Unpacking the last of the moving boxes, Esther glanced at Jake across their new living room. He tried to hide his frustration, but Esther could tell he was disappointed in her. It hadn’t been easy to transfer his residency mid-year, even pleading family emergency. They had only been in Massachusetts for three weeks, rattling around in an old farmhouse Jake rented at the edge of a small town, in a valley between forested hills.
Esther hated it.
“You’ll adjust,” Jake said.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” She shook her head. “This place is like a foreign country, like another galaxy, like Mars.”
“Even after all those summers at Loon Lake?”
She pointed at the black square of window. “Does that look like summertime in New Hampshire to you?”
“Spring will be here soon,” he said. “At least we’re out of Detroit, the three of us safe and together.”
Getting away from the icy looks and occasional muttered comments from ex-comrades was a relief, but who was she without her past? “That’s easy for you to say. You have your work, your patients. There’s nothing for me here.”
“Then make something for yourself. Go back to school. Finish your degree.”
Their arguments always ended at this same place. Jake meant well, but he had no idea how lost she felt. She took the last mug from the deep corner of the carton. Unpacking was marginally easier than packing. Crumpling the newsprint wrapping into a ball, she tossed it into the pile in the corner of the room. The yellow kitten raised his head, batted the air briefly, then let his nose sink back onto his paws. Mustard hadn’t been his playful self since the move, and she couldn’t blame him.
“Finally!” Jake shouted, ripping open the cardboard flaps of a large carton. “Records! I can’t wait one more second for music.”
Esther couldn’t bear the thought of listening to the soundtrack of their old lives. She had managed to hide the box of LPs among the stacks of unopened cartons. Until now.
He hugged his favorite The Doors album to his chest. “I’ve been hearing ‘Light My Fire’ in my dreams.” He slipped the vinyl record from the sleeve and turned toward the turntable.
“No,” Esther said.
“You want Joan Baez instead? Okay.” He started flipping through the albums again.
Jake knew all about Esther and Rosa’s long-standing argument about Joan Baez versus Bob Dylan, about which songwriter spoke for their generation. Esther preferred Baez, the human side of protest. Rosa argued that Dylan was their prophet. Now that was protest music, Rosa used to proclaim, singing Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changing” with her long arms undulating to the rhythm.
“No Baez either,” Esther whispered. “I can’t listen to any of our music anymore.” She stood in her bathrobe in the middle of the living room, among emptied cardboard boxes tumbled like Molly’s blocks. “Just the thought of it makes me feel boneless.” She looked down, letting her tangled hair cover her face. “I have no scaffolding.”
Jake put his arms around her. “We’ll figure this out, Esther. But I can’t live without music.”
Why couldn’t Jake understand how that music made her feel? Esther leaned against him. And it wasn’t just the music. Tomorrow was Molly’s first birthday, and how could they possibly celebrate without her family, without Rosa?
Icing a birthday cake late the next afternoon, Esther counted off the months on her fingers. If Rosa had been just pregnant on August 17, say three months along at most, and if she didn’t have an abortion, she should have a baby right about now.
“You might have a cousin out there somewhere,” she told Molly. She scattered a handful of Cheerios onto the wooden tray of Molly’s high-chair and sat at her desk tucked in the kitchen alcove. Every single day since Rosa’s awful letter arrived, she had mentally composed her answer, revised it, and then trashed it. Today she had to get it on paper. For Molly’s future and her own peace of mind.
Dear Rosa,
It’s been three months since I got your letter. I’m still stunned.
The postmark was smudged but I figure you wrote it right before you left town. I doubt I could find the courage to mail this, even if I knew how to find you, which I don’t. But maybe you’ll get the message anyway. I used to think that we should have been twins; we understood each other’s unspoken thoughts so well.
I know you’re furious with me. But I don’t deserve the things you said in that letter. “Coward. Traitor. No longer sisters.” Those are rough words even for you. Brutal words. Impossible words.
When I read your letter, I can picture your face. Your lips so rigid they seem to disappear. When we were little, I used to worry when you got angry and blazed your eyes and lost your lips. I was afraid you would burn yourself up. End up a spent volcano of cinders on the floor. Guess I wasn’t so far off.
I know. I know. If you were here you’d tell me to stop painting pictures in the air. I guess you’ll get what you want, because I’m feeling pretty earthbound right now and I can’t imagine ever painting another picture.
You’ve lost a lot too. I have no idea what it’s like, being underground. I don’t really know what that means. Are you in Detroit or far away? Do you know that Mama and Pop may have to sell the store? To pay my court costs and civil damages and lawyer’s fees, but mostly for your bail, which was forfeited when you left. Pop is so stooped over and so thin, I can see the shape of his bones under his skin.
When she was a little girl, Pop’s back had been straight and strong and he knew everything. His union picnic was the high point of every summer. There were puppet shows about the struggles between workers and owners. The three-legged race was her special time with Pop, their legs tied together with burlap strips making their gait impossibly, hysterically lopsided. Then, every year, just when she had almost given up on it again, the fire engine would finally pull up in front of the shoemakers’ union hall, load up all the kids, and drive around the block with children piled on the ladders imitating siren noises.
Mama and Pop refuse to talk about the store, like they refuse to talk about you, and about pretty much everything else, except Molly and when am I going to give her a little brother or sister. I’m not ready for that yet, but I heard that you’re pregnant, that Molly will have a cousin. Congratulations, Sister.
Do you think our children will ever know each other?
What she really wanted to ask was harder to put into words. She wanted to know if having a child, experiencing in her blood that profound and awful responsibility, made Rosa understand Esther’s choice and stop hating her. Esther had no idea. She used to think she could predict what Rosa thought, know what she would do before it happened, but no longer.
One of the things I’ve learned from all this is that even if we sometimes felt like twins, we’re not. When we were in jail that first night after the arrest, that’s when I knew how very different we were. You were so high on the whole experience. You went on and on about Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community, and how the women in our cell were our sisters. When I looked around, all I saw were hookers and thieves.
You didn’t seem to notice the smells that night, the sour urine and dank stench of dirty feet. You kept right on talking about that line you love so much, the one Tim Wright liked to quote. How each of us has to figure out a way to live our lives that doesn’t make a mockery of our values. You were so fired up, Rosie. You were incandescent and I admired you so much. Me, I was just scared. I couldn’t stop thinking about Bernie, snatched from the picket line and beaten to death in jail. I kept imagining Molly growing up without a mama.
You’re my big sister and I’ve always listened to you, always followed your lead. But not this time. You and I made different choices, but that doesn’t make me a coward and you can’t disown me, no matter what you said in your letter. We’ll always be sisters.
Love, Esther
P.S. We’ve moved to Massachusetts. In case you care.
Esther folded the letter in thirds, then in half again. She dug around in the back of the bottom drawer for the red Japanese box. The folded yellow paper fit perfectly on top of Rosa’s letter. At the slam of Jake’s car door in the driveway, Esther buried the box under old greeting cards and stationery and firmly closed the drawer. She checked the clock; he was right on time. The three of them would celebrate Molly’s birthday with her first taste of chocolate.
“Your daddy’s home.” Esther scooped another handful of Cheerios for Molly.
“Dadadadadada,” Molly repeated, her face serious.
Jake brought a frigid blast of air into the kitchen. He set a bottle of Chianti on the countertop and nuzzled Molly’s belly with a bristly porcupine puppet. “Happy birthday, Monkey.” He turned to Esther. “You, too.”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“You did all the work.” He hugged her and presented a large paper bag.
“Brrr.” She wiggled away from his cold coat, felt the shape of the bag and stiffened. “No records.”
Jake planted a loud raspberry kiss on Molly’s neck. “We need music. If you can’t listen to our old records, we’ll try something new. Something old, actually.” He pulled four albums from the bag. “Broadway musicals. From that second-hand record store downtown.” He kissed Esther’s forehead. “These might be slightly scratched, but at least they won’t remind you of Detroit.”
That evening they listened to “Kiss Me, Kate” while they cooked spaghetti for dinner and toasted Molly’s birthday, clinking their jelly glasses of red wine in celebration. They took photographs of Molly tasting her first bite of chocolate cake, her puzzled response to the sticky sweetness, then the dawning of delight. While Jake washed the dishes and sang along with Yul Brenner, Esther waltzed Molly around the kitchen to “The King and I.”
At bedtime, the three of them squished together in the rocking chair and Esther nursed Molly to the mournful melodies of Carousel. She tried not to dwell on the image of Rosa all alone in a strange city with a new infant. When Molly was finally asleep, Jake put on Porgy and Bess and they slow-danced among the empty boxes. Esther rested her head on Jake’s shoulder and swayed to the simple ache of the music, happier than she had felt in months. She could have danced until breakfast.