Red Hook Road (21 page)

“Do you really think a celebration will make Ruthie feel better?” Iris asked.

“No,” Mr. Kimmelbrod said.

Iris smiled ruefully, reached over to the sideboard, and picked up a pen and a piece of paper. “I’d better make a shopping list.”

Serious measures were required: Iris baked a lime pound cake. It was her most impressive cake; she used a Bundt pan embossed with a complicated pattern of grape clusters and vines. The cake baked up tall and golden brown, and the lime sugar glaze crackled tangy and sweet when you bit into it. She did not make the cake very often, in part because she invariably scraped her knuckles while zesting the limes, and also because Becca used to do most of the baking in the house. But today Iris was aiming to please. She was once again off to negotiate with her
machetaynista
, the woman with whom her native language did not even require her to have a relationship. If she got out of the experience with no injury worse than a few skinned knuckles, she would consider herself to have been fortunate.

Once Iris had agreed to the Fourth of July memorial, she had thrown herself, as always, foursquare into the operation. She planned the menu, she ordered the lobster, she borrowed the extra chairs and tables, she made the calls to let friends know that the Fourth of July picnic was happening this year, albeit with a different focus. And after Ruthie informed her mother (somewhat improbably, in Iris’s opinion) that without John’s family there, without John’s
mother
there, the celebration would be incomplete, Iris found herself sitting, uninvited, in Jane Tetherly’s dark little kitchen, bearing unsolicited baked goods.

“It’s pretty yummy,” Iris said.

“I’m on Weight Watchers,” Jane said. “But I guess Matt and Samantha might like it.”

“There’s a pound of butter in this cake; it’s about six points just to sit next to it. Eight if you inhale.”

First Jane drew her brows together over her nose and frowned. Then a slow smile crept across her face.

“Maybe I’d better give it to Maureen, then,” Jane said. “It’s her turn to bring the refreshments to her Overeaters Anonymous meeting.”

Now it was Iris’s turn to smile.

“You do that Weight Watchers?” Jane said. “Not that you need to. But you know about the points.”

“I go on Weight Watchers every January,” Iris said. “For about three weeks. I lose one pound the first week, stay even in the second, and gain two in the third. Then I quit.”

“That’s how it always went for me. Especially during the change. I packed it on when I was going through the change. For ten years I gained at least five pounds a year. But this time I’m sticking to my points. I’ve lost sixteen pounds so far.”

Five pounds a year? For ten years? Iris could not imagine gaining that kind of weight.

“It shows,” Iris said. “You look great. So, well, I guess this probably isn’t the best time to ask you to bring your famous banana pudding to the memorial we’re planning for the Fourth.”

The ease of the moment drained away and Jane’s face stiffened. Her frown returned and she gazed over Iris’s shoulder, as if there were something fascinating, something incredible, happening in the far corner of her kitchen, by the toaster. Iris held her breath. When Jane failed to respond, Iris continued, “Ruthie’s calling it a celebration of Becca and John. I think she might have mentioned it?”

Jane nodded curtly, but made no other reply.

“I know it seems strange,” Iris said. “I mean, it’s the Fourth, and people usually have picnics to go to. And of course the next day, well. No.” She waited for a response from Jane, but none came. “It’s just that last year the Fourth was such a good day, such a happy day, for all of us.”

Jane drew her mouth into a thin, disapproving line crosshatched with wrinkles. “I’m short-staffed and backed up on houses. And I doubt Matt will be able to get away. He’s working all kinds of hours down the yard. They’ve got two boats they’re trying to get into the water before August.”

“Surely they won’t make him work on the Fourth of July?”

“Depends on how things are moving. If they’re running slow they might.”

“Ruthie’s really got her heart set on this,” Iris said. “The fireworks,
especially. We won’t be lighting them until dark. Matt can come whenever he’s done.”

“Maureen’s always got plans with the girls. You know, going to this one’s house or that one’s. Can’t really count on Maureen.”

“But you’ll come, won’t you? And bring Samantha with you?” To distract from the naked pleading in her voice, Iris took a sip of the iced tea Jane had poured for her. The tea was sweet, the ice cubes cold against her teeth.

“I’m afraid not,” Jane said.

Iris pushed aside her glass and leaned toward Jane. “Look, Jane, can I be honest here? I—I really could use your help. See, until Ruthie got this idea into her head about the celebration, she was just, well, she’s been sinking. Spending most of her time in her room, lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling, and I think she probably lost ten pounds last year. She is not doing well.” For a moment Iris worried that she might be laying it on a little thick, but then she realized she had said nothing that was not true.

Jane knotted her fingers in her lap and stared down at them. As the silence stretched between them, Iris found herself beginning to get angry. Was Jane really so cold-hearted that she could so easily and for so little reason reject Iris’s entreaties on behalf of her daughter? Was Iris’s company really so intolerable that Jane could not manage a single evening of it?

Just as Iris was about to allow herself to lose her temper, to let Jane know exactly what she thought of her selfishness, Jane said, “So she’s pretty bad off.”

Ruthie
was
bad off. There was no denying it. She had never been particularly resilient, and although Iris had tried, that was simply something you could not teach a child. You were born with it, or you weren’t. Whatever measure of resiliency it was Iris’s to bequeath had gone to Becca. What a terrible irony that it was the one who could least cope who was left to do so.

“Yes,” Iris said. “She’s bad off.”

“Same with Matt.”

“Matt’s not doing well?”

“He dropped out of college.”

“Oh, no.” Iris had never seen Jane look so obviously worried. In fact,
in all the years she’d known the woman, there was only one other time that Iris could remember seeing an expression other than impassivity on Jane’s face—when she had broken down at the scene of the accident. Now, if Iris hadn’t known her, she might have described her as distraught.

Jane said, “First person in the family to go to college. Either side. And he’s a smart boy. He never would have dropped out if this hadn’t happened.”

The truth was that Jane had always felt a certain amount of ambivalence about her son’s pursuit of a college degree, or at least about his pursuing it at Amherst. The University of Maine was a fine institution, and she had been supporting it with her tax dollars since she had first drawn a paycheck. She disapproved of his choice to go farther afield for school, to the kind of place where the children of the summer visitors went. It had seemed like striving to her, like trying to turn himself into something he wasn’t. But now that he had dropped out she found that she was disappointed. Worried, too. She could not figure out what was going on in the boy’s head.

Iris said, “I’m so sorry, Jane. Maybe he just needs more time.”

“Well, he’s going to get all the time he wants pretty soon. They won’t hold his scholarship forever, and I don’t know how he thinks he’ll pay his tuition without that.”

After a protracted process of dueling insurance companies, the threat of a trial, and an out-of-court settlement, the Copaken and the Tetherly families had each received $100,000 from the limousine driver’s automobile insurance policy. Iris and Daniel had donated their portion of the money to a variety of Red Hook charities, including Usherman Center’s scholarship fund, the library, and the food pantry, which fed a surprising number of local families at the end of every winter. Jane, who could not afford the luxury of philanthropy, divided the sum between Matt, Maureen, Frank, and herself. It gave her a nest egg for the first time in her life, but even if she gave Matt her own portion, what was left of the two combined would not be enough for more than a single year of college.

“I’m sure they understand what he’s going through. I know the financial aid process can be confusing, but the decisions are made by compassionate people.”

“I suppose,” Jane said dubiously. “I don’t really talk to them much. Matt takes care of all that himself.”

“It’s so hard when kids won’t do what you know is best for them.”

Jane sighed. “Now, isn’t that the truth.”

“And you can’t even tell them that they’re making a mistake, because then they’ll act just to spite you.” As she said this Iris was thinking not about Ruthie, who, despite the evidence of this celebration, generally avoided at all costs making her parents unhappy, but about Becca. Becca, who had always cheerfully brushed off her mother’s advice and done exactly what she wanted, up to and including marrying this woman’s son.

“Yes, they will,” Jane said. She blew air out of her mouth with a noisy huff. “Will your father be there? At this ‘celebration’?”

“My father? Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Samantha, my niece? She kind of took to him. I guess you know they met up at the Bag.”

“No,” Iris said. “I didn’t know. At the Bait Bag?”

“He had his classical music playing on the radio, and I guess she likes that kind of thing.”

“She likes classical music?”

“She’s been playing that trout song ever since she heard it.”

“The trout song? You mean the Trout Quintet?”

“She picks it out on her electric piano.”

“My goodness. Well, I’m sure my father would be happy to play her some music. I mean, play it on the stereo. He can’t really play the violin anymore, because of the Parkinson’s.”

“Samantha checked one of his records out of the library. She’s been listening to it pretty much nonstop.”

“Did she? That’s so sweet. If I’d known I would have brought a few CDs over for her. If you come to the celebration I can have him sign them to her.”

“Samantha would like that,” Jane said.

Conscious that this chink in Jane’s armor might not last, Iris said, “Will you come, Jane?”

Jane sighed. “What time did you say it was?”

“Six,” Iris said.

Jane frowned. Then she reached out a finger and swiped it around the edge of Iris’s cake plate, scooping up a little lime glaze. She licked her finger and nodded. “That is yummy,” she said.

“It’s my best recipe,” Iris said.

“Maybe we should have just a small slice,” Jane said. She bustled around the kitchen, taking plates out of a cupboard, and a knife and two forks out of a drawer. She cut two hefty pieces of cake and slid one across the table to Iris.

“I can’t promise anything,” Jane said. “But if we’re not working, I guess we can make it.”

Iris’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you so much, Jane. This means a tremendous amount to Ruthie.” Then she took a big forkful of cake. The bottom was a tad soggy, and the lime might have been grated a bit more finely. But it was good. It would do.

Other than the widow’s walk on top of the turret, Iris and Daniel’s airy bedroom had the best view in the house of the small East Red Hook cove and the sea beyond. Iris kept the windows bare of curtains so that on clear mornings they were awakened by the sun reflecting off the water. The large room had once been two, but they had taken out the dividing wall and put in a bathroom at one end. Iris had refinished her grandmother’s bedroom suite—the tall highboy and the matching double-wide chiffonier. Two bright rag rugs on either side of the bed protected their bare feet from the cold floor in the mornings.

On the bedroom walls hung photographs of the girls and of Iris’s various and sundry Maine ancestors, and one of Iris and Daniel, taken on their wedding day down on the beach below the Red Hook Unitarian Church. The only photograph from Daniel’s side of the family was of his parents, a stiff, posed black-and-white shot of them wearing evening clothes and smiling uncomfortably into the camera. On the bottom of the picture, in flourishing script, was inscribed “Cunard
RMS Galicia
.” The photograph commemorated the single vacation Saul and Irene Copaken had ever taken, a cruise from Miami through the Caribbean, the highlight of which had been a stop in Havana during which Daniel’s mother, not normally a gambler, had won seventy-two dollars at baccarat.