Red Hook Road

by Ayelet Waldman

  Readying her false hostess’s smile, Iris said, “Is everything okay in there?”

  “They seem all right,” Jane said.

  For a moment they stood awkwardly, then Iris said, “Dinner’s ready and waiting outside.”

  Jane nodded briskly and strode off down the hall.

  Before Iris could bring herself to follow, she heard someone, it could only be her father, playing the violin, a G major scale. On the wall opposite the living room door hung a large mirror with a gilt frame. Iris looked into the mirror and saw in it the reflection of an image at once shocking and familiar. Strange and yet somehow perfect. Her father sitting on a stool, his violin tucked beneath his chin, playing for a rapt little girl who could not take her eyes off him. A little girl who seemed to be feeling rather than hearing each and every note as it sailed off the string.

  After dinner, as they waited for it to be dark enough to set off the fireworks, a few of the young people began desultorily throwing a football back and forth. Ruthie and Becca’s friend Jasmine leaned up against the wall between the yard and the sea, watching them. Matt drew his arm back and Ruthie could see the sharp triangle of his shoulder blade beneath his shirt, like a bird’s wing. With a snap of his wrist he let the ball go, and then looked away, as if he didn’t care where it landed. He turned toward them and squinted into the light, the three neat lines between his eyebrows so deep and distinct that Ruthie could see them from where she was sitting.

  Jasmine jutted her chin in Matt’s direction. “I fucked him.”

  “You did not,” Ruthie said.

  “I did. In our boathouse. On a pile of seat cushions.”

  “You did not,” Ruthie said.

  “I did indeed.”

  “When?”

  “Last summer.”

  “Last summer? After … after everything?”

  “No! God no. Before. Remember that night a few days before when we all went out drinking at the Neptune?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lauren gave a bunch of us a ride home because she was the only one who wasn’t totally wasted, but she was afraid to drive up the hill to his house in the dark, so I said he could crash at our place. We ended up in the boathouse.”

  “But he’s, like, eight years younger than you! He was what, nineteen?”

  “He told me he was twenty-one. And they were serving him drinks.”

  “Oh please, the bartender at the Neptune will serve anyone. I had my first beer there when I was sixteen.”

  “Well, he said he was twenty-one.”

  “He’s going into his junior year. He’s maybe twenty. Did Becca know?”

  “God no,” Jasmine said. “She would have killed me. She treated him like a little brother, even though it was obvious to everyone that he had a crush on her.”

  That, Ruthie thought, was Becca to a T. In a way she’d been everybody’s big sister, the person who teased you about your clothes or the way your hair stood on end in the morning, and also the person who made sure you learned how to swim, who stuck up for you when you were being picked on, who warned you when you had something green between your teeth. There had always been other people who felt some version of Ruthie’s own adoration for Becca, and while that had on occasion made Ruthie jealous, she’d always tried to reassure herself that Becca’s generalized goodwill had a very particular focus when it came to her own sister.

  “Do you really think Matt had a crush on her?” Ruthie said.

  “Totally. Hey, Matt!” Jasmine called. “Come sit with us.”

  “Jasmine!” Ruthie said, swatting Jasmine on her bare, bony leg. “Don’t.”

  “Come on, Matt,” Jasmine called. Matt caught a pass and then pulled his arm back and spun the ball in a neat arc. Again Ruthie watched the lean muscles of his back and shoulders contract. The other player caught the pass, tucked the ball under his arm, and jogged away, waving Matt in the direction of the girls.

  Matt walked over, his head down, a few strands of dark hair falling over his eyes. “Hey,” he said.

  “Have a seat, stay awhile,” Jasmine said, patting a patch of grass next to her.

  He sat down, missing by a few feet the spot he’d been instructed to take. He sat with his elbows resting on his bent knees and began absently pulling blades of grass, every once in a while putting the white end of a particularly tender blade between his teeth. His face was shiny with sweat and he was giving off a shimmer of heat.

  “Having fun?” Jasmine said.

  “Sure.”

  “Talkative guy, aren’t you?” Jasmine said.

  Matt’s neck and ears grew pink.

  Ruthie said quickly, “Thanks for buying the fireworks. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem. It was good to get away for a day.”

  Jasmine, said, “Okay, children. I’m going leave you two and see if Iris needs any help clearing up.” She sprang lightly to her feet. Ruthie began to scramble up, too, but Jasmine stopped her. “I got it. You two stay here and talk.”

  She took off across the lawn at a jog. Watching her go Ruthie said, “She’s got a lot of energy for someone who hasn’t eaten since 1989.”

  When Matt smiled, his protruding cheekbones lifted, balling up under his eyes.

  “I can’t believe I said that,” she said. “I’m so mean.”

  “You aren’t mean.”

  “I probably should go help my mom,” Ruthie said.

  “No, don’t,” Matt said. “I mean, I think Jasmine and your mom have probably got it under control. And my mom will help. She can’t stand to look at a mess.”

  Ruthie didn’t want to be talking to Matt about cleaning or about Jasmine. She wanted to talk to him about real things, about pain and sorrow, emptiness, guilt. Of all the people here today, he was the only one with any hope of understanding what she had been going through, how it felt to lose your older sibling, to be suddenly bereft of the presence, of the soul, that was your fixed star, the index of all your ideas and experiences.

  “My mom told me that you left school,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I can understand that. I thought about doing it, too.”

  “You did?”

  “Definitely. I mean, in the end instead of leaving I did sort of the opposite. I worked all the time. If I could have slept in the library I would have.”

  “That’s because you go to Harvard,” he said, gently mocking her.

  Even after all these years Ruthie had never managed to master the Harvard student’s pose of studied nonchalance. She felt vaguely embarrassed, as if there were something ostentatious about attending the college, as if her intelligence were something she had to apologize for. “It’s just as hard to get into Amherst,” she said.

  “Not quite.”

  They were silent for a moment. Then Matt said, “I can see why you’d spend your time in the library. You were trying to get away from everybody.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Me, too. It was, like, no one at Amherst knew John, so they just expected me to be the same person as I was before, you know? And I wasn’t. I’m not.”

  “Exactly. That’s exactly how I felt.”

  “Maybe I should have thought of hiding in the library,” he said ruefully. “I’d probably be better off.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m working at the boatyard.”

  “I didn’t know you were into boats.”

  “I wasn’t. But I guess I am now. I’m going to try to finish John’s old Alden.” He looked almost defiant, as if daring her to disapprove of his plan.

  “So are you working at the yard to kind of, like, learn how to do it? Or do you already know?”

  “John taught me some. But I’m learning down at the yard. You know. Slowly.”

  “That’s great,” Ruthie said, doubtfully. “I’m sure John would have wanted the boat to get built.” What she was not sure of was whether John would have wanted his younger brother to build it. He’d been so proud
of Matt’s being the first Tetherly to go to college, of how different he was from the rest of the family. John used to say, in a tone at once proud and wondering, that Matt loved books the way he, John, loved boats. Still, she found something touching in the idea of Matt building the boat that had been John’s dream. She felt a sudden wish that she could do something like that for her sister, finish some job Becca had left undone.

  While they waited for the sky to grow dark enough for the fireworks, Matt described the boat to her. It had a well-steeved-up bowsprit, a clipper bow with a carved billethead and trailboards, and the cabin was made of exotic South American mahogany. He sounded, Ruthie thought, like he knew what he was talking about, although she had not the slightest idea what half the terms he used meant.

  Matt looked nothing like his brother—he was dark where John was fair, slender where John was broad, his eyes aquamarine shot through with flecks of green where John’s had been a paler, clearer sky blue—but now when he moved his hands as he talked, describing arcs in the air, there was some deep kinship visible. She was lulled by the sound of his voice, low but emphatic, and by his simple, masculine grace. She felt a sense of gentle melancholy, not an unpleasant sensation, just different. Softer, more diffuse than the gut-wrenching sadness she had felt so many times over the past year.

  Although Matt had always deferred to his jovial older brother, it had always been clear, at least to Ruthie, that he was the smarter of the two. Once, a few years ago, on one of the few occasions she could remember hanging out with Matt, the two of them got into an argument about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which she had had to read for a Freshman English class. Ruthie remembered thinking it was funny that this kid had such strong opinions about a book he was probably too young to read. He was two years younger than she was, and back then that had seemed like a lot.

  Ruthie wondered if Matt had indeed had a crush on Becca. Perhaps, but it seemed to Ruthie more that he had idolized her like a younger brother would. After all, Becca had been John’s girlfriend since Matt was nine years old. She was almost as much a fact of Matt’s life as she had been of Ruthie’s.

  Daniel looked up at the sky, trying to assess whether it was dark enough to light the fireworks. The guests were sprinkled around the yard, sitting on the grass like he was, or in the chairs Ruthie had collected for them. The first mosquitoes had descended and the sharp chemical tang of repellent filled the air. Iris distributed citronella candles in fat glass jars.

  So far, Daniel thought, as little as he wanted to be here, as lonely as he felt surrounded by all these people, he had adequately executed his duty for this celebration. No one had sensed his dislocation, his tamped down need to escape, the unforgivable itch in his hands as they ached to ball themselves into fists and strike out at something, anything. He had made no public spectacle of himself.

  This celebration was the first some people had seen of one another this summer, and although it had been uncomfortable at first, soon enough the guests seemed to forget that they were there to do anything other than celebrate the independence of the United States from Great Britain and eat lobster and pie. To them it was just another Fourth of July picnic at the Copakens’. Now, though, as it grew dark, conversation ebbed. The twenty or so people who had remained to see the fireworks quietly sipped their drinks and scraped the last traces of Nilla wafer banana pudding from their dessert plates with the tines of their forks.

  “It’s like waiting for Havdalah,” Mary Lou Curran said. She was sitting on a kitchen chair balanced somewhat precariously in the grass.

  “Hmm?” Daniel said, looking up at her.

  “You know, dear. Waiting for the stars.”

  “The stars?”

  “When you can see three stars in the sky, then Shabbat is over.”

  “Mary Lou Curran,” Daniel said, laughing. “You never cease to amaze me. How in the world do you know about Shabbat and Havdalah?”

  “My second husband was Jewish, didn’t you know? We weren’t married long—we met at a bicentennial picnic and he was dead before 1980. But that was long enough for me to learn all about Shabbat and the Havdalah service, my personal favorite, with the lovely braided candle and the spice box. For a while there I collected those little boxes. I even know how to bake a challah. Or at least I used to.”

  “I’ll bet you still can,” Daniel said. “So today would have been your anniversary, in a way.”

  “I suppose it would have been,” she said. “Though I think now the day’s come to mean something else for all of us.”

  “I suppose,” he said. “But tomorrow would be … more accurate.”

  “Perhaps,” Mary Lou said. “But Jewish holidays start the night before.” She raised a gnarled finger to the sky. “One—I think we can count Venus, don’t you? Two. And there, just barely visible. Three.”

  Daniel’s view of the stars was suddenly obscured by the dark planet of his wife.

  “Should we start?” Iris said.

  “Where’s Ruthie?” he said.

  “Down by the water, I think. Do you have the fireworks?”

  “Matt put them out at the end of the dock.”

  “Okay, then.” Iris raised her voice. “Everyone! Can I have everyone’s attention?”

  All remaining conversation stopped and the guests looked expectantly at Iris.

  “If you’ll all come down to the beach, we’ll say a few words and then set off the fireworks.”

  The guests silently rose and followed her down to the water. It was a ghostly, mute procession. No one knew what to say, so they said nothing at all. When they reached the beach they huddled together, waiting.

  “Ruthie,” Iris called. “Ruthie? Do you want to start?”

  Daniel peered through the dark at the crowd, looking for his daughter. She was standing on the beach. We waved but she shook her head.

  “Ruthie?” Iris called again.

  Daniel put his hand on his wife’s arm and, leaning down to her ear, whispered. “You do it.”

  Iris seemed about to object, but then she sighed. She lifted her glass in the air and said, “Do you all still have your drinks?” Those who did followed her lead and held their wineglasses, tumblers, and bottles of beer in the air.

  “To Becca and John,” Iris said.

  At that moment, before her toast could be echoed by the other guests, there was a sharp cry. Everyone turned in the direction of the sound and, nearly in unison, gasped as they watched Mr. Kimmelbrod tumble to the ground. His cane had skidded across a slippery boulder and he had lost his footing on the rocky beach.

  “Dad!” Iris shouted and ran to his side, pushing people out of her way.

  Ruthie was there before her, and fell to her knees, pulling Mr. Kimmelbrod’s head into her lap.

  “Don’t move him!” someone shouted.

  The guests pressed closer, straining to see. Across the minds of those who had in the first place disapproved of the idea of a celebration to commemorate the dead couple flitted the thought that this wasn’t unexpected. Not that the old man would fall, certainly, but that something bad would happen. Others simply shuddered at the terrible symmetry of this second accident. Had he broken his hip? Hurt his head?

  “Please,” Iris said, “someone call an ambulance.”

  “No,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said. “I don’t need an ambulance. I’m fine.”

  He was trying to sit, frantically jabbing his cane at the ground to try to push himself up.

  “Don’t,” Iris said. “Just wait until the ambulance gets here.”

  Ignoring her mother, Ruthie slipped her arm beneath Mr. Kimmelbrod’s shoulders and pulled him up to sitting.

  “Please,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said. “I am fine. Just a clumsy old man.”

  “Do you want to try to stand up, Grandpa?” Ruthie said.

  Iris said, “Dad, don’t. Something could be broken. Your hip, your leg.”

  “Nothing is broken,” he said.

  Ruthie squatted down next to him and w
as about to hoist him up when Daniel stepped forward. “Let me,” he said, and lifted Mr. Kimmelbrod up to his feet as though he weighed no more than a child.

  With sighs and sounds of encouragement, people made room for Mr. Kimmelbrod, supported by Daniel on one side and Ruthie on the other, to walk up to the opening in the low wall that separated the lawn from the rocky beach. After the three of them had passed through, the crowd of guests followed, until everyone was standing on the lawn.

  “Up to the house?” Daniel asked.

  “No. Here, I think,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said.

  Matt appeared holding a white wooden folding chair in his hand. He unfolded it and set it on the grass, pushing on first one leg, then the others, to make sure it was steady.

  With a wince he tried to suppress, Mr. Kimmelbrod lowered himself into the chair.

  Iris said, “Are you sure you’re okay, Dad? Do you need an ice pack?”

  “Only a drink,” he said.

  A small hand appeared, holding a tumbler. “It’s ginger ale,” Samantha said. “I only took two sips.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod accepted the glass, patting the girl on the head.

  “Thank you. Ginger ale was exactly what I had in mind.” He turned to Iris and said, “Please, continue. Light the fireworks.”

  “I’ll sit with you,” Ruthie said.

  “No, you go down to the water where you can see.” He glanced at Samantha, who was hovering anxiously. “This young lady will keep me company, won’t she?”

  Samantha leaped forward and positioned herself next to his chair like a sentry.

  Mr. Kimmelbrod raised his glass in the direction of the guests. “To Becca and John,” he said.

  People hesitated, looking at one another.

  “To Becca and John,” he repeated.

  “To Becca and John,” they replied.

  After the last of the fireworks had been lit, after the last of the guests had collected their things and left, Iris sat alone at the end of the dock, her bare feet in the water. She moved her feet in slow circles, trailing twin spirals of green phosphorescence. When Becca was a toddler Iris used to take her out in a little old dory at night. She would strap Becca into a life jacket, throw a few more on the bottom of the boat for padding, and prop the little girl, not much more than a baby, really, on top. Then she would row out to the middle of the harbor, ship the oars, and they would drift. In the too-big life jacket Becca looked like a tortoise flipped on its back, her chubby legs and arms waving uselessly. Periodically she would try to lean over the side of the boat, straining to reach the water. Iris would grab the back strap of the life jacket and lower Becca far enough so she could plunge a fat little hand into the water, waggle it around, and squeal at the sight of its sparkly green wake. She had rejected Iris’s explanation of how plankton emitted energy in the form of light when disturbed, and instead insisted that phosphorescence was another word for fairy dust.