There’s more. Another document that I find in the pile of documents. A form, an official-looking form that reads State of Illinois across the top. In the circuit court of Cook County. Petition for name change.
It’s complete. Signed, dated and stamped. Esther is no longer Esther, but now Jane? It seems preposterous, imagining Esther as something as banal as a Jane. Something so ordinary for Esther, who isn’t in the least bit ordinary. If she had to change her name she should have gone for something along the lines of Portia, Cordelia, Astrid. That’s far more suiting to Esther than Jane.
But no. Esther is now Jane. Jane Girard.
I’m hit with a sudden flash from the past: Esther and I sitting on the apartment sofa, watching TV. It was three months ago, maybe four. She’d been somewhere for the day, which she was pretty tight-lipped and buttoned-up about; she wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone. And since she didn’t, my mind made up for lack of details, envisioning some unscrupulous man with a wife and kids meeting Esther at that shady hotel over on Ridge, the one that was still offering en suite bathrooms and color TV, as if this was the latest and greatest in hotel accommodations. It wasn’t like Esther to do such a thing, but it was fun in my mind to pretend. She didn’t want to talk about where she’d been, and muttered one-word responses to every darn question I asked: Yes and No and Fine.
She said two weird things then, two weird things that I remember. First, she said, “Have you ever tried to make something better, and ended up making everything worse?” Though when I asked her to explain, she wouldn’t elaborate. I told her yes. Story of my life, was what I said.
And she also asked this, out of nowhere, from beside me on the sofa, sad and contemplative. “If you could change your name to anything, what would you choose?”
I chose Belle. And then I went off on a rant on how I loved the name Belle and hated the name Quinn. What kind of name is Quinn, anyway? It’s a boy’s name is what it is. Or maybe a last name, I don’t know. Either way, it’s not a name for a girl. That’s what I said.
I never knew what Esther would choose—she didn’t tell me—but now I did. Jane. Esther chose the name Jane.
Esther had changed her name. Legally. She had stood in some courtroom before a judge and asked that her name be changed, and I didn’t know. How did I not know about this?
I also find a paper shredder plugged into an electrical outlet on the white wall. I yank off the top of the shredder and stare inside at the millions of ribbons of paper bits. It’s filled to the brim; I don’t think she could get one more sheet of paper in. How long would it take me to sort the ribbons of paper out and tape them back together again? Would it even be possible?
I return to the desk and find a bookmark, a coupon, a gift certificate and what looks like a passport photo, three passport photos tucked in a Walgreens sleeve, the fourth image missing, sheared off the page evenly with a pair of scissors. No passport, just the remaining photos, and I have to wonder who they belong to, Esther or Jane?
I also wonder where the passport is.
I search everywhere, but there’s no passport here.
If Esther changed her name to Jane and got a passport for Jane, she’d need other things changed to Jane, as well, such as a driver’s license and a social security card. Is Esther walking around someplace with a driver’s license that bears the name Jane Girard?
But then, when I’m about to give up hope of finding anything else in the drawers, I see another note, typed and signed, All my love, with the same E and the same V. All my love, EV. Esther Vaughan. Folded in thirds as the first note had been, and stuffed at the bottom of the bottom desk drawer.
My Dearest, I read as the oven timer hollers for me, the odor of burning pizza cheese threatening to ignite the entire building on fire.
I drop the note on the desktop and run.
Alex
There isn’t anything you can’t find on the internet these days, especially for a public figure like Dr. Giles. Thanks to sites like HealthGrades and ZocDoc.com I can easily access any and all reviews on the shrink. The first thing I discover is that he really does have a first name, something other than doctor. Joshua is his name. Dr. Joshua Giles.
For some reason that changes everything when I picture him as a helpless babe, in a mother’s arms, being given a name. Joshua.
He’s also thirty-four years old.
Married.
A father of two.
Graduate of Chicago’s Northwestern University, with above-average ratings in wait time and office cleanliness, ease of scheduling appointments. By the looks of HealthGrades and ZocDoc.com, people like him.
I spend the afternoon at the public library, reading the reviews on a computer I’ve reserved. Unlike the rest of the world, Pops and I don’t own a computer. This computer, a dated HP desktop, sits in a small terminal in the equally as dated library. The town library, a 1920s relic, is old. Though it’s expanded twice since the original seven-hundred-square-foot library was opened in 1925, it’s still small. The collections are lacking and out of date, a has-been of some other generation. Books are in short supply. And then there are the videocassettes, movies still available on VHS, which far surpass the number of DVDs.
Here at the computer terminal (I’m surprised we even have computers, rather than typewriters, word processors, the Roman abacus), there are no doors or walls and so I’m constantly peering over my shoulder to ensure I’m not being watched, that some looky-loo or nosey parker isn’t surveilling my internet search. Because that’s the kind of thing people around here do. I make a mental note to clear the search history before I leave, too, so some librarian doesn’t stop by later and see what I’ve been seeing, the glowing reviews for a Dr. Joshua Giles, PhD, that appear on the screen one after the next, after the next. Kind, say the reviews. Good listener. Heartwarming. Grounded. Easy to talk to.
He is the best!!! says one review, with an overkill of exclamation points that makes me question the reviewer’s mental health and state of mind.
As for Dr. Giles’s personal life, he’s married to a Molly Giles and has two kids, a four-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter, according to a blip in the local paper. There’s no mention of their names. There are pictures of Dr. Giles—professional photos of him in a navy sport coat with a stock gray backdrop like every other doctor in the whole entire world has—but zilch for the rest of the family. His home was purchased about a year and a half ago for 650,000 smackeroos. Everything is there: his name, date of purchase, address, what he pays in property taxes. There’s no such thing as privacy anymore.
“Finding everything okay?” a passing librarian asks, and I jump quickly, minimizing the screen. The librarian is a relic from the 1920s herself, a gray-haired woman well past her prime. I tell her I am; I’m finding everything just fine. Except that I’m not, not really. I don’t even know what it is that I’m looking for, but I do know that I’m not finding it here. I guess deep down I was hoping for something scandalous and bad. Patients claiming he was a creep, a freak, a pervert, something along those lines. Citations from the American Psychological Association, code of conduct violations or just plain bad reviews. He missed appointments, he made his patients wait too long, he fell asleep in his chair midsession.
But as far as I can tell, people like him. The man’s history is squeaky clean.