Hive Mind

The Lunch

Esther is late, and none of us knows why. It’s the last Thursday of the month. The standing date for our luncheon. Caesar salad and breadsticks. Sparkling water with lime. Diane, the wild one in our bunch, prefers a cocktail. Today’s lunch is extra important because we need to select our songs for the Senior Center’s holiday showcase.

We call our acapella group Late to the Party. Ironic, given the present circumstances, but it made us laugh when we came up with it, decades ago. How clever, we’d thought, for a group of women who’d delayed procreation. For some, the choice had been career-related. For others, a matter of procrastination. But we’d all known what it was like for family and friends to ask “When?” Or the even ruder “What’re you waiting for?” And then the smug, “Well, it’s about time.”

We’d started as a group of ten. But ten requires a long table, leaning forward with elbows in the butter dish to hear what’s being said. So, when Sandy moved to Florida, and Julie to Baton Rouge, and Eddy passed away (so young, so sad) and Lana went to work at her husband’s firm, we decided to keep the group as it was. Three altos, two sopranos, and one who’s never been able to keep to one or the other. But today, it’s only five of us, staring at an empty chair. We envision Esther filling the space in her wide-brimmed hat, floral scarf, and nearly-visible cloud of Chanel. Yet our vision is a hologram. Where could she be?

We chomp breadsticks. We shred paper napkins. We send hopeful glances to the door.

We’d planned to discuss our worries about Medicare. And the mental health of our kids who call us in the shaky voices they’d once used after a nightmare. We assure them, “You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. Haven’t we been around the block a few times?” (Some of us more than others.) We don’t say that nothing is for certain. Well, almost nothing.

Because, in all these years, Esther has never missed one of our luncheons. In fact, she’s always first to arrive since she pads the time it takes to park her Caddy. Her first husband, George (may he rest in peace), loved that car. “His second wife,” Esther used to joke. And although she’s since remarried—to Stanley Kogelman of Kogelman’s Sporting Goods—she’s held onto it in the way one keeps mementos of loved ones. A photo in a wallet. A locket of hair. Or, in this case, something decidedly bigger. The lime green car could be mistaken for a boat. Or a sea monster that’s consumed the boat. We’ll often spot it hogging two spaces while we circle the block on a quest for our own regular-sized spot.

Over the years, we’ve had sanctioned absences: an illness, an out-of-town trip. But even when Martha was recovering from her hip replacement, well, we just ordered platters and moved the whole party over there.

We check our cell phones, the ones our kids insisted we get. “No, no,” we’d objected, and now we can’t put them down. We try sending a text. “Did it go through?” “Can’t tell.”

Diane leaves another message, verbalizing what’s in our heads.

“Where are you? Are you okay? Please call.”

We chomp more breadsticks. Shred more napkins. After the waiter comes by for a fourth time, Diane stands up, scattering napkin shreds like a flock of starlings.

She puts a ten on the table. “I’m going.”

We don’t have to ask where. We add a few singles out of guilt for consuming so many breadsticks and follow her out the door.