Don't You Cry (15 page)

But then she takes the sweatshirt into her own grasp and says to me, “That's sweet of you. Really it is. But won't you be cold?” And I shrug my shoulders and mutter, “Naw,” but of course it's not true. I'm already cold. But soon I'll head home for the night, into a soft bed with blankets and a house whose thermostat is set to sixty-eight degrees. Soon I won't be cold. But she will. She'll be here in this cold, dilapidated home all night.

As she slides my sweatshirt over her own hoodie, her long, rippled hair falling over the bulgy hood, her hands getting stuffed into the soft, worn cotton of the already-warmed pockets, I realize I kind of like the idea of my sweatshirt keeping her warm for the night.

I don't stay long. I don't want to overstay my welcome.

But even more importantly is the fact that I haven't done a thing yet to humiliate myself, and I'm hoping to keep it that way. But for a few minutes I do stay. I stay and watch as she sets herself down on the floor, covering her body with the moth-eaten blanket. I stay while she folds her legs up in what we used to call Indian-style and hums quietly beneath her breath. I cross my own arms across myself—warmed now by only a thin T-shirt—and think to myself that Pops and my garage would be warmer than this. So, too, would our wooden shed. But this girl doesn't know me from Adam. I find it impossible to believe she'd spend the night in my garage.

Heck, with Pops likely out cold, I could bring her right on into my room and there, in my bed, she could sleep, snug and cozy and warm—with me on the floor, of course. I let that image dwell in my brain for just a little while.

But she doesn't look that naive, and so I don't bother to ask.

She'd just say no, and then I'd feel like some degenerate for even thinking that was a good idea. She'd think I was a creep. Open mouth, insert foot.

“You from around here?” I ask, and she replies rather aloofly, “Sort of. Not really,” and I smile self-consciously and ask what that means.

She shrugs. “I guess you could say that I am,” and still, even with this I'm left wondering.

“Closer to Battle Creek?” I ask, knowing it's a stupid thing to ask. There could be a thousand towns and cities in all of Michigan, maybe two thousand. Why Battle Creek? But I ask it, anyway, because when I open my mouth, it's all that comes out. To my surprise she nods her head impassively and I know it was either a lucky guess on my part, or she wishes I'd just shut up.

“You like to swim?” I ask as an alternative, thinking of that day at the lake, but instead of saying yes or no, she asks of me, “Do you?” It's a technique, spinning my queries so she doesn't mistakenly share a single thing about herself. She doesn't want me to know a thing.

“I like it enough,” I say, “though the water gets pretty cold this time of year.”

“You think?” she asks, but still I can't tell whether or not she agrees, and I envision her back floating along the surface of a frigid Lake Michigan as raindrops plummeted from the sunless sky. I'm not sure if it's a question or a statement or something in between, but I nod, anyway, and say, “Yes, I do. It's cold.”

“Are you from around here?” she asks.

“Born and bred,” I say, watching as she plucks at that strained bracelet that hugs her wrist, that habitual pluck, pluck, pluck that earned her the nickname of Pearl. I have no idea how long I watch.

When she lays her head on the blue country plaid pillow, I say my goodbyes and go. But by then her eyes are already half-closed, and if she does say goodbye, I don't hear it. I go, anyway, watching for one last minute as she drifts off to sleep.

As I retrace my steps through the old home and back out the busted window onto the stepstool placed outside, knowing fully well that Pearl will take center stage in my dreams tonight—if I even manage to sleep—I realize this: out of sight, but never out of mind.

Quinn

Ben holds my hair for me while I puke.

The good news is that I only picked at the roast beef sandwich at lunch. What comes out of me is mainly stomach acid and bile. And I made it to the toilet in time, so it's not as if there's a mess left behind to clean.

We sit together on the cramped bathroom floor, a black-and-white checkerboard tile like all the other tile in the apartment. There are dust bunnies there, that and soap residue. Which makes no sense because it's not as if we bathe on the bathroom floor. But still, it's there. I'm pretty sure there's urine on the toilet seat, too, and I silently curse Landon or Brandon, Aaron or Darren—whoever that man was I brought home Saturday night—because he's the only one who could have possibly made the mess. It's not like Esther and I pee on the seat. Little did I know that sixty-some hours after our little tryst I'd be staring his pee straight in the eye as I hovered over the porcelain throne and puked. That's quite some parting gift.

When the puking mutates into dry heaving and slowly draws to a close, Ben lays a cool washcloth on my head and brings me a 7-Up with a pink plastic straw.

“You should go,” I whisper to him, knowing good and well that it's nearing six o'clock. Priya, in her own apartment miles away, will wonder where he is. They don't live together, but Ben would like to. He's said as much and I've pretended to care, knowing that if they did, they'd save rent.
Loads of rent money
, Ben says. But Priya says no. He's confessed this to me once and only once, the fact that it drives him nuts the way Priya keeps her guard up all the time, as if she's got only one foot
in
the door. Not one foot out the door—she has no plans to leave—but she's not quite ready to step completely inside. He wonders if she'll ever be. She's überindependent, which was something that intrigued him from the get-go—self-sufficient and self-reliant, the kind of girlfriend that didn't cling. Now it seems as if he'd like someone who clings, or rather, he'd like for Priya to cling. Or maybe he'd just like for Priya to need him the way that he needs her.

But still, they have dinner together many nights, and tonight it's Priya's turn to cook. He's due there at six. She's making
aloo gobi
, not that I asked, but still he told me—though that was before the notion of food sent me running to the john.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he says, and he excuses himself and leaves the room. From the bathroom floor I hear his voice. He's in the hallway, just outside the door, telling Priya the reason for canceling their plans. “Hey, babe,” he says, but he makes no mention of me.

Or of being at my apartment.

Or of Esther.

Or the fluky death of her former roommate.

Instead, Ben blames a document production, which needs to be overnighted via FedEx by the time the store closes at nine o'clock. It's not that far-fetched; it's happened before, dozens of project assistants running to and fro to Bates label and photocopy documents so they can reach the opposing side by some imminent deadline. “I'm so sorry,” he says, “the lawyer just sprung it on us this afternoon. It's going to be a long night.” And Priya being Priya—not that I would know—absolves him completely of his sin. “Thank you for understanding,” Ben says, and, “You're the best,” and then he ends the conversation with a
love
and a
you
and a nauseating air kiss that makes me want to hurl all over again and so I do.

He returns to the bathroom and joins me on the floor.

“Are you ready to talk about it?” he asks, his tablet—as always—within reach. “We should talk about it, don't you think?” he asks, sure to add, “When you're ready,” and I tell him I'm ready. Though I'm not quite sure I am.

Ben scours the internet and comes across an article, one which states that paramedics responded to a 911 call at Esther's and my address, that they found Kelsey Bellamy unresponsive, that she was transported to Methodist Hospital, and it was there that she was pronounced dead. I picture emergency room physicians trying hard to work their magic before some EKG flatlines and a grim man states point-blank,
Time of death: 8:23
, though of course I don't know what time she died.

But then another image comes to me: handouts on grieving, the grieving process, the seven stages of grief. Was Esther grieving because Kelsey was dead?

Friends and relatives on Kelsey's Facebook page cite carelessness, negligence, complete disregard as the cause of death. But why? The messages are esoteric to say the least; they leave out some kind of information the average reader wouldn't be privy to, someone like me, just snooping around on Kelsey's Facebook page for the inside scoop.

She wasn't my roommate; she wasn't my friend. So why, then, do I see the photos of Kelsey Bellamy and feel sad? My eyes tear up and, as Ben hands me a tissue, I wipe the tears from my eyes. “Esther didn't do this,” I say, though inside we're both thinking the very same thing.

She did.

* * *

Esther has a habit of making every task her own, of moving items from other people's docket to hers. It isn't a bad quality to have, an eager beaver with a behemoth heart.

A typical example: the time Nancy on the second floor decided the tenants of our walk-up apartment building needed to be more committed to recycling. Nancy was tired of seeing old beer bottles and never-read newspapers tossed out with the trash, and Mrs. Budny—old Mrs. Budny with one foot in the ground already, who didn't need to worry about preserving the world for her children or her children's children (neither of which she had)—wasn't going to do a thing about it.

But all Nancy did was post a flyer—delineating the recycling centers around town—in the hall, beside the mailboxes, which somehow or other every single tenant managed to ignore.

But Esther, on the other hand, took it a step further. She contacted recycling services to secure a deal. She purchased several containers for recycling—with her own money, I should add—and left them outside, by the rank Dumpster in the alley behind our home, and in the laundry room. She posted signs, listing what was recyclable and what was not, and what effect
not
recycling was having on our world: landfill overflow, and the need to create new landfills. She encouraged use of the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. She offered up an award for which resident was the best recycler (it wasn't me).

And unlike Nancy's master plan, which failed miserably, Esther's plan didn't fail. It was quite the success. Avid recyclers we turned out to be.

Esther was the one who encouraged me to eat more healthful foods; she persuaded me to pursue a career change. A simple remark—
I hate my job
—became Esther's cue to solve the problem, to make this conundrum her own, though she did it in a way that was never autocratic or oppressive or annoying. It was simply sweet. What Esther decided I needed to be was a teacher, instead of a dopey PA. I almost laughed at that thought: me, a teacher. It seemed ludicrous, and yet it was Esther who convinced me to try and get certified in early childhood education, after I slowly became smitten with the tiny tykes at her bookstore's story time.
You're good with kids
,
she told me,
and besides, you don't want to stay in that crappy job forever, do you? You're better than that, Quinn.

I'm not smart enough to be a teacher
,
I told her at the time as we hovered in the bookstore after story time, me on the floor with some curly-haired kid I didn't know, helping her find the perfect picture book on princesses. It wasn't as if I worked at the bookshop or anything—I didn't—but I'd become a frequent attendee of story time and had gotten to know some of the kids. I liked the stories, yes, more than I cared to admit, but even more I liked that sense of belonging in Esther's world. I've never had a friend quite like Esther. She's like a sister, one I like even more than my real sister.

You're smarter than a four-year-old, aren't you?
Esther had asked, and I shrugged. God, how I hoped I was smarter than a four-year-old.
You can do this
, she said.

It wasn't a week later before I sought out information online for teacher certification programs in Chicago, and Esther signed on to helping me prepare for the Basic Skills test, one which tests my knowledge—or lack thereof—in language arts, reading and writing and math. I can only take the test five times; I've already failed it once. Esther has been helping me study; she swears we're going to pass it the next time around. We. Esther and me. She's told me at least twelve times already that this isn't something I have to do alone. We're a team, Esther and me. That's what she said to me.

Another example of Esther's take-charge persona: the time I made mention of the fact that I'd like to exercise more, to get in shape. I'm not a small person, not short or skinny or just plain petite. Esther is petite, but I am not petite. I am in no way small. But I'm not fat, either. I secretly blame my mythological Amazon ancestors for my tall figure and big bones, for the fact that I am mighty. That's the way I like to look at it: mighty. The way I figure it, too, when I do my shopping online, I got a heck of a lot more sweater or skirt for my money—a heck of a lot more fabric than their size-two-petite, say—for exactly the same price. Their loss, my gain.

But still, I'm not getting any younger, or smaller for that matter, and I made the mistake—or maybe it was a blessing—of telling Esther this, and at once, Esther concocted a fitness plan for her and me to follow. She isn't a hard-core runner, but she does run on occasion. She isn't about to sign up for the Chicago Marathon or anything like that, but she can last a good mile or two, and so that's exactly what we did. Esther got in the habit of dragooning me from bed early in the morning—well before sunrise—and we'd follow the same route, down Clark to Foster where we crossed under Lake Shore Drive and onto the Lakefront Trail, a paved path that spans eighteen miles, running north to south along the shores of Lake Michigan. We didn't make it all eighteen. Nowhere close. For all intents and purposes, I'm not even sure I ran. Running, by definition, requires two feet off the ground at a time, and I'm not entirely sure they were. If anything, we maybe trekked two miles along the path, which might have been a brisk walk, trying desperately to save face in the midst of all those marathoners or wannabe Olympians soaring past us on the Lakefront Trail.

My legs burned; I had a cramp. I had many cramps. I couldn't breathe.

But Esther being Esther cheered me on. She was encouraging.
You can do it
, she said. She slowed down to keep pace with me so that I didn't feel like a chump, though I was pretty sure I still looked like a chump what with my arms flapping like a dying bird falling from the sky.

But Esther didn't give up. She dragged me out of bed day after day after day, though each day I tried hard to refuse, blaming blisters on my feet, the aches and pains near the joints and muscles and tendons. It hurt everywhere. I could hardly squat down to use the restroom or pull on a pair of socks or my shoes. But Esther didn't give up on me.
Wakey, wakey
,
she sang to me each day, luring me from bed. She drew a warm bath for my aching limbs, adding Epsom salt—
the panacea for muscle pain
, as Esther claimed. She made me stretch. She helped with my socks. She tied my shoes. She yanked me out to the Lakefront Trail.

And I ran.

This is what I realize as I return to my bedroom closet, sitting there staring at that word carved into the drywall—
Kelsey
—like some sort of desperate cry for help. When Esther puts her mind to something, there isn't a thing she can't do.

But I can't help but wonder what it is this time that Esther's put her mind to.

In time Ben and I move into Esther's bedroom, where I show him my latest work-in-progress, the ribbons of photo paper spread across the floor.

“What's this?” he asks as I explain how I pulled these scraps from Esther's paper shredder.

“Maybe nothing,” I say, “or maybe something.” I shrug, admitting, “I don't know yet,” and without being asked Ben and I drop to the floor in tandem and make haste of putting my shredded puzzle pieces together, more curious than ever to know who it's a photograph of.

We work quickly; we don't speak. We don't need to speak. Is it Esther in the image, or maybe, just maybe, it's Kelsey Bellamy. Together we start to engineer the brick of a building, a slab of concrete, and somewhere in the center an image begins to form of a woman: mere legs, thinner than a man's would be, sporting a pair of flare jeans. She has no face yet, nothing to tell us who she is, no telling accessories that stand out in the half-formed image. It's a zoomed-out photograph, not a close-up, and so the details are hard to see as Ben and I stay up well past our bedtimes toiling away on the task.

Outside there's a full moon, a golden globe that glares through the window, splashing its light on the floor. As the clouds roll by, they snatch with them the moonlight, and the room grows darker, the puzzle pieces lying before Ben and me harder to see.

But then the moon returns again, taunting and mocking us, its light bursting across the floor, and I have to wonder if a nefarious Esther is out there somewhere taunting and mocking us, too.