Hive Mind - Page 3

The News

Lois enters the security code to unlock the front door. (“Babs” for Esther’s favorite singer, of course.)

The foyer is spotless. Thanks to the success of Kogelman’s, Esther can afford a weekly cleaning service. We tell ourselves we’re happy for her, while thanking our stars that our eyesight has faltered to the point in which we no longer see dust bunnies under our beds or cobwebs behind the washing machine.

As we shuffle past the living room, we nearly miss her, but it isn’t just due to our eyesight. With her beige pantsuit and self-tanning face powder, she practically blends in with the furnishings. She holds a matching tissue in a shaking hand. It’s the movement that catches our attention.

“Esther, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She looks up as if in a trance. And then she’s free of it. Tears fall. She puts the tissue to use. A fresh box is retrieved from the bathroom—this one in Lilac Rose to match the tile.

“It’s Jeffrey,” she says after she’s accepted the glass of water from Martha and packed Lilac Rose tissues into her fist like a magician’s trick in reverse.

We grip each other’s arms. Losing another member of our group would be terrible, but the loss of a child is beyond compare. We’ve all been lucky. Hoping we’ve earned the right through good behavior to exit according to our position on the chronological timeline. Parents before progeny. And the progeny should go in order too, oldest to youngest. That’s just the way it should be. Even worse, Esther only has the one. A socially-awkward scientist whose teenage experiments once destroyed half their basement. Perhaps he’d been electrocuted in his lab. Or tried one of those street drugs meant to boost confidence.

“Is he…?” Diane again voices our thoughts.

Esther extracts a tissue. Dabs her eyes. “Married? Yes.”

We look at each other. Married? Why this is great news. Or maybe just so-so news, depending on the bride. (Or groom, as was true with Martha’s middle son—to a pediatrician, which she mentions at every opportunity.) And even if the new spouse is like Anita’s daughter-in-law who worships reality TV stars, well, this still shouldn’t fall into the category of a tragic, tissue wielding, Don’t-Even-Call-Your-Friends drama.

Lois asks, “To who?”

Martha, who’d been an English teacher corrects her. “To whom.”

Esther swipes her eyes, removing circles of powder, which gives the impression of a partially-dressed clown. (Not that we’d say anything.)

“An illegal.”

“An illegal what?” Diane again.

“Immigrant.” Esther’s eyes well. “He thought she was going to get deported so he—.” She looks at her hands, as if she’s still holding the phone. “—married her.”

She tells us that Jeffrey and his new wife are on their way over, then sinks back into her trance. We wait with her, surrounded by the sounds of her natural habitat: the chirping canaries, the ticking grandfather clock, the whoosh of air conditioning (Esther is always hot, the rest of us can practically see our breath), punctuated by the noises that bodies make when they get to be our age: the creak of joints, the gurgling digestive system as it strives to break down the doughy balls of bread.

Our minds are also at work, spitting out ticker tape that identifies each of us by our familial line’s country of origin: Brazil, Ireland, Poland, Russia and one of the L countries that was always traded back and forth. All of us, the children of immigrants, including Esther. True, a sudden marriage could produce a shock, but that was nothing new. Anita’s had eloped in Vegas! And what about all the women we’d known in our younger years whose marriages took place with equal speed so as to precede the appearance of a mid-torso bump? Why has this upset Esther so much? We have our suspicions, and those suspicions have to do with the influence of one Stanley Kogelman. We don’t know him well. Esther always answers, “Golf, work, golf, work,” when we ask after him. In our few brief encounters, he’d called us “Girlies,” which made us bristle. 

But there are still so many other important questions we’d like to ask—the ones we’ve asked at all matrimonial announcements. What does she do? How did they meet? Are they registered? We assume we’ll get answers soon. Sure enough, we hear the front door open. Esther’s lips part.

“That will be Jeffrey,” she says. “And her.”