Free Being Esther by Miriam Karmel

whistles.
    â€œYou’d think I just announced a trip to the moon,” Esther snaps. She straightens the edges of the newspaper, which is spread out on the table before her. “I want to see the desert. Once more.” Her voice trails off. “Before I die.”
    Ceely sighs impatiently. “You’re not dying.”
    â€œThen why are you pushing me into that place?”
    Impatiently, Ceely says, “It’s not a dying place. And I’m not pushing you.” She pauses. “It will be easier,” she says, her voice softening. “That’s all.”
    â€œEasier than what? Easier for whom?”
    â€œWhy do you do this?” Ceely whines, her voice rising.
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œTwist everything.” Now she is shouting.
    â€œNobody lives forever,” Esther declares, slapping her hand on the newspaper. Then she begins reading aloud from the obituaries, like the rabbi intoning the names of the dead before reciting the mourner’s Kaddish. When she is finished, she says, “I’m off to the desert. Four nights at the Doubletree Inn. Plus a day trip to Mexico. A bus picks you up at the hotel.” With each assertion,the lie blooms. Had she known how easy it was, she might have started lying sooner.
    â€œI’m going with you,” Ceely blurts.
    â€œMaybe I don’t want you to go,” Esther says, quickly regretting the careless remark.
    â€œHow can you not want me to go?” Ceely is whining again, the way she did when Esther imposed a ten o’clock curfew.
    â€œI don’t need a babysitter,” Esther says, sitting taller in her chair. “And besides.” She pauses. “You can be unpleasant.” She presses the newspaper with her hand, which is so contorted she appears to be clawing the pages. Frightened by her body’s insubordination, by her inability to direct it as she wishes, she dismisses the offending hand, sending it straight to her lap. Then she hears herself saying, “Do you really want to go?” But before Ceely can reply, Esther says, “Good. Then it’s settled.”
    Esther makes all the arrangements. She wants to visit the Desert Museum and a place where they reenact the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. She wants to ride the tram in Sabino Canyon and behold the giant saguaro. She has read about the best place for margaritas. She hopes green corn tamales will be in season. And she signs up for a day trip to Mexico.
    The bus for the trip to Nogales picks them up at their hotel after breakfast. Four people have boarded by the time Ceely and Esther get on. An older couple, sporting baseball caps and fanny packs, are seated toward the front. Water bottles in mesh holders dangle from their necks. They remind Esther of the smiling couple on the Cedar Shores brochure. Seated behind them is a pair of older women who could easily be Esther and Lorraine. At the next two hotels, six more people get on, all of them considerably older than Ceely.
    The driver pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot about twohundred yards from the border, and before the passengers disembark, he hands out maps of the Nogales business district. Then he holds up a map and with his finger, traces a route from the border crossing to Calle de Obregon, the street where all the pharmacies are clustered. “Hey!” The man with the water bottle interrupts. “I thought you’re supposed to be our guide.”
    Esther elbows Ceely in the ribs and through clenched teeth whispers, “Don’t make trouble.” For Esther, survival has always depended on blending in, as if the next pogrom were about to sweep through the village and her only hope was to lay low. No coughing, no sneezing; not a peep until the marauders take off. This instinct is as ingrained in Esther as if she’d been born not in Chicago but in the Polish shtetl from which her parents had fled a lifetime ago. So while the rest of the group murmurs