“Dada work?” Molly asked.
“Yup, Monkey. Dada work.” Jake took his jacket from the hook, turned to Esther.
“I’ll be home late. Staff meeting. Are you going to finish that application? Today’s the deadline, if you want to start with the summer semester.”
Jake had been after her to return to college and finish her degree. When she got into bed with her novel the evening before, the course catalog for the nearby state university had been on her pillow, opened to the painting courses. She probably should’ve finished in Ann Arbor when she had the inspiration, because now the muse had deserted her, gone off into the ozone with Pop and Rosa.
“What about Molly?” Esther asked.
“She’s two. She’s ready for day care. She’ll love it.”
“College takes a lot of energy, especially with a baby.”
Jake set his backpack on the floor and put his arms around Esther. “Grief can take a long time, but Pop would want you to try to get on with your life.”
Esther didn’t know what Pop would want. “I’m trying. But every time I think about him, Rosa sticks her nose into my memories and takes them over.” Esther took a long drink of coffee, wondering if Rosa still disapproved of caffeine. “I’ll do the application today. I promise.”
“All done,” Molly said, sweeping the remaining goldfish crackers off the tray and onto the floor. “Play truck.”
In the living room, Molly filled the yellow metal truck with load after load of alphabet blocks, pushing them around the room and then dumping them into her dolly’s cradle. Esther poured a second cup of coffee and switched on the television news.
“Last night, an explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse in New York City,” the reporter announced. The footage jumped from a row of brownstones, front wall gone, exposing the inside to the camera like a child’s dollhouse, to smoky clouds, people milling in the street, fire trucks. Was it the filming or her own brain that made the images so incoherent, so hard to understand? There was talk of a Weatherman underground bomb factory, of dynamite and nails, unidentified body parts, all mixed up with shots of movie star neighbors, daughters and sons of famous lawyers and rich men, rubble in the street. A neighbor described two young women running from the blast, naked.
Could Rosa be making bombs? Could that naked woman be her sister, running from a project gone terribly, horribly wrong?
Esther felt Molly’s hand patting her cheek. “Mama cry?”
“Mama’s fine.” She stood up, turned off the television. “Let’s play. You want to make pictures?”
After settling Molly with a large piece of newsprint and four fat crayons, Esther located her address book on the kitchen shelf, between The Joy of Cooking and Adelle Davis. Would Allen still be living in the same apartment, Rosa’s apartment, or should she call him at work? Perhaps without Rosa’s fire he had grown tired of tilting at windmills, left Legal Aid, and joined a fancy corporate practice. That thought made Esther smile, but then she remembered the explosion and the smile died.
Allen’s hello sounded sleepy. She should have waited. She should have thought more about it before dialing, because what on earth could she say to him? They had not spoken since Rosa left.
“Hello? Who’s there?” Now he sounded annoyed, but his voice was the same.
“Hi, Allen. This is Esther. Esther Green.”
He didn’t answer right away. Maybe she should hang up. She felt nauseous, faint, crazy.
“Esther. Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s just . . . have you heard from Rosa? Is she okay?”
“Why?”
“That explosion. The Weathermen? In Greenwich Village?”
“You’re worried that Rosa might be involved?” His voice sounded strange, as if he were making fun of her, but also as if he might have had the same worry himself. “No, I very much doubt that Rosa was anywhere near the townhouse.”
“Do you hear from her? Is she okay?”
Allen’s sigh was audible. “I can’t tell you anything concrete. But yes, the last message I got, she was doing all right.”
“What about her . . . about your . . . did she have a baby, Allen?” Once she got started, Esther didn’t want the conversation to end. She wished she were in Allen’s crowded, messy living room with stacks of yellow pads and wax-crusted wine bottles. She wanted to see his face, observe every nuance of expression behind his scruffy beard, capture every possible detail about Rosa.
“We have a daughter. Emma. Born in February. I’m sorry but that’s all I can tell you.”
Esther heard the click but didn’t move the receiver from her ear. “Emma,” she said to herself. She turned to Molly. “You have a cousin and her name is Emma. I have a niece and her name is Emma.”
“Bye bye?” Molly asked.
Esther hung up the phone, closed the address book, and returned it to the shelf. She brought the college application packet to the table and read what she had already written. In the space for expected field of study, she scratched out “Painting.”
Rosa’s face appeared in her mind. A face unharmed, not burned from dynamite, skewered by nails, nor crushed by brick walls, eyes still luminous and scornful.
“No art?” Rosa’s image mocked. “But you’ve always wanted to be a great artist. You can’t give it up now.”
“Back off,” Esther told the apparition. “I want to do something else, something that’s all mine. Besides, it’s none of your business anymore, is it?”
She printed “Art Education” on the blank line. She couldn’t think of a profession less connected to her sister, less sullied by her. She couldn’t imagine a profession Rosa was less likely to respect.