was lying at the side of her bed with her back to the headboard, and her gout foot was elevated and propped on pillows. The bruised wedges beneath her eyes had settled to a faded yellow-green, and her nose was no longer taped. She ignored Esther, and when Rick asked, she refused to turn the volume down with her remote.
The male voice-over was loud and distracting: “The will to survive despite insurmountable obstacles . . . Don’t panic . . . Flying off the handle can be a death sentence.” Esther wondered if Rick had been lying in bed beside Grandma Eileen before he’d answered the door, as the arrangement of pillows and bedspread suggested.
In only a few seconds, she was able to determine as she watched the television that a man had crashed his plane in the African bush and had shattered his legs. His ankles felt like they were going to explode inside his laced boots, and the voice-over informed viewers that if he didn’t get his boots off, the swelling would make self-amputation his only option. A close-up showed what appeared to be ferocious red ants making their way toward the man, who was keeled over and screaming in anguish. The camera angled in on the impossibility of undoing the elaborately laced boots.
“I think it’s almost over,” Rick said.
The man began dragging himself to a thorny tree, ants crawling on his arms, eating him, and he finally reached the tree, leaving a dusty trail in the dirt; he was attempting to push himself up and balance, when the screen, with a last twinkling glimmer, went black. Grandma Eileen held the remote, and for the first time in days, she spoke to Esther: “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Rick stole a glance at Esther, and she saw that he was afraid that Grandma Eileen might detect signs of his divided loyalty. Without saying anything, he left the bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind him.
“Well,” said Grandma Eileen, “hurry up.”
The blood rushed to Esther’s heart and she was afraid. Instead of speaking, she tried to hand Grandma Eileen her notes, but Grandma Eileen wouldn’t take the list, so she just set the paper in her lap.
“It explains,” she said.
“So what.”
“It explains.”
“Who cares,” Grandma Eileen said, staring at the black television screen; the tip of her tongue peeked between her lips like a pink wet finger.
“I need to talk to you,” Esther said, trying to summon Charlie into the half-darkness of the room. To feel him in every sound, in herself—to be strong. But in his physical absence, a thousand doubts seemed to overtake her. She remembered the fly at Ahab’s eyeball, the empty stare, and her heart gave a wild jerk.
“I don’t care,” Grandma Eileen said, turning the television back on with her remote, “what’s in your goddamn letter.” Her cheek was blended into her neck, and her neck swelled over the collar of her flannel nightgown. She rested the remote on her belly, swatting away the paper so that it landed on the floor.
Esther saw the credits for I Should Be Dead rolling across the screen, set to a bombastic soundtrack of horn instruments. Sweat collected at her armpits and her guts tightened as the problem became clear: She wasn’t ruthless enough to get what she felt she deserved, and, no matter how illogical or unfair, power would always be on the side of money.
She leaned over, picked up her paper. Her interactions with Grandma Eileen had the effect of casting down her courage. When she stood back up, she was surprised to discover that she was dizzy. For a second, everything was blurred, but then her focus came back.
“Horseshit,” Grandma Eileen said. She said something else, but Esther couldn’t hear over the volume of the television. But then Grandma Eileen repeated her statement, as if to make sure its meaning was understood: “You don’t matter and it doesn’t matter.”
7
“I’LL TELL YOU what, Charles: We’ve never received so many letters from students,” said J. D. Galbraith, dean of Orange County Community College, crouching to sit in a corner booth at Shark Island. He smiled and scooted over to make room for Charlie, who had won the award for most influential professor by a landslide. A medium-size wiry man in his early sixties, Mr. Galbraith had thin hair the color of pale sand, and his face had the wrinkled, perpetual tan of a dedicated golfer’s. He wore a dark blue suit, no tie. “These students really pulled for you, and I didn’t think they cared about anything besides watching their MTV. It’s quite a thing.”
Charlie sat in the booth, his slacks gliding against the faux leather. The restaurant was bustling with the lunch crowd. Servers rushed from table to table, carrying trays with plates, frosted glasses, milk shakes, and wicker baskets lined with waxy paper and filled with french fries. The entire staff, including the busboys, wore Hawaiian-print shirts, Bermuda-style shorts, and high-top tennis shoes.
Charlie took a sip of his ice water in a plastic glass large enough for a giant and considered the coincidence that he was at Shark Island. When Mr. Galbraith had invited him to lunch, of course he’d said yes, and in the air-conditioned cool of Mr. Galbraith’s Mercedes, he’d deferred the decision of where to dine.
Their table faced the bar window, and Charlie thought about what he might tell Esther tonight. (I was facing that same window where I first looked in and saw you, and I had to listen to this pompous-ass go on and on, when all I really wanted to do was think about you.) Although his own voice in his ears sounded smug, he tried to look directly into Mr. Galbraith’s eyes to convey his sincerity.
“Students appreciate when someone treats them like adults, and that’s all I do. I treat them with respect and give them the consideration they deserve. It makes them want to step up to the plate and be adults. It’s pretty simple.”
Mr. Galbraith wagged his head, indicating his amazement. He had an excited look about him and an unnerving tendency to stare. A drooping and broken palm frond bobbed at his shoulder.
“Well, I appreciate what you’re saying, Charles, I really do, but you’re being modest. How do you manage to keep their gnatlike attention in this day and age? I have two teenage daughters, and all they want is to be entertained and go shopping.�
� He flapped out his napkin and placed it in his lap. “I can’t get them to read a book.”
“I don’t have teenagers, Mr. Galbraith, but my experience has been that my students are competent when given the opportunity.”
“Call me J. D.” Mr. Galbraith’s eyes flashed around the restaurant. He made eye contact with a waitress and summoned her by lifting a hand, snapping his fingers, and waving.
(“I mean, what could I say?” Charlie would tell Esther. “That Shark Island is a pretentious, mediocre restaurant that caters to idiocy? He looks like the Channel Two weathermen, with that leathery tan and the way he dresses—like he’s going to start telling me about high-pressure fronts. And he kept going on about kids and MTV. He probably hasn’t read a book besides Tom Clancy or Dean Koontz, but he’s dean of a college! I mean, come on.”)
Their waitress, an anorexic blond with a red plastic name tag pinned to her chest—HEATHER—seemed beleaguered, despite her dutifully cheerful presentation of the specials. Mr. Galbraith was condescending (“Hello, Heather. You want a good tip, sweetheart? Ignore all your other tables and take care of us”), and Charlie could see that he would be the type of customer who thought his joking was in good fun, but in reality demanded that everyone present acknowledge his power.
Charlie tried to compensate by smiling sympathetically, and Heather smiled back, her eyes locked into his for an invigorating, sexually charged instant.
Mr. Galbraith ordered a masculine Heineken, and Charlie’s one open act of defiance was to order what Esther would—a sour apple martini, at which Mr. Galbraith chuckled tolerantly.
As Heather walked away, they watched her bony backside in her shorts, a plum-size gap between her thighs.
“She’s a skinny little thing,” Mr. Galbraith mused, and Charlie shifted uncomfortably. Anorexic women made him squeamish: sexy even though they shouldn’t be—like gawky girls on the cusp of adolescence, disturbingly breakable.
“So I hear you’re a golfing man,” Mr. Galbraith said, pouring his beer into a chilled plastic mug, a smile beaming from his face. His eyes were an empty pale blue. He set the bottle on the table and wrapped both hands around his mug. “When you hit that ball in the right place and drive it down the fairway”—his hand left his mug and made a sweeping motion over the table; he made a noise like a soft whistle, the tip of his tongue near his front teeth—“there’s nothing like it in this world.”
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