Red Hook Road

by Ayelet Waldman

  Ruthie smiled, but then her eyes grew sad. “I miss Granny.”

  Alice Marie Kimmelbrod, née Godwin, great-granddaughter of Elias and Alice Hewins of Red Hook, Maine, had died of breast cancer when her youngest granddaughter was eleven years old, in the forty-fifth year of her marriage to Emil Kimmelbrod.

  Over the dozen years since she died, Mr. Kimmelbrod’s memories of his wife had calcified into a series of images and vignettes. Alice at her dressing table, a row of bobby pins in her lips, rolling her hair—honey blond when they met, then faded to a soft downy white—into a chignon. Alice bent over the old slate sink in the kitchen of the house on Peter’s Point Road, the gentle roll of her waist straining against her dress. Alice stretched out on the dock, a filterless Pall Mall dangling from her lips, a fishing rod propped beside her, cracking her long toes. Alice with her eyes closed, listening to him play.

  He remembered the way Alice would hold court from a small tufted armchair tucked beneath an east-facing window in the corner of the Usherman Center recital room on warm August Wednesday afternoons, when the students performed. Often she would bring Becca and Ruthie with her. When Becca listened to music she sat perfectly still, her eyes narrowed, her expression rapt. The look of surprised horror on the girl’s face when a musician struck a false note always put Mr. Kimmelbrod in secret danger of cracking a smile. Ruthie had sat quietly, too, a good girl, but as she leaned against her grandmother’s knee it had often seemed that she was entranced less by the music and more by her grandmother’s palm smoothing her hair.

  Another memory. Of Alice lying in bed, fishbelly white skin pulled taut over sharpened cheekbones, teeth clamped together to keep from moaning in pain.

  Ruthie dunked another onion ring in her milkshake and chewed it slowly. Mr. Kimmelbrod licked his cone, allowing the ice cream to melt on his tongue. She stretched her legs out along the sun-warmed bench and sighed.

  They had almost finished eating when a maroon minivan nosed sharply into the parking space next to theirs, scraping the bottom edge of its front bumper against the low cement barrier. Through the open window they heard a woman’s gruff voice say, “You want ice cream or not?”

  The rear door slid open on its roller, and a small, dark-haired figure stepped out.

  “Hey!” Ruthie called. “Hi, Samantha!”

  The girl frowned, as if trying to place Ruthie. She waved tentatively. Then she cocked her head to one side and listened. A flurry of piano notes came out of the open windows of the Copakens’ car.

  Samantha stood there with her eyes closed, her head rocking from side to side.

  The driver’s side door opened and Jane stepped out, slamming it hard behind her. As she came around the side of the car toward the picnic table she said, “You’re being spoken to, miss.” To Ruthie, Jane said, “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Ruthie said. “How are you, Jane?”

  “Fine. We’re fine. And you?”

  “We’re all right.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod watched the small, dark-eyed girl. She had long arms, and she stood with her hands held a little in front of her body, her fingertips faintly trembling. Her small, round chin darted in time with the music.

  “Do you like the music?” he said.

  She opened her eyes and smiled hesitantly, her face suddenly crowded with large white teeth.

  “Do you know this piece?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s Schubert. The Trout Quintet. You’ve heard it before?”

  Again she shook her head mutely.

  “Come,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said, ignoring Jane’s and Ruthie’s questioning looks. He patted the seat beside him. “Sit.” The girl hesitated and he cleared a small space of paper plates, napkins, straw wrappers. “Here.”

  She sat next to him on the bench and together they listened to the music. She bobbed her chin in perfect time. Mr. Kimmelbrod wondered at her sense of rhythm, a hunch quickening in his mind.

  “You hear the rhythm,” he informed her. He tapped his fingers on the table.

  She nodded.

  “Can you tap it out as I do?”

  She nodded again. Delicately, her long thin fingers nearly soundless on the rough wood of the table, she began tapping in unison with him.

  “Do you hear the violin?”

  She nodded and tapped out the rapid triplet accompaniment with her right hand, her left continuing with the melody. Mr. Kimmelbrod raised his eyebrow. He was not easily impressed, but the untrained girl’s ability to maintain two beats, essentially in opposition to each other, was at least worthy of note.

  “Do you play an instrument?” he asked.

  Longingly, the girl said, “No.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jane said. To Mr. Kimmelbrod, “She plays the piano.”

  “Only it’s not a real piano. It’s just an electronic keyboard,” Samantha said.

  Jane shrugged and said, “Real or not, it’s the piano you have.” She turned back to Mr. Kimmelbrod. “She has a knack. She hears something once, she can play it right back for you.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod nodded. To Samantha he said, “Do you take music lessons?”

  Jane said, “There’s no money for that kind of thing.”

  The music ended, but Samantha kept up her tapping. Mr. Kimmelbrod watched the girl for a moment, remembering a game he had played with Becca when she was very small. Matching his voice to the rhythm Samantha was still tapping out on the table, he sang, “Can you hear the trouts a-swimming?”

  She startled, stared at him for a moment, and then smiled. Returning his rhythm, she sang, “Yes, they swim and swim and swim.”

  He modulated to a minor key. “Are the trouts now still a-swimming?”

  Samantha frowned, but quickly picked up the modulation, this time humming her response.

  Mr. Kimmelbrod looked at Jane. “She has a very good ear. That’s rare, especially in a child with no musical education.”

  “She’s a smart little girl,” Jane said, in a voice that implied this was not necessarily a recommendation.

  “Oh, I think perhaps it’s more than that,” he said.

  “Are you a musician?” Samantha asked him, shyly.

  She was very slight, her legs long and bony, her hands large, he thought, for her age. A musician’s hands. “Yes. I play the violin. Do you like the violin?”

  The girl treated Mr. Kimmelbrod to another of her grand-piano smiles. “It’s my favorite instrument.”

  Jane said, “All right now, Samantha. If you want your ice cream, go on and get it.” She pulled a crumpled dollar bill out of her pocket and held it out to the girl.

  Reluctantly, Samantha took the dollar. As she turned to abandon Mr. Kimmelbrod and Schubert for the less rarefied pleasure of a chocolate-vanilla swirl, she said, “I love the violin.”

  “So do I,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said. He watched her as she took her dollar bill and went to stand on line. “She’s your niece?”

  “My niece’s girl. She’s just with me for a few weeks or so, while her mother takes a little rest.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, recalling now what Iris had told him about the girl’s mother’s frequent hospital stays. Manic depression, as he recalled. “Is the girl’s mother musical?”

  “Not particularly. I mean, she doesn’t play piano or anything.”

  “But Samantha is adopted,” he said.

  “From Cambodia.”

  “Perhaps she inherited this gift from her Cambodian parents.”

  “No way to tell,” Jane said. “They’re a mystery.”

  “She should have instruction,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said.

  Jane smiled thinly. “I’ll pass that on to my niece.”

  For the briefest of moments he considered insisting, but what good would it do? Were it of importance to the woman, or to anyone in the child’s family, someone would already have noticed the gift and taken steps to nurture it. In Mr. Kimmelbrod’s experience, the children whose musical sensitivities were transl
ated into accomplishment were those with aggressive parents, most often mothers, whose ambition propelled them through the exhaustion and tedium that the acquisition of technical skill demanded. The truly musical child possessed innate gifts, but just as important were early and frequent exposure to music and the value placed on musical accomplishment by the parents. Whatever gifts this girl had, ten years of neglect, no matter how benign, had most likely atrophied them, perhaps beyond redemption.

  “She’s very talented,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said.

  “She’s a smart girl,” Jane said again, turning away.

  Mr. Kimmelbrod began clearing the table, gathering their crumpled napkins and empty cups. Ruthie took the garbage from him. The trash can was directly in front of Jane’s car, and when she approached it she saw Matt sitting in the passenger seat. Had he been hiding from her?

  “Hey, Ruthie,” he said.

  Still clutching the trash in her hands, she said, “Hi.” She could not look at him without thinking of his arms around her waist, of the fireworks bursting in the sky.

  “Did you just come up from New York?”

  “A couple of days ago.”

  He nodded. “I thought I saw your mom’s car yesterday over by Hannaford’s.”

  “Probably, yeah. She went grocery shopping. You know, first big shop of the summer.” Ruthie looked down at the leaking milkshake cup in her hands and then dumped it in the trash. As she wiped her sticky hands on her jeans she said, “How’ve you been?” at the same moment that Matt said, “How was your year?”

  After a moment of awkward silence, Ruthie said, “Okay, I guess. Considering. Yours?”

  “Same.”

  After another clumsy silence, Ruthie said, “We were at the cemetery today.”

  Matt looked startled. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I liked the picture on John’s headstone. He looks really happy.”

  “Yeah, it’s a nice picture.”

  “Do you ever go out there?”

  “I’ve gone a couple of times,” Matt said. “With my mom. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “No.”

  “How come your parents didn’t put a headstone on Becca’s grave?”

  “Oh, we did. We did it today. I mean, I guess they must have put it in yesterday or something. But we unveiled it today.”

  “Unveiled it?”

  “We had to wait a year to put up the marker. It’s a Jewish law. Or tradition, whatever. You have a service when you unveil it for the first time.”

  “Like a memorial.”

  “It wasn’t much of one.” Her voice thickened in the back of her throat. “It wasn’t really any kind of memorial at all.”

  “Oh,” Matt said. And then after a moment, “I’m sorry.” Neither of them was quite sure what he was apologizing for—for the failure of the unveiling ceremony to adequately memorialize Becca’s death, for raising the subject of the headstone in the first place, or for making Ruthie cry.

  She shook the tears out of her eyes and, with a glance at her grandfather, said, “You know, we’re thinking, I was thinking, of having, like, a real memorial for Becca and John.” Mr. Kimmelbrod shook his head, but she continued, quickly, “Not a service, but, you know, a celebration. Remember how my parents have that party, every year on the Fourth? And, well, last year it was the rehearsal dinner. Which was kind of like the last time we all were happy together, you know? I mean, we were happy at the wedding, but that was different. The Fourth is a good anniversary. It’s the anniversary of a happy day. Do you think you’d be interested in coming? I mean, all of you?”

  Matt looked over at his mother. Jane crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Sure,” he said to Ruthie. “Sure we’d come.”

  “Really? That would be great. We could have fireworks, like last year.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod noticed that for some reason his granddaughter blushed when she mentioned the fireworks.

  “Do you have fireworks?” Matt said.

  “No. But we can get some.”

  “I could go to New Hampshire for you. I go that way all the time.”

  In fact he had not been to New Hampshire since the trip with John last summer, but she would have no way of knowing that.

  “Really?” Ruthie said. “That would be great.”

  “We’re busy on the Fourth,” Jane said.

  Ruthie’s face fell. “Oh.”

  “We are?” Matt said. “Doing what?”

  “We have plans,” Jane said, sharply.

  “What plans?”

  “Fourth of July plans.” She called out to Samantha, “Come on now, girl. We’ve got to get going.”

  Samantha stepped away from the cashier’s window, walking carefully so as not to topple her towering swirl.

  “Well, if you change your mind, or your plans get canceled …” Ruthie began.

  “Don’t you spill that,” Jane said to Samantha. Then she slammed the car door shut.

  “I just thought it might be nice,” Ruthie said to Matt. “To have a way to remember Becca and John that would be celebratory.”

  Jane leaned her head out of the car and said, “That’s not the way we do things. Parties for the dead.”

  “Oh,” Ruthie said.

  “Jesus Christ, Mum,” Matt muttered. “What the hell? Don’t mind her,” he said to Ruthie. “I’ll get the fireworks.”

  “Really?” Ruthie smiled. “That’ll be really great.”

  “Matt,” Jane said, turning on the engine.

  “Okay,” Ruthie said, lifting her hand in a reflexive wave. “And I’m so sorry, Jane. I mean, for your loss. For all our losses.”

  Jane pursed her lips. “Well, the Lord doesn’t give us more trouble and sorrow than we can bear.” Then she jammed the car into reverse and backed out of the parking space. Mr. Kimmelbrod could not make out what Matt said to her, but he could tell the boy was angry.

  Ruthie turned to her grandfather. “Why do people say that? Do you think God only gives you as much trouble and sorrow as you can bear?” Ruthie asked.

  “I do not believe in God,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said.

  “Well if not God, then life. Fate, whatever. Do you believe that it only gives you as much as you can bear?”

  He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was so American, he thought, this notion that there was a supernatural force carefully calculating each individual’s capacity for suffering.

  “You don’t think that’s true?” Ruthie said.

  “Are you bearing it?”

  Chewing her lip, Ruthie said, “I guess I am. I’m still alive. I mean, I’m miserable, and a lot of mornings I feel like I just can’t get up and face the idea that Becca died. But I do, don’t I? I do get up. I wrote my thesis, I graduated from college. I even got it together to apply for the Fulbright.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod had been worried for a time that Ruthie would not even graduate. She had been so very depressed. During the fall semester she had spent more of her time at home in New York than at university, much of it on the living room sofa in his apartment, curled under one of Alice’s afghans, holding an unread book in her hand and trying to hide her tears. And then Iris had stepped in, and escorted—perhaps the right word would have been dragged—Ruthie back to Cambridge. After that, when Ruthie called, she told him that she was spending all of her time in the library, reading and rereading her assigned texts, revising draft after draft of every seminar paper, creating elaborate study outlines for exams that she could have aced without even bothering to review her notes. She told Mr. Kimmelbrod that the hours she spent studying were the only ones in which she could think of something other than Becca. Ruthie had graduated magna cum laude. Her senior thesis on the construction of girlhood in the works of Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning had won the English Department’s Helen Choate Bell American literature prize. At the end of the year she was awarded a Fulbright to study English literature at Oxford, the very same fellowship her mother had won thirt
y years before. But he had a terrible sense that these accomplishments meant little to her. She seemed to him to be utterly lost.

  “And your mother?” Mr. Kimmelbrod said. “Is she ‘bearing’ the death of her child?”

  “I guess in the same way I am. She went to work. She taught all her classes. She’s different than before. She’s more withdrawn, I guess. Depressed. But she’s alive, right? She’s working. So I suppose you could say that she’s bearing it.”

  “So, then, by the logic of the irrepressible Jane, if God—or life—only gives you what you can bear, then had you or your parents simply been weaker people, then Becca would still be alive? If we all weren’t so strong, then the driver of the limousine would have driven more slowly?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruthie said. Her nose was growing red and her eyes were damp.

  As if one’s capacity for pain had anything to do with life’s apportionment of agonies, Mr. Kimmelbrod thought. Such idiocy. Such sanctimonious pabulum. What did Jane Tetherly know of what God gives or doesn’t give, she who could not even recognize the astonishing gift that fate, God, or genetic chance had given to a child growing up right under her nose?

  God only gave you as much as you could bear? He thought of his beloved younger sister, Felice. Felice did not die in Terezin, like their parents and brother, like her husband and her small daughter. With the assistance of the Red Cross, he had retraced his sister’s steps. In 1944 Felice was transported first to Auschwitz and then, by some fluke of the genocidal bureaucracy, back to Terezin. She was still alive when the Russians liberated the camp. After liberation she was evacuated to Zeilsheim, a displaced persons’ camp near Frankfurt. From Zeilsheim she did not write to her brother in the United States, despite the fact that any musician, any orchestra, would have known how to contact him. She could even have sent a letter care of Carnegie Hall and it would eventually have reached him. But she had never written. Felice, liberated from the camps, no longer forced to battle for every mouthful of food, for every step, every breath, had a moment to consider what it was that she had lost, and it was more, in the end, than she could bear. On May 15, 1946, she sliced open her wrists with a shard of glass and bled to death in a stall in the women’s latrine.