Kaaterskill Falls

by Allegra Goodman

  “Should I look for another place?” Elizabeth asks.

  “Well, there aren’t so many places to put a store,” Hamilton tells her. He lights a cigarette and pulls his wood slat chair close to Elizabeth’s Dutch door. “I guess you could rent from King. He’d rent you something.”

  “We do rent from him,” Elizabeth says. “We rent our bungalow.”

  “Well, there you are. Course, I’ve known him for years. You know the father?”

  “No,” says Elizabeth. She’s packing up the Popsicles and frozen chicken pieces. Over the weekend she keeps them sealed in boxes in Hamilton’s freezer.

  “Michael King’s father. He was before your time. A dentist; rich. A—” Hamilton was about to say “a Jew,” but tactfully he substitutes, “Summer people like you. Name, Herb Klein. A short little man, and dark. Not like the son. Dr. Klein took his summer fees in cash. He didn’t declare. Hid the money instead in his summer place. That old house had a black iron stove, potbelly for wood burning, and Dr. Klein kept his money there in bills, stuffed in the back. Maybe fifteen thousand in greenbacks.”

  Elizabeth leans over the Dutch door.

  “One fall, after old man Klein went back to the city.” Hamilton taps the ash off his cigarette. “The son, Michael, came back here hunting, with a girl from the city. Thought no one would notice them because the summer people were gone. So there they were, alone together fooling in Klein’s old house. There was no water, and the electricity turned off. All of a sudden we had a cold snap. October, and it went down to twenty-three degrees. The two of them were freezing in that house, and there wasn’t any heat. So Michael decided to light a fire in the old woodstove. Dragged up apple wood from the basement—”

  “How do you know that about the wood?” Elizabeth asks.

  “I made up that part,” Hamilton says evenly. “But the truth is he got a fire going and burned all that money his father kept in the stove. As long as he lives, no one in this town will ever forget it. He may be rich, but the moral is: Klein is Klein.”

  Elizabeth laughs. She feels almost like a year-rounder, working at Hamilton’s store, and listening to his tales about Michael King. She feels that in some curious way Hamilton is extending his friendship to her, grousing with her about the one man in Kaaterskill they have in common, his interloping neighbor and her landlord.

  “You’ve seen his house on Maple,” Hamilton says.

  She nods.

  “Take a look at the lions. Look at those lions in the front. He bought a pair of plaster lions, you know, with the paw upraised, one for each side of the entrance. But if you take a look, you’ll see that they both face right. He’s got a dispute now between him and the company. They claim he ordered two identical lions, not two lions facing each other. And I’m sure he did.”

  As ALWAYS on Fridays, Elizabeth closes early, at two o’clock. She walks home, carrying the cash box along with her purse and a shopping bag full of extra challahs. She has hired one of the mechanics from Boyd’s garage, James Boyd, to go down to the city for her every week with his pickup truck, and Ira Rubin, a boy from town, to help him with the heavy lifting. Of course, these are expenses. She has to charge more for everything, but what has surprised her is that people are paying the higher prices. Elizabeth marks up the fresh baked goods in particular, but every week she sells out of challah and babka, cookies and coffee cake. Her customers love the fresh bread and cake she brings up from Edelman’s. They will pay for that.

  The little girls are playing in the yard in front of the house, but as soon as they see Elizabeth they jump up and follow her inside.

  “Can I have a cookie?” Sorah asks her.

  “Me too,” shouts Brocha.

  Malki comes running from the girls’ bedroom with Chani after her. “Mommy. Look what Chani is reading. Look.”

  “Give it back,” says Chani.

  “Mommy, look,” Malki says, flashing a small book.

  Chani charges, grabs the book, and pushes her sister so hard that Malki loses her balance and falls to the floor.

  Elizabeth rushes over. She helps Malki up and scolds, “You know better than that, Chani. Are you listening to me?”

  Chani says nothing. She is fourteen now, tall for her age, her hair thick and dark.

  “She’s reading books about Israel,” Malki says doggedly.

  “Are you being a tattletale?” Elizabeth asks her.

  Malki’s eyes well up with tears.

  “I can read whatever I want, stupid.” Chani glares at Malki.

  “Don’t you ever call your sister stupid,” Elizabeth snaps. “Apologize. Now.”

  “Sorry,” Chani says grudgingly to Malki.

  When the house is calm again Elizabeth and Chani make dinner. “What did you do in camp today?” Elizabeth asks as they work together in the kitchen.

  Chani makes a face. “Rav Lamkin talked about the fast days and how we should mourn for the calamities of our people and that we have no home. He likes fast days.”

  “Does he?”

  “That’s all he talks about. Calamities.” Chani cuts up celery for stuffing. “Why does he pretend Jews don’t have a home?”

  “The rabbi meant we don’t have a homeland,” Elizabeth explains.

  “But Israel is in the paper every day,” Chani says, puzzled. She sees it all the time. That Prime Minister Begin is coming to Washington to talk with President Carter. That Begin is allowing settlements in Judea and Samaria. Just last Shabbes after shul, Chani heard Mr. Melish and Mr. Birnbaum talking about the settlements and the territories and Jordan. Mr. Melish was grumbling about President Carter—that as far as Carter is concerned, he’d give all Israel’s land away for ten points in the polls, and that this Middle East peace conference of his is just a publicity stunt.

  And Mr. Birnbaum answered with one of his strange sayings: “Blessed are the peacemakers. For they shall inherit the earth.”

  “Everyone talks about Israel all the time,” Chani says now. “You can’t just pretend it isn’t there.”

  “Chani,” Elizabeth begins. But she doesn’t know quite how to put it. She never imagined hearing words like these from her daughter. “I think reading and finding out about the world is good. It’s necessary to learn about the world. But the world is one thing and God is another. The two don’t fit together yet. And one day they will, and the Temple will be restored, and Israel will be ours again. But the place isn’t ready yet, and neither are we.”

  “I know that,” says Chani. “But why do you and Daddy never talk about it? Why are you pretending it isn’t real? Look,” she says, and she runs and gets the Times from the living-room couch, and she holds it up so that her mother can see, right on the front page, the picture of a soldier standing guard while workers are building houses. “See,” she says. “It’s in the newspaper and in the maps—”

  “But we don’t want just a place,” says Elizabeth. “You can’t substitute bare land for—for the mitzvos that must be done, and the transformation of all the lives in every place in the world…. We’re waiting, you see.”

  “But if you just sit around and wait, nothing will get done—that’s what you always say,” Chani points out, triumphantly practical. “So what good is it going to do if we’re all waiting over here in New York? Shouldn’t we be in Israel now?” she suggests recklessly.

  “Well,” Elizabeth says, “if you wanted a house and I gave you a model of a house, would you take it?”

  “I don’t want a house,” Chani says, and she puts the newspaper down on the counter. Houses in Chani’s mind are made up of chores. A house means making beds and preparing dinner. Picking up toys and washing dishes every night. But a country, a whole country, would be big and full of mountains. Places to climb and places to swim. Bare land. Those words sound good to Chani, like bare feet.

  Elizabeth begins stuffing the capon they are having for dinner. Chani, Chana, Anna, Annette, she thinks. All the permutations of that name. All the different ways she imagined h
er child would grow up. Weren’t they all just variations on the thoughts she had about herself? Of course Chani has her own opinions. They all do, all her daughters. But Chani is so outspoken. That concerns her. Chani’s questions in themselves are natural. Bright children don’t accept ideas without asking for reasons. The explanations should hold them to belief, not blind obedience. But among the Kirshners questions like Chani’s are a private thing. They aren’t accepted publicly. There are bounds on discussions and arguments, and talk in public places. There are books that people simply do not read, and subjects that they avoid altogether. Chani is getting older. She needs to be more careful about what she says.

  ALL the summer people are preparing for Shabbes. Peaches and nectarines cover the table in Eva and Maja’s big old-fashioned kitchen. Quilted appliance covers lie in a heap and all the appliances are whirring—the thirty-cup coffee urn, the white KitchenAid mixer on the counter. Andras sits and tells his sisters about Nina’s home improvements. This summer she is having an alarm system installed. She is redoing the bathroom downstairs. For reasons Andras cannot understand, she is getting estimates on finishing the basement.

  “She keeps busy with that house,” says Eva from the sink.

  “Well, she’s busy with a lot of projects,” Andras says. He wants to be fair. “She’s been working very hard with HIAS.”

  “That’s a wonderful thing,” Maja says. “The Soviet Jews.”

  “She’s very good at it, coordinating them,” says Eva, and she laughs so heartily that tears come to her eyes. You wouldn’t know from her laugh that she has been ill. At Andras and Maja’s urging she is finally going down to the city for some tests.

  “Well, it’s true,” Maja says, “she finds them schools, apartments. It’s hard work.”

  “And she is always scandalized by one thing or another,” says Eva, wiping her eyes.

  This is what Andras’s sisters laugh at. The edge to Nina’s character, the catch to her generosity, the sharp words motivated by motherly concern, the problem that the children might be spoiled or assimilated. The worry that the children should be practicing their music, and that the refugees—some of them take advantage! One family from the Soviet Union was practically given an apartment, a luxury apartment. And then it turned out they weren’t Jewish at all! Russian Orthodox on both sides!

  Nina spent most of the winter organizing the family’s annual trip to Argentina. Andras didn’t come with them this time—he had work at the warehouse. And so over the Christmas holidays Nina took the children to visit their grandparents. She and the children left for three weeks, and they returned with the sun in their faces and their hair. Then, of course, Nina had to get Renée and Alex back on schedule, back to school.

  They are watching him, his sisters. They serve Andras ice coffee at the cluttered table, their husbands’ newspapers neatly folded to the side. It’s warm in the kitchen. The oven is on, and Eva and Maja are baking rugelach, rolling out the dough, cutting it into crescents with a knife, then spooning in the filling and rolling up the cookies.

  “This is very difficult dough,” says Maja, “very difficult to work with.”

  “I think only the two of you can really make rugelach,” says Andras.

  “And Cecil’s mother,” Eva amends. “Esther Birnbaum, of blessed memory. Don’t sit like that, Andras, with your hand over your mouth. It makes you look old.”

  “I am old,” Andras says. “I’m fifty-eight years old.”

  His sisters look at each other in mock horror. “No,” says Maja, “we can’t allow that. What would that make us?”

  “You’ve been spending too much time on the business,” Eva says. “You don’t take time to enjoy. You should be interested in other things.”

  Maja nods vigorously as she cuts the crescents from the thin rugelach dough. “Wait, wait, don’t rush,” she warns Eva, who is ready to spoon the filling in. The dough is sticky, and it makes Maja nervous.

  Eva sits back with her bowl and loaded spoon. “You know that Philip’s cousin died at only fifty-three!” she tells Andras. “He overworked. He was thinking about the shop even on vacations. He only turned on the radio to hear the news. No music. He never went to see the movies. You should go see what’s playing at the Orpheum.” Eva brandishes her spoon at Andras—the rugelach filling of raspberry jam mixed with crushed walnuts. “This you have to taste. Taste,” she orders. Her eyes are full of light.

  AT THE Kendall Falls Library Renée is getting ready to go home. Her mother hadn’t wanted her to work a second summer at the library. She’d wanted her to try the Lamkin camp again, but Renée refused to consider that, and her father said she could keep working for Mrs. Schermerhorn.

  “Renée,” Mrs. Schermerhorn says now, “did you finish reshelving on the adult side?”

  “Yes,” says Renée.

  “All right, you may go.”

  Renée runs out to where Stephanie is waiting.

  “Let’s go to Coon Lake,” says Stephanie.

  “I can’t. I have to get home,” says Renée.

  “Be late,” says Stephanie.

  Renée looks at her watch. “My father is probably home already.”

  “Let’s go fast,” says Stephanie, and she hops on her bike and takes off down the street.

  Renée pedals after Stephanie up Mohican Road, past Mohican Lake, and all the way to the smaller Coon Lake. Huffing, she and Stephanie walk their bikes along the overgrown trail to the water’s edge.

  They take off their shoes and wiggle their toes in the soft, wet sand. They watch the tiny flicks of fish.

  “Maybe I’ll be an ichthyologist,” Stephanie tells Renée. Renée says nothing.

  Stephanie asks her, “How come you never say what you want to be?”

  “Because I don’t know yet,” says Renée.

  “You don’t have ambition,” says Stephanie.

  “I don’t know what I want to be ambitious about” Renée protests.

  “Well,” says Stephanie, “you’d better be careful or you’ll end up like all those other women in Rabbitville.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Housewives, of course. You’ve got to open your eyes, Renée. We’ve got to do some consciousness raising here.”

  Renée opens her eyes and looks at her friend. She can never tell whether or not Stephanie is joking.

  “You can’t just spend your life taking the path of least resistance,” says Stephanie. “You’ve got to get out there and do something. And if you don’t know what you want to do, you’ve got to figure something out.”

  “Okay,” says Renée.

  “You’re hopeless!” Stephanie throws herself down on the sand.

  Renée is hurt. “I have to go home.”

  “You’re going to spend your whole life doing what people tell you to,” Stephanie says. “It’s like you’re cursed. You’re like a goose or something. Whoever you’re with is going to imprint you. Whoever you see first, you’ll follow wherever he goes. Your father, your boyfriend, your husband—”

  “Boyfriend! Husband!”

  “I’m talking about the future. Because this is what’s going to happen. It’s your trajectory,” Stephanie says darkly.

  “You’re the one who’s always telling me what to do!” says Renée.

  “I’m deprogramming you.”

  “No,” says Renée. “You’re just bossy.”

  Stephanie gets up and shakes the sand off of her. She grins. “Oh, yeah, well, that’s true,” she says. “I am.”

  Renée pedals home, and the wind tangles up her thick hair. She is half offended by and half in love with Stephanie’s talk about the future. Offended that Stephanie thinks she’s such a follower, bound to do what other people say. Fascinated, and somehow flattered, to hear Stephanie say that she has a trajectory.

  2

  THEY are forcing the Rav to stay inside. They will not leave him unattended, even for a moment. He is angry, furious at Isaiah and Rachel, but too weak to get up
by himself. He has only his voice left to make his displeasure known. He calls to them loudly like a wounded bird, and chastises them from his bed or chair. The Rav is almost immobile. For two months he has been sleeping in a rented hospital bed. Two male nurses carry him up and down the stairs. Rachel tried to convince him to stay in the city during the summer, but he rejected the idea so violently that she did not dare to press the issue further. The Rav insisted on coming to Kaaterskill as he always has. Now, in July, the house is congested with the minyan every morning, doctors coming in and out, the nurses coming and going on their shifts, lifting and carrying him as if he were a bale of hay. And, of course, Isaiah and Rachel, always present, always strained. It exhausts him, all of it—not merely the medication and its side effects, the nausea, the hallucinations—but the tedium and banality of his days, the flow of people, the effort to eat, to sit and stay awake, the grinding, slow mechanics of his life.

  Late now, on Friday afternoon, they have moved the Rav downstairs for the evening service. The table is set, the food prepared. Today, at last, Jeremy is to come up for the weekend. He has just returned from his two weeks abroad. When Jeremy left for Italy, the Rav was stronger. He was in better spirits. But in the brief time Jeremy has been gone, the Rav’s medication has become less effective. Even high doses do not loosen his legs and arms or help him to swallow.

  The Rav has been waiting for Jeremy. For days he has spoken about the coming visit to Isaiah and Rachel, told them how impatient he is to see his older son and talk to him. But why is Jeremy late? The long afternoon is ending, and Rachel must light the candles. She is putting away books and shuffling papers in her fussy way, moving piles from one place to another. Did Jeremy’s car break down on the road? The men have already begun arriving for the Kabbalat Shabbat service. They fill the living room and crowd the Rav in his chair. He must sit, but they stand for him, while Isaiah paces nervously around the perimeter of the room, glancing at his watch.

  Why is he late? Was there an accident? The sun is still setting in pinks and golds and flaming orange, but the colors make no difference. The time of sunset determined for this latitude is seven fifty-nine. To be late would be unconscionable. Isaiah is davening with his mouth set. The Rav knows what Isaiah fears—that Jeremy will come in after Shabbes with all these people in the room watching. The Rav himself cares nothing about that. He cares about the time. The start of Shabbes is not a thing to be put off. Not a thing to be delayed. The moment comes, and either one is ready or one is not, either one observes the time or one does not. The moment comes once, and it is gone. Candle lighting is not delayed because someone is late. Shabbes is not an event like the theater or the train, for which it is simply rude or impractical to be late. There will be another show, or another train. There will be other times to meet one’s friends, but for candle lighting there is no other occasion. The time of candle lighting is a matter of readiness for God. And to be unready, to put candle lighting off, to delay, or simply to let other concerns govern the clock—that is an offense, that is truly a desecration. And as he sits downstairs in his straight-backed chair, the Rav must imagine there was something on the road, some emergency, a matter of life and death, because there is no other excuse.