Being Esther Read Online Free PDF Page A

brilliant child was pushed into the deep end of an empty swimming pool—she settled on the passage she’d committed to memory. Esther had read and reread those lines as if she were rehearsing for a play. She recited them in front of the mirror and while clearing the breakfast dishes. “One of these days you’re going to have a tragic, tragic heart attack.” That’s what the woman in the story, the one with the unfortunate son, had said to her husband. Esther shouted those words while she ran the vacuum, while making the beds. Then, like that fictional woman, she threatened to wear red to her husband’s funeral and sit in the front row flirting with the organist.
    Esther was conjuring a way to work those lines into the conversation, the way to portend Marty’s death and his funeral, when he looked up from his puzzle and said, “I suppose if it’s only three mornings a week . . .”
    Esther closed the book, returned it to the coffee table, and nodded. “Brenda,” she said.
    â€œBrenda?”
    â€œBasil’s girl.” Softly, she added, “Nobody will ever know I was gone.”

E very morning at 8:30 sharp, Esther and Lorraine speak by phone, though it would be easy enough to meet near the statue of Saint Francis, in the building’s courtyard.
    One morning Lorraine makes the call, the delicate expression the two employ for checking to see that the other has made it through the night. The next morning, Esther returns the favor. And so it will go, until the day one of them doesn’t answer, leaving the other to panic, wondering what to do. Dial 911? Call Milo, the building’s super?
    Today, while waiting for Lorraine to call, Esther peers through her living room window across the courtyard into the other apartments of the Devonshire Arms.
    Lorraine’s curtains are drawn, yet Esther can picture her friend seated at the kitchen table with the Sun-Times and her second cup of Sanka.
    When the phone finally rings, Esther picks up and without so much as a hello, says, “Ceely kidnapped me.”
    â€œEsther, listen to me. Your own daughter cannot kidnap you.”
    â€œTrust me. She did.” Esther pauses, waiting for her friend to deliver the verbal equivalent of a pat on the arm.
    Lorraine sighs. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t sleep so well.”
    â€œI just said that I was kidnapped, and you’re going on about a sleepless night!”
    Esther is about to hang up when Lorraine says, “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
    â€œNot now,” Esther whispers. “Later. I’ll tell you at lunch.” She has just finished reading the newspaper. The government is spying on ordinary citizens, listening in on phone conversations without a warrant. Though she doesn’t believe for a minute that anyone would bother eavesdropping on a couple of eighty-five-year-old women, she isn’t taking any chances. What happened to her is nobody’s business.
    She thinks about her grandson, Josh, who doesn’t care who knows what. Last Sunday, after dinner, he sat her down at his desk, punched some keys on his computer, and told her about something called a blog. “Here, Nonna. Check it out.” She read about Josh and his girlfriend, a sweet girl with a heart-shaped face and messy hair, about the things they did when he was away at college, about the smell of his sheets after sex. Esther, who could remember changing Josh’s diapers, stopped reading and said, “Very nice.”
    No, she is not about to broadcast the details of her life to strangers. No blogs. No revelations for government spies. “I’ll tell you everything. Later,” Esther says to Lorraine. “Now tell me what kept you up. Was it the music? I heard him playing again last night.”
    Sometimes at night Esther listens for the music from across the courtyard. The autistic boy who lives next to Lorraine can play for