Red Hook Road (5 page)

“Hey, Mom,” she said.

“Hi, honey,” Iris said. She slipped her arm around Ruthie’s waist. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Yes,” Ruthie said. This was not entirely true. She never knew what to do with herself at big parties like this one. She always felt like her conversations were the wrong length. Either she flitted aimlessly among people, or she clung to someone long after, she was certain, they’d lost interest in anything she might have to say. At school she never went to big parties, not even the ones held regularly in her own dorm. Still, this was her sister’s wedding. She should be having more fun.

With a final “Thank you so much” to the ladies, Iris steered Ruthie away.

Once they found a spot with a good aspect over the room, Iris said, “You look beautiful, darling.”

Ruthie sighed. “Oh, please.”

“Ruthie! You look lovely.”

“I look like a twelve-year-old in this dress.”

“You don’t like it?”

“No.”

“Well, why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell Becca you didn’t like it?”

“Because she was all about the purple.” Ruthie gave her skirt a shake. “What was I going to say? Your favorite color makes me look like a grape?”

“The purple looks wonderful on you. It makes you look rosy and beautiful.”

“The color’s not even the worst part. The cut is so infantile.”

“I don’t understand you, Ruthie. You had all the opportunity in the world to make your opposition known. Becca would have let you wear anything you wanted.”

“You’re right. I probably should have said something.” Iris was just never going to understand that this was not the kind of battle Ruthie could ever have won. Once Becca got an idea in her head, good luck fighting it. “Anyway, what time is it?” Ruthie said.

“I don’t know,” Iris said. “Getting close to seven, I imagine.”

“How much longer are Becca and John going to be? They’re so busy memorializing their wedding, they’re going to end up missing half of it.”

“It shouldn’t be much longer,” Iris said. “The photographer said he just wanted a few shots of them down by the water.”

The beach below the church was almost ridiculously picturesque, with the lobster boats, some white, some painted in bright colors—red, mint green, sky blue—to match their buoys, bobbing in the harbor. The beach was known for its sea glass, and the gray-brown sand twinkled with amber and green pebbles, even, occasionally, light blue, yellow, and pink, and every so often a magical bit of red. The grassy slope down to the beach was sprinkled with wildflowers, still in full bloom. If you looked up from the beach you could see the town laid out like a miniature village through which a model train would make its way, all white clapboard and shiny black shutters. It was no wonder that every bride and groom married in the town ended up with a photograph silhouetted against the scenic backdrop of sea, hill, and town. Iris and Daniel had their own version of that wedding picture, Iris in her turquoise minidress decorated with tiny mirrors, Daniel dressed up in a mod, double-breasted, peacock-blue suit, standing on the edge of the dock, the sea sparkling behind them. Maybe on her parents’ next anniversary, Ruthie thought, she would reprint their wedding picture and put it in one of those double frames alongside Becca and John’s.

“I bet that ridiculous limousine broke down,” Ruthie said. None of them had approved of the limousine Becca’s foolish girlfriends from the yacht club had insisted on paying for as a wedding gift. Ruthie had been surprised that Becca had agreed to it, especially because she rarely hung out with those girls anymore. Other than Jasmine, Becca’s oldest summer
friend, she mostly spent time with the girlfriends and wives of the men John worked with at the boatyard, some of whom were local girls, some of whom came from other oceanfront towns where their husbands had learned the craft of wooden boatbuilding. Ruthie supposed that Becca had accepted the gift of the limousine because she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings.

“I’m sure they’ll be here in a few minutes,” Iris said.

Ruthie said, “Hey, Mom, do you think Becca’s expecting us to decorate their car? With, like, shaving cream and cans?”

“Oh, lord. I hope not.”

“Well, I hope that the best man has it under control, because it was
not
on my list.”

Iris had prepared a flowchart of all the wedding tasks and provided each member of the family with a personalized to-do list, updated weekly, and then, as the day got closer, daily. Trashing the bride and groom’s getaway car had not been on anyone’s list.

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Iris said. “I’ll take the fall if someone needs to.”

Ruthie watched her mother scan the crowd, her eyes finally alighting on Mr. Kimmelbrod, sitting at a table on the far side of the room, alone but for Samantha Phelps, the flower girl, who was perched on a chair on the opposite side of the same table.

“Honey, will you go make sure your grandfather’s okay? He’s sitting over there with just Samantha for company.”

“She’s so cute,” Ruthie said. Samantha was tall for her age, with a perfect bee sting of a mouth, and shiny dark eyes. Who could resist a lavender-taffeta-clad little girl, no matter how ineptly she’d strewn her petals?

Becca had invited Samantha to be her flower girl only a week ago, and they’d had to pay the dressmaker twice the cost of the dress because of the late notice. Ruthie was surprised that Iris had never objected to the added expense, but perhaps it was because Samantha’s story played on her heartstrings. She had been adopted six years ago by Jane’s niece, Connie, whose husband had promptly run off with the NCO of his army reserve unit and not been heard from again. Over the years Connie had been in and out of the psychiatric hospital outside of Augusta, leaving Samantha to the less
than tender ministrations of her aunt Jane, the only one of Connie’s relatives who’d been willing to take the girl.

Iris and Ruthie watched Samantha sway in time to the music. “She likes the band,” Ruthie said.

“She’s adorable,” Iris said. “But I can’t imagine that she and your grandfather have much to talk about. Go over and sit with him, why don’t you, Ruthie.”

Sending her daughter away made Iris feel vaguely guilty, as usual. Ruthie could be so needy, so desperate to know what Iris was thinking, so afraid that something might be going on from which she was excluded. When she was small and someone would tell a family story or simply share a recollection, Ruthie would always ask, in a tone of great desolation, “Was I
born
yet?” She clung close, Ruthie did, both to her older sister and to Iris. It used to drive Becca out of her mind, the way Ruthie would follow her around, asking to be included in every game, especially when Becca had a friend over. The girls were five years apart and not particularly well matched as companions. Becca’s patience, though long for a child—she loved her sister—was not infinite. Sometimes she would set on Ruthie, pushing her out of the room or shrieking at her just to go away.

Iris would scold Becca for these outbursts, even punish her, but in truth she’d sympathized with her. Ruthie’s neediness could be exhausting. Even as a baby all she’d wanted to do was sit on her mother’s lap, one pudgy hand slipped into the top of Iris’s shirt. Iris would be twitching in her seat, thinking of all the things she had to get done, the articles that needed writing, the house that needed cleaning, the bills that needed paying. There was dinner to make and there were papers to grade, but Ruthie would nestle her head firmly under Iris’s chin, content just to sit and breathe in her mother’s scent. When Iris finally succumbed to her urges and lifted Ruthie off her lap, the baby would weep in deep despair, as if her mother had left her on an orphanage doorstep, an anonymous note pinned to her little terry-cloth romper, instead of having merely set her down on the kitchen floor while she unloaded the dishwasher.

Iris knew most mothers would have killed for a placid baby like Ruthie, but Iris had preferred her older daughter’s energy. Becca had been an active and animated child. She’d slept little and was quiet in Iris’s arms
only when she was nursing. She walked at nine months, so early that she looked like an animatronic baby barreling through the house on too-small legs. As a baby, Becca bored easily, so Iris scheduled music, gym, and art classes, outings to the park, visits to the museum in the winter and the beach in the summer. Their days began at dawn and ran at full speed until dark, when Iris collapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep until Becca woke her up with an excited cry and an effervescent smile, ready for more. She twitched, wiggled, and moved so much that Iris once insisted on an appointment with a pediatric neurologist. There was, of course, nothing wrong with the girl.

Becca’s hectic motion ceased only when she heard music. Then she would pause, wrinkle her brow, and concentrate with a furious focus, her hands held out, fingertips extended, as though they were antennae through which the sound entered her body.

Iris had gone back to work when Becca was six months old, and the baby had adapted easily to day care. She liked the stimulus, the constantly changing cast of characters. When Iris tried to take Ruthie to day care, on the other hand, the poor thing had cried so hard that she made herself vomit day after day, until the day care center finally told Iris she’d have to find alternative arrangements. Iris and Daniel hired a nanny they couldn’t really afford, but at the time Iris was closing in on tenure and there had been no way for her to take another semester off.

It seemed obvious to Iris that some parents were better suited to certain kinds of children, and vice versa. Some children’s personalities mesh with their mothers, and others do not. Loving Becca was as simple as breathing, like a reflex—a knee jumping when hit by a doctor’s hammer. But loving Ruthie took concentration. It was not that Iris loved her second daughter any less. It was more like there was a nearly imperceptible hitch, a millisecond’s pause, before she was reminded of the ferocity of her maternal devotion. It was ironic, really, because Iris had far more in common with Ruthie than with her eldest. Ruthie was an intellectual, for whom academic work was a pleasure rather than a chore. When she was younger, Daniel used to joke that the words
extra credit
gave Ruthie the same thrill that the words
snow day
gave to other children. Like Iris, she was rarely found without her nose in a book; she had read through the entire contents of the Red Hook
Library children’s collection by the time she was in middle school and had taken on the role of unofficial children’s librarian, priding herself on being able to find a book to suit the tastes of the most discerning—or least bookish—patron. But despite these similarities, and despite the fact that Becca had not once in her life read a book that was not assigned for school, it was Becca whom Iris found easier to love.

“Hey, Grandpa,” Ruthie said when she arrived at his side. “What happened to Samantha?”

“The flower girl? She informed me that she needed to use the restroom, so I assume that’s where you’ll find her.”

Mr. Kimmelbrod had set his place card neatly on top of his plate and hung his cane from the back of his chair. His trembling hands were folded in his lap.

“I wasn’t actually looking for her. I was looking for you. How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you,” he said, in his customary formal tone. Although technically Czech, Emil Kimmelbrod’s family had always considered themselves German Jews, hyperrational, self-controlled, disciplined—altogether similar in temperament to the people who would soon begin to slaughter them so efficiently. Even after sixty years in the United States, Mr. Kimmelbrod comported himself with a Teutonic decorum. He wore a necktie at all times, kept a handkerchief in his pocket, and disliked familiar terms of address. This formality was born of his reserve, and his reserve reflected his control. Mr. Kimmelbrod was as devoted to structure—musical, personal, ethical—as other men were to the idea of the divine. He was not a
controlling
man—he did not care to dominate anyone other than himself—but his veneration of discipline and technical perfection was legendary.

From the moment she could toddle over and climb up into his lap, Ruthie had resisted—if not, in her loving way, scorned—this terrible formality. Without having words to express what she felt, she recognized and embraced the emotional ferment behind her grandfather’s precise reserve, the passion that others saw expressed only in his music. She pressed secret kisses to his sober cheeks and clutched his diffident fingers. She insisted on calling him Grandpa, a usage he would have tolerated from no one else. Even Becca, with whom he had spent so much time—although he had not
since she was a young child been her teacher, he had directed her musical education—did not see, or break, through him so effortlessly. Certainly Becca never adopted this casual tone of address. When she was with other musicians she called him Mr. Kimmelbrod; at home she called him Grandfather.

“Are you getting tired?” Ruthie said, sitting down next to him. He patted her small hand with his, all blue veins and swollen knuckles. A single lock of his wiry white hair had sprung loose from the grip of the violet-scented pomade he applied every morning. It dangled by the long, fleshy lobe of his ear. Ruthie gently smoothed the hair back into place. She knew how much he loathed being even a little unkempt.

“I’m not tired,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said, although of course they both knew this was untrue. Ruthie could always tell when his strength was failing, but, more important, she always knew when it wasn’t, when he felt fine—unlike his daughter, who insisted on viewing him as perpetually infirm. Mr. Kimmelbrod’s first noticeable symptom of Parkinson’s disease was the one that had caused him to stop performing: the thumb and forefinger of his right hand had begun a rhythmic motion as if they were trying at furious speed to roll a pill. There followed an infuriating cascade of symptoms: periodic rigidity and inflexibility of his muscles; a lack of balance that sometimes caused him to freeze, worried that another step would send him crashing to the ground; and the shrinking of his handwriting to a crabbed and wavering cryptogram.