Kaaterskill Falls (31 page)

Now, in July, bent over in the bookmobile, Ira picks up
The Works of Aristotle.
He takes a copy of
The Odyssey
as well. “Ira,” Mrs. Schermerhorn tells him, “you are making great strides. You are giving yourself an education.”

He stays as long as he possibly can, putting off the moment when he must check out the books.

At last he comes up to Renée and hands her the classics in their
faded red library bindings. She barely looks up as she opens the books and inserts new cards in the back.

But Ira looks at her. He looks at the backs of her arms flecked with freckles, and he looks down at the top of her head, her copper hair. He has never seen that color on anyone else. He has never known—or, in any case, never noticed—anyone so beautiful before.

“Here,” she says, and hands him the books.

He decides that he will say something. He resolves to speak.

“Here,” Renée says again. She is still holding the books out for him.

“Thanks,” he says.

Then Renée looks up at him and Ira knows that she knows. She has sensed the truth. He feels both relieved and wary. She knows he has a crush on her.

That afternoon when Renée comes out from the library, she finds Ira standing near her bicycle at the fence. Just standing there poking at a Smiley’s milk shake with his straw.

Ira bends down and picks up an identical large shake from the ground. Fine red dirt clings to the bottom of the paper cup. “I brought you one,” he says.

“Why?” Renée asks.

“Do you want it?”

“No,” she says, although she is very thirsty.

He puts it down again. “Can I have it, then?” he asks.

She almost laughs at him.

“Mine is almost gone,” he explains.

She looks at the tall cup sweating on the ground. “What kind is it?” she asks.

“Chocolate.”

“Oh,” she says.

“Why? Do you want it now?”

“No, I was just wondering what kind it was.” She gets up on her bicycle.

“I see you all the time in Kaaterskill going to temple,” Ira says.

“It’s not a temple. It’s just a shul.” Renée leans over the handlebars of her bike.

“My great-great-grandfather built it,” Ira says.

“Your great-great-grandfather?” Renée asks dubiously.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, it’s true,” Ira says indignantly. And it is true. His great-great-grandfather was old man Rubin, the man Cecil Birnbaum likes so much to tell about, the founder of the synagogue in Bear Mountain who fought with the townspeople and hauled the synagogue building to Kaaterskill with his team.

But Renée doesn’t know any of this. She just looks at Ira skeptically.

“So I guess I’m Jewish like you,” Ira says.

“Either you are or you aren’t,” says Renée.

“I am, but I’m not religious,” Ira informs her.

She looks at him, a bit surprised.

“But you are, right?” he asks her.

“I am what?”

“Religious.”

She nods.

“Why?” he asks her.

She hesitates. “Because my parents are,” she says.

“But when you’re older you won’t have to be,” Ira says.

“I might or I might not,” Renée tells him. “I have to go.”

“Where?” Ira asks.

“None of your business.” She pushes off.

“You’re mean,” he says, but he says it humbly.

She circles back. “I am not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You don’t even know me,” she says diffidently, but she wheels her bike closer. She is almost close enough to touch. He can almost touch her hand.

Without noticing, Ira takes a step. Almost before he realizes it, his fingertips brush Renée’s freckled arm.

Then Renée takes off. She shoots away down the road and disappears, pedaling hard. Dust rises around her as she pedals, and she gets dirt in the toes of her sandals. It was so strange, standing there and talking like that. His great-great-grandfather! Stephanie will think it’s
so funny. Ira Rubin likes her. Ira Rubin with his philosophy books and his glasses nearly slipping off his short nose. And his long arms. He never knows what to do with his long arms. His fingers made her shiver; they were so cold from holding that milk shake. She feels embarrassed somehow, remembering it, but also a little glad. She’s got to tell Stephanie about this. Stephanie will laugh and laugh.

Mohican Lake glistens green beyond the currant bushes as she takes the turn into Stephanie’s yard. Two dusty white cars are parked in the driveway near Mrs. Fawess’s Mercedes. Renée leaves her bike on the grass.

She runs to the front door and rings the bell, but no one answers. The door is ajar, and she lets herself in.

She feels lost when she enters the shadowy living room. The lights are all off. “Stephanie?” she calls.

The house looks strange. The living-room furniture pushed over to one side, as if the place were being closed up for the summer. Beyond, in the dining room, the tablecloth tilts, one end brushing the floor—about to slip off the long glass table.

In a murmur of voices Mrs. Fawess appears with two men dressed in dark suits. Mrs. Fawess’s face looks swollen, her eyes puffy; Stephanie stands behind her with a startled face.

“Stephanie?” Renée says.

Her friend stares at her with such hard eyes, Renée is afraid to come closer.

“Leave, Renée,” Stephanie orders.

Renée stands still, and then Stephanie walks over. “I said go.”

“Wait,” Renée says. “What’s wrong?”

Mrs. Fawess shakes her head and says, “I’m sorry, Renée, this is not a good time.”

“Why?” Renée asks Stephanie. “What happened?”

But Stephanie puts her arm around Renée and she whispers in Renée’s ear, “Promise you won’t say anything.”

“About what?”

“Promise.”

Renée looks at Stephanie for a hint of a joke; she looks into Stephanie’s face, hoping and half expecting a smile. “I promise,” Renée says.

“We’re going,” Stephanie says.

“You’re moving? Why?” Renée whispers back.

But Stephanie doesn’t answer. Fear pricks Renée. Where is Stephanie’s father? Where are her cousins? Renée doesn’t get a chance to ask. Gently Stephanie propels her out the door.

Renée picks up her bike from the front lawn. She doesn’t want to go. She wants to run back inside and find out what’s happened. She is Stephanie’s best friend—at least in Kaaterskill. She has a right to know. But Renée doesn’t run back to the house, and Stephanie doesn’t come out after her.

W
HEN
Renée gets home she shuts herself in her bedroom. She clamps her pillow to her and stares at all the things in her room until they look unfamiliar to her. The rosebud wallpaper and white bookcase of books she read when she was little, the blue-lettered spine of her
Pinocchio
, the wicker clothes hamper, the blond doll sitting on the dresser in her blue-smocked dress, legs thrust out in front of her, and the Eskimo doll standing guard with his spear, face peeking out of his rabbit-trimmed hood. Everything in the room is bigger, quieter. When her mother knocks, the sound is muffled and magnified as if underwater.

“Renée, what’s wrong?” Nina rushes over. “Did you hurt yourself?”

Renée just shakes her head and clutches the pillow more tightly. “What’s wrong?” Nina begs.

“It’s Stephanie,” Renée says. She can’t help speaking of it, although she promised not to. “Something happened—there were men there with her mother.”

“What kind of men? Police?”

“I don’t know; I don’t know. They didn’t have police cars. Everything was all mixed up in the house—”

“It must have been a burglary,” Nina reasons. “It was just a burglary, and the security came to see the damage, that’s all.” Nina takes both Renée and the pillow in her arms. “That’s all,” she murmurs, “that’s what happens when the alarm goes off. The men come down from the company, they make the inventory—that’s all….”

But Renée knows there was no burglary. By the next morning Stephanie and her family are gone.

Everyone in town is speculating about where Fawess has gone and why. They are talking about it at Boyd’s garage and in the hotel, in the ticket booths at the Orpheum, in the Kaaterskill post office. Fawess and his wife and daughter, his brother and sister-in-law, and their children are nowhere to be found. They left before dawn, and scarcely packed their things. Michael King’s twin houses on the lake are full of clothes, dishes, even groceries, but his wealthy renters have vanished. Some people say that the family left simply to avoid paying bills. That Fawess did not have as much money as he pretended. Others argue that Fawess had Mafia dealings and left town because he was told to leave, or because he felt he had to go undercover. Mrs. Schermerhorn is of this school.

“He was working with the wrong kind,” Mrs. Schermerhorn tells Mrs. Knowlton in the library.

Renée looks up from the pile of magazines she is slipping into clear plastic sleeves.

“I, for one, suspected it a long time,” says the librarian. “Those truck runs to Canada? You remember, Janet, those gatherings they had up at the lake. All those limousines coming up.”

In the sunny library Renée feels cold.

“I, for one,” says Mrs. Schermerhorn, “particularly noticed the smoked-glass windows in those cars.”

Renée swallows, thinking of the Fourth of July picnics at the Fawesses’. She remembers the drums and the thousand almond cookies; handsome Mr. Fawess dancing on the porch, arms above his head. The limousines parked on the grass.

“I think one day the law caught up with him,” Mrs. Schermerhorn declares. “Or maybe just the folks he worked for. In any case, he got the signal it was time to go. He got some sign. Of that you can be sure.”

Renée ducks her head down and keeps at the stack of magazines. Her mother has ordered her not to speak about Stephanie to anyone. “Renée,” her mother said, “if I had any idea those people were, that my daughter was—you have no idea how I blame myself for letting you gallivant around town with that girl—I didn’t know—” And her
mother’s voice trembled. “I telephoned your father in the city. We want you to promise us you will never, ever—and you won’t discuss how you know that girl with anyone, do you understand? I don’t want you touched by this.”

Stephanie always said Renée’s mother was overprotective. Renée doesn’t think of her that way. She imagines overprotective mothers are sweet and gentle and timid. Renée’s mother is fierce and peppery. She has such a temper. She doesn’t seem to have any sympathy for Stephanie, or even for Renée.

Renée can’t help feeling sorrowful, abandoned there in the library. How could Stephanie leave her here with Mrs. Schermerhorn? At home Renée’s brother is sitting with his little friends, playing Monopoly on the porch, sneaking in real dollar bills for the “free parking” bonus. Renée’s mother is working in the backyard, repainting the bungalow where the lawn mower and the tools are kept.

On Friday Renée’s father comes up, and they all sit down to dinner together. And now that Stephanie is gone, even Friday-night dinner is different. Without any plans to make, without anything else to think about, Renée sits at the table and she pays attention. She hears her mother’s insistent questions to her father, and her father’s cold replies.

“But why shouldn’t we go on a family trip?” Nina asks. “The children have only been to Argentina. It would be good for them to travel. It’s educational. They should see Europe. Ruth Fishman was just telling me how every summer the whole family gets away to a new place. They’re going to Scandinavia before the Holidays. Last summer they went to Eastern Europe. Renée and Alex are getting older. Kaaterskill isn’t as good for them the whole summer.”

“They look fine to me,” Andras says.

“It would be good for all of us. You haven’t gone back once, not even to Paris.”

“No.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Nina presses.

Andras pushes away his plate. “It means no.” And in silence Nina brings out her apple pie, a magnificent sight with the crust ballooning upward and then sinking down at the point of her knife to touch the cinnamon spiced apples.

Undistracted, Renée sees her parents in a new light—as though they are not her parents, but independent people, strangers. There is something sharp and severe about them, and even sad. Why do they never touch each other? Are they too old?

For so long Stephanie had been Renée’s internal audience. Renée feels an echo inside of her now that Stephanie is gone. She’d come to anticipate Stephanie’s reaction to everything she saw and did. Already now, Stephanie’s voice is fading and she can’t consult Stephanie’s decided opinions anymore. The whole charmed world Stephanie conjured up has also vanished. The dragon Schermerhorn is only a librarian again; Rabbitville has become again the shul day camp and bungalows of Kaaterskill. And Renée notices the unhappiness in her house. She feels it now, without distraction, without the chance to rush outside with Stephanie into the buzzing summer air. It’s as if she’d been spinning, as she used to when she was little on the grass, and then suddenly she stopped, and the world stopped spinning with her; the trees settled back into their places, the scattered house came back together, and the tilted windows slowed and squared themselves.

T
HE
Rav does not come downstairs anymore. He is confined to his room and lies in the rented hospital bed, asleep much of the day. When he wakes, he feels as though he has forgotten something. For a moment he cannot recollect it, and then he remembers his illness and his immobility. With great effort he opens his eyes, draws breath, moves his head.

The men, his many Kirshner followers, pass through the room downstairs. In the morning the Rav feels them passing and praying. They are putting on their white tallesim, shaking out the voluminous draperies. They shake them over their shoulders like wings. The Rav feels the words in the house and he moves his lips with them. His mouth is dry, and yet he feels he still has something to say. The men finish. They fold up their wings and hurry away, only to return again in the afternoon. For hours Isaiah sits with him, reading aloud from the gemara in his quiet voice, his voice of restraint. The Rav has something to say, but not to Isaiah. Rachel comes and goes with food. She adjusts the black radio on the nightstand, so that he can hear the news. She brings the Rav’s grandson with her, and Nachum stands next to her, pale, serious, a little frightened. The Rav does not speak to them. He is tired of all of them, their caution and concern for him because he is dying, their restrained good health and subdued youth, their false modesty about living. They seem to live in shadow.
He sees it, but they cannot. They don’t have a sense of what was taken. American born, they cannot possibly appreciate the loss. For they did not know the great Kirshner synagogue in Frankfurt which stood like a palace, with windows like jewels. The Frankfurt synagogue was a seat of learning and a soaring theater for prayer. Now that place is ruined, and its burning was like the destruction of a new Temple.