Iris sucked her breath in with a gasp and pulled her hand loose. “No.” She had come prepared for many things, but not for this woman’s insight. “I’m asking too much.” She reached blindly for her bag. “We should probably give you some time …”
“Samantha, hon,” Connie said. “Go on over and look at the TV for a little while. I want to talk to Iris.”
Samantha glanced from her mother to Iris and back again. Then she shrugged and walked over to the television, perched on the edge of a plastic chair, and shot periodic glances back at the women.
“Jane said no, didn’t she?” Connie said.
Iris simply nodded.
“Wouldn’t think she’d agree.”
Iris opened her mouth, ready to present to Connie the argument that she had prepared—that it was only Connie who had a right to decide what was best for Samantha—but Connie raised a hand to silence her. “I have failed that girl,” she said.
“No, you haven’t failed her,” Iris said, unconvincingly.
“Of course I have,” Connie said. “I have failed her mightily. I took her in, I made her mine, and then I started to do her damage almost right away.”
“You haven’t damaged her. She’s not damaged.”
“But she will be if I keep her. She’s got a gift, and she deserves to be surrounded by people who understand how good she is. I owe it to her to give her to you.”
For the first time Iris felt the incredible weight of the burden she had been pushing to take on, the ramifications of the responsibility she had so blithely determined to assume. “You aren’t giving her to me,” Iris said. “She’ll still be yours.”
“No,” Connie said firmly. “She doesn’t belong to me. If she’s going to be who she should be, then she can’t belong to me. You’ve got to take her.”
Now it was Iris’s turn to accept or reject the offer. She looked over at Samantha, who was rocking slowly to music that only she could hear. “I promise she’ll visit you,” Iris said.
“When she can,” Connie said. “She’ll come when she can. And don’t worry, I’ll deal with Jane.”
XI
Daniel ran the four and a half miles to the lobster pound dragging an old red Radio Flyer behind him. The wheels, which had not seen the ministrations of a can of WD-40 for at least fifteen years, squeaked ferociously with every step. The grinding of metal axle against ball bearings served as a kind of screeching, metallic metronome of his progress along the strip of sun-baked country road. The pavement along the side of the road had buckled and rutted from the winter’s snows, but there were just enough cars whizzing by to prevent Daniel from running down the smoother middle. At one point, he dragged the wagon over a bad break in the asphalt and it tipped over. As he was righting it he noticed a pink scrap of paper stuck in the gummy dirt in the corner of the wagon. Daniel remembered how when his girls were little he would load them into the wagon and wheel them the couple of hundred yards to Witham’s Country Store. As a reward for keeping him company during his grocery shopping he’d allow them each to choose a candy bar. Ruthie loved chocolate, had since she was a baby. Becca liked things she could chew. Gum, caramels, and her favorite, Starburst candies. He scratched the pink Starburst wrapper loose with his fingernail, slipped it into the pocket of his pants, and resumed his trek.
The road between East Red Hook and the cove on Peasbury Neck where Scotty Teasdale kept his lobster pound had once been lined by tall elm trees that had cast a gracious canopy of shade. But every one had been felled by Dutch elm disease, and Daniel found little respite from the strong early-afternoon sun. The band of his ball cap was soaked through, as though it had been dunked in a bucket of water, and his drenched T-shirt clung to his back. He smelled rank, like the inside of an old running shoe. As each arm started to ache he transferred the handle to the other, and by the time he arrived at the pound he felt like he’d been tortured, his arms hauled behind his back and winched up on a high hook.
The cut over his eye throbbed. He had opened it up again earlier today, when he agreed to go a round with Jason, the dumb-ass gym manager. As useless as the guy was in the ring, he had managed to land a jab that Daniel should have been able to easily dodge. The cut had started to bleed again through its rough crosshatch of stitches, but Daniel had not bothered even to slap a Band-Aid on it. It was still oozing blood when he walked into the house, and Iris’s tight-lipped frown when she saw it was one of the reasons he had set out on this expedition. He had stood before her almost defiantly, as if daring her to protest, or even to acknowledge noticing that he had reinjured himself. It had been a struggle for her—that was obvious—but in the end she had simply turned away and resumed cutting up cabbage for the coleslaw. Some perverse impulse had made him set out from the house dragging the red wagon instead of riding in his car.
Scotty Teasdale, a wizened creature in a captain’s cap, with a mouthful of oversized gray dentures like a row of tombstones stretching his lips into a wide grimace, was skeptical about Daniel’s means of transportation.
“You’ve got thirty bugs here. That’s a lot of weight to be hauling in a kiddy car,” he said as he pulled the bright red lobsters out of the vat of water he had on permanent boil and wrapped them in newspaper.
“It’s downhill,” Daniel said.
With a hoot of laughter and a wet smack, Scotty sucked the top row of his dentures loose of his gums and clacked them back into place. It wasn’t until Daniel started down the road back to East Red Hook that he realized what had amused the old man. As hard as it had been to run uphill, down was worse. The wagon kept picking up speed behind him and bashing into the backs of his legs. By the halfway mark his ankles and calves were a mass of bruises and he was cursing whatever foolhardy impulse had inspired his ridiculous errand. Why hadn’t he considered the toll on his back and shoulders of dragging fifty pounds, or how a child’s wagon would be such a considerable part of the burden it was supposed to be bearing?
About a mile from home he became aware of an overwhelming desire not to be dragging this load any farther. He stopped. The handle of the wagon clanged against the blacktop and he stood for a moment, feeling the ache in the bones of his hand. He listened to the shrill whine of the cicadas and looked out across the rolling meadows by the side of the road. The sun was shining, and the golden hay glowed. A winding path had been mowed through the hay, skirting a tumbledown barn and ending at a small dock. A white rowboat bobbed in the water. He looked down at the Radio Flyer with its load of soggy brown paper grocery bags containing $237 worth of lobsters. He turned his back on the wagon and began walking back the way he had come, toward the neck, away from home, his unencumbered gait now weightless and nimble. He felt like he covered ten feet with every step.
He made it only a dozen yards or so into his escape attempt when a dark-green pickup truck pulled up next to him.
“Daddy?” Ruthie said from the open passenger-side window.
He kept walking, the truck rolling slowly alongside him.
“Daddy, where are you going?”
“Quebec,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nowhere. I’m just … walking.”
Because Ruthie’s head was in the way it took a moment for Daniel to realize who was driving the truck. As the driver braked, her head fell back against the headrest, and he had an unimpeded view of Matt Tetherly.
“Hello, Mr. Copaken.” Matt squinted at him beneath the bill of a Red Sox cap.
“Hello, Matt,” Daniel said. He looked back at Ruthie. She blushed. So, he thought—with a lack of surprise that was itself, perhaps, surprising—she’s fucking Matt Tetherly.
Daniel’s hair and clothes were so drenched in sweat that it looked like he had just that moment walked out of the sea. His soaked white T-shirt had become translucent, and where it clung to his chest you could see whorls of dark hair, and even the outline of his nipples. His face was red, both from exertion and from sunburn, and a row of angry black sutures crawled across th
e suppurating gash above his eye. He looked like the kind of person who might shove a crumpled coffee cup in your face and demand a dollar.
“Isn’t that our wagon?” Ruthie said, pointing up the road.
Daniel made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Yep.”
“It looks like you’ve got bags of lobsters in there.”
“Thirty bugs.”
Matt said, “Uh, Mr. Copaken, uh, do you—should we go get it?”
“Okay.” He turned back toward home again, and began trudging up the road to the wagon. Matt pulled ahead and parked on the shoulder of the road. He jumped lightly out of the cab of the truck and, careful to hold them from the bottom so they wouldn’t tear, moved the heavy paper bags from the wagon into the truck bed. Then he lifted up the wagon and laid it upside down next to the bags, so it wouldn’t roll.
“Get in, Daddy,” Ruthie said. “It’s okay.”
She moved to the narrow rear bench and Daniel climbed in. On the way home, neither Ruthie nor Matt asked why he had abandoned a wagon full of lobsters by the side of the road, nor what had possessed him to bring the wagon in the first place. Nobody said anything. They turned onto the East Red Hook village road, and then into the gravel driveway, pulling off onto the front lawn to leave room for other cars. Matt cut the engine.
Daniel said, “Does Iris know?”
Iris was sitting at the kitchen table folding napkins. Her hands stilled when Daniel walked through the door and then through the mudroom to the kitchen.
“Where do you want these?” he said, as he dumped the soggy bags full of lobsters on the other end of the table.
“Just cover them with a towel,” Iris said.
Iris was shocked at his disheveled appearance, but before she could even decide whether to comment on it the screen door banged again. Ruthie walked into the kitchen, Matt at her side.
“Do you need some help getting ready?” Ruthie said.
With a single glance Iris took it all in. After what she had witnessed last summer, Iris was not particularly surprised to see them together, although Ruthie’s failure ever to mention Matt during the course of their arguments had led her to assume that things between them had begun and ended on that single Fourth of July night. “Sure,” she said, finally. “Why don’t you put the salads outside.”
Ruthie went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and began loading Matt’s arms with bowls.
“Matt, I haven’t heard from your mother,” Iris said. “So I guess she’s not coming.”
Matt looked vaguely embarrassed. “I, uh, no, I don’t think so, Mrs. Copaken. I mean, I haven’t seen her today, but she wasn’t planning on it.”
“I figured as much,” Iris said, feeling relieved. She had been dreading another confrontation with Jane, whom she knew must be furious with her for having gone directly to Connie with her New York plan for Samantha.
“Daniel,” Iris said. “People are going to be here any minute. Are you going to take a shower?”
“Yes, I am. But before that, if you don’t mind, I believe I’m going to have a beer.”
Iris shrugged and, picking up a basket of rolls, went outside. Ruthie handed her father a Wicked Ale from the fridge and he opened it and took a long slug. The creak of the wagon’s wheels still grated in his ears. He closed his eyes and rolled the cool bottle along his forehead. When he opened them, he saw Matt standing uncomfortably in the middle of the kitchen while Ruthie bustled around.
It could be worse, Daniel thought. He’s a nice kid. Like his brother had been. Matt didn’t have John’s charm or irrepressible good cheer, but he was bright and sweet-natured, a solid citizen.
Ruthie balanced a platter on top of the bowls in Matt’s arms and tucked a sheaf of napkins under his arm. The load in Matt’s arms threatened to topple, and Ruthie giggled, catching the uppermost dish before it fell. Daniel realized how rare that sound had become in the past two years. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Ruthie laugh. Whatever its source, whether she was happy or just relieved that her parents had not reacted negatively to what was going on between her and Matt, he was glad to see her laughing. He said, “Matt, can I interest you in a beer?”
“Maybe later, Mr. Copaken,” Matt said. “Once Ruthie’s done with me.”
Half an hour later, showered and dressed in clean if shabby khakis and his favorite faded polo shirt, Daniel took up his role as host, standing next to the cooler in the yard, ready to hand out drinks to the guests as they arrived. Ruthie and Matt sat side by side on the picnic bench in the middle of the yard, leaning back against the table, their hands twined together, as if to announce their relationship to the company.
The first guest to arrive was Mary Lou Curran.
“Thank you, dear,” she said, accepting the gin and tonic Daniel poured her from the tall pitcher Iris had prepared. Mary Lou took a sip, leaving a delicate tracing of pale-pink lipstick on the rim of the plastic cup. “My goodness,” she said suddenly.
Daniel followed her gaze over to Ruthie and Matt. Ruthie waved. Mary Lou lifted her hand in return.
“How long has that been going on?” Mary Lou said.
“I don’t honestly know,” Daniel said. “I just found out about it myself.”
Mary Lou raised her thin, penciled eyebrows. “Half the relationships I know are really support groups in disguise.”
When Daniel and Iris’s immediate neighbor to the south, a pediatric surgeon from Bethesda, arrived, he took one look at Daniel and said, “What the hell happened to you?”
Daniel dodged the question with a vague “I cut myself,” as if an inch-long wound only partly stitched closed with irregular knots of black thread could be dismissed as a shaving accident.
“You need to have that cut restitched.”
“Probably.”
“No, I mean it. That’s just—” He made a face. “It offends my sensibilities. Come on.”
So Daniel followed Dr. Ethan Haber across the road to the small house in which he spent only three weeks out of every summer. The kitchen had been renovated at an unfortunate time; the countertops were speckled Formica, and the tile of the backsplash featured wicker baskets of garish yellow daisies. There was little evidence of Dr. Haber’s residence in the house. No piles of newspapers and unread mail, like in their house across the street. No coat hooks piled with jackets and mackinaws, no boots and shoes heaped in the corners of the mudroom. Just a single fleece jacket emblazoned with the yacht club logo hanging on the back of the Holly Hobby kitchen chair to which the doctor directed Daniel. He brought in a brass desk lamp from the other room and aimed the light at Daniel’s chin. With a pair of tweezers, he began tugging the stitches loose.
“Who the hell did this to you? A blind ER tech?”
“No, a crippled corner man.”
The doctor gave a bark of laughter. Daniel winced as one of the stitches tugged against his open wound.
“Wish I had some lidocaine for you,” Ethan said. “But you are shit out of luck.”
“No kidding.” Daniel closed his eyes and listened to the faint sounds of the party across the street in his backyard. He could hear voices, an occasional shout. Someone had turned on some music. For a moment he fantasized about staying here in this anonymous house, where he could eavesdrop on his family but neither see nor be seen by them. But was that really a satisfying fantasy? As long as he was fantasizing, couldn’t he permit himself the luxury of a complete escape?
Ethan said, “You going to be all right if I stitch this closed again?”
“Yeah.”
“So how’d you get this?” Ethan said as he peeled open a small suture pack and picked up the needle with his forceps.
“Boxing.” Daniel flinched as the doctor poked the hooked needle through his skin. “Man, that hurts.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” the doctor said. “It can’t hurt more than getting punched in the face.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Just one more. What the hell a
re you doing boxing, anyway? An alter kocker like you.”
Daniel shrugged, his shoulder banging against the doctor’s hand. “Fuck!” he said.
“Yeah, well, don’t move. You know, a few years ago I took up flying.”
“Flying?”
“Yuh. Almost bought myself a Cessna. You’re all done.” He sat back, snapped off his rubber gloves, and shot them into the trash can.
“Almost?” Daniel said.
“Came to my senses and got a divorce instead. Let’s go. They’ll be missing you at home.”
While the guests ate their lobster, Mr. Kimmelbrod went to his bedroom to fetch his violin. In spite of his tenancy, the room appeared no less anonymous than it had when it had been used as a guest room. His clothes barely filled two of the four drawers. His shirts took up no more than a few inches of the hanging bar in the maple chiffonier that had stood between the two windows on the eastern wall of the room since the spring of 1902, when it had been ordered from the Sears, Roebuck and Co. furniture catalog by Iris’s grandmother for $8.45 painstakingly saved from her housekeeping allowance. His black leather wash kit lay, zippered closed, on the back of the toilet. The only way a stranger would know this was Mr. Kimmelbrod’s room was by the violin case that lay on the white chenille spread.
Since he had lost his ability to play, Mr. Kimmelbrod had not been sufficiently conscientious about making sure the Dembovski was played as often as it needed to be. To keep its suppleness and tone, an instrument must be played. He remembered how Alice used to say that a violin was like a marriage. Untended, it became stiff and brittle, it lost its sound. He wondered how long it had been since Iris and Daniel had tended to their marriage.
Mr. Kimmelbrod unbuckled the violin case. It was, he knew, foolhardy of him to trust a child with such a valuable Guarneri—he could only imagine what his insurers would say, those neurotics in suits whose demands that the violin be stored at all times in a locked safe he so assiduously ignored—but she handled it with due reverence, and played, despite her inexperience and her size, with confidence and aplomb. At first he had been surprised by Samantha’s proficiency on the Guarneri, given that her everyday instrument was only three-quarter size. The spaces between the notes on the strings were more elongated on a bigger violin, and normally a student could not switch back and forth without having serious problems of intonation. Samantha, however, had long fingers for a girl her age, and she managed very well.
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