Red Hook Road

by Ayelet Waldman

  He traced the pearwood purfling of his violin with a trembling finger. He was never as conscious of the ruin of his body as when he held his eternal violin. He looked at his gnarled, shaking hands, the spiky black hairs sprouting from his knuckles, the cracked, dry, yellow nails, his loose and papery arm, flakes of skin drifting like dandruff from his elbows. He was a wrecked vessel, a walking carcass, but the Guarneri was whole and unchanging; it mocked and measured his decay. Its timelessness was not in the nature of something inorganic, a gem or a statue; the Dembovski was not an inanimate object. It breathed, it had a personality of its own. He was devoted to his violin as to a lover—a moody, complicated lover who demanded that you touch her in a certain way. He had fallen in love with the Dembovski in the Bond Street showroom of the venerated W. E. Hill & Sons violin dealers on a wet and freezing November afternoon in 1958, and had immediately contacted the generous consortium of music lovers who had offered to buy him a worthy instrument.

  His Dembovski was the equal, Mr. Kimmelbrod believed, of Menuhin’s Lord Wilton and Heifetz’s David. Better than any Stradivarius. For Mr. Kimmelbrod, a Strad, no matter how bright or pure in tone, could not compare to the dark, throaty melancholy of the finest Guarneri del Gesù. Indeed, the Dembovski, Mr. Kimmelbrod sometimes worried, was a better violin than he deserved. He was by any estimation a renowned virtuoso who had had an enviable concert career. He had soloed with the finest orchestras in the world, including the London, New York, and Israel Philharmonics and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His 1947 recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sergei Koussevitzky was still considered the finest contemporary interpretation of that most challenging of pieces. Before he and André Previn had their final, irrevocable falling out in 1971, he had toured with the London Symphony Orchestra throughout Europe and Asia, never to anything but warm reviews. But he had never achieved the level of international acclaim of some of his contemporaries: Menuhin, Heifetz, Zimbalist, Stern, or even David Oistrakh.

  It was often said about Mr. Kimmelbrod, by those who withheld the highest acclaim in their judgment of him, that he resisted his own talent, that he betrayed his musical self. Had he but permitted himself to embrace without reservation his gift for interpreting the violin works of the Romantic masters, there is no knowing—some said—to what heights he might have soared. Mr. Kimmelbrod’s concert career had lasted for decades, but if he was celebrated at all now, it was as a teacher of genius, at Juilliard and here at Usherman Center.

  “Mr. Kimmelbrod?” Samantha said. She was standing in the doorway dressed in a pretty party frock, visibly nervous. “Iris said it’s time for me to play.”

  Mr. Kimmelbrod lifted his eyes to the girl and smiled. She was so singular in her focus, so eager to exclude everything from her mind and heart but music. Even with so little experience she exhibited a kind of technical and musical courage he had rarely seen in his career as a teacher of the violin. His granddaughter had not had that courage. At her best Becca played cleanly, solidly. But when confronted with the most difficult pieces, she had sometimes faltered, cowed by the complexity of the music, despite knowing that she possessed the technical skill necessary to play it. Samantha, he felt, would never cower even before the trickiest and most demanding piece. He hoped he would be alive long enough to hear her tackle something like the Britten Violin Concerto, or like the Chaconne.

  Iris had asked Mr. Kimmelbrod to introduce Samantha to the guests, but he had declined. Although he was not opposed to the idea of Samantha exhibiting her skills to a small, familiar audience—especially an undiscerning one—neither did he want to endow the occasion with too much portent. As great as her promise was, they all needed to remember that she had been playing only a little more than a year. She would make mistakes today, she should make mistakes; only then could he be sure that she was reaching far enough. He did not want her to consider this a performance, but rather an exercise.

  “Friends!” Iris called, clapping her hands to attract their attention. “We have a lovely treat in store this evening. I’m sure that most of you will remember Samantha Phelps, from Becca and John’s wedding.” The crowd grew suddenly still. “Well,” Iris continued, “Samantha’s talents extend far beyond being a flower girl.” A few people laughed. “She’s also an accomplished violinist. Tonight she’ll be treating us to a little Bach. The first two movements of Sonata no. 1 in G Minor.”

  Samantha stepped forward. She was wearing a white sundress patterned with red cherries and had her hair pulled back with a shiny red plastic headband. Just as Iris began to lead the guests in a round of applause, Jane came around the corner of the house, bearing her Nilla wafer banana pudding before her like an armored shield. Samantha noticed her aunt immediately and grinned. Then, when her aunt did not return her smile, her face fell. She lowered her violin and waited, as if she thought it possible that Jane had come to call off the recital, to drag her back home to her Casio keyboard and her lonely bedroom and her dreams of a family of people who loved music and lived in music and serenaded each other nightly on the tro khmer.

  Jane placed the pudding on the picnic table with the other desserts.

  “Jane!” called Iris. “It’s so good to see you.”

  Jane smiled grimly. She had had no intention of coming to this party. As Iris had anticipated—it was no great feat of prognostication—Jane was furious with Iris for going behind her back to Connie, for intruding herself once more, and in a way and a place that Jane considered to be completely out of line; so furious that she felt there was no guarantee that she would be able to control herself in Iris’s presence. But Samantha had begged her to come to her “debut.” The old man was going to let Samantha use his million-dollar Italian violin, and Samantha had insisted on Jane coming to hear her play Bach on the ancient instrument. Jane had heard of Stradivarius, even though Mr. Kimmelbrod’s wasn’t one of those. And so in her desire to support her niece there was also a certain amount of curiosity to see with her own eyes this high and mighty fiddle.

  Jane peeled back the plastic wrap from the Nilla wafer pudding. She had actually been looking forward to not being obliged to make the damn pudding this year, but then, when she had decided to come, she seemed to be unable to prevent herself. And so once again she had found herself standing in her kitchen, slicing four dozen bananas while staring at a sampler her mother-in-law had embroidered for her as a first anniversary gift, with its homely saying that had struck Jane, then as now, as an ironic if not overtly hostile comment on Jane’s skill in the kitchen. “Bake a little love into every bite,” it read, in letters once bright red and now faded to a murky pink. But the subsequent improvement in Jane’s cooking had little to do with love. Baking was no different than anything else; there was a right and a wrong way to do it, and no room for forgiveness of one’s mistakes. While she had waited for the meringue to brown in the oven, she had wondered if the bile, fury, and scorn she was baking into every bit of this particular Nilla wafer pudding would manage to affect its flavor.

  As she made her way to the back of the crowd, Jane passed Matt and Ruthie. Ruthie smiled and put out her hand, as if to touch Jane’s shoulder. Jane flinched and Ruthie drew back. At that moment, Jane saw Bill Paige come around the house with an easy, loping step, carrying two cases of Geary’s. He set them next to the cooler, tore open one of the boxes, and pulled out two beers before catching up with Jane. Jane accepted the beer he handed her and watched with pleasure as the realization broke across Iris’s face. Serves her right, Jane thought. That’ll teach her that she doesn’t know half as much as she thinks she does. Jane nodded briskly at Samantha, and now once again the girl lifted up her violin.

  Samantha launched into the first movement of the Bach as though she were leaping into the ocean. She threw her whole body into the music, her bow dancing across the strings. Her presence when performing was the opposite of Mr. Kimmelbrod’s. Where he had been still, she was kinetic, twisting, shivering, whippin
g her body back and forth.

  At first Iris could barely pay attention to the music, so taken aback was she at the sight of Jane Tetherly and the sheriff together. She watched them closely, trying to asses both the extent of their relationship and the effect of Samantha’s playing on them. Iris allowed herself to imagine that Samantha’s exceptional playing would move Jane so that she would realize that the girl deserved the opportunities only the Copakens could provide her. Then, perhaps, the lingering guilt Iris felt at having gone behind Jane’s back might finally be expunged. Jane’s expression, however, was unreadable, although Sheriff Paige looked at once astonished and pleased.

  Samantha was so caught up in the joy of playing that when she began the second movement, the fugue allegro, she inadvertently picked up the tempo, her fingers flying, her bow arm flapping. By the end she was racing along, and because there were so many running notes, she had a little trouble with the sixteenth notes. But even those few guests who noticed her mistakes were astonished at her skill.

  Listening to Samantha’s frantic second movement, Iris tried desperately to recall having heard Becca play the same piece. Surely Becca had performed it in one of the hundreds of recitals in which she had participated over the course of her childhood. She could remember other children performing it; there was a tiny Chinese-American boy, no older than six, who had run through the second movement at such a breakneck pace that it was exhausting to watch. By the time he had finished Iris had been out of breath, too tired to focus on Becca’s more stately Schumann. She could remember others playing it, too. One teenage girl who’d sucked her lower lip the whole time. Another who had made so many mistakes she’d been led away after the first movement. But Iris could not remember ever having heard her own daughter attempt this piece.

  The two movements were short, no more than eight minutes because of how fast Samantha was playing, and when she drew out her final, climactic note, her face was damp with sweat. Iris leaped to her feet and shouted, “Brava! Brava!” The audience joined her, giving Samantha the first but by no means the last standing ovation of her life. Samantha’s face flushed as she stood proudly before the assembly, many of whom had last seen her on the wedding day. If on that day she’d been out of her element, today she was entirely in it. She bent forward and, with a flourish, acknowledged their applause with a bow.

  Iris continued clapping until Samantha had retreated to the house to return the violin to its place. Only later did she look around for Daniel. She hoped that Samantha’s performance would have convinced him of the girl’s promise, and of their own responsibility in helping her achieve it. She found him at the cooler, sending Bill Paige’s Geary’s splashing into the melted ice, one by one.

  “Wasn’t she amazing?” Iris said.

  “She’s great,” Daniel said. He took a beer for himself, opened it, and tossed the top into the cooler.

  “Do you understand now why I’m so eager to help her?” Iris said. “She’s exceptional.”

  “Her talent was never the issue.”

  “Her talent is the only issue.”

  “You and I both know that isn’t true.”

  Before they could argue any further, Ruthie and Matt interrupted them. Ruthie held Matt’s hand like she had always held her father’s, gripping his two middle fingers in her fist.

  “Samantha totally rocks,” Ruthie said.

  “Doesn’t she?” Iris said, glancing at Daniel.

  Daniel drank deeply from his bottle of beer.

  Ruthie looked from her mother to her father, and back again. “Is everything okay?” she said.

  “Everything’s fine,” Iris said. “So, you two are dating?”

  Ruthie nodded.

  “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruthie said. “I guess we were worried that you’d think it was weird for us to be together.”

  “I don’t think it’s weird,” Iris said.

  Ruthie pressed closer to Matt, who stiffened momentarily and then slipped his arm around her waist. Ruthie said, “Matt and I have something we want to ask you.”

  Iris caught Daniel’s eye, and they were at once united in a familiar moment of parental trepidation.

  “I’m going to stay here this coming year, in Red Hook, with Matt,” Ruthie said.

  “Oh, Ruthie,” Iris said.

  “What? You said you wanted me to have a plan.”

  So Ruthie really did intend to mimic the worst of Becca’s decisions, Iris thought.

  She looked to Daniel for support, but whatever unity they had moments ago experienced seemed to have passed. He wasn’t going to back her up. “Staying in Red Hook isn’t a plan,” Iris said.

  “Yes, it is. It might not be the plan you wanted, but it’s a plan. Matt and I—were hoping you’d let us live here over the winter. We could take care of the place.”

  “I’m getting pretty good at carpentry and stuff,” Matt said. “I could build you another set of bookshelves for the living room, and fix the spring on the back door. I could lay in a cord of wood for the fire. Whatever you needed done around here.”

  Iris said, “But what would you do, Ruthie? Where would you work?”

  “At the library.”

  “The library?”

  “Yes. Mary Lou Curran convinced the director to hire me.”

  “How much can you possibly earn at the library?”

  “Well, they’re not exactly paying me.”

  “They’re not paying you,” Iris said flatly. “Well, then how ‘exactly’ is that a job?”

  “They will pay me, when they get their new budget. They just can’t pay me now. So for the first little while I’ll be volunteering.”

  “And how will you support yourself?”

  “I’ll get a part-time job.”

  “There are no part-time jobs, Ruthie. Not in Red Hook.”

  “Becca always worked.”

  “Becca taught sailing. I don’t think that’s really an option for you. Particularly in February.” God, how Iris missed sailing with Becca. Even when they weren’t getting along, they would still sail together. Becca used to tease her that the water was the only place where you could trust Iris to mind her own business. They rarely talked on their sailing excursions, exchanging little more than terse warnings about the boom or instructions to come about or trim a sail. They would enjoy an easy, companionable silence, the kind of silence Iris used to have with Ruthie when they were sitting in the same room, each immersed in her own novel.

  Since the accident Iris sailed alone.

  Ruthie said, “I know I can find something to tide me over until the library comes through. I can work at one of the inns. Or at the market. I’ll find something. And we don’t need much money. Not if you let us live in the house while you’re gone.”

  “Are you going to pay the bills, Ruthie? Are you going to pay to heat the house? Do you know how much that would cost?”

  “She and Matt will be the caretakers,” Daniel said. “We’ll pay them what we’ve always paid Jane.”

  “We can’t take away Jane’s income. That wouldn’t be right,” Iris said.

  Matt said, “My mom watches a lot of houses in the winter, Mrs. Copaken. One more or less isn’t going to be a big deal.” His voice was surprisingly firm, and Iris saw Ruthie give him a grateful squeeze.

  “Call me Iris, not Mrs. Copaken,” Iris said automatically, and then flinched. She had said that precise thing so often to John that it had become almost a mantra.

  “I have a job,” Matt said. “At the boatyard. I can pay the bills, and I can even pay rent.”

  Iris gazed at her daughter for a long, wordless moment. Then she said, her voice gentle, almost pleading, “Ruthie, why are you doing this?”

  “Dad?” Ruthie said. “You don’t think this is a bad idea, do you?”

  Daniel shook his head. “I think you’ll be fine.”

  Iris was not surprised that Daniel had agreed. That had always been his job. To agree with th
e girls, to support them, to indulge them. She was the taskmaster, the planner, the one who determined the rules and meted out punishment when they were broken. While on occasion she had resented their roles, had wanted to be the good guy just once in a while, she knew that it was she who had determined what parts they’d play to begin with.

  Though she wasn’t surprised by Daniel’s reaction, she was shocked by her utter failure of insight into his motivation. Always before she would have known what his true feelings were. And now she hadn’t the faintest idea if he really thought it was a good idea for Ruthie to live some pale simulacrum of Becca’s life, or if he opposed the idea but could not bring himself to express it, or if he just didn’t care.

  How had it come to this? That she had so little insight into the mind of the man who she’d always believed she knew better than she knew herself? And Ruthie. How had they reached a point where Ruthie paid so little heed to her mother’s point of view? How had she lost them? What had Iris been doing? Where had her mind been, when it should have been focused on her family?

  Iris felt her energy for discord simply drain from her. “Fine,” she said to Ruthie. “You can stay here in Red Hook and volunteer at the library, or knit sweaters, or weave Christmas wreaths. You can do whatever you want.”

  The intensity of their discussion had not gone unnoticed, and it was only when Iris had turned away from Daniel and Ruthie that she realized that many of their guests had quietly taken their leave. She considered calling out that there were still fireworks to come, but honestly she didn’t care anymore.