He only dares to watch her sleep as he kneels next to her. He only speaks to her in his mind. And because he cannot wake her, asking her to forgive him, silently he forgives her: for being well in body and in mind, for remembering without pain, for living and dreaming apart from him, in her own time.
“YOU would not believe what these people are bringing in,” James Boyd tells Ira in the garage late that afternoon. “It’s a lawn-mower epidemic.” He strides through the garage, swatting a whole line of the driver-mowers with his oily rag. “Come on, let’s close up.”
“Why’d they all break at once?” Ira asks.
James shrugs. “Summer people mowing over crab apples.” He kicks Andras’s lawn mower. “What are they trying to do? Make apple sauce? They all want them fixed immediately. They aren’t getting done today, though. Monday we’ll do Melish. First come, first served. Then King. He’ll be Tuesday the soonest.”
“He wanted it for tomorrow.”
“So sue me. Sunday we’re closed. Always have been, always will be. Hi, Stan,” he says, as Stan Knowlton walks in.
“Thought you might join me and Curtis for some refreshment,” says Stan.
“Love to,” says James. “Ira, let’s get a move on. Time to lock up.” He looks over at Ira, who is leaning against King’s tractor mower. The boy takes one of the blue wipes for windshields and cleans his glasses.
“You know, you’ve got to get out and do something, kid. When I was your age, fine weather like this … we waited all year for nights like this.”
“You got a girlfriend?” Stan asks him.
“No,” says Ira.
“You should work on that,” says Stan.
“That’s what I tell him,” says James.
“You got anybody worth going after?” Stan asks.
Ira says nothing, and they both laugh at him.
“What’s her name?” James teases.
“Oh, what’s in a name,” says Stan.
“Come on, who is she?” James asks Ira. “Who’s the lucky gal?” But he won’t tell.
CHANI and her sisters watch the lilac sky for the three stars that mean the end of Shabbes. They sit on the grass in back of the Birnbaum house, and Renée sits near them, but a little apart. She spreads her dress around her, feeling the air ruffling the blades of grass. Tomorrow is Sunday, but Stephanie won’t be there waiting with her bike. There won’t be anyone to swim with or to check up on the cows at Lacy Farm. She is filled with loneliness for Stephanie, for her funny slang and her conspiracies. Renée can’t make up any of that by herself. She can only sit on the grass all alone, the summer stretching out before her with no one waiting for her or telling her to hurry up. She does not know that there is someone waiting for her. From the Birnbaums’ backyard she cannot see Ira Rubin, pedaling the slight hill on Maple. He rides, faster and faster, until he whooshes past at breakneck speed, only to turn, pedal up the hill and down again, wind in his ears, sky rippling over him. Renée does not know it yet. Over and over, every time he speeds by, he is hurrying to see her.
The Landauer boys are running races in the garden, their white shirts flapping, their black jackets in a pile on the ground. As Cecil had hoped, the garden next to Michael King is filled with small boys in peyyes. There are loud games of flag football and crashing through hedges. More than once King has found stray soccer balls on his property. He has complained to Joe Landauer, and even demanded Cecil’s telephone number in England. King says he would move if Jackie were not so attached to the house. Of course, there are a lot of things you can do if you are willing to move and start over. If you don’t have roots in a place, as he and Jackie have in Kaaterskill.
They are all outside waiting for havdalah, the Landauers, Andras and Nina, Elizabeth, Isaac, Eva, Maja and their husbands, and Regina, Cecil’s sister. She has come back from Los Angeles to get some of her things before Cecil ships the furniture to England. They are all sitting there on the rose-patterned chaise longues, even Mrs. Sobel and her husband—the old Conservative rabbi, frail under a plaid carriage blanket.
“I guess that was the last time,” Regina is saying, “the wedding reception we had for Cecil and Beatrix. Two years ago. That was the last time I came up here.”
“No. Has it been that long?” Eva asks.
“And now this is my last look at the house,” Regina says. “I spent every summer of my life here until I got my Ph.D. Can you believe that?”
Nina shakes her head. “And it’s the most beautiful on the street.” She looks back at the sweep of the lawn all the way down to Bramble Creek. The rise of the white house before them on the hill, its porches and carved posts, the gambrel roof and bright windows.
“Is Cecil really going to sell it?” Eva asks.
“It’s his to sell,” Regina says, and her voice is sad.
“You must miss the seasons,” Maja says.
Regina shakes her head. “We have seasons in Los Angeles. No, I’m going to miss the house.”
“I think you might find a new one,” Elizabeth says cautiously, but Regina doesn’t answer.
“Elizabeth has taken over a store in the city,” Andras tell Regina.
“Oh, no. Not at all. I’ve been doing the books,” Elizabeth says. Working for Grimaldi is nothing like having her own store. She does not feel as she did then, when she carried that idea inside of her—exuberant, unstoppable, on the wind of her imagination. Still, she is pleased to hear Andras speak of it. Taking over a store! She is tickled by the exaggeration. “I just fell into it, working there,” she tells Andras. Then she says, “That’s not true. I thought of something you said to me.”
“Something I said?”
“I’m sure you don’t remember. At the naming of Cecil’s baby you said, ‘Elizabeth, this is the United States of America.’”
He looks at her, puzzled.
“‘And you can do whatever you please.’”
He smiles now, leaning back in his lawn chair.
“That’s what I thought of when I decided to … go in, and inquire.”
“You thought of that?”
“Just the way you put it stuck in my mind—” She stops.
“No, go on,” Andras says. “It’s just strange you took it so seriously. I was just—”
“I didn’t know whether I should bother going in,” Elizabeth tells him, “and then I remembered what you said. I thought that you were right.”
“But people dream about living in Los Angeles,” Nina is telling Regina.
“Well,” Regina says, “everyone has different dreams, and I dream about Kaaterskill, right here.”
“What do you dream?” Nina asks.
Regina thinks about the question. Then she says slowly, “I dream about being right here in this garden with my parents alive, and Cecil a little boy. My dolls, Cynthia and Nancy, in the doll carriage. And you, Eva and Maja. Your onegs and garden parties. My mother’s rugelach. My fir tree.” She looks up at the blue-green fir towering above them. “It was planted when I was born. It’s the same age as I am. The sunsets here, the blueberry picking, the Escarpment Trail. The rainstorms. We used to sit on the porch in the rainstorms. We always felt safe here. We thought the summers would last forever. I remember looking up at the falls, and everything rushing and white and beautiful. You looked up there and you felt that you could do anything. That absolutely nothing could ever stop you. Do you know what I mean?”
No one answers. The stars are drifting over the sky. They were all watching for them, but no one saw them come. Yes, Elizabeth thinks. I do know.
They get up and go inside the house to make havdalah. The Landauers get out the spice box and kiddush cup. Brocha holds the braided candle, and Isaac says the prayer marking the end of Shabbat. After he says the last words, Hamavdil ben kodesh lihol, Nina asks, “What do you think is the best translation for that?”
“Blessed be he who separates the holy from the profane,” Isaac says.
“The sacred from the secular,” puts in El
izabeth.
“The transcendent moment from the workaday world,” suggests old Rabbi Sobel in his quavering voice.
“Mm.” They pause around the smoking candle.
“Take some cake home with you.”
“What about the Orpheum? We could see what’s showing.”
“Renée has her lesson tomorrow. I don’t know.”
“Tomorrow you said we could go to the lake.”
“We’ll see, Sorah. We’ll see.”
And so they walk home under the canopy of trees.
Allegra Goodman’s first collection of stories, Total Immersion, was published in 1989, followed by her critically acclaimed collection The Family Markowitz. She was a recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Allure, Food, Vogue, Commentary, and Slate. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
KAATERSKILL FALLS
A Dial Press Trade Paperback Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Dial Press hardcover edition / 1998
Delta Trade Paperback edition / August 1999
Dial Press Trade Paperback edition / July 2005
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Allegra Goodman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: The Dial Press, New York, New York.
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