Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  But the fisherman did not know that Cohen had been Esther the White’s choice, and that Esther the White did not give a damn if the poachers camped in the wild eastern section of the Compound, and she did not give a damn if they caught a million bluefish in the Compound’s waters. As far as she was concerned, Cohen’s only job was to keep Phillip alive. Others thought Cohen was a failure—and it was true, the poachers still streamed fish entrails across Mischa’s seaside, the ivy Cohen planted on the sea wall withered, and roses often appeared where wisteria had been ordered, but Esther the White had been right when she had first chosen Cohen—in nearly a quarter of a century, Phillip had not killed himself. That had been Esther’s goal when she first pulled Cohen’s letter out of its envelope. It was true, the man had no qualifications, but Esther believed that a man who could not do any of the jobs he was hired to do would naturally gravitate to other jobs. He would feel guilty because he was inadequate, he would be indebted to the family who had hired him despite this, and he would be as faithful to Phillip as a St. Bernard.

  It would not have concerned Esther the White that Cohen was slowly becoming friendly with the fishermen. Because by the time Cohen had begun to spend evenings playing cards with the poachers, he had already saved Phillip from drowning on a hot August night. Esther the White might have raised an eyebrow had she learned that by the time Esther the Black was born, and Phillip had been rescued by the landscape artist three times, Cohen had known quite a few of the women in the fishermen’s camp as lovers. He had even become seriously involved with Nina, the sister of the fisherman he had spoken to during his first night as the Compound’s guard. But Esther the White would have done no more than raise an eyebrow; and by the time the landscape artist had saved Phillip’s life five times, there was nothing anyone could say that would have made Esther the White fire Cohen.

  So, Cohen played card games regularly, and he was even taught to play Bolo, the fish game where the form of a skeleton is rebuilt. He loved to sleep with Nina, because her skin was like cool, moving water, even on the hottest night. The years moved for Cohen, with cards, and bourbon, soon with caring for Esther the Black; but although he had a lover, it wasn’t Esther the White. When Nina grew tired of her life’s hard work and decided to move on to Florida, where an aunt through marriage ran a soft-ice-cream concession in Pompano Beach, she offered Cohen a free train ticket and a life of soft ice cream; but Cohen declined. He had to, he didn’t love her. Esther the Black was in the back seat of the Cadillac the day Cohen drove Nina to the ferry; at five years old, she was smart enough to look the other way when Nina kissed Cohen goodbye and whispered once again that she could afford train tickets for two to Fort Lauderdale. Esther the Black had grown up in the fishermen’s encampment; the first time Cohen had taken her there she had been two, and he had found her alone on the porch of her parents’ cottage, in the season when Phillip was locked in his special cottage, and Rose couldn’t face anything but gin and tonics. From the start Esther the Black had kicked off her shoes the minute they crossed over to the eastern section of the Compound, from the start she understood when Cohen placed his finger to his lips when he deposited her on her parents’ doorstep. That day, at the ferry, Cohen bought Esther a treat as they walked down the docks to see Nina off; Nina cried when she saw that Cohen had bought the child an ice-cream cone, and she was still crying as she waved goodbye from the boat.

  When Cohen left Esther the Black on her parents’ porch with chocolate running down her shirt, he returned alone to his lighthouse to grieve for Nina. He sat surrounded by dust and bourbon bottles for several days, and then he went back to the fishermen. He took Esther the Black with him, and she played in the dirt with the fishermen’s children as Cohen found other lovers. But, he never stayed with one woman as long as he had stayed with Nina. That would not have been fair; he would not have loved any of them, he could not, because there was already Esther the White.

  It was enough just to see her, Cohen told himself. It was enough to love her granddaughter as if the child had been shared between them. And each time he planted, lilies which surrounded the green lawn, a grove of mimosas which moved like a flock of Brazilian parrots outside her bedroom window, what grew was for her, for Esther. He took to having imaginary conversations with Esther the White, often about the upbringing of Esther the Black, which he felt was negligent. He imagined these conversations as he worked with his bucket and rake, clearing the poachers’ remains off the beach.

  It was just such a conversation Cohen was imagining the evening he stumbled upon Esther the White. Cohen climbed over the sea wall at the end of the day, he wiped his hands on his pale faded jeans to keep the salt from the blisters on his fingers and palms, and he buttoned his coat against the icy wind. He was thinking of how he would, if he could, tell Esther the White that they must send the kid away for the next summer. Last August, Esther the Black had been six, and children in the fishermen’s camp began to work at that age; when the winter fell away, and school was through, the girl would be left with nothing to do. Maybe a gymnastics camp, Cohen thought as he loaded his bucket and rake into the tool shed, kicked away dead leaves and bits of rock, and lit a Marlboro. It was then that he saw Esther the White. She was in the pine grove. It was early winter, and Esther the White knelt in the ice and she dug in the earth in a place where the ivy refused to grow. Cohen could not move; he forgot his imaginary conversation, and he stood like a thief, hidden by the shadows of a large jutting stone in the sea wall, a place which would later become a break in the sandstone, a tear caused by freezing and melting ice. And Cohen himself was as still as a stone, as he watched the woman he loved paw at the earth like a white wolf or a witch.

  Esther the White howled and cried; she wore a gray mohair coat and sunglasses, ivy was climbing up her coat sleeve. Cohen had been on his way to a poker game after work; he had intended to smoke cigarettes and watch the moon rise before he walked on to the fishermen’s encampment. But, instead, he was still. Instead, he watched Esther the White. He crouched down low; he cupped the light of his cigarette in his palm. Esther the White was talking to herself as she dug in the earth. Her fingers were ringed and whiter than ice; the blue veins in her wrists shimmered and moved. Cohen had been that close to her. He had even seen her breath turn to smoke when it touched the air. And as Cohen listened he forgot everything but Esther’s voice; he forgot the pain in his knee as he knelt in the ice, he forgot the salt on his own skin.

  That winter, that evening, Esther the White had had enough. There, in the pine grove, the first week the family had arrived, she had hidden the cash and jewels she might some day need. For a time of emergency. She could cope with Mischa, and his brother, the dwarf; she had learned to accept Phillip’s suicide attempts; she had barely noticed that fine lines had found their way to her pale skin. The real problem was that, at the age of forty-nine, she was pregnant.

  Esther the White had stopped sleeping with Mischa years before they had reached New York, and the one time she had let him crawl into her bed, he had gotten her pregnant. She wanted an abortion, she needed an abortion. She had fallen for Mischa’s line about an aching heart, she had let his cry of “Not long for this world” move her, and she had stared at the pale, beige ceiling as Mischa, her husband, who for years had not wanted to be bothered with the expense of a mistress, placed his penis inside her. And now she was pregnant. She had not even wanted Phillip, and she had been eighteen then. She clawed, in the frozen earth, until her fingernails were split; but she could not find the velvet jewelry box she had hidden. She found nothing; she had forgotten the spot.

  Esther the White cursed her husband and his brother; she screamed out against her own parents. She wondered why she had ever been born. She had been forced to give birth to Phillip, who had tried to turn her into a shadow, a ghost, when he named his daughter after her, when he knew tradition forbade it. It was revenge, getting back at her because she had been a terrible mother, a mistake she would not make twice. But, most of
all, Esther saved her rage for someone named Solo. When she spoke of Solo, Cohen covered his ears with his gloves. He ground his teeth, he shivered like a seagull. But, Esther the White did not stop, she cursed and she dug through the ice; she dug until her fingernails were black half moons; still, even with her fury to aid her, she could not find the buried money and jewels.

  Cohen realized that he was beginning to know Esther better than he had ever known anyone before; he almost forgot his own memories, his travels, and years and blood. As she dug, Cohen imagined his own hands digging alongside of hers, dirt sticking to the blisters on his palms. And just then, as he was about to jump like a thief into the pine grove, as he was about to suggest that they get shovels from the tool shed and dig up all of the earth in the world if they had to, the fisherman appeared.

  Cohen’s friend, the fisherman he had met during his first night as guard, called out Cohen’s name. The landscape artist was paralyzed; his bended knee was frozen to the earth. But Esther the White rose from the ice like a soldier. Her eyes were a terrible blue, her breath showed itself like fire in the frozen air. Cohen was terrified; he stared across the pines at Esther. If she told Mischa of Cohen’s friendship with the fisherman, Cohen could be finished. He was supposed to be their guard, their enemy; he was not supposed to meet them for a game of cards on a winter’s evening. He would be dismissed without pay, back to the city, jobless, without even a photograph of Esther the White.

  But, quite suddenly, Esther the White moved close to the trunk of a tree and hid herself. The fisherman did not see her; he continued to wave at Cohen, to call out Cohen’s name. Cohen was caught, a traitor in the Compound; but, before he could rise and face the music, walk over to Esther the White and be slapped or dismissed, Esther herself held a finger to her lips. Across the ice and the silence, in the instant that Esther held a finger in front of her lips, at the moment when Cohen slowly nodded back to her and agreed to be silent, the two had made a pact.

  This is to be a secret, Esther wordlessly told Cohen; and, with her free hand, she waved him on to meet his fisherman. What Cohen did not understand then, when he did not know what was buried in the grove, was what Esther had to lose. Cohen wanted his job, and he wanted to be close to Esther the White. And if Esther had chosen to, she could have walked away from the pines, sipped Irish tea with lemon in her own warm kitchen, and casually mentioned to Mischa that she had seen Cohen with a fisherman, the enemy. What could Cohen have done to betray her? Whisper to her husband, “Listen, I saw your wife digging like a deer. It looked suspicious”? Mischa would only have answered, “So? This is her compound. What’s it your business? I’m keeping an eye on you, busybody. Spy.” Still, it had been Esther the White who first vowed a silence, who must have thought she had more to lose, although Cohen could not think of what that loss might be.

  That night the moon rose, and Cohen walked away with the fisherman. He smoked cigarettes, played poker, drank a bottle of sweet wine, and made love to a woman with red hair. When he returned to his lighthouse, he slept dreamlessly; and when he awoke he was thinking of Esther the White. So, he returned to the pine grove early the next day. The morning was silent and cold, and already the earth which Esther the White had turned up had frozen solid. Cohen’s fingers burned with cold as he spaded up the earth around many of the pine trees, and then carefully re-covered the holes he had made. As he was about to give up, as the morning turned pale gray, his spade hit something between the roots of a small pine tree; he found a velvet jewelry box. He covered his marks, he looked over his shoulder. No lights were on in any of the houses, no footsteps fell on the earth, but still Cohen waited until he had returned to the lighthouse before he opened the box. Once home, he pushed the junk and clutter off his table; cigarette ash clung to his vest. Cohen lit a cigarette, and opened the box. Inside was newspaper. Cohen studied the newspaper; and then, slowly, he unwrapped the treasure Esther the White had hidden.

  Cohen carefully examined one thousand dollars in cash, two tiny, delicate diamond earrings, and a polished stone as large as Cohen’s own hand. The stone was jade, and carved into the jade was the face of a woman, her hair upswept, her nose delicate and fine. Around the stone was red gold studded with emeralds. In his hand Cohen now held more than he had ever earned, more than he would earn in a lifetime as a landscape artist. He couldn’t bear to look at it, he couldn’t bear to imagine what lover had given the jewels to Esther the White. So, he wrapped up the treasure and stared at the newspaper. All morning, he sat in the lighthouse and thought of reasons why Esther the White would hide a stone worth so much, and why she would now try to find it. He came to the conclusion that Esther the White was planning to run away from the Compound, and he must not allow that. But he could not keep the cash, he would feel like a thief. And, by the time he had walked down the Compound road to shovel the paths free of ice, Cohen had already decided to keep the jade pendant and the small diamond earrings; and before he went to speak with Esther the White, he sewed the gems into the lining of his sheepskin coat.

  That night, he found her in the parlor of the main house. She sat on the couch, and Cohen hoped that her eyes could not somehow see through the lining of his coat.

  “What is it?” Esther the White asked. She had been wondering if abortionists accepted American Express cards. When the bill came, she would try to convince Mischa that she had bought a new coat.

  “Can we talk?” Cohen said. He shuffled his feet, and in his pockets his hands sweated over the dollar bills.

  Esther the White had assumed that Cohen would not bother her; he would be thankful that she hadn’t turned him in to Mischa as a traitor. “No,” Esther said. “We can’t. I’m thinking.”

  “Well, before you finish thinking,” Cohen said, “maybe you could use this.” He pulled the thousand dollars from his pockets and laid it alongside her on the flowery couch.

  Esther the White stared up at him; she wondered how a man like Cohen could have so much money. And, although she was too polite to mention it, that was the first time she realized that he loved her. Esther the White folded the bills and stuffed them into her shoes. “A loan,” Esther the White said, although she doubted that she could ever repay him; everything the family had was in Mischa’s name.

  Cohen shook his head. “What would I do with money?” he said. “Buy liquor? Spend a few days at Belmont betting on losers? Keep it.”

  They never discussed the money again; although it was Cohen who drove Esther the White to the abortionist’s office in Forest Hills.

  “I’m here for an abortion,” Esther the White said as Cohen pulled up to the curb. “I thought I would tell you, so that you don’t think anything’s unusual if I look ill, so you don’t mention anything to my husband.”

  Right then, Cohen wondered if he should tell her he had her jewels. His assumption must have been wrong; she seemed not to be planning to run away from the Compound. But he wasn’t thinking fast, he was opening the door for her, and worrying about her going up to the doctor’s office alone. And, before he knew it, he was alone in the car, Esther was gone, and it was too late to mention the jade pendant, too late to hold her hand.

  Now as Cohen waited in the Cadillac, waiting for Esther and remembering how pale she had been after the abortion as they drove back to the Compound, Esther, too, thought of Cohen as she waited to be called by the nurse.

  Esther the White did not bother to leaf through magazines like some of the patients; she crossed her legs, and, through the pocket of her cloth coat, she kept a hand pressed against her side. The air conditioning in the office chilled her pain until it was nothing but ice carving through her stomach. She pressed harder, and thought of Cohen, his rumpled shirt, his Russian accent, the way he drove Mischa’s car, with one arm thrown across the back of the seat; he passed other cars too quickly, he was ready to turn down any one-way street. Esther the White could not remember having ever seen Mischa drive that car. But Cohen was dangerous; she must remember that. He knew too much about h
er, he had seen her years before, wailing like a wolf on the ice. And he was in love with her.

  On either side of Esther, on the doctor’s rust corduroy couch, patients sat anxiously. No one could know that Esther the White, wearing her gray linen coat in the heat of a July afternoon, was afraid of falling in love. She would have liked to open the door and wave to Cohen, to signal him to sit beside her on the couch and hold her hand, but it was too late; and when the nurse called out her name, Esther the White walked into the examining room, and she undressed and waited.

  The doctor was young. Too young. Phillip’s age, Esther thought, as she watched him read her medical records. Esther had visited the same doctor in the winter, when the pain began, and he had taken X-rays and blood tests; but Esther never returned, even though his office had sent her postcards which she had to tear into tiny pieces and flush down the toilet before Mischa could see them and guess that something was wrong. And now, as the doctor wrote in her file, Esther was thankful that Phillip had never become a doctor; who would want her son to become such a thing? Nothing but a death-dealer. It was better to try to drown every summer than to be able to smile at me this way, Esther thought, when he knows as well as I that it’s death.