Don't You Cry(12)

I pull my hood up over my head. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my pants and walk quickly, head down, through town, past the carousel, and to the beach.

The town is lonesome and I am feeling blue.

I think of my pals Nick and Adam and Percy, off at college, having the time of their lives. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of some girl I don’t even know, may never see again, likely a head case, too.

The lake pounds the shore, no different than it did this morning. It’s only in daylight that I can see the choppy waves out at sea, the steady flow of whitecaps that charge the sand, livid and swift like knights on horseback—a charging cavalry. The sand is a washed-out brown. The lake has a smell to it, not an unpleasant one, but one that just smells soggy and wet and cold. The sand sticks to my black gym shoes as I make my way past the tall beach grass, the dense bursts that emerge through the sand. The grass is brown and brittle now. No longer green. Soon it will be gone, torn from its roots by the cold and the wind and the snow. My eyes rove the sand for crinoid stems—the tiny disks I find in the gravel and in the sand—just as they always do. It’s a fixation for me, a weakness, a habit. Crinoid stems, Indian beads, sea lilies. It’s all the same to me, the fossils of prehistoric creatures that once inhabited Lake Michigan. I gather a crinoid stem from the sand and admire it in the palm of my hand. Much more beautiful than shale or basalt rock to me; much more meaningful than granite or slag, though, really, they’re nothing much to look at. People string jewelry with these, but me, I collect them in a Ziploc bag. For now, I slide it into the pocket of my pants, holding tight, careful not to let go.

There’s a couple out on the pier, a man and a woman, not far out, but far enough to get the gist of it without being knocked into the water by the wind. They hold each other by the hand—steadying one another in the stubborn gale—as they take in the sweeping lake views and the apocalyptic sky, and then they turn and go, trooping to a car parked in the adjoining lot, stomping the sand off their shoes as they do.

But I don’t go. I stay, taking it all in for myself.

It’s only after they’ve left and I’ve watched the black car spin out of the lot and out of town that I see her sitting all alone on the playground’s belt swing, her feet dragging through the sand below. Her hands clutch the chain, though she doesn’t pump her legs, allowing the wind to move the swing for her. It’s a measured swing to say the least, deliberate and lazy, as one does when they’re thinking about something else and not at all about the swing.

Pearl.

Her coat is on; her hat is on. Her hands are ungloved and look to me to be cold. Her scarf is wrapped around her neck, though the wind grabs it by either end and pulls, so that the scarf floats this way and that on the current of the wayward wind. It’s begun to rain—just a slight drizzle—something she seems repellent to, as if she’s waterproof. She doesn’t seem to mind the rain, which pelts me in the eyeballs and soaks my insides. I can’t stand the rain. I could scurry home; I should scurry home. I should run. But I don’t. Instead, I move to a covered spot, a picnic area with wooden tables and, more importantly, a roof. I sit on the timber tabletop, a solid fifty feet from where Pearl sits.

She doesn’t see me.

But I see her.





Quinn

When I get to the end of the note, I have one, simple, undeterred thought: Who the hell is My Dearest? I have to ask Esther about this. I just have to. The last line screams over and over again in my ear: Did you see me? Were you trying to make me mad?

I want to ask Esther, Who?

I scurry out into the living room to see if she’s come home yet, slipped in quietly while I was in her bedroom. I half expect to see her sitting on the rose-colored sofa, crisscross-applesauce as she says to those tiny tykes at the bookshop’s story time. I picture myself confronting Esther about the note, thrusting the typed sheet of paper under her nose. Who is My Dearest? I ask. I see myself shake that note in front of her rueful face and demand to know, Who is he?

A line runs through my mind: Or maybe that was something she came up with all on her own: leaving the lights on so that I could see. It was, after all, her victory.

In my musings I shake Esther by the shoulders and ask over and over again: Who is she? Who is she, Esther? as Esther’s face turns contrite and she begins to cry.

But no. I wouldn’t do that to Esther. I wouldn’t want to see her cry.

But still, I want to know. Who is she?

Of course it doesn’t matter, anyway, because when I come barreling out of the bedroom she’s not there. Of course she’s not there. It’s just me and an empty room. The TV is off and so other than the hiss of the radiator the room is silent. The room itself screams of Esther, all the mismatched furniture she owned before I moved in: the rose-colored sofa, the industrial iron coffee table, a mod plaid chair in black and white, throw pillows in moss and yellow and blue. And then, of course, there was the frieze rug that we carried home together from some yard sale on Summerdale—my only contribution to the decor save from, of course, me. We must have walked three blocks with that rug, Esther in front, me in the rear, laughing all along the way from the sheer weight of it, from the fact that it was a bilious green. I take in the walls of the apartment themselves, a blinding white, which we’re prohibited from painting by order of Mrs. Budny. Mrs. Budny, an eighty-nine-year-old Pole who lives in the unit beneath us, and also my landlord. The walls instead are covered in coat hooks and candleholders and a dry-erase board where Esther and I leave each other curt little messages, missives and other forms of communiqué.