maybe, I don’t know, I’ve lost all sense of time—before she reaches for the buttons of the coat and starts to unbutton from top to bottom. And then the coat comes off. Set in the sand beside the boots and the socks. It’s as she starts to remove the jeans from her legs that I think, This can’t be happening. I peer around for another onlooker, someone, anyone, to tell me this is real and not only a figment of my imagination. Is this really happening? This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.
I’ve stood now and moved closer, two, maybe three feet, hidden behind the wooden columns that frame the picnic shelter. I wrap my hands around the columns and squint my eyes so that I can see the way Pearl unbuttons and unzips the jeans, the way she sets herself down in the wet sand and drags the denim from her legs, setting that, too, by the coat and the shoes. The rain has picked up its pace now and barrels down harder, blowing sideways in the wind. It sweeps through the orifices in the enclosed shelter space and soaks me through and through. The girl stands then, hands in the pockets of her blue hoodie, with nothing else on. Just the hoodie and a pair of underpants. And the hat and scarf.
But then the hoodie goes, too.
And it’s then that she enters the water. In nothing more than her undergarments, her scarf and a hat. She walks right in, insouciant to the cold like an emperor penguin, diving right into arctic waters. She doesn’t stop when she gets her feet wet. Or her ankles. Or her knees. She keeps going. I think she might walk right on to Chicago if she could, hands dragging along the surface of the water as the waves run up and splash her, soaking her head to toe with the lake’s callous spray.
Without realizing it, I’ve moved from the picnic shelter and stand, myself, in the sand. How did I get here? I don’t know. All common sense tells me that I should call someone for help. The police? Dr. Giles? How long does she have before the cold water leads to hypothermia? Fifteen minutes? Thirty minutes? I don’t know. But I can’t call someone because I’m completely dumbstruck and speechless, feet frozen to the sand, unable to lug my phone from the pocket of my pants. Because I can’t get my eyes off Pearl, there in the water, swimming the sidestroke, long enough to call for help. Watching the way her unhurried arms rise up out of the water one at a time, and then drop back in. The gentle, rhythmic kicking of feet in water, proffering no splash at all. The way she goes and goes without turning her head for a breath, like a fish with gills and fins.
If I had something better to do with my time, I probably wouldn’t be standing here watching her swim. But I don’t and so I stand here and watch her swim.
And there, as I stand, gawking, the girl rises up to her feet and begins a retreat from the water. While any normal human being would sprint shivering from the water and into something warm and dry, she doesn’t. Her steps are slow, calculated. She isn’t in a hurry. She takes her time, emerging from the water soaking-wet, the little she wears now completely sheer. The sand clings to her feet, her ankles, grainy sand changing colors before my eyes. Turning darker.
I would avert my eyes. I should avert my eyes.
But I can’t.
I can’t be blamed for this. What eighteen-year-old would turn his head away, refuse to look? Not me, that’s for sure. Not anyone I know.
Seems to me, anyway, that she wants to be seen.
And there she stands in the wet sand, the water likely freezing to her bare skin in the cold, autumn air. She makes no attempt to dry herself off or to get dressed. Her back is to the lake now and she takes in what’s on the other side: the playground and carousel, the beach grass and a line of vacuous trees.
And me.
And that’s when she turns to me and waves.
And I prove to the world that I really am a chickenshit when I turn and walk away, pretending I don’t see.
I rise to my feet and follow the ringing of the phone to the kitchen, fully expecting to see Esther’s cell stashed there on the countertop beside canisters of flour, sugar and cookies. But no such luck. I’m not one to answer her phone or even notice its ring, but now I’m worried. Perhaps Esther is in trouble; perhaps she needs my help. Perhaps it’s Esther on the other end of the line calling me for help on her phone. She’s lost, doesn’t have enough cash for a cab. Something along those lines.
But she could just call me on my phone, then. Of course she could. That would make more sense. But still. Maybe...
I flip on the stove light and continue to search, tracking the subdued ringtone as Hansel and Gretel tracked bread crumbs through the deep, dark woods. It sounds far away and hard to hear, as if there’s cotton in my ears. I open and close the stove, the refrigerator, the cabinets, though it seems utterly absurd to do so. To look for a phone inside a refrigerator. But I do, anyway.
I continue on my search. The phone rings once, twice, three times. I’m nearly certain the call will go to voice mail and this will all be for naught, when I find it tucked away inside the pocket of a red zip-up hoodie that hangs from a hanger in our teeny-weeny coat closet.
I snatch up the phone, ousting the hoodie from its hanger as I do, watching it fall to the floor as I answer the call, the caller ID reading Unknown.
“Hello?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear.
“Is this Esther Vaughan?” probes a voice on the other end of the line.
And then I utter the three words that in about thirteen seconds I’ll regret having said. “No, it’s not,” I say, wishing instantly that I would have said, This is she. But then again, why would I when my interest has yet to be piqued? It takes much more than a blocked phone number to get my attention. I get blocked calls all the time, mainly debt collectors calling to collect unpaid bills. Old credit cards with cringe-worthy balances I haven’t made payments to in years. Student loans.
“Is she there?” asks the voice. It’s a gruff voice, a male voice, that isn’t going to fool around with any pleasantries or wisecracks or banter.
“No,” I say, and then, “Can I take a message?” I ask as my hand fumbles through the near-darkness for the dry-erase board and a marker. I drift across the room to the board that hangs aslant from a wall, fully prepared to jot down a name and phone number below the arcane message: Ran out. Be home soon, a phrase that suddenly takes on an abundance of meaning.
Ran out. Be home soon.
Esther wrote that. I know she did. It’s not my handwriting; it’s hers. The fusion of cursive and print, upper-and lowercase words. Both feminine and masculine all at the same time.
But when did she leave the message, I wonder, and why?
Was it last week when she ran back to the bookshop to find her forgotten faux glasses? Or just a couple days ago when she hurried to the Edgewater branch of the Chicago Public Library on Broadway to return a book before closing time, so that it wouldn’t be late? Esther is a stickler for returning books on time.
Or, I wonder then while waiting for the guy on the other end of the cell phone to decide whether or not he’s going to leave a message, did she leave the annotation last night before she opened her bedroom window and climbed on out? That’s it, then, I tell myself. There’s no reason to be worried. Esther left me a note; she’ll be home soon. It says so right there on the board.
Ran out. Be home soon.
And then to my dismay, the man on the other end of the line curtly replies, “It’s a confidential matter.” His voice is ticked off. “We had an appointment this afternoon. She didn’t show.”
Apparently that information—Esther’s sloppy, negligent behavior—isn’t quite as confidential as who he is or why he’s calling. There are voices in the background that I try hard to decrypt: cars, the lapping sound of ocean waves, a blender. I can’t be sure. It all fuses together until it is one thing and one thing alone: noise. Clamor. Racket. A whole hullabaloo.
“I can