Don't You Cry(29)

Quinn

Esther is a great roommate. Most of the time. I’ve hardly ever seen her angry, except for the day I rearranged the foodstuff on her cabinet shelf. Then she got angry, really angry, and by that I mean she nearly flipped her lid.

I didn’t rearrange her foodstuff, per se. I was looking for something, dill weed to make a seasoning for my microwave popcorn. A little salt, a little sugar, a little garlic, a little dill weed, and presto! It was one of my many obsessions. Esther was at school, a night class for her occupational therapy thingie, and I was at home, settling in to watch some show on the TV.

Esther and I each have kitchen cabinets that are our own. The ones with the bowls and plates we share, but the ones with the foodstuff we do not. There’s mine, packed to capacity with junk food galore, and then there’s Esther’s, complete with one-off cooking and baking supplies: kelp noodles and basil seed, dill weed, peanut flour, garam masala, whatever the heck that is. And Frosted Flakes.

I made the popcorn. I could have settled on salt, I know, but knowing Esther had the ingredients for my special seasoning, I dug through her spices and noodles and whatnot for the dill weed.

I didn’t think I’d made a mess, but Esther sure did. I was on the sofa with my delish popcorn when she returned from class, the volume on the TV quiet so as not to disturb Mrs. Budny down below, old Mrs. Budny, who I imagined often stood in the middle of her own home, her dough-like head wrapped up in a babushka, her skin an anemic white, upthrusting a mop with shaking, old-lady hands, pounding the ceiling to shut up Esther and me.

But not that day. That day the TV was so quiet that I could hardly hear. Esther came home in a fine mood, one which disappeared quickly when she reached into her cabinet for the Frosted Flakes and then said to me, “Quinn,” her voice a tad bit Hannibal Lecter–like when she appeared in the living room and snapped off the TV. Hello, Clarice.

“Hey!” I griped. “I was watching that,” I said as she tossed the remote control to the mod plaid chair.

“Can you come here for a minute?” she asked, leaving the room without waiting for me to respond. And so I set my popcorn aside and followed her into the kitchen, where her cabinet door was ajar. It didn’t look like a mess to me. I could hardly tell a thing had been moved. The dill weed was right where it needed to be, between the cumin and the fennel seed. Alphabetical order.

“Did you touch my food?” she asked with a strange tremor to her voice that I’d never heard before.

And I said, “Just a little dill weed.” And, “I’m sorry, Esther,” when I saw how upset she’d suddenly become. It wasn’t like Esther to become upset, and so I was taken aback. “I’ll buy you more,” I promised as her face turned red, as red as a field of poppies, so that I thought smoke might come out of her ears like steam from a train engine. She was mad.

She marched to the open cabinet and said, “The dill weed goes here,” as she lifted and lowered the dill weed container into the exact same spot I’d left it. “And the peanut flour goes here,” she said, doing the very same thing with the bag of flour so that when she dropped it to the cabinet shelf, flour sprayed everywhere.

I hadn’t touched the flour. I thought to tell her that—to tell Esther I never touched the flour, not once, not one single time—but I saw now that she wasn’t in the mood for a rational discussion on peanut flour.

Then Esther said, “Now look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done, Quinn. Look at the mess you made,” meaning the pinpricks of flour that dotted the countertops, and she tromped out of the room, leaving me to clean a mess she made in response to my bogus mess.

You live and learn, I told myself, and the next day I bought my own damn dill weed.

*

I return home from the coffee shop, walking down the worn hallway to my apartment. The carpeting is frayed and tattered, a henna color to mask the mud and dirt and other gunk we carry in on the soles of our shoes. The walls are scuffed. One of the corridor lightbulbs has burned out, making the walkway dim. It’s dreary. Not dirty or dangerous or any of those things that urban dwellings can sometimes be, but just dreary. Used. Overused. Like a tissue that no longer has any usable parts. The hallways need new paint, new carpeting, a little tender loving care.

Though if it wasn’t for the homeliness of the walk-up corridor, I wouldn’t quite appreciate the hominess of Esther’s and my space. Snug and comfy, cozy and warm.

As I slide my key in the keyhole and turn the door’s handle, there’s a part of me expecting to see Esther on the other side of the steel pane, making dinner in her favorite button-back sweater and a pair of jeans. The smells that greet me are delectable and divine. Either the TV is on—The Food Network—or the stereo, some kind of folksy acoustic thing emanating from the three-piece, overpriced speakers with Esther singing along, her legato and range even more impressive than the voice on the stereo that’s getting paid to sing.

If the radiator hasn’t kicked into high gear, Esther will greet me at the door with my timeworn fleece and a pair of slippers. Because that’s Esther. Saint Esther. The kind of roommate who greets me at the door, who makes me dinner, who would bring me coffee and bagels every single day of the week if I asked her to.

But Esther’s not there and I’m more than a bit discouraged to say the least.

And so, without Esther, I find my fleece myself. I find my slippers. I turn the stereo on.