Red Hook Road

by Ayelet Waldman

  Matt looked around at the tools John had left neatly in their places, at the stacks of hardwood, the cans of varnish. On a makeshift drawing table—just a wooden door propped on two sawhorses—there was a small stack of drawings and blueprints, held down by a well-thumbed copy of Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design. John’s years’ worth of WoodenBoat magazines filled a small, rough-hewn bookshelf. There was a layer of dust over everything, and when Matt moved the Skene to look at the drawings beneath it, it left behind a clean, square ghost. The topmost drawing was a photocopy of a detailed blueprint of the Alden that John had found in a volume of Alden plans and drawings. Beneath it were drawings he’d made himself, labeled in the precise, confident architect’s handwriting that Matt had always envied and admired. Matt’s own scribble was illegible even to himself.

  Matt gazed from the drawings to the boat and back again, wondering how much work there really was left to do. He flipped through Skene, tried to understand the full-page complicated renderings and schematics. None of it meant anything to him, but he was a quick study, and had been working all this time by his brother’s side. Surely there were simpler books than this one, ones that laid out the process of restoration in a way even he could understand. And there were the guys at the boatyard. John’s friends. They’d help him.

  Inspired, he decided to head on over to the Neptune and see if he could find someone who might be willing to talk to him about the project. But for some reason, when he got to town, he turned right onto Red Hook Road and drove to Jacob’s Cove. He slowed down as he drove up to the cove. He pulled off the road onto the broad shoulder. The tide was low, and he could pull the car out onto the rocky strip of beach, facing the water. He turned off the engine, stared out over the water, and let himself remember. WKIT had been playing “Little Wing” by Jimi Hendrix. One minute he was rocking out to the music, and then the next, framed in the windshield of his car was a Ford Explorer sailing through the air in awful slow motion toward the limousine ahead of him. As Hendrix’s weary, spacey, soulful voice sang in his head, Matt watched the Explorer drift down on top of the limousine, crumpling it like tinfoil. The noise of the accident still echoed in his brain: an impossibly loud boom, followed by the grinding screech of metal on metal. The limo spun around and careened across the beach, its back end plowing into the bay, sending up arcs of water that shimmered in the orange-red light.

  Now hearing the song in his head, things played out differently. “Riding with the wind”: the Explorer climbs up the shoulder. “When I’m sad, she comes to me”: the limo swerves away from the truck. “With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free”: the Explorer plows into the trunk of a white pine, splintering the wood but grinding to a halt. “It’s all right she says it’s all right”: the limo driver slams on his brakes and stops short just before hitting the water. “Take anything you want from me, anything”: the passenger door opens and John steps out. “Anything”: he lifts his hand and waves to Matt, his back to the sun, his body lit from behind, his face in shadow, but his broad grin still, somehow, visible. “Anything. Anything.” Safe and sound.

  Matt left the cove and, instead of turning around and heading back into town, drove the rest of the way to East Red Hook. He pulled off the road again, at the lookout next to the little bridge over the reversing falls on the outskirts of the village. At low tide the streambed was a bog of brackish mud, puddles teeming with minnows, and boulders drying white in the sun. At high tide the flow of the stream reversed, the sea rushed in, and the water soon grew deep enough to jump into. From the moment the bridge was built by the WPA in 1935, village kids had entertained themselves at high tide by standing on its rail, waiting until a likely car approached, and then pinwheeling their arms in mock panic and flinging themselves into the water below. Reliably, at least a few times every summer a car full of panicked tourists would screech to a halt.

  Whenever he drove this way Matt always tried to watch for the exact moment of the tide’s reversal. Would the water foam and swirl, like a huge Jacuzzi tub? Would it slow to a stop and then gradually creep out to sea, like a locomotive grinding into reverse? Would it arc around, like a sailboat coming about to catch the wind? He had never in his life managed to appear at the right time, however; had never been able to catch the exact moment when everything changed.

  From the lookout Matt could see the back of the Copakens’ house and of the Grange Hall. The Copakens’ house shone, its shutters liquid black against the bright white clapboard. Most people Matt knew didn’t even bother to paint the rear of their houses. The backsides were often the same dull, peeling red of their barns, or sometimes just bare, weathered planking. Every summer the Copakens’ house looked as if it had just received a fresh coat of shiny paint.

  A lush, verdant lawn led from the house down to the water and the long white dock, where two dinghies were tied up. The Copakens’ beat-up 150 Montauk was moored a few dozen yards out, next to the little sailboat that had belonged, John had once told him, to Becca’s grandmother. Suddenly, Matt saw a spiraling white flash take off from the end of the dock. Around and around it spun, higher and higher into the sky, until, with a crack, it became a starburst of light and, fizzling quickly, plummeted to the water. He got out of the car.

  It took a little while for the girl standing on the end of the dock in the gloaming to notice him. When she did, she lifted her arm and waved. Matt hesitated only for a moment before taking off at a loping jog across the bridge and down the rocky slope to the beach. He ran up the beach toward her, stumbling once over a piece of dark-gray driftwood.

  “It’s you,” Ruthie said, when, out of breath, he pounded out onto the dock. She had changed her clothes. Her long, bare thighs disappeared beneath the hem of her navy hooded sweatshirt, and he couldn’t tell if she was wearing shorts underneath or just a bathing suit. Or less. The collar of the sweatshirt was torn, and above the gaping neckline he could see her bony clavicle beneath her pale skin. She was barefoot, with long, skinny toes and delicate, narrow feet. Heaped next to her was a small cardboard Sam Adams case filled with fireworks.

  Once or twice when they were growing up, John and Becca had joked about fixing him up with her sister, but it was only teasing, and Matt always understood that to Ruthie, two years older, he was just a kid. Until now he had never really considered her a peer, a woman, anything but Becca’s sister.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Pretty sweet, huh?” Ruthie said, nudging the box of fireworks with her toe. Her toenails were unpainted, and her foot looked soft, delicate.

  “Yup,” he said.

  “Only I don’t think it’s really dark enough yet.”

  “No, not quite.”

  “I found these in the barn,” she said. “They’re left over from …” Her voice trailed away. He saw now that her nose and the rims of her eyes were pink and faintly swollen.

  On the Fourth of July—the night before the wedding—they had held the rehearsal dinner in the Copakens’ backyard, a more festive version of the yearly Fourth of July picnic that was the family’s tradition. John had been in regular attendance at the yearly picnic, but this was the first time Matt and the rest of his family had been invited. The Tetherlys came—all but Frank, to everyone’s relief. The members of the bridal party were there, as well as a number of relatives of the Copakens. There were a dozen or so out-of-town guests and a good many of Iris’s and Daniel’s friends. Iris served boiled lobster, big bowls of coleslaw and potato salad, and a pot of homemade bean-hole beans baked from a recipe that supposedly came down to her from her grandmother. Iris and Becca had made half a dozen pies, and Matt’s mom had contributed John’s favorite dessert, a Nilla wafer banana pudding. And at the end of the evening John had given them a fireworks show.

  That dinner was the last meal Matt ever shared with his brother. John had been too hungover and nervous to eat much of anything on his wedding day. While Matt’s memories of the wedding itself were now completely overshadowed by the tragedy, he could recall
with perfect accuracy how happy they had all been at the rehearsal dinner, making toasts, pouring wine, talking about how full they all were before ladling themselves another helping of beans.

  “That was a nice party,” Matt said. “I mean, John and Becca seemed so happy and all.”

  At the sound of their names, Ruthie twitched. For the first couple of weeks Matt had felt the same way. Every mention of the names of the dead seemed to light a small hot fire inside him. Then one day a few weeks back he woke up and found that, suddenly, the opposite was true: it was the minutes, the hours, the entire days that went by without someone mentioning John that hurt Matt the most. He had tried to talk about John to his mother, but that went nowhere. So he had started hanging out with John’s friends. Every evening he would head over to the Neptune, and stake out a stool in the middle of the bar. As people trickled in they would stop and pass a few minutes with him. Some offered no more than their condolences, some tried to buy him a beer. And that was okay. But what Matt was waiting for were the stories. About the birch bark canoe with swept-up gunwales and a squared bow that John and a friend had built for a middle school project on the Passamaquoddy tribe. About how one hunting season, when another buddy was laid up with a broken leg, John had filled his freezer with venison steaks, because he knew the guy relied on his yearly buck to feed his family. They’d retell John’s jokes—Matt must have heard the one about the robber in the sperm bank a dozen times. They’d remind one another about practical jokes John had played on them. The guys, as sad as they were, as much as they missed their friend, always ended up laughing, especially once they’d had a few. And if Matt rarely laughed out loud with them, as long as he was sitting on that barstool he felt okay. He felt like he was close to his brother. He was dreading the end of the summer, dreading the prospect of going back to college and being surrounded by people who had never known John, who had never laughed at his jokes or been the beneficiaries of his unsolicited largesse, who didn’t know or care that he was dead.

  “I guess we bought too many fireworks,” Matt said now.

  The weekend before the wedding Matt and John had driven over to New Hampshire. For some crazy reason, John had decided that they’d do the whole drive on back roads, and they’d ended up switchbacking their way through the miles. Half the time it seemed like they were heading east to go west or north to go south.

  “I told him to ease up a little, but John just couldn’t resist those Catherine wheels and mortar shells.”

  “It was like, what, a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of fireworks?” Ruthie said.

  “At least. This stoner kid running the stand sold us a bunch of stuff he shouldn’t have. Stuff you’re supposed to be licensed for. Sky rockets. Mortar shells. And that awesome Angel Cake stuffed full of Roman candles and aerial shells. That was the one that kind of fanned out when it went off.”

  “That one was awesome,” Ruthie said.

  John and Matt had set off the fireworks from the end of the Copakens’ dock, aiming them out to sea. There had been one scary moment when a Golden Dragon went astray, spiraling back in the direction of the harbor, but it had exploded high enough in the sky to keep from setting anything alight on its way down.

  Now, as they stood on the dock, it was hard for Matt not to remember that night: John kissing Becca on the back of the neck, then pushing her behind him, telling her to watch out or she’d get her fingers blown off; Becca hovering behind John, her long sun-lightened hair tied up in a swinging ponytail. Matt remembered how when the huge Angel Cake was lit, John had grabbed Becca, swung her around, and wrapped his arms around her from behind. Matt remembered Becca leaning against his brother’s chest and smiling at the lights exploding in the dark night sky.

  “I’m going to wait until it gets dark for the rest of them,” Ruthie said now.

  “I’ll do them for you. You could blow your fingers off,” he said. To cover his sudden discomfort at unconsciously echoing his brother, he said, “I saw your grandfather at the Red Hook post office the other day.”

  “You did?”

  “I guess he was maybe with some students from Usherman Center? They had violin cases.”

  “Yeah, probably students.”

  “I never heard Becca play,” Matt said, anticipating Ruthie’s small tremble at Becca’s name.

  “She sold her violin a couple of years ago.”

  “Yeah, to help pay for the Alden, John’s boat.”

  “That’s right. God, that made my mom so mad.”

  John had told him that, too. Iris was a tough nut, John used to say, but once you cracked her, she was sweet inside.

  Ruthie glanced at him, her mouth registering the barest hint of what looked like a smile. He smiled back and she caught her lower lip between her small white teeth and looked away. He caught himself taking the opportunity of her averted gaze to let his own eyes travel up the length of her body, stopping where her legs disappeared from view. He flushed.

  “Do you think it’s dark enough yet?” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  After a long, quiet moment during which Matt tried to keep himself from looking anywhere but at her face, Ruthie pointed to a sloop tacking awkwardly back and forth across the inlet. “That’s Jeremy Weiss.”

  Matt dragged his eyes unwillingly away from her and out over the water. He snorted once, derisively. “Dude can’t sail for shit.”

  Ruthie said, “I guess he’s about as bad as I am.”

  “Is that the Sparkman & Stephens? The one John restored?”

  “I guess so. I don’t really know.”

  “The guys down the yard knew the kid was going to fuck up that boat. And wouldn’t you know it, three weeks after they delivered her, she was right back at the yard. Dumb ass got a net fouled in the propeller. John was ready to kill him.”

  “Well, I guess that could happen to anyone,” Ruthie said.

  “Guy’s a dumb ass.” Matt had no idea why he was making such a big deal out of this. He didn’t care about Jeremy Weiss or his boat.

  “He’s all right,” Ruthie said.

  The truth was Matt didn’t know Jeremy Weiss even to say hello to. Ruthie clearly did, though. For no reason at all he wondered if Jeremy Weiss wasn’t Ruthie’s boyfriend. If he was, then why wasn’t he out here with her? Why’d he leave her to cry over John and Becca’s fireworks all by herself?

  Ruthie said, “I don’t really know him too well. I mean, for all I know he is a dumb ass.”

  A slight breeze brought with it the briny smell of the sea. Matt inhaled deeply. He listened to the sound of the waves splashing gently against the beach. The tide was coming in.

  “Is it dark enough yet?” she said.

  “Soon,” Matt said.

  Ruthie said, “When are you going back to school?”

  “Next week,” he said. “What about you?”

  “Tomorrow. I have to get to work on my thesis before classes start and everything gets crazy.”

  “You’re a senior?” Matt said.

  “Yes. You’re a sophomore, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you like Amherst?” she asked.

  “It’s all right.”

  “You’re the first person in your family to go to college, aren’t you?”

  “John went to college,” Matt said. “Or as good as. He did the design course at the Landing School. It’s a really hard program to get into.”

  “Oh, I know,” Ruthie said. “Just, you know. A four-year college. Someone said you were the first.”

  That had to have been John. John had told anyone who would listen when Matt had gotten his scholarship. But Ruthie couldn’t seem to bring herself to say John’s name.

  Matt shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Sure it is. Amherst’s a great school.”

  Everyone reacted that way when they learned that Matt went to Amherst. Surprised and then overly impressed, as if it were impossible to imagine a kid like him getting into a school like tha
t. As if being from Red Hook necessarily meant you couldn’t hack it at a college like that, couldn’t be an intellectual. But it wasn’t about intelligence, it was about cash. At least half of his high school graduating class had gone to college, although most were at the University of Maine. The only reason he was going to Amherst was because they’d offered him a scholarship. Ruthie hadn’t meant anything by it, he knew. She was sweet. She wasn’t a snob like most of the summer visitors; after all, she was Becca’s sister.

  “Yeah, Amherst’s all right,” he said. “How’s Harvard?”

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  Matt shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. He tried to think of something to say to fill the expanding quiet between them, but before he could come up with anything she said, “Do you think it’s dark enough yet?”