I hang up with the operator and will Ben to call. Please, Ben, please, I silently beg. Please call. But Ben doesn’t call. I search online for the numbers of the closest area hospitals, starting with Methodist, and then I call, asking the receptionists one by one if Esther is there. I state her name and then I describe her—the shaded hair, the heterochromatic eyes, the ungrudging smile—knowing that Esther has that kind of face that once you’ve seen it, you never forget. But Esther isn’t at Methodist Hospital or Weiss or any of the local urgent care facilities. I lose hope with each apathetic reply. No Esther Vaughan here.
I’m feeling lost and alone when I hear the sound of a telephone ringing. Not my phone, but a phone. Esther’s phone, which I know from the ringtone, some 1980s Billboard hit that nobody listens to anymore.
Esther’s ringtone. Esther’s phone.
Esther’s not here, so why is her phone?
I rise to my feet to find it.
Alex
I wonder if she has any idea she’s being watched.
I watch the girl twitch her hands, scratch her head. I watch her cross her legs this way—and then that way—on the park swing, trying to get comfortable. Then she uncrosses her legs and kicks at the sand. She looks left, right, and then peers upward and opens her mouth to catch droplets of rainwater falling from the sky.
I have no idea how long I stare. Long enough that my hands go numb from the cold and the rain.
It’s after some time that the girl rises to her feet and stands. Her feet, in the chestnut-colored Uggs, sink into the sand as she moves through it and toward the beach. Closer and closer to the water. It’s hard for her to move through the sand thanks to the density of it, for one, and the wind. It pushes her modest body this way and that, her arms out at her sides like the arms of a tightrope walker. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.
And then three feet before the tide line, she stops.
And I stare.
And this is what happens. It starts with the boots first, which she draws from her feet with great balance, one foot, and then the other. She sets them side by side in the sand. The socks are next, and I think to myself, Is she crazy? Thinking she will dip her feet into the frigid waters of a November Lake Michigan. It can’t be more than forty degrees. Ice cold. The kind of water that gives rise to hypothermia.
The socks get tucked into the shaft of the boot so they don’t blow away. I watch and wait for the girl to totter to the lake’s side and walk right on in, but she doesn’t. There’s a moment that passes—or many moments, maybe, I don’t know, I’ve lost all sense of time—before she reaches for the buttons of the coat and starts to unbutton from top to bottom. And then the coat comes off. Set in the sand beside the boots and the socks. It’s as she starts to remove the jeans from her legs that I think, This can’t be happening. I peer around for another onlooker, someone, anyone, to tell me this is real and not only a figment of my imagination. Is this really happening? This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.
I’ve stood now and moved closer, two, maybe three feet, hidden behind the wooden columns that frame the picnic shelter. I wrap my hands around the columns and squint my eyes so that I can see the way Pearl unbuttons and unzips the jeans, the way she sets herself down in the wet sand and drags the denim from her legs, setting that, too, by the coat and the shoes. The rain has picked up its pace now and barrels down harder, blowing sideways in the wind. It sweeps through the orifices in the enclosed shelter space and soaks me through and through. The girl stands then, hands in the pockets of her blue hoodie, with nothing else on. Just the hoodie and a pair of underpants. And the hat and scarf.
But then the hoodie goes, too.
And it’s then that she enters the water. In nothing more than her undergarments, her scarf and a hat. She walks right in, insouciant to the cold like an emperor penguin, diving right into arctic waters. She doesn’t stop when she gets her feet wet. Or her ankles. Or her knees. She keeps going. I think she might walk right on to Chicago if she could, hands dragging along the surface of the water as the waves run up and splash her, soaking her head to toe with the lake’s callous spray.
Without realizing it, I’ve moved from the picnic shelter and stand, myself, in the sand. How did I get here? I don’t know. All common sense tells me that I should call someone for help. The police? Dr. Giles? How long does she have before the cold water leads to hypothermia? Fifteen minutes? Thirty minutes? I don’t know. But I can’t call someone because I’m completely dumbstruck and speechless, feet frozen to the sand, unable to lug my phone from the pocket of my pants. Because I can’t get my eyes off Pearl, there in the water, swimming the sidestroke, long enough to call for help. Watching the way her unhurried arms rise up out of the water one at a time, and then drop back in. The gentle, rhythmic kicking of feet in water, proffering no splash at all. The way she goes and goes without turning her head for a breath, like a fish with gills and fins.
If I had something better to do with my time, I probably wouldn’t be standing here watching her swim. But I don’t and so I stand here and watch her swim.
And there, as I stand, gawking, the girl rises up to her feet and begins a retreat from the water. While any normal human being would sprint shivering from the water and into something warm and dry, she doesn’t. Her steps are slow, calculated. She isn’t in a hurry. She takes her time, emerging from the water soaking-wet, the little she wears now completely sheer. The sand clings to her feet, her ankles, grainy sand changing colors before my eyes. Turning darker.
I would avert my eyes. I should avert my eyes.
But I can’t.
I can’t be blamed for this. What eighteen-year-old would turn his head away, refuse to look? Not me, that’s for sure. Not anyone I know.
Seems to me, anyway, that she wants to be seen.
And there she stands in the wet sand, the water likely freezing to her bare skin in the cold, autumn air. She makes no attempt to dry herself off or to get dressed. Her back is to the lake now and she takes in what’s on the other side: the playground and carousel, the beach grass and a line of vacuous trees.
And me.
And that’s when she turns to me and waves.
And I prove to the world that I really am a chickenshit when I turn and walk away, pretending I don’t see.
Quinn
I rise to my feet and follow the ringing of the phone to the kitchen, fully expecting to see Esther’s cell stashed there on the countertop beside canisters of flour, sugar and cookies. But no such luck. I’m not one to answer her phone or even notice its ring, but now I’m worried. Perhaps Esther is in trouble; perhaps she needs my help. Perhaps it’s Esther on the other end of the line calling me for help on her phone. She’s lost, doesn’t have enough cash for a cab. Something along those lines.
But she could just call me on my phone, then. Of course she could. That would make more sense. But still. Maybe...
I flip on the stove light and continue to search, tracking the subdued ringtone as Hansel and Gretel tracked bread crumbs through the deep, dark woods. It sounds far away and hard to hear, as if there’s cotton in my ears. I open and close the stove, the refrigerator, the cabinets, though it seems utterly absurd to do so. To look for a phone inside a refrigerator. But I do, anyway.
I continue on my search. The phone rings once, twice, three times. I’m nearly certain the call will go to voice mail and this will all be for naught, when I find it tucked away inside the pocket of a red zip-up hoodie that hangs from a hanger in our teeny-weeny coat closet.
I snatch up the phone, ousting the hoodie from its hanger as I do, watching it fall to the floor as I answer the call, the caller ID reading Unknown.
“Hello?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear.
“Is this Esther Vaughan?” probes a voice on the other end of the line.