Being Esther by Miriam Karmel

Author:Miriam Karmel [Karmel, Miriam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781571318749
Publisher: Milkweed Editions

One day, over lunch at Wing Yee’s, Lorraine says to Esther, “Where are we going to put all the bodies?”

“All I know is, cremation isn’t right,” says Esther, who intends to be buried in the ground, wearing her blue silk dress with the dyed-to-match shoes. She is leaving nothing to chance. From time to time, she reminds Ceely and Sophie (there’s no point involving Barry) about the folder labeled, My Funeral. “It’s all there, in black and white. In a drawer in the breakfront, just below the china teacups.”

Esther’s mourners are to be ushered in to the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon and file out to “Stranger in Paradise,” the Tony Bennett version. The postburial menu is to include cheese blintzes, minibagels with lox, and bite-sized rugelach from the German bakery on Montrose. Lorraine has agreed to prepare a chopped-liver swan and promised to use pimento olives for the eyes, as Toots Lustig had done. Should she predecease Esther, Sophie will step in, but without all the fanfare. Sophie is also in charge of the flowers. Bougainvillea. Esther has threatened to haunt her granddaughter should a single carnation be on display.

After the waitress sets down a pot of tea, Esther reminds Lorraine about the chopped-liver swan. “And don’t forget the parsley tail feathers, or my mother-in-law will have a fit.”

“Your mother-in-law is dead,” Lorraine says, giving Esther a baleful look. “And besides, we were talking about cremation.”

Impatiently, Esther says, “You know I already have my plot.”

What Lorraine doesn’t know is that Esther and Marty fought over the plots. At some point during their row, Esther recklessly suggested cremation, which was practically unheard of back then. They’d been heading to the cemetery to check out the plots, which some loudmouth from the temple brotherhood had been pushing. “Maybe we should consider cremation,” Esther said. The idea popped into her mind unbidden. The mere concept was exotic, foreign, remote as India. Cremation had nothing to do with their life.

“Cremation?” Marty slapped the steering wheel; his face turned red. He accused Esther of wanting to use their burial money for a new refrigerator.

She denied it, but agreed that he had a point. “All that money, Marty. For what?”

“So I’m right!” he crowed.

When she stood her ground, he argued that he didn’t want to be burned.

“You won’t know the difference,” she said, not certain she was correct. All she knew of cremation came from pictures in Life. Giant funeral pyres. Bodies strewn with flower petals, before the flames consumed them.

“So now you’re an authority on the afterlife?” Marty was shouting.

“Then you buy a plot, and I’ll be cremated,” she snapped. Briefly, she felt cheered by the thought. The possibility of spending eternity away from Marty, no more quarrels followed by difficult silences, buoyed her spirits. But then she turned and caught a glimpse of his profile, his round, ruddy cheeks, the irregular bump at the bridge of his nose, which she sometimes caressed. She observed the way his hands gripped the steering wheel, at ten o’clock and two, the same way he’d taught her to drive.

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