Red Hook Road

by Ayelet Waldman

  The only thing little Becca had loved as much as the sea was music, especially hearing her grandfather play. They would sit together in the living room, the child on the little willow rocking chair that had belonged to generations of tiny Godwins and Hewinses, the old man seated on the piano bench. She would stare at him, rapt, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging partly open, whether he was playing a Bach fugue or a series of scales. Becca had been entranced by Mr. Kimmelbrod and his music, just as Samantha had been entranced by him tonight.

  Iris stared at her feet, long and white in the moonlight, like pale salmon swimming in place against a seaward-flowing tide.

  “Iris,” Daniel called. “Are you coming in?” She winced at the loud insistence of his voice. At night sound traveled well over the water, a fact that, as a teenager, Becca had never seemed to realize. When she was late for curfew, Becca used to have John bring her home in one of the boats from the yacht club, figuring that her parents would be listening for the sound of a car on the road. Iris, from her bedroom overlooking the backyard and the sea, would hear the slap of the oars as the boat approached the dock. She would hear the kids’ hushed voices. She would even hear an occasional moan that she did her best not to interpret. She would listen to the slow scrape of the screen door against the frame, and she would know that Becca had caught it before it could make its trademark gunshot slam.

  “Iris!” Daniel called again.

  Iris wished she could sleep out here, on the water. She didn’t think she could bear another night on her side of their wide mattress, another night when she never once touched Daniel’s body because she could not bring herself to reach across the divide.

  “Iris!”

  “I’m coming,” she said softly, wondering if her voice would carry like his did, like Becca’s had. She padded up the dock in bare feet, then stopped to slip on her tennis shoes before picking her way across the rocky beach. She’d been wearing the same pair of torn Keds for more than a decade. Becca had hated them, had said they looked like an old woman’s shoes, with lumps on the side from the corns on her pinkie toes.

  She took the long way back to the house, going around to the opening in the wall at the far end of the property instead of using the one near the dock. If she hadn’t made the detour she would never have seen the couple sitting on the steps of the Grange Hall’s side door. If there hadn’t been a moon or if she and Daniel hadn’t pulled down the dying white pine between their yard and the Grange Hall’s, she wouldn’t have noticed the two bodies pressed against the door, less two distinct forms than one dark mass. They didn’t see her; she was at least thirty yards away and they were busy with each other. As she watched, one of the forms partly detached itself from the other. At that moment, the cloud that had been obscuring the moon shifted and a ray of clean white moonlight shone on the couple, placed perfectly to illuminate the pale globe of the girl’s bare breast. Matt bent his head and the breast disappeared. Iris heard Ruthie moan softly, her voice carrying just like Becca’s had, all those years ago.

  THE THIRD SUMMER

  I

  Saul Copaken always claimed that no heavyweight, not Joe Frazier, not George Foreman, not even Ali, could hold a candle to Archie Moore, who fought for twenty-seven years and knocked out his last opponent at the age of fifty. While Daniel had always loved Moore, he had never truly appreciated the majesty of the accomplishment that had so impressed his father until this moment, when he found himself trying to convince the young manager of the Maine Event to let into the ring a fifty-five-year-old man with an amateur’s license that had expired before the kid was born.

  Daniel had started training the morning after they buried Becca. He found that the harder he pushed his body, the easier it was to empty his mind of grief. At first he had limited himself to running and jumping rope—a modified version of his college boxing coach Tommy Rawson’s roadwork regime—and for almost two years that had been enough. This spring, however, he found himself requiring ever more prolonged and more rigorous exertion to achieve that desired hollow space in his head. One Saturday afternoon in early May, still crackling with energy after a ten-mile run through Central Park, he decided to clear out his and Iris’s storage locker in the basement of their building on Riverside Drive. Each tenant was entitled to an eight-by-six-foot cage, and theirs was packed full of boxes and odds and ends of furniture. He could not bring himself to open any of the boxes for fear of finding something like Becca’s elementary school report cards, or one of the sweaters his mother had knit for her when she was a baby, and in the end he did little more than shift the contents of the cage from one side to the other. The job was taxing, but still, he didn’t work up the sweat he had been hoping for.

  In the back of the cage he came upon a box salvaged from the attic of his parents’ house after his father’s death. This box posed little risk of upending his heart, and he opened it. On top, in a cracked wooden frame with a loose nail poking through the paper backing, lay a faded black-and-white photograph of Daniel in boxing trunks and gloves, his lean body slick with sweat. He found he could remember neither the match nor the moment the photograph was taken, but he was sure he had won. You could tell by his grin. In the dim, dank storage locker, Daniel crouched down onto his heels, holding the photograph in his hands. He remembered with heartbreaking clarity what it was like to be so young and powerful. So unencumbered, so free. He remembered in his hands and shoulders how good it felt to fight, how a few minutes in the ring could wipe out a day’s worth of frustration, of self-doubt, of everything beyond the instantaneous question of where the next punch would land.

  This summer, as soon as they arrived in Red Hook, Daniel had driven up to Newmarket. On that first morning, as he pushed opened the heavy steel door of the Maine Event and walked into the stinking fug of sweat, foot, mildew, leather, and chalk, he felt like he was shedding years and responsibilities and, especially, any pain that could not be treated with a handful of aspirin and an ice pack.

  He had been training hard since that first day. Thirty minutes jumping rope, and then another thirty working the heavy bag and the speed bag, shadow boxing in front of the mirror. Then an hour stretching out and soaking in the overchlorinated hot tub. It was a long workout, longer than anyone else’s at the gym, even though the other guys were much younger. Every once in a while a couple of guys would take a desultory turn in the ring, but mostly they appeared to spend their time wrapping and unwrapping their hands, and talking shit about their amateur rankings. Sometimes one or another of them would glance Daniel’s way, say something to his buddies in an undertone that broke them up, as though there were something funny or even pathetic about the sight of an old man working out so hard. Daniel tried not to give them the satisfaction of hearing him suck wind, but every so often he had to bend down, rest his elbows on his knees, and wait for his heart rate to slow so that he didn’t feel like it was going to burst out of his chest and go flapping around the room.

  He’d told no one about his workouts, especially not Iris. She’d hated his boxing, had insisted that he quit almost as soon as they met. If she knew where he was, she’d throw a fit. Over the past few weeks he’d found himself concocting ever more Baroque explanations for his three-hour daily absences from home.

  At first the exertion and the familiar colors, furnishings, and sounds of the gym—the smells of armpit and feet, the give of the mats beneath his shoes, the weight of the gloves in his hand, the ticking rattle of the speed ball—had been enough. But now, he wanted to fight. When Daniel was in his prime, none of the young fatheads who hung out at the Maine Event would have lasted more than three rounds with him. He knew he could take a couple of them even now, if the little bastard who managed the place would just let him spar.

  “How old are you?” the kid asked, smirking. This was the same kid Daniel remembered from two years ago, turtle-shaped, his bullet head jutted out almost horizontally from the Gargantuan hump that was his back and shoulders.

  “Four years older
than Larry Holmes. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “How many fights have you had?”

  “Four,” the kid said, with some embarrassment.

  “By the time I was twenty-two, I’d beaten half the middleweights on the New England Golden Gloves circuit,” Daniel said, in an uncharacteristic show of braggadocio.

  A gravelly voice from behind him rasped, “And the other half?”

  Daniel turned in the direction of the voice and found himself staring down at the freckled bald pate of an elderly giant in an electric wheelchair. Daniel had seen him around the gym before—he clearly owned the place. Daniel took a step back in order to look more closely into the man’s face. He had the mashed nose of a fighter, and one corner of his upper lip was bisected by the twisted thread of a scar. The man’s large gnarled hands with their lumpy knuckles rested uselessly on the arms of the wheelchair. The tips of his fingers were bent at sharp right angles, as though they’d been broken and poorly reset.

  “The other half kicked my ass,” Daniel said.

  The man in the wheelchair extended his crippled hand to Daniel. “Jimmy Tunney,” he said.

  “Any relation to Gene?”

  “My father’s cousin.”

  Daniel nodded and took the man’s hand. “Daniel Copaken.” Tunney’s palm was soft and powdery, a surprising contrast to his knotted and calloused fingers.

  “How long since your last fight?”

  “A while,” Daniel said. As he had worked his body back into fighting shape, he had begun to feel that the young man who had danced in the ring, weighed down by nothing but two ten-ounce gloves, was his finest, truest self. His other self—the man who went every day to a job he hated, who held up his end of a marriage that had grown difficult and disconnected, who had lost one child and feared the growing distance between him and the other—that Daniel Copaken felt weighed down by time and failure.

  “Back in the late sixties?” Tunney said.

  “Thereabouts.”

  “You ever fight down Lowell way? We’re talking late ’67, ’68?”

  “Sure.”

  “Yeah, I saw you once. I had a boxer on the same card, Damone Pettiford. It was his last amateur bout. And the last decent fight he had.”

  Daniel remembered the card and the fighter. He could remember every single one of his fights: every punch, every count, every ring of the bell. Over the past weeks, his memories of those long-ago bouts had gradually returned to him, as though his sweat and effort were bringing them to the surface of his mind.

  “Pettiford?” Daniel said. “Kind of a showboat. Threw a wicked seven.”

  Tunney laughed. “That’s the one. You fought some kid from the islands. Can’t remember his name.”

  Daniel winced at the memory. “Angel Franqui.” He pictured Franqui in his mind. A small man, with muscles bunched like tennis balls under his skin and a birthmark the size and color of a plum across his solar plexus. Daniel remembered taking aim at that birthmark, trying to use it as a target. He had not, he remembered bitterly now, ever managed to connect.

  “That’s right. Franqui. You lost.”

  “Only on points,” Daniel said, his cheeks reddening beneath the whiskers he had not bothered to shave this morning. One good power punch would have brought pitty-patting Angel Franqui down for the count, but Daniel had had an off night.

  “You took a lot of hits.”

  “Could always take a punch. Still can.”

  “We’ll see,” Tunney said. “What do you walk around at, ’bout 190?”

  “Closer to 185.”

  “That’s a far cry from 165. Hey, Wiley,” Tunney called. “Come on over here.”

  A thick-legged man with a graying scraggly ponytail stilled the speed ball he’d been hammering and ambled over to them. Despite having worked out in the same gym since Daniel first walked through the door, this was the first time they’d been part of the same conversation. “Yeah, Jimmy?”

  “You want to take a round or two in the ring with this guy?”

  “With you?” Wiley said to Daniel.

  “Sure.”

  “What are you, like, fifty?”

  “I used to be.”

  “Man, I been the oldest dude in this dump—except for Jimmy—for a long time. But shit, compared to you I’m a fucking ankle biter.”

  “Archie Moore won his last fight by a knockout, in three, when he was fifty years old,” Daniel said.

  “Ali kicked Archie Moore’s ass,” the kid behind the desk said.

  “Cassius Clay kicked Archie Moore’s ass,” Daniel said. “And this guy doesn’t look like any Cassius Clay to me.”

  Tunney laughed. “Okay, we get it. You’ve got, what, fifteen, twenty pounds on Wiley? And he’s got fifteen, twenty years on you. I figure that makes it a fair enough fight.”

  It took only a few minutes for the men to get suited up. Daniel bounced on his toes and shoved the brand new, unmolded mouth guard around with his tongue, trying to keep it from cutting up his gums. The cracked leather of the old headgear rubbed his skin and the borrowed sparring gloves were soggy and stank. He tried not to think of the wide circle of their acquaintance among the damp palms of greater Newmarket. But even without his own equipment, he felt good. The blood rushed to the surface of his skin, waking every cell to the impending relief of battle. He was going to kick Wiley’s ass.

  Wiley, his ponytail poking out of the back of his headgear, climbed into the ring and did a few ostentatious squat stretches. “All right, old man,” he said, turning from the ropes. “I’m gonna lay you out real gentle.”

  “Just a round or two,” Tunney said. “See what happens.” He flicked a mangled hand at the kid who worked the front desk. “Jason, you ref. And keep your goddamn eyes open. We don’t want either of these old farts getting hurt.”

  Jason hopped into the ring and motioned the two fighters to the center. They banged their gloves together. Daniel tried to stare into Wiley’s eyes, but the man wouldn’t look at him. Normally boxers locked eyes at the beginning of every round, dropping their gaze only when the bell rang them into their corners. That kind of singular, steady eye contact, occurring for entire minutes at a time, never happened anywhere outside of a boxing ring. Not even in bed with a woman did a man look so intently, with such unflinching focus. But Wiley’s eyes traveled around the ring, up and down, over at Tunney, anywhere but at Daniel. It was disconcerting, Daniel thought, to fight a man who wouldn’t look you in the eye.

  Tunney rang the ringside bell and Wiley charged forward, swinging a wild, looping hook. Daniel sidestepped and caught Wiley with a quick one-two. The familiar give of flesh beneath his fist filled Daniel with a flush of emotion so warm, so satisfying, that he could call it nothing other than joy. This was what he had been waiting for. He spun around on his left foot and landed a solid straight right. He felt the blow from his fist all the way up to his shoulder. The most satisfying sensation in the world. A blow perfectly landed. An opponent staggered beneath its force. The world narrowed down to only this box.

  Wiley couldn’t put together a combination; he seemed able to throw only one punch at a time, and those so slowly that each fist seemed to float by itself through the air. But his blows were hard enough that when they did land they hurt, and Daniel liked it. He had been waiting for this pain, simple pain, pain of the body, a tingling electric ache on the top layer of tissue followed by a sharp stab deep inside. During a fight, with his adrenaline pumping, it was not even pain, but an awareness of the promise of pain. During a fight it was possible to forget that the next morning when he woke—head banging, a mouse puffed up under his eye, oozing red patches spread out across his face and body—the promise would be redeemed.

  Power was all Wiley had. Daniel danced nimbly out of his path, dodging most of his punches. With every swing Wiley left himself wide open for Daniel to throw to the body. Wiley’s right arm kept floating away, allowing Daniel to land jab after jab on his forehead and nose. D
aniel’s mind cleared, emptied of anything other than this perfect moment, the sound of his fist against Wiley’s body. A crashing that sounded less like leather on flesh than metal on metal, harsh and grinding.

  Daniel hungered for that knockout blow. It would be so easy—all he needed to do was pack the weight of his entire body onto the few square inches at the front of his fist. Then all other sensation would disappear, and he would feel only the sweet, terrible give of skin and bone under his hands. One punch and then he’d just stand back and admire his work as his opponent crumpled. Daniel ached to throw that punch. He wanted that peace in the pain and the punch and the long slow folding of an opponent onto the canvas.

  Just as Daniel felt himself ready to let go, just as he gave himself permission to hit as hard as he was longing to, Jason separated the fighters. Daniel stepped back into his corner, blowing a few ragged breaths, trying to get hold of himself and his knockout rage.

  “You want to call it quits?” Tunney said.