Read Online Being Esther by Miriam Karmel - Free Book Online Page A

Charms. She enjoys guessing whether the sugary pellet melting on her tongue is a star, a clover, or a moon. “But this is better for you,” Ceely would say, sounding like a TV commercial nobody believed.
    On Mother’s Day this year, Ceely gave Esther a portable phone with colossal buttons that Esther at first mistook for a toy. Ceely’s gifts are like that: lights activated by the clap of a hand; a call-for-help device Esther is supposed to wear around her neck; an ergonomic can opener; a large-print edition of Newsweek, which Esther barely has time to read, as it takes most of the week to get through the New Yorker. Esther has tried explaining that her glaucoma, which is under control, does not interfere with her reading. But Ceely knows best.
    Esther would prefer a silk scarf, perfume, even a box of chocolates, or that old cliché—flowers. She imagines telling Ceely that though she is old, she hasn’t lost her capacity for the sensual. But then Ceely would coo, as if Esther were a child who doesn’t understand that what she really wants is the whole-wheat fig bar and not the chocolate cupcake with buttercream frosting.
    Ceely pours the All-Bran into Esther’s favorite blue bowl, and as she slices banana on top she lectures her mother on the benefits of potassium.
    Esther, who doesn’t recall asking to be fed—she’s already eaten—says, “I’ll bear that in mind. And by the way, nice haircut.”
    â€œThanks,” Ceely says, sweeping her bangs back with a forearm.
    Ceely has thick auburn hair, cut short, at odd angles. Estheronce had hair like that, hair she could do something with. Then one day, she couldn’t. Now every time she looks in the mirror all she can see is a woman well past her prime, with hair that resembles a collapsed soufflé.
    As she sets the bowl in front of Esther, Ceely reports that her in-laws have just sold their house for over three hundred thousand dollars. “They paid eighteen for it in 1954.”
    â€œI remember when gum was a nickel,” Esther says.
    â€œYou remember everything,” Ceely snaps, then suddenly brightens as she seizes the opening her mother has unwittingly provided. “You remember everything,” she repeats, “except where you left your purse, your glasses, and . . .” She pauses, picks up an empty bag and, skillfully as an origami master, begins pressing creases into it. “And your keys,” she says, as she creates another fold.
    â€œOh boy,” Esther mutters. Then she considers the bowl Ceely set in front of her, never mind that she’d been in the middle of a game. “First I’m moving. Now it’s the keys.”
    â€œYes, the keys,” Ceely says. “We need to talk about that.”
    â€œWhat’s there to talk about?”
    â€œYou don’t want to end up on a guardrail?” Ceely’s voice rises. Her speech is halting, deliberate, like Esther’s when she speaks to Milo, who studies English for Newcomers at the community center. “Do you?”
    Esther wishes she had a hearing aid to turn off, but despite the other infirmities of aging that plague her—glaucoma, arthritis, and slightly elevated blood pressure—her ears are in good working order. “People die when they give up the keys,” she says. She picks up her spoon, eyes the cereal, and sets the spoon down. “But don’t worry. I’m not driving.”
    â€œYou could kill someone, Ma. Remember the man who stepped on the accelerator instead of the brakes and drove intoa pedestrian mall?” Furiously, she creases the bag. “Eight people dead.”
    â€œI’m not driving,” Esther lies. She looks down and considers the cereal, which even in her favorite bowl resembles kibble.
    â€œThen sell the car. Get rid of it.”
    Ceely holds out her hand, as if she expects Esther to fork over the keys this very minute. Ceely is as sure of