“Closer to Battle Creek?” I ask, knowing it’s a stupid thing to ask. There could be a thousand towns and cities in all of Michigan, maybe two thousand. Why Battle Creek? But I ask it, anyway, because when I open my mouth, it’s all that comes out. To my surprise she nods her head impassively and I know it was either a lucky guess on my part, or she wishes I’d just shut up.
“You like to swim?” I ask as an alternative, thinking of that day at the lake, but instead of saying yes or no, she asks of me, “Do you?” It’s a technique, spinning my queries so she doesn’t mistakenly share a single thing about herself. She doesn’t want me to know a thing.
“I like it enough,” I say, “though the water gets pretty cold this time of year.”
“You think?” she asks, but still I can’t tell whether or not she agrees, and I envision her back floating along the surface of a frigid Lake Michigan as raindrops plummeted from the sunless sky. I’m not sure if it’s a question or a statement or something in between, but I nod, anyway, and say, “Yes, I do. It’s cold.”
“Are you from around here?” she asks.
“Born and bred,” I say, watching as she plucks at that strained bracelet that hugs her wrist, that habitual pluck, pluck, pluck that earned her the nickname of Pearl. I have no idea how long I watch.
When she lays her head on the blue country plaid pillow, I say my goodbyes and go. But by then her eyes are already half-closed, and if she does say goodbye, I don’t hear it. I go, anyway, watching for one last minute as she drifts off to sleep.
As I retrace my steps through the old home and back out the busted window onto the stepstool placed outside, knowing fully well that Pearl will take center stage in my dreams tonight—if I even manage to sleep—I realize this: out of sight, but never out of mind.
Quinn
Ben holds my hair for me while I puke.
The good news is that I only picked at the roast beef sandwich at lunch. What comes out of me is mainly stomach acid and bile. And I made it to the toilet in time, so it’s not as if there’s a mess left behind to clean.
We sit together on the cramped bathroom floor, a black-and-white checkerboard tile like all the other tile in the apartment. There are dust bunnies there, that and soap residue. Which makes no sense because it’s not as if we bathe on the bathroom floor. But still, it’s there. I’m pretty sure there’s urine on the toilet seat, too, and I silently curse Landon or Brandon, Aaron or Darren—whoever that man was I brought home Saturday night—because he’s the only one who could have possibly made the mess. It’s not like Esther and I pee on the seat. Little did I know that sixty-some hours after our little tryst I’d be staring his pee straight in the eye as I hovered over the porcelain throne and puked. That’s quite some parting gift.
When the puking mutates into dry heaving and slowly draws to a close, Ben lays a cool washcloth on my head and brings me a 7-Up with a pink plastic straw.
“You should go,” I whisper to him, knowing good and well that it’s nearing six o’clock. Priya, in her own apartment miles away, will wonder where he is. They don’t live together, but Ben would like to. He’s said as much and I’ve pretended to care, knowing that if they did, they’d save rent. Loads of rent money, Ben says. But Priya says no. He’s confessed this to me once and only once, the fact that it drives him nuts the way Priya keeps her guard up all the time, as if she’s got only one foot in the door. Not one foot out the door—she has no plans to leave—but she’s not quite ready to step completely inside. He wonders if she’ll ever be. She’s überindependent, which was something that intrigued him from the get-go—self-sufficient and self-reliant, the kind of girlfriend that didn’t cling. Now it seems as if he’d like someone who clings, or rather, he’d like for Priya to cling. Or maybe he’d just like for Priya to need him the way that he needs her.
But still, they have dinner together many nights, and tonight it’s Priya’s turn to cook. He’s due there at six. She’s making aloo gobi, not that I asked, but still he told me—though that was before the notion of food sent me running to the john.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and he excuses himself and leaves the room. From the bathroom floor I hear his voice. He’s in the hallway, just outside the door, telling Priya the reason for canceling their plans. “Hey, babe,” he says, but he makes no mention of me.
Or of being at my apartment.
Or of Esther.
Or the fluky death of her former roommate.
Instead, Ben blames a document production, which needs to be overnighted via FedEx by the time the store closes at nine o’clock. It’s not that far-fetched; it’s happened before, dozens of project assistants running to and fro to Bates label and photocopy documents so they can reach the opposing side by some imminent deadline. “I’m so sorry,” he says, “the lawyer just sprung it on us this afternoon. It’s going to be a long night.” And Priya being Priya—not that I would know—absolves him completely of his sin. “Thank you for understanding,” Ben says, and, “You’re the best,” and then he ends the conversation with a love and a you and a nauseating air kiss that makes me want to hurl all over again and so I do.
He returns to the bathroom and joins me on the floor.
“Are you ready to talk about it?” he asks, his tablet—as always—within reach. “We should talk about it, don’t you think?” he asks, sure to add, “When you’re ready,” and I tell him I’m ready. Though I’m not quite sure I am.
Ben scours the internet and comes across an article, one which states that paramedics responded to a 911 call at Esther’s and my address, that they found Kelsey Bellamy unresponsive, that she was transported to Methodist Hospital, and it was there that she was pronounced dead. I picture emergency room physicians trying hard to work their magic before some EKG flatlines and a grim man states point-blank, Time of death: 8:23, though of course I don’t know what time she died.
But then another image comes to me: handouts on grieving, the grieving process, the seven stages of grief. Was Esther grieving because Kelsey was dead?
Friends and relatives on Kelsey’s Facebook page cite carelessness, negligence, complete disregard as the cause of death. But why? The messages are esoteric to say the least; they leave out some kind of information the average reader wouldn’t be privy to, someone like me, just snooping around on Kelsey’s Facebook page for the inside scoop.
She wasn’t my roommate; she wasn’t my friend. So why, then, do I see the photos of Kelsey Bellamy and feel sad? My eyes tear up and, as Ben hands me a tissue, I wipe the tears from my eyes. “Esther didn’t do this,” I say, though inside we’re both thinking the very same thing.
She did.
*
Esther has a habit of making every task her own, of moving items from other people’s docket to hers. It isn’t a bad quality to have, an eager beaver with a behemoth heart.
A typical example: the time Nancy on the second floor decided the tenants of our walk-up apartment building needed to be more committed to recycling. Nancy was tired of seeing old beer bottles and never-read newspapers tossed out with the trash, and Mrs. Budny—old Mrs. Budny with one foot in the ground already, who didn’t need to worry about preserving the world for her children or her children’s children (neither of which she had)—wasn’t going to do a thing about it.
But all Nancy did was post a flyer—delineating the recycling centers around town—in the hall, beside the mailboxes, which somehow or other every single tenant managed to ignore.