“Yup,” I say.
“Ever hear from your mom?” she asks as if she just can’t quite let it go, this conversation about my father, about my mother, and I say, “Nope.” Though sometimes I do, sometimes just a random postcard from a place I’ll never see: Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls. The Alamo. Funny thing is they never say anything. She doesn’t even sign her name.
“It’s not easy being a mother,” she says under her breath, not looking up at me as she speaks. Ingrid is a mother, though her children are long gone, her husband gone, too, thanks to a particularly virulent strain of the flu that passed through many years ago. But Ingrid is a much better mother than my mom ever was, whether or not her kids are still around. She must’ve been. She looks like a mother, the considerate eyes and good-natured smile. Flaccid arms that look like they give great hugs. Not that I would know.
I consider Ingrid’s words: It’s not easy being a mother. To this I don’t say anything. Not at first, anyway, but then I finally offer up, “Must be,” because the last thing I want to say is something that will exonerate my mother for leaving me. There’s no excuse for that, for disappearing in the middle of the night, hopping the train out of town without ever saying goodbye. There’s a photograph Pops keeps of her. In it, she’s about twenty-one. They’d been together only a short time when the photograph was taken, my mother and my father. A month, two months. Hard to say. In the photo, she’s not smiling. But that’s not saying much. It’s hard to remember my mother ever smiling. Her face is narrow, tapered at the bottom to a point. Her cheekbones are high, her nose slender. Her eyes solemn, verging on stern, maybe even mean. Her hair, brunette, cut above the shoulders, is fanned out around her head, a fallout of the generation. It’s the 1980s, early 1990s. She wears a dress, which is strange because I don’t ever remember seeing my mother in a dress. But in this photo she wears a pale gray and foggy lavender dress. The dress is ruffled and tiered and shifty, but it’s also simple, as if trying to be something that it’s not. Just like my mother.
“We all make mistakes,” she says, and I say nothing.
And then before I know it, we’re talking about the dreaded winter again. The cold, the wind, the snow.
It’s after the fourth game that Ingrid tells me to go. “You don’t need to stay here and keep me company,” she says while gathering the playing cards in her hands. “I’m sure you have better things to do,” though of this I’m not so sure. But I go, anyway.
I bet Ingrid has better things to do than hang out with me.
I say my goodbyes and I head out the front door, letting it slam closed. From the front porch I catch the sound of the dead bolt latching. I hurtle myself down the steps and into the middle of the street as a sedan sluggishly pulls into a parking spot before me and cuts the engine. A young lady climbs out, a cigarette pinched between her thin lips. I step around the sedan and that’s when I see the shadow of a lone figure ambling down the road. In a black-and-white checkered coat, a black beanie set on her head. Her canvas bag crisscrosses her slight body; her hands are shoved into the pockets of her pants. The ends of her hair blow in the wind.
Pearl.
She disappears into the morning air, over a single hill on the far end of Main Street—over the hill, getting consumed by the large homes and the enormous trees that fill that part of town, swallowed up and digested, so that before I know it, as I stand, feet frozen to concrete in the middle of the street, she’s no longer there.
And then I hear the squeal of a screen door and I see Dr. Giles standing outside his cottage home, watching this scene, too.
I am not alone. Dr. Giles and I, the both of us, watch as the woman goes, watch as she evanesces over the hill and into the morning’s fog.
Quinn
I call the bookshop on the ride home, apologizing effusively for the poor reception on the bus. I try hard to sound sincere. I really do. I don the kindest voice I can possibly round up, a whole mishmash of kindness, sincerity and concern like a fragrant potpourri.
The woman who answers the phone is a lady by the name of Anne, who’s uptight, high-strung and rule abiding, all attributes I gleaned the one and only time we met, when I’d come to the bookshop to keep Esther company for her thirty-minute lunch break. As I walked in the shop that day and announced the reason for my visit, Anne quickly pointed out that I was early, that although it was 12:24 and the shop was destitute, hollow and wanting for life, Esther’s lunch break didn’t begin until twelve-thirty. And then she proceeded to watch like a hawk as Esther organized books—face out and spine out—on a wooden shelf until twelve-thirty arrived and we were given permission to leave. And in that moment I decided I didn’t like Anne one bit.
So it’s quite unfortunate, really, that of all the booksellers in the shop, Anne is the one to answer my call. I tell her who I am. I try to play it cool, not letting her in on my little conundrum, the fact that it’s been thirty-six or more hours and I still don’t know where Esther is.
From the other end of the phone, there’s silence. At first I picture the old, cadaverous woman searching the bookstore for Esther, and a faint trace of hope fills me with the possibility that Esther really is there, at the bookstore, working, arranging those books face-out on the wooden shelves. At least that’s what I hope is happening in the ten or twenty seconds of dead air. But then the silence goes on so long that I’m absolutely certain we’ve managed to disconnect somehow, our conversation broken up by the faulty connection on the bus. I pull the phone from my ear and stare at the display screen, watching the seconds of the call time rise. Fifty-three, fifty-four...
She’s there. Somewhere.
“Hello?” I ask. “Anne?” I think I say it more than once. But it’s hard to hear. Around me there is noise, the diesel engine of the CTA bus, people talking inside, the honking of horns outside. It’s rush hour and there is traffic. Surprise, surprise.
“Esther was supposed to be here at three,” Anne says to me. “Do you know where she is?” she asks rather brusquely, as if I’ve pulled a fast one on her, lacking all the sincerity and effusion of my request.
I don’t bother to check my own watch, knowing good and well it’s after five o’clock. The evening commute is busy and loud. Bodies press into mine on the bus as I stand, holding on for dear life. It smells. The people smell of body odor and bad breath, evidence of a long day at work. An arm presses against me, leaving a trace of sweat on my skin.
This, of course, strikes me as odd, the fact that Esther didn’t show up at work. Esther always goes to work, even on those days she drags herself out of bed complaining that she doesn’t want to go. She still goes. She works hard; she goes out of her way to please everyone. She tries her hardest to make a good impression on her boss and her coworkers, even Anne, though I tell her that’s a waste of time. She’ll never please Anne. But still, it’s not like Esther to not show up to work, and no matter how angry I am with her over the roommate quandary—that betrayal still stings—I don’t want Esther to get in trouble or lose her job and so I decide to cover for her.