The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [117]
No, Esther insisted. Harry, go back to your study. Please, open a book.
Open a book?
She took pity on me. Do as I tell you, Harry. Open one of your books. Ten minutes. Give us ten minutes here.
Who tried to rape you? I asked. We must call the police.
Harry! Esther said. She rose and with a will of iron pushed me with both hands out of the kitchen. She pushed me into the living room and then down the hallway to the stairs. She would have pushed me up the stairs to my study, but I had agreed in my mind to go up there anyway.
Nevertheless, at the landing I turned around and waited. I could not help but be curious. What rape? And who the perpetrator? The door to the kitchen closed behind Esther, and I heard from in there female murmurings. Chloé said something, Esther said something in return. Women have this way of excluding men from discussions of domestic importance. Around the house we are befuddled by their private plans and strategies. I trudged upstairs.
THEY WENT TO THE POLICE, leaving me behind in the house. But Chloé, having not been penetrated or otherwise assaulted by her father-in-law, declined to press charges for criminal sexual assault or to testify against him, although she was encouraged to do so. They calmed her fears of being arrested, Metzger having all the bad unsavory cards in this particular deck. Late that night, she returned to our house and called her parents, who had made their way home by tow truck and taxi. Esther would not let her drive herself home. She gave Chloé a spare nightgown — they were the same height, Esther and Chloé — and put her to bed in Aaron’s room. Much of the night Esther sat there on the edge of the mattress, until Chloé slept.
The next morning Esther rose, I won’t say “joyfully,” but with serious intent. She called in to her job and to her boss, informing everybody that she would not appear. In the kitchen she prepared orange juice, scrambled eggs, toast, and bagels. Chloé came in wearing Aaron’s too-large green bathrobe, and I must say it was a shock, seeing her dressed that way, barefoot in our kitchen as she had been at her wedding reception, dressed in our son’s robe, then a priestess of Eros, now brought low.
She managed a smile for the two of us, one of the more heartbreaking gestures of politeness I have ever witnessed.
Good morning, she said, and she started to cry. Esther rose up faster than I did and took the girl in her arms. I can’t eat scrambled eggs, Chloé said, huddled inside Esther’s arms. Because I’m pregnant, they make me sick or something.
You don’t have to eat anything.
Hard-boiled eggs’re okay, she said. Still she continued to weep.
Please sit down, Chloé, I requested of her.
I’ll try.
She sat successfully at the table and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. What are you going to do now? I asked.
I can’t go back there, she said. That little shithead — pardon my French — is gonna be followin’ me around. I can’t . . . She shook her head. I can’t think, for starters.
Well, you’ll live here, then, Esther said. Until you think of something to do. For the interim, you’re right here. You can move into one of the bedrooms upstairs, or we can make up an apartment for you in the basement. You could have privacy down there. You could come and go as you please.
Esther looked at me, an expression on her face not of inquiry — Was this plan acceptable to me? — but of unarguable confirmation — We are going to do this. Why would I argue? I just nodded.
Here, Esther said, and she pulled a green bracelet off her arm and put it on Chloé’s.
What is it? the girl asked.
Malachite, Esther told her. It gives courage.
Later that day, I drove with Chloé over to her apartment and helped her collect some of her household gods: her clothes, her radio and CDs, her little TV, her late husband’s track shoes and baton, pathetic odds and ends. In two carloads we brought them over. The chairs and table we left behind for a later trip.
Eventually she broke her lease. She is now our tenant.
She decided that she wanted to live in the basement. I don’t want