I have one thought then, one memory: the name etched into the wall in my bedroom closet, the forgotten fragment of a photograph bearing traces of Esther’s hair, the one I found in the closet of the vacant bedroom after I’d moved in.
I hurry quickly from the room and into my bedroom. Ben follows behind asking, “Where are you going?” and there in the bedroom I show him. I slide open the doors of the reach-in closet and start pulling out items at random, tossing dresses on hangers to the floor, pushing aside a rolling suitcase I’ve never used, a graduation gift from my folks in case I ever had the urge to get up and go. Right now I have the urge to get up and go. But where?
“What are you looking for?” asks Ben as I point a quivering hand at six consequential letters placed on the drywall, scored into the popcorn walls with something like a carving knife. An hour ago they meant nothing to me, but now they do.
Kelsey.
*
It’s all just fun and games until somebody gets hurt.
Isn’t that how the saying goes?
It couldn’t be more apropos.
We’re sitting in my apartment, Ben on the rose-colored sofa, me on the black-and-white mod plaid chair because it seems like the right thing to do, the unassuming thing to do. I could have sat next to him; he’d sat first and he left me room. But that, of course, seemed foolhardy and pert. And what if after I sat, he rose and found another chair? That wouldn’t be good.
No, this way I’m in the driver’s seat, in the saddle, at the helm. I’m the one in control. And anyway, from the other side of the industrial iron coffee table, the view is more clear. The better to see you with, my dear.
His light brown hair is a sleek square cut, the kind that sends him to the barber every other week for a trim. His expression has taken on that serious air as it does when he’s working, completing the all-important task of Bates labeling documents like me. But instead of Bates labels, his fingers type across the keyboard quickly, and then he stares at the screen. And then he types and he stares, and he types and he stares. His feet rise up to the coffee table, his work shoes removed. His socks are black, a crew cut, pulled halfway up to his knee. He’s discarded the tie and unbuttoned a button or two of a vintage oxford shirt. He wears no undershirt beneath, the skin there tanned and smooth.
I want to touch it.
And he says in a grisly, morbid sort of way, “This is weird,” and his eyes rise up to meet my eyes, which are already on his.
Outside it’s nearing five o’clock. Soon our coworkers will go home, fleeing the black high-rise like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Dusk is falling quickly out the apartment windows. The close of day. I rise from the mod plaid chair to flip on a light, an arched floor lamp that fills the space with a yellow hue.
“What’s weird?” I ask, and Ben says, “Listen to this.”
He clears his throat and reads. “Kelsey Bellamy, twenty-five, of Chicago, Illinois, died Tuesday, September 23, at Methodist Hospital. She was born on February 16, 1989, and moved to Chicago from her childhood home of Winchester, Massachusetts, in 2012. She worked as a substitute teacher in the Chicago Public School system for two years before her death. Kelsey is survived by her fiancé, Nicholas Keller; her parents, John and Shannon Bellamy; siblings Morgan and Emily; and countless grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. Visitation will be from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Friday, September 26, at Palmer Funeral Home in Winchester, Massachusetts. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Food Allergy Research and Education.”
He searches for a date of the obituary: last year. September of last year, mere weeks before I moved in with Esther. Weeks!
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I say, and I think to myself, How sad, but also, Holy shit.
“Are you sure she’s the one, the right one? She’s the Kelsey Bellamy who used to live here?” And then I think, My God! I hope she didn’t die here, and I have this image of a dead Kelsey Bellamy, dead on my bedroom floor. I shake the image from my mind.
“Well, I can’t be sure,” says Ben, “but she’s the only Kelsey Bellamy in all of Chicago that I can find. The age seems right, too. Can’t imagine Esther living with a sixty-year-old.”
“I can’t believe Esther didn’t tell me this,” I say, but the thing is, I can. Two or three days ago, I’d have said, No way, but now I can’t be sure. I’m starting to discover there are many things about Esther’s life that I didn’t know.
Esther, Jane or whoever the heck she is.
“How’d she die?” I ask.
“Doesn’t say,” Ben says, “but I’m guessing...” And then his voice trails off, only to be interrupted with, “Look here,” as he scoots over to make even more room for me on the small apartment sofa. He doesn’t have to ask twice, though I’m slightly offended by the amount of space he believes is needed for my rear end. He’s pointing at his tablet screen as I toss a throw pillow to the ground, and slide in beside him. And there on his tablet is an image of Kelsey Bellamy.
She’s lovely. That’s the first thought that runs through my mind. Though not in your typical blond hair, blue eyes kind of lovely. More like a gothic lovely with jet-black hair and smoky eyes, hence the goth catalog delivered to her this afternoon. Her skin is an ashen white. It’s whiter than white as if it’s been slathered with baby powder—or as if, perhaps, she’s a ghost, already dead. She dresses like a goth, I guess, but with a certain femininity to it—a black Lolita skirt, a ruffled blouse, black lipstick.
I have a hard time picturing Kelsey Bellamy as a substitute teacher.
“This is weird,” I say, “really weird.”
“You’re telling me,” says Ben as he continues his search to see what else he can find. As we sit there—pressed together on the small apartment sofa so that our knees hover mere inches from each other, eyes staring at the same pinwheel on the same display screen as the tablet thinks, me inhaling his crisp, citrusy cologne—we come across Kelsey’s Facebook page, whereby friends and family leave mournful, tear-jerking status updates about their beloved daughter, granddaughter, niece and friend, with claims made by some that Kelsey’s roommate was the one responsible for her death. A terrible accident, some say, but others call it negligence. Some claim she should be convicted of manslaughter. She as in Esther. The roommate, they say. They say Esther—my Esther—did this. That she killed Kelsey.
“You don’t think...” asks Ben, but he stops just short of finishing that thought out loud.
But yes, I do think. I think exactly what Ben is thinking though neither of us can say the words aloud.
I can’t even begin to describe what goes through my mind.
And then there’s my stomach, which has sunken somewhere down to my toes.
All at once, I think I may puke.
Alex
In the end it’s curiosity that makes me decide to step foot inside that derelict house across the street from mine. It’s dark out, nighttime, as I walk home from another long day of work, my feet and legs bone-tired. As I close in on the house, I see the flicker of light, same as Pops and I did the night before: on, off.
And that’s what gets my attention.
A bird, a common grackle, sits on the contorted roof shingles, singing a rasping, croaky song, its luminous blue head glowing in the glossy moonlight. It sits there perched on the old, sunken-in roof with black bug eyes that stare down onto the street at me, its cusp-like beak pointed in my direction. I take it all in: the bird’s shiny body; the lustrous blue head; its long, attenuating tail; its feet, brown and gnarled like an old lady’s hands.
The moon, a perfectly round sphere, ascends high into the nighttime sky as lazy clouds float by.