Red Hook Road

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Are you in pain, Grandpa?” Ruthie said. She stood at the foot of the bed, resting her hands lightly on Mr. Kimmelbrod’s splayed toes.

  “There appears to be some concern that I will become a drug addict,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said. “Elderly violinist junkies being such a scourge on society.”

  Iris pursed her lips and gave a little puff of frustrated air.

  “I’ve spent the better part of the morning trying to convince someone to up his dose, to no avail.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod once again closed his eyes.

  “He’s been like that this morning,” Iris said. “In and out.”

  “You should go home, Mom,” Ruthie said. “Really, I’ll stay with Grandpa. It’s fine.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said, without opening his eyes. “You must go get some rest, Iris. You are worrying me.”

  Iris sighed.

  “Matt’s going to be at his mom’s all day, loading up the Rebecca and taking her down to the yard,” Ruthie said. “I can stay here while you’re gone, and then when he’s finished he can pick me up.” Matt had tried to get the yard to move back his launch date, but their calendar was full. It was either now or wait until the end of the summer, and as appealing as the idea of delay was, it didn’t make sense to wait any longer.

  “It’s going to take me at least a few hours,” Matt said. “You’ll have plenty of time to get to East Red Hook and back. Have a nap. Take a shower.”

  “You don’t mind?” Iris said. “There’s nowhere you need to be, Ruthie? Work?”

  “They know I’m here,” Ruthie said. “And Matt told the yard he wouldn’t be in until after lunch.”

  Iris allowed herself to be convinced.

  Mr. Kimmelbrod’s blanket had pulled loose, and Ruthie did her best to remake the bed around him while he slept, managing to form serviceably tight hospital corners, as if there were a standard that she was expected to maintain and might possibly be graded on.

  “Very good, my dear,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said, sleepily. “They’ll have you cleaning the bathrooms next.”

  “Toilets are where I draw the line,” she said. “You’ll have to get up and clean your own.” She emptied out his plastic cup of water and rinsed both it and the matching pitcher in the shallow sink. When she turned back to Mr. Kimmelbrod, she saw that his eyes were open and he was fumbling for the morphine drip.

  “Let me do that, Grandpa,” she said. She pumped it a few times. “I think it’s working again.”

  His hands twitched on the bedclothes, and Ruthie put hers over them. They were warm and dry, crosshatched with lines and wrinkles.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said.

  “What is?”

  He closed his eyes. She waited to see if he had fallen asleep again, but then he said, “A single misstep.”

  “Yes. I thought of that, too.”

  “Turn to the left, go on as you are. Turn to the right, finished.”

  How many times had she thought that over the past few years? That if the photographer had been satisfied with one less picture, or one more. If the limo driver had paused for a moment to adjust his seat. If Becca had stumbled on her way into the car and adjusted the strap of her shoe. Turn to the left, go on as you are. Turn to the right, finished. And what direction was she turning right now? Or was she so afraid of making a wrong turn that she had stopped dead in her tracks?

  Ruthie crouched down over the bed, pressing her cheek against her grandfather’s. “Nothing’s finished, Grandpa. Your hip will heal, and you’ll be home soon. It’s just a temporary setback.”

  But by now he was asleep.

  When Iris returned to the hospital she looked much better, in spite of her wet hair and the long red crease in her cheek from her pillow. Either the circles under her eyes had faded, or she had covered them up with makeup. She seemed merely tired, rather than flat-out destroyed.

  “Thank you, honey,” Iris said. “You were right. I did need a little break.” She sat in the chair on the other side of the bed. “Listen, Ruthie. I called your dad.”

  “You did?” Ruthie said. She had not seen her father since April, when he had come up to Maine for a visit. He had stayed with her and Matt in the house, slept in his own bed, worn the clothes that were still in the drawers of his dresser, drank from his favorite coffee cup. Having him there had been at once perfectly normal and strange.

  Iris said, “I asked your father to come up, to see Grandpa.”

  Her parents’ separation had hit Ruthie hard. She had tried to tell herself that she was not a child. She no longer lived with her parents, at least not in the winter. She had no right to feel abandoned. She had no right to feel such grief. But still, when her father visited, Ruthie had felt at once sad and guilty, as though she were betraying her mother by accepting her father’s presence in his own house. She had not told Iris of his visit.

  Because the purpose of Daniel’s trip had been to see Ruthie, and by extension Matt, they all felt obliged to spend time together in a way they never had before. It was as though they were traveling together on a vacation, just the three of them, and thus could not abandon one another to separate activities. It poured all weekend long, a disaster because there was nothing much in Red Hook to occupy a rainy day. Ruthie had introduced Daniel to her colleagues at work, all of whom he’d known for years. She gave him a tour of the library that he’d been visiting since before she was born. They had gone to a bad movie in Newmarket and visited Red Hook’s galleries of mediocre vacation art, feigning interest in the muddy landscapes and studies of lighthouses. They had shopped at the L.L. Bean outlet and even driven all the way out to Okamok Isle for a scoop of Daniel’s favorite ice cream, only to find that the stand’s owner had been arrested for dealing drugs along with the Rocky Road and Moose Tracks. “No wonder the milkshakes were so cheap,” Daniel said, as they stood in front of the shuttered shack. By Sunday afternoon they had exhausted all activities apart from videos and endless games of Yahtzee, and Daniel leaped at Matt’s suggestion that they go see how the Alden was shaping up.

  Relieved to have an hour of solitude, Ruthie stayed behind. When they returned home she was in the side yard trying to remember where she had planted her tulip and daffodil bulbs. The men were deep in conversation when they got out of the car, and didn’t see her.

  Matt said, “Last summer I ended up replacing half the wood in the stateroom. That set me back a lot.”

  Daniel said, “How much do you think it’s going to take you to finish her?”

  Matt said, “Well, I still owe nearly a thousand to the farrier who poured the keel ballast, and I got a deal on the sails, but they’re still going to run me at least five grand.”

  “She’s a good-looking boat. It would be a shame not to finish her.”

  “I’ll figure it out,” Matt said. “It might just take a while.”

  “I’d like to help you,” Daniel said. “I could be an investor.”

  “She’s not much of an investment, sir. You wouldn’t see your money back.”

  “Let that be my problem,” Daniel said. “I’ve got a little tucked away for a rainy day. And it’s definitely raining today.”

  Matt glanced up at the grim sky.

  “Should we say six thousand?” Daniel said.

  Ruthie stifled a gasp. How would they ever pay that back?

  “That’s too much, sir,” Matt said.

  “Okay, then. Let me give you three. And you come up with the rest yourself.”

  There was a long silence. Then Matt said, “If it’s really okay with you. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “All right, then, three thousand it is.”

  Ruthie was furious. She was angry both at Matt for having taken the money and at her father for having given it. She walked around the corner of the house and confronted a startled Matt. “Can I talk to you? In private.”

  Daniel put his hand on Matt’s shoulder and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. “I’ll be inside.”

  “That was rude
, Ruthie,” Matt said, after Daniel had closed the door behind him.

  “You know I don’t want to take money from my parents!”

  “You were eavesdropping?”

  Her face burned. “That’s not the point. The point is that you took money from my father without asking me first.”

  “He offered!”

  “You should have said no!”

  “I’m sorry,” Matt said. “I just honestly don’t know what to do. I’m in a hole here. That fucking router destroyed I don’t even know how many thousands of dollars’ worth of joinery and planking. What was I going to do? Patch it with plywood? And the sails. Do you know how much sails cost?”

  “I do now. Five thousand dollars.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s five thousand dollars I don’t have. And I can’t exactly finish her without sails.”

  When Ruthie tried to thank her father for the money, Daniel shook his head and said, “That’s between Matt and me, sweetheart. It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  She felt so uncomfortable about the money that even now it was hard for her to talk to her father on the phone without feeling like the debt somehow cast a shadow over everything she said. But that awkwardness paled in comparison to the idea of seeing her father here, in Maine, in the same room as her mother.

  “If Dad comes up, where’s he going to stay?” Ruthie asked Iris.

  “I was worried about that, too, but it turns out there’s no tenant this week at your grandfather’s cottage, so he can stay there. I’ll need you to go over and make sure Jane’s girls have put fresh linens on the bed. And maybe you could pick up some things for him at the market. Some milk and bread. I packed a box with some of his favorite things—his coffee, and those shortbread cookies. I put in some of his clothes, a few books, and his down pillow—he hates those foam ones Grandma always bought. It’s on the kitchen table. Do you think you could take it over to the cottage before he gets here?”

  Even with all her worries about Mr. Kimmelbrod, Iris had clearly devoted considerable thought to Daniel, reflecting on what would make him comfortable, what he would enjoy and require.

  “When is he coming?”

  “Tomorrow. Oh, and stop by the co-op and see if they have any fresh eggs. God knows the last time he had a fresh egg.”

  “Should I arrange for him to get a massage?” Ruthie said, mock-innocently.

  But Iris seemed not to understand the remark or its intent. “A massage?” she said blankly. “I—I don’t know.”

  “Forget it,” Ruthie said.

  “He said he’d been considering coming up for Matt’s launch, anyway.”

  Had he been? Ruthie hadn’t known that. “Are you going to see him?” she said.

  “Of course. I’ll see him when he comes to visit your grandfather.” Iris was clearly trying to appear civilized and reasonable, but Ruthie could hear a note of something like expectation in her tone.

  “I mean, you know, outside of the hospital. Like, will you guys have dinner together?”

  “Are you asking if I plan on dating your father while he’s here? No. I doubt it.”

  “If we had the Fourth of July celebration this year, we could invite him.”

  “No, Ruthie.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you serious? Because your grandfather is in the hospital, and I don’t have time to plan a lobster bake for thirty people.”

  “Of course you must have your celebration,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said.

  They both jumped when he spoke. Iris put her hand to her chest as if to hold her heart in place. Then they both burst out laughing at how startled they had been.

  “How are you feeling, Dad?” Iris said. “Is the morphine working?”

  “The pain is not terrible. My arms are extremely itchy, however.”

  Iris said, “The nurse said that could happen. Is it really bad? They can give you an antihistamine. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, I think.”

  Once Iris was gone on her way to track down the nurse, Mr. Kimmelbrod said to Ruthie, “I would like you to have your celebration, Ruthie.”

  “No, we can’t do that, Grandpa. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  Even before Mr. Kimmelbrod’s fall, neither Iris nor Ruthie had mustered a great deal of eagerness for the party. Iris had drawn up her customary to-do lists, ticking off the tasks one by one as they were completed, but it had not been with much heart. Iris’s reluctance mirrored Ruthie’s. But as much as she had been dreading the celebration, Ruthie feared even more what that dread said about her, about her mother and her father, about the passage of time, about their memories of Becca, and, most of all, about the hollowness at the heart of her broken family that seemed, in retrospect, to have underlain all their celebrations since the accident, to have given the lie to all their plans and preparations. She had thought, she had always hoped, that the pain and loss of Becca’s and John’s deaths might be transformed, even to a degree redeemed, by memorials and celebrations, even by her coming together with Matt. Those deaths were terrible and senseless, but at least they might with time become the means by which they all, Tetherlys and Copakens alike, were brought together, and held together, and sustained. Now it seemed that there had been nothing there to hold together in the first place, and the reason nobody wanted to have the party this year was because it would just make that terrible emptiness plain.

  “Have the celebration,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said.

  “But why? Grandpa, you’ve never enjoyed them.”

  “True,” he said. “But I will be here, or in rehab. I won’t have to suffer through it, but you should.”

  Ruthie laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Iris said as she came into the room. “The nurse will be here in just a minute with the antihistamine.”

  Maybe, Ruthie thought, now more than ever some kind of statement was required, a refusal to submit to loss, to let it work its mischief on them. And maybe it was that kind of stubbornness in the face of grief—about which Mr. Kimmelbrod knew more than anyone, the art of which, even more than music, he was virtuoso—that could, in the end, redeem them all.

  “We’re having the celebration on the Fourth,” Ruthie said, boldly. Then, hedging, she added, “It was Grandpa’s idea.”

  “We can’t possibly,” Iris said. “How am I going to throw a party when I’m at the hospital ten hours a day? There’s no way.”

  “If it were anyone else, I would agree,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said. “But nothing is beyond you.”

  “Mom, you don’t even have to do anything,” Ruthie said. “Seriously, I’ll take care of everything. And anyway, everything’s basically done.”

  “But, well, I don’t want to sound harsh or unfeeling, but—why bother?” She gave a laugh that sounded both bitter and self-mocking. “I mean—look at us. Dad, you’re in the hospital. I’m separated from my husband. What’s to celebrate?”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod opened his eyes and looked squarely at Ruthie, as if he lacked the strength that an answer demanded and was trusting Ruthie to do the job. Ruthie tried to think of a way to summarize or explain to her mother the kind of stubbornness that her grandfather embodied, the persistence of love and work and affection in the face of sorrow that was more, somehow, than the mere habit of being alive. She shrugged.

  “It’s a tradition,” she said.

  IV

  On his way to King’s Boatyard for Matt’s launch, Daniel wondered at the thought that today would be his first reunion with Iris since September of last year, when he had moved his things out of the Riverside Drive apartment. He’d arrived in Red Hook late last night, missing hospital visiting hours, and had arranged to meet Iris at the launch. After they saw the boat safely in the water, they’d go up to Newmarket together. How odd to have gone so long without seeing the person whose company had for decades defined who he was, both for good and for ill. He had spent more time with Iris than with anyone else in his life, had slept far more nights with her than alone, h
ad known her body and her face better than his own. He had not intended for their separation to be so absolute. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he had not imagined either that it would be or that it wouldn’t. At first he hadn’t wanted to see her at all, had not even wanted to speak to her on the phone. He’d felt at the beginning well shed of her, that without her there reminding him of his failings, he would finally become the person he was supposed to be.

  He had found an inexpensive efficiency apartment, adequate for his needs, and set about doing exactly what it was he wanted to do. He ate what he liked, he ignored the heaps and piles of newspapers and magazines that quickly accumulated on every available surface. He trained four, sometimes five times a week, and on the days he wasn’t in the gym he ran four times around the reservoir in Central Park. He had no choice but to go to work, but all the while he was supervising student cases and dealing with his colleagues he tried to imagine what job he would choose if he could be anything he wanted to be.

  For a while this was enough. The feeling of liberation he’d experienced when he first left Red Hook sustained him through the autumn and into the winter. His only source of frustration during those months was his inability to come up with a satisfactory alternative to the career his wife had chosen for him. He had never considered himself an inspired teacher, had never found the academic environment to be particularly interesting. While many of his colleagues in the clinical department worked diligently on law review articles that they hoped would catapult them into the more legitimate academic side of law teaching, he had no such ambitions.

  He’d for so long blamed Iris for his haplessness, for the frustrations of his failed career, and yet when confronted with the opportunity to make a change, he simply couldn’t think of anything else to do. There wasn’t another legal job that attracted him, and although he tried to come up with something, there was nothing outside of the law that he’d rather be doing. On the contrary, the more he tried to figure out an alternative, the more appealing his job, with its simple and achievable demands, its academic calendar and long vacations, began to seem.