Red Hook Road

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Not really. My mom likes rock and roll okay. Like Bon Jovi and stuff.”

  “Not classical music?”

  “Not really.” Samantha peeled the bread off the top of her sandwich and poked at the egg salad as though she were looking for something she had lost. “Sometimes I kind of, like, pretend …” Her voice trailed away.

  “What?” Iris said. “Pretend what?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. Tell me.”

  Shyly, Samantha said, “There are these Cambodian stringed instruments that you play with a bow, like a violin. I read about them on the Web. Sometimes I, like, imagine that my birth parents were musicians. That they played the tro khmer. If they did, that would explain why I, you know, can play.”

  “That doesn’t seem silly to me at all,” Iris said.

  “And it would explain why they gave me up, too.” Quickening to her topic now, no longer embarrassed or shy, Samantha said, “I was almost three when I was adopted, but I’d been living in the orphanage my whole life. The year I was born there was a drought, and a lot of babies were given up because their families couldn’t feed them. During a famine the first thing people would give up would be entertainment, don’t you think? If they were musicians my parents wouldn’t have been able to earn a living. They’d have been the first people to starve. So they had to give me up, to try to save me.”

  Iris said, “It sounds like you’ve really thought this through.”

  Samantha flushed and returned her gaze to her disassembled sandwich.

  Iris hurried to add, “It’s a very plausible theory. And of course, musical gifts as profound as yours often run in families.”

  “Like Becca and Mr. Kimmelbrod.”

  Iris took Samantha’s hand and squeezed it gratefully. “Exactly,” Iris said. “And Mr. Kimmelbrod wasn’t the first in his family by any stretch. His mother’s family was very musical. She was a pianist, but back then a Jewish woman would never have been allowed to have a concert career. I often wonder what my grandmother’s life might have been like had she been born in another place and time.”

  “Like me. Who knows what my life would have been like?”

  “True. You might never have seen a violin.”

  “Or I might have been playing music all my life instead of starting so late. I might have played the tro khmer with my mother.”

  Or, Iris thought, you might have been adopted by a couple of Jewish psychiatrists and been enrolled in Suzuki when you were three years old.

  She was touched by the naked yearning for connection, for a coherent explanation of the wonder of herself, that she heard in Samantha’s voice. Iris thought of Becca’s life, how replete with music it had been. Although neither Iris nor Daniel was particularly musical—she had inherited none of her father’s gifts—their house had been filled with music. There was always something playing on the stereo or the radio. Not just classical music, but rock and roll, jazz, blues. Daniel loved Brazilian jazz and bossa nova, and he worshipped Miles Davis. Her daughters’ infancies had been bathed in music.

  It had been no surprise when Becca proved so receptive to, and fascinated by, music. When she was three, Mr. Kimmelbrod presented her with her first violin, eager to nurture her talent. What might Samantha’s life have been like if she had had the same kind of early encouragement? If she had heard Mozart in her cradle, if she had sung before she could speak, if she had studied from toddlerhood with the finest teachers? Although Samantha’s musical education was proceeding now with a breakneck speed, and working with a violinist of Mr. Kimmelbrod’s stature was an opportunity even the most gifted and affluent prodigies rarely received, Iris could not help but wonder how the girl’s life and career might have flourished if she had been adopted by someone else. Someone, for example, like Iris.

  It had taken so little to effect dramatic change in Samantha. She was like a desert flower that needed only a smattering of rain to bloom. Just last summer she had known nothing about music, and yet she had learned to sight-read in a few lessons, almost without being taught. Mr. Kimmelbrod had simply explained to her the rules, which she had then instinctively grasped.

  Samantha was clearly desperate for the kind of musical life Iris and Mr. Kimmelbrod could give her. The girl had borrowed dozens of recordings from Mr. Kimmelbrod: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Mendelssohn, Grieg, even Webern and Schoenberg. Early this summer she had even borrowed a CD of the Kronos Quartet playing George Crumb’s surrealistic Black Angels, returning the next day and begging Mr. Kimmelbrod to get her a copy of the score from the Usherman Center library.

  So obvious was her talent that Mr. Kimmelbrod had arranged for her to study over the winter with the only violinist in the area he trusted not to ruin her with bad habits: Arturo Weinstein, the concert master of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. Iris had paid for the lessons, never letting her father know that she had given Jane the impression they were free.

  Iris had even made Samantha a gift of the three-quarter-sized Gliga that had been Becca’s when she was young, so that she would have a respectable instrument to play.

  Samantha had made marvelous progress in Bangor over the winter, but not as much as she could have. Weinstein abandoned the state for nearly all of February and March in favor of the warm sun of Florida. Moreover, Jane had resisted Iris’s offer to pay for Samantha’s travel expenses to and from Bangor, and so Iris was sure that there were times when the lack of transportation had kept Samantha from her lessons. There had been long periods when Samantha had received no instruction at all. This summer Iris was trying without success to find a more reliable instructor for the coming winter.

  “It must be very difficult,” Iris said now. “Not to know where your talents come from, or even the details of where you come from. Do you know other Cambodian people?”

  “I know a bunch of girls adopted from China, but they’re mostly younger than me. In the church we used to go to there was another Cambodian adoptee. And two boys from Korea. The pastor was really into international adoption. They were all his kids.”

  “You don’t go to that church anymore?”

  “No. It was in Belfast, and when my mom … got sick, we moved up here to be closer to her family.”

  “Do you miss the church? The other children?”

  “Yeah. I guess. The Cambodian girl was older than me, and the boys, you know. They’re boys. But there was a really good choir at the church. I liked that. And it was nice not to feel quite so different all the time.”

  “Up here you must feel pretty different.”

  With uncharacteristic vehemence Samantha said, “Everybody talks about how great it is to be different. Like diversity is so important? But they don’t know what it’s like to be different all the time. Nobody talks about that.” She hesitated for a moment, and then in a rush, as though she had been waiting for years to find someone to confide in, said, “When I was little sometimes I used to forget; like, I’d be walking along feeling totally normal, and then I’d look in the mirror, and I’d be like, oh yeah, that’s what I look like.”

  “You know, Sam,” Iris said, laying her hand gently on Samantha’s cheek, “I know it’s not the same, but I sometimes feel something a little like that about Becca. Every once in a rare while, I almost forget that she’s gone. If I get very wrapped up in something, like my work, suddenly I’m not Becca’s mom, grieving for her. I feel like … well … like the old me. Like I always felt, before. And then, usually after just a minute or two, something snaps me back. I’ll see something, not even as obvious as her picture, just maybe a cup of coffee on my desk, or a pen with the cap off, and I’ll remember how when she was a little girl she liked to drink coffee that was mostly milk, with four teaspoons of sugar, or how she used to leave the tops off the markers so that they were always drying out. And just like you, I’ll think, Oh, right. That’s who I am. I’m the mom whose daughter died.”

  Samantha listened intently, nodded in vigorous agreement.

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sp; “You know,” Iris said. “I have Becca’s audition tape for the New England Conservatory of Music. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes!” Samantha said. “Oh yes.”

  Although Iris had always meant to listen to the tape, she had never until this moment had the courage. She could not explain why she was suddenly willing to play it for Samantha, who after all had barely known Becca, nor why she hadn’t shared it with the people who were most entitled to hear it: Daniel, Ruthie, and Mr. Kimmelbrod.

  Iris led Samantha into the living room, knelt down in front of the stereo, and put the cassette into the player. There was a hiss of static, a click, and then Becca’s throaty voice. Iris sat down. She closed her eyes and clutched her knees to her chest.

  “Rebecca Felice Copaken.” That was all; no more than three seconds of sound. It was the first time Iris had heard her daughter’s voice since saying good-bye to her on the steps of the church.

  The first piece was Paganini’s Caprice no. 7 in A Minor. Iris remembered that Becca had originally planned to begin with Mendelssohn’s Concerto in A Minor, but Mr. Kimmelbrod had told her that he had heard the first movement of the concerto, over and over, on hundreds of audition tapes submitted with Juilliard and Usherman Center applications. He had urged Caprice no. 24 on her, but she had demurred, claiming that it was too challenging. She chose no. 7, and played it nearly perfectly.

  Becca had subsequently played a number of the caprices for her senior recital, and it was this performance that Iris remembered as she listened. Iris recognized her daughter’s light touch swiftly skipping from note to note. She remembered how Becca used to toss her head as she played. When the tone turned somber, she would close her eyes and furrow her brow. Becca would frown, and jerk her chin, she would lift her eyebrows and sway when she drew out a note with a long bow stroke. She would rock back and forth, almost dancing. Such a dramatic contrast to her grandfather’s mask of performance. When he played, Mr. Kimmelbrod was a model of physical restraint. Most violinists played with their whole bodies. They swooped and dived, the music not only in their fingers and hands but in their arms, their torsos, their legs and feet, even in the mops of hair that flapped and flew around their skulls. Mr. Kimmelbrod was like the trunk of an oak tree, a reviewer had once said, with deep roots anchoring him to the ground.

  At Becca’s senior recital, Iris had been conscious the whole time that Mr. Kimmelbrod, sitting next to her, kept wincing ever so slightly. Later, he offered a brisk criticism of what he considered Becca’s flaws in fluidity and tone.

  Iris pushed this memory of her father’s displeasure away and let the music wash over her, imagining Becca’s long sun-tanned fingers flitting across the strings, her ponytail dancing as her body bobbed and dipped. She glanced at Samantha, who was immobile, straining to hear every note.

  Becca played the final notes, ending on a dramatic flourish, and both Iris and Samantha, who had been taut with attention, sagged back, drained.

  When they heard the introductory notes of the next piece of music on the tape, the Chaconne, the final movement of Bach’s Violin Partita no. 2 in D Minor, Samantha whispered, “Oh I love this Bach! I wish I could play it.”

  “You will,” Iris said. “Someday you will.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod had disapproved, too, of the lush, soulful quality Becca worked so hard to bring to the Chaconne. “Too much Heifetz,” he had said. “Not enough Bach.” He made this pronouncement after she completed the audition tape, when she was playing it for them before sending it off. Iris remembered the expression on Becca’s face at his words. She went pale, but then she laughed. Iris had tried to reassure her that the piece was fine, better than fine. She had played it beautifully. But Becca had not needed her mother’s reassurance. “It’s the best I can do,” she said. “If they like it, they’ll let me in. If not, I’ll go to NYU and study anthropology. Or else I’m thinking clown college.” Becca had a gift for shining it on, for getting over things, for letting go. Unlike her mother. Right now, for instance, recalling Mr. Kimmelbrod’s dry, epigrammatic dismissal of the audition tape, Iris found herself suddenly furious. Becca had played the Chaconne for him, in homage to him. She played it because he had performed it in his first American solo recital, at Town Hall on June 11, 1936.

  “That was so beautiful,” Samantha said. “Thank you.”

  Smiling at her, Iris realized that Samantha’s eyes were full of tears. Awash in emotion, grateful beyond measure to this young girl for appreciating the beauty of what they had just heard, Iris said, “Perhaps you’d like to come visit us in New York this year? You could have some lessons with Mr. Kimmelbrod. We could go to a few concerts. We might even be able to find a concert of Cambodian music.”

  Samantha said, “I’ve never been to New York. And I’ve never seen Cambodian music played anywhere except on the Internet.”

  “We’ll definitely go to a concert, then. And you know what? There are lots of Cambodian adoptees in New York. I’m sure I could track down an organization or a support group. Maybe you could attend a meeting. At the very least we could go eat at a Cambodian restaurant.”

  “I’ve never eaten Cambodian food,” Samantha said. “That would be wicked awesome.”

  It would be wicked awesome, Iris thought. She imagined taking the girl to concerts, sitting in a recital hall and hearing her perform for the first time. She imagined introducing her to Lincoln Center. She imagined sitting in her living room reading a novel while across the room a young girl practiced her scales.

  Iris was confident that Samantha had the potential to be a world-class violinist. But most musicians of her caliber began serious study when they were barely out of diapers. By her age they’d already spent five, six, or even seven years learning the repertoire and perfecting their technique. As talented as she was, Samantha had tremendous catching up to do. She could not risk even one more winter of missed lessons and family distractions. She needed to study music and theory, and she needed to be protected from the pressures of her mother’s illness and the peripatetic life it foisted upon her, back and forth between Jane and her mother, never knowing for sure where she would spend the next week or month.

  “I think it would be a very good idea for you to spend some time with us in New York,” Iris said. “I’ll talk to your aunt Jane.”

  The excitement drained from Samantha’s expression. “She’ll never let me go.”

  “I’m sure that once she realizes what an opportunity this is for you, she’ll agree.” Of course Iris was sure of no such thing. Jane was certain to resist the idea of Samantha spending time in New York. And she would be particularly averse to the plan that now began to form in Iris’s mind: wouldn’t it be remarkable if Samantha could spend a whole winter in New York? The girl would have access to a musical education unavailable to her in Red Hook. Think how she would blossom! Iris was sure that her father would be willing, even eager, to fully assume the responsibility for Samantha’s musical education. He might even be able to arrange for her to attend the Juilliard precollege program. Samantha was young and untutored, yes, but she was marvelously talented. Even if she were not ready for Juilliard now, certainly she would be with a year or so of concentrated education. In New York Samantha could be surrounded by music every waking hour of her day. She should have the kind of life Iris had given to her own daughter. A musician’s life.

  Iris was sufficiently self-aware to understand even at that moment that the idea of helping Samantha was not purely altruistic, that it might also go a long way in assuaging the sense of emptiness she had felt since Becca’s death. It was so odd. Becca had not lived at home, except in the summers, for nearly a decade, and yet Iris felt so bereft of her day-to-day presence. She would love to have a girl in her life again, one whose musical education she could shepherd properly this time. Iris had learned from her experience with Becca what kind of encouragement and support to give. As gifted as Becca was, Iris thought it likely that Samantha might have something more, an extra dose of ambiti
on or talent. Enough to overcome the challenge of having started so late. So, no, her motives were not entirely, or even primarily, charitable. Iris recognized her selfishness. She was thinking, if she was really honest, about Ruthie, too, who seemed as eager to throw away her future as her sister had been. But did it matter? Wasn’t the girl what mattered, and how best she could be nurtured? Even Jane, despite the many roadblocks she was sure to throw up against the plan, would surely, in the end, have no choice but to acknowledge what was best for Samantha. But best to start small. With the idea of a visit.

  “I bet that together we could convince your aunt to let you come,” Iris said.

  “I don’t know,” Samantha said doubtfully.

  “What don’t you know?” Mr. Kimmelbrod stood in the doorway, leaning on his walker. He wore a freshly ironed white shirt, dark slacks with a knife-sharp crease, and polished black brogues. The only indication that he had been sleeping for the past two hours was the long red furrow across his cheek where his face had rested against the pillow.

  “Nothing, Dad,” Iris said. “We were just passing the time.”

  “So you were not practicing the Bach?” he teased Samantha.

  “She was, Dad,” Iris said. “For nearly two hours! I made lunch. Can I interest you in an egg salad sandwich?”

  “No thank you.” To Samantha, Mr. Kimmelbrod said, “Come. Let’s hear what progress you have made.”

  “Can I stay and listen?” Iris asked. Always before now she had made sure to excuse herself when it was time for Samantha’s lesson, even going so far as to leave the house to give them the privacy she knew her father expected.

  “It’s up to Samantha,” he said.

  Samantha smiled shyly. “I don’t mind,” she said.

  For the next hour Iris sat curled on the living room couch and listened while Samantha and Mr. Kimmelbrod worked on the first movement of the Bach, the adagio. Iris had heard the sonata dozens of times. At Becca’s childhood recitals there was often at least one young violinist doing his or her best to bring something other than a turgid solemnity to the first movement, or to get through the second as fast as possible. On certain rare occasions, a particularly talented child would do more than simply make it through. Sometimes a child would bring a depth of feeling to the piece, an adult’s intensity.