Helen Cox - Sunrise in New York

‘I didn’t know you were a teacher. But now you say it I can imagine it. You have that stony, unimpressed glare perfected,’ I said with a small smile.

‘Thank you for noticing,’ Esther said, with a flicker of her left eyebrow. ‘It takes precious time to perfect something like that.’ She took in a deep breath and straightened out her mouth, which just a second ago had been hitching up into a smirk. ‘Where’d you spend Christmas?’

My chest clenched at that question. ‘In a church, mostly.’

‘Alone?’

I nodded.

Esther lifted her head up off the doorframe before sighing, walking over and sitting next to me on the bed.

‘I didn’t tell you before, but when you went back to your parents’ last Christmas, I spent it alone in Atlantic City,’ Esther said, looking at me, her eyes watery and gleaming; two topaz stones catching the light.

‘But you said you had friends you were spending it with in New York?’

‘I lied. I wanted to be alone and I didn’t want anyone to know why.’ Esther shook her head. ‘Unlike you, I can lie, and I did. For a long time, I lied about so much.’

‘Why?’ The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

Esther sighed again. ‘It’s… painful to talk about. But Mum spent Christmas 1989 alone too, back in England, and I still feel awful about it. Who knows how many Christmases she’s got left. And there’s no harder time to be alone. This time of year is supposed to be all about togetherness, and when you spend it watching all the other families go into their cosy homes, standing on the outside of the circle, hearing them on the inside laughing and arguing and taking each other for granted, knowing they’re part of something you’re not, well, that’s hell.’ Esther was caught in a daydream, or something worse: the grip of a tragic memory.

‘Makes you feel like you got no family,’ I agreed.

‘I’m sorry I hesitated about taking you in, that was wrong,’ she said, looking me right in the eye as she spoke.

‘It’s no less than I deserved.’ Somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to shrug.

‘Don’t say that. Nobody deserves to be turned away when they’re desperate like that,’ Esther said. She moved a stray strand of blue hair out of my eyes. The temperature in the room seemed to be rising by the second. There were no mirrors in the sitting room but I could feel the redness in my face and a lone tear stole down my cheek.

‘Bonnie, hey, come on,’ said Esther, putting a hand on each of my shoulders. It wasn’t exactly an invitation for an embrace but I threw my arms around Esther anyway and, without hesitation, she pulled my head into her chest and stroked my hair. Did she know, by some magical instinct, that that’s what Mama used to do when I was a kid? Until one day, without a word as to why, she just stopped. Maybe because she thought I’d grown too old. Or maybe because it had finally sunk in that her first-born daughter wasn’t going to be the perfect little princess she’d hoped for. She was going to drink beer and stay up late and play music she didn’t approve of.

I missed those hugs so much.

For all that’d happened between me and Esther in Atlantic City, she was the closest thing I had to family right then. A woman I hadn’t seen for almost a year. A woman I’d tried to rip off in a moment of hopelessness. They were always so difficult to undo, the things you did in moments like that.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did to you. I never should’ve done it,’ I said, my voice muffled by the fabric of the checked shirt she was wearing.

‘Shh. It’s alright. It’s alright,’ Esther soothed.

‘It’s not alright. It never is. You’re good to me when I don’t deserve it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know who I am or what to do. I’m not supposed to be here. I should have things figured out. I should have a real job and a family and a house and a cat or something dumb like that but I haven’t got any of those things. I just… I don’t fit. I don’t belong. I don’t know why.’ I took in a sharp breath, trying to fill my lungs again after my pathetic blathering, which had all the makings of a country song if only I could make it all rhyme.

‘Bonnie, you’ve got to listen to me. Listen.’ Esther wrapped her arms tighter around me, holding me steady against the force of my tears and the exhaustion and all I was running from. ‘Nobody has the right to tell you who you should be or what you should do.’ I closed my eyes and tried to zone in on her voice. It had a steadiness and certainty to it I didn’t remember noticing before. ‘You’ve got to figure that out for yourself. I built a whole other life on “shoulds”. A woman should get married. A woman should keep a tidy, proper house. A woman should please her husband.’

I pulled my head away from her chest and dried my eyes on the sleeve of my sweater dress.

‘You were married?’ Even though Jimmy had already let this slip last night in the diner, I thought it best to look surprised. If Esther found out Jimmy had been talking about her private life behind her back it’d only upset her and that’s the last thing I wanted.

‘To a bad guy,’ Esther said. ‘On the surface, he seemed to be everything a good husband should be. But when nobody was looking he did unspeakable things. To me and to himself.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I rubbed her right arm at the elbow.

‘It’s alright, I’m alright– or, at least, I’m on my way to alright. But what I’m saying is, I’ve lived a life of “shoulds”. In fact, in a weird way, that’s something Michael – my late husband – and I had in common. And it’s not a guaranteed route to happiness. In fact, often it’s quite the opposite.’

I offered a limp smile. ‘Are you saying Jack isn’t the kinda fella who gets too hung up on what he should be doing?’

Esther shook her head and after a minute smiled too. She always had a war with herself over raising a grin. I never did understand that about her.

‘Jack’s impulsive and unpredictable and has a complicated history, if we’re going to be polite about it, but he’s not alone on that score, and he makes me happy. Not everything about our life as a couple is certain, but it doesn’t matter because we’re together and to us that’s all that really matters,’ she explained.

‘So all I gotta do is find true love? That it?’ I smirked at the idea. True love was some far-off, mythical figment right then. She might as well have told me to go off and hunt for a unicorn.

‘No.’ Esther chuckled. ‘You have to decide what you want, that’s it. A relationship with someone else might play a part in that someday but your relationship with yourself is more important. In fact, it’s by far the most important thing.’

‘Difficult to have a relationship with someone you barely know,’ I said, scraping both hands through my hair.

‘Maybe this is your chance to find out who you are.’ Esther raised both eyebrows. ‘Maybe this is a chance to become who you want to be. Rather than some sexed-up persona on the casino stage in Atlantic City.’

Esther had heard me talk so many times, after too many beers, of how I felt I was hiding behind the words and truths of other people. Put me on a stage, give me a song to sing, and I could be somebody. Not myself, but somebody. But take me out of my costume, let me come up with my own words, and I didn’t know who I was or what to say. Off stage, I wasn’t anybody at all. Other than a person nobody really wanted around.