Kaaterskill Falls (42 page)

I
N THEIR
small cheap car, a Toyota, Isaiah and Rachel drive back to the Kaaterskill house. Jeremy will be arriving within the hour. Just after lunch, he’d warned them on the phone. Isaiah and Rachel do not speak. In their silence the car whirs along the road, faster and faster. Isaiah is driving recklessly, but Rachel doesn’t say anything. In his black suit and black wool fedora, Isaiah is speeding on the curving mountain road.

Rachel is nervous. When they arrive at the house she unlocks the door with shaking fingers. But all is still. Jeremy has not yet arrived. In the living room and on the tables, in the library, the Rav’s books stand, all in their places, as yet untouched. Rachel and Isaiah sit in the cold living room and wait. Isaiah walks around through the dining room and the library. They wait for an hour, and then an hour more. They move out to the glassed-in porch and watch the road.

“Should I call him?” Rachel asks.

“No, no, he’s coming,” says Isaiah.

“It’s two o’clock,” she says.

“He’ll be here,” Isaiah tells her.

A
T LAST
, at almost three Jeremy drives up and he sees them waiting for him on the porch. He takes out his house key, but Isaiah gets to the door first and holds it open for him.

“Hello,” Jeremy says to his brother.

“Jeremy,” Isaiah says, and he extends his hand with a kind of wistful formality. “Come in.”

Awkwardly Isaiah and Rachel stand with Jeremy in the living room.

“The moving company will be here in just a few minutes for the estimate,” says Jeremy.

“Well, we were hoping—” Isaiah begins.

“We want you to cancel the movers,” Rachel says.

Jeremy smiles wryly and shakes his head.

“I have something for you,” says Isaiah, and he gives Jeremy an envelope.

Jeremy opens it and takes out a piece of blank paper folded around a check. It is a check for ten thousand dollars.

“This is for the books,” Isaiah says.

“We’re getting the other forty from the sale of the lake property,” says Rachel.

Jeremy flushes. He looks for a moment as though he doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

“But I don’t want this,” he says at last. He returns the check to his brother. “No, I really don’t want it.”

“You said you would sell us the library,” Isaiah tells him.

“I was—I never meant it,” Jeremy says.

“But we have the money and we want to buy it,” says Rachel.

“No,” Jeremy says. “I can’t do that.”

“You led us to believe—” she starts.

“If I led you to believe something, then I’m sorry,” Jeremy says. “I’m not selling the books.”

“I don’t understand,” says Isaiah.

“Why do you want to keep them?” Rachel bursts out.

“I want to keep them,” Jeremy says, “because they are mine.”

E
ARLY
morning, while it’s still dark outside, Elizabeth wakes up in her bedroom in the city. Her eyes open easily. Her thoughts are clear. When she looks at the lighted numbers on the clock, she sees why. It is five in the morning, and the baby has slept all night. Isaac is awake too. They look at each other in disbelief. This is a miracle. They have never had a baby sleep through the night this early. They lie still, afraid at first to speak. As quietly as she can, Elizabeth leans over the side of the bed and looks into the battered wicker bassinet. There she is, not even a month, and fast asleep on her stomach, her head pillowed on one arm. The apartment is perfectly quiet. Not a sound from the girls’ bedrooms.

“They’re all asleep,” whispers Isaac.

“It’s like the alignment of the planets,” Elizabeth whispers back.

Isaac begins laughing.

“Sh.”

They want to lie there silent. They don’t want to make a sound. Any minute the spell will be broken. The baby will wake up. Brocha will start calling, “Mommy! Mommy!” from her bed. But they can’t keep themselves from talking. It is so rare to have time for conversation at the beginning of the day when they are both awake and fresh.

“How did the pantry go?” Isaac asks Elizabeth. She has been cleaning out the pantry for Passover.

“I’ll finish today, I think,” she tells him. “Then you can bring up the things from the basement.”

“I didn’t realize you’d done so much,” he says. “She must be a real sleeper.”

“She watches me,” Elizabeth says. “I put her in the carrier and she looks around.”

“Like Sorah,” he says.

“She’s quieter.”

“Oh, I was meaning to tell you.” Isaac turns to Elizabeth on his pillow. “When I went down to Grimaldi’s for the onions he had a sign up.”

“What kind of sign?”

“Help wanted.”

“Oh, no,” she says. “Isaac.”

“I thought you might be interested,” he says.

“And what about the baby?”

“You know my sister would watch her if you wanted to try it.”

“I don’t want to run a cash register in a grocery store! And he—”

“He’s a little grumpy,” Isaac admits. “Still, I thought—”

“That’s not what I’m interested in,” she says again.

“I know,” Isaac says. “It wouldn’t be the same as your own business. I was just thinking that you could start there, and then, you know, you would get to know the old man. Eventually—we’d save—we’d be rich. You’d buy him out and have the store for yourself.”

“And then a chain, and then an empire of Grimaldis,” she says.

“Or Shulmans,” he tells her, lightheartedly.

“Oh, please,” she says.

Elizabeth watches from the bed as Isaac gets up and puts on his slippers. He has to go to the synagogue for morning minyan. He will put on his tefillin there, wrapping his arms with leather straps. He will wrap the straps so tightly that they will leave their red impression on his arms. He will bind himself with the words of the Sh’ma: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God; the Lord is one. And I will love the Lord with all my heart and all my soul and all my might. Elizabeth will pray in the house as soon as she can, in the time she finds. She will not put on tefillin, but, like Isaac, she will bind herself with the command
merits. She will not fold herself in a tallis, but like him, she will fold herself in prayer.

She will never cast the life away. But when, she wonders, will she view the pattern of her days as brightly, or say her prayers as gratefully? When will she observe the holidays with the pleasure of past years? When will she cook again with such joy?

Isaac leans down and kisses her. “You should go in,” he says, “and look around.”

“Into Grimaldi’s?”

“Why not? You can say you have experience—” he begins.

Then the baby starts to cry. The girls wake up all at once and start calling. In a moment Elizabeth is out of bed and looking for hairbrushes and schoolbooks, and trying to tape up Sorah’s broken diorama of the crossing of the Red Sea. Sorah is wailing that it’s no good, and Elizabeth is telling her, “But you did a wonderful job. It’s a very hard thing to show in a diorama.” And it’s true, it
is
hard to depict Moses leading the children of Israel across the sea, the waves parting, and the pillar of fire before them—this was what had fallen off—with only cardboard, markers, and construction paper.

A
LL
week Elizabeth is home with the baby. She is cleaning for Pesach, turning the house upside down. In the newly scoured kitchen the Pesach pots and pans and dishes fill the cabinets. All the regular utensils, dishes, glasses—are packed away in boxes. The oven racks lean against the wall ready to go down to the basement. Elizabeth has put away the toaster and the knife rack, emptied and scrubbed the inside of the refrigerator and freezer. Now she is vacuuming the couch. She’s taken off all the cushions and she is collecting puzzle pieces, a stray sock, barrettes, and pennies. She vacuums the crumbs, directing the long extension hose with both hands, and the crumbs crackle as the hose sucks them up. On the armchair the baby sleeps, bundled in her blanket. She looks like a small pile of clean laundry, except that she is breathing softly, up and down. They have named her Chaya.

She is a good baby, easy like Brocha was. Elizabeth holds her, rocks her, walks with her. She weighs nothing, and she dozes off
quickly. When she is awake, Elizabeth carries her around the room and shows her the house. She props her in the baby carrier and puts her on the dining-room table, so that she can see out the window. It is mild today, and the sunlight shines in pale yellow. She should take Chaya out. She needs to buy wine, meat, matzo, gefilte fish, farfel for stuffing, eggs. Her mind is filled with lists, all the things she has to clean, and all the things she has to buy. It is a buzzing of details, noisy and somehow reassuring, like the roar of the vacuum cleaner. And yet beneath this roar of details, somewhere underneath, she feels her imagination pacing, wounded, restless. She feels the questions muffled under the litany of errands. Where will I go? What will I do?

After lunch Elizabeth pushes the stroller to Auerbach’s, where she buys meat and receives compliments on the baby.

“How old?” the saleslady asks.

“Three weeks,” says Elizabeth.

“Aren’t you brave taking her out at three weeks. I never would have dared.”

“So this is number six,” one of Elizabeth’s neighbors says, as Elizabeth makes her way up the street with her bags hanging from the stroller.

“Yes, this is Chaya,” says Elizabeth.

“Oh, very nice. For Isaac’s father?”

Elizabeth nods. She makes a little joke. “If we have a seventh we’ll have to name her Batsheva.” The name means “seventh daughter.”

The air is cold, but it feels good on her face. The dirty snow is melting in the bright afternoon sun. Rather than take the groceries all the way up to the apartment and then come down again, Elizabeth puts the bags and the baby in the old yellow Mercury, the poor car spattered with mud and stained with salt. She drives to the car wash at the very edge of the neighborhood, where some of the buildings are derelict and some abandoned, the sidewalks Uttered, the kids on the street rough. The block is almost, but not quite, too dangerous to visit even during the day. The car wash, however, is the best in the city. It is like a mikveh for cars.

Isaac always laughs when Elizabeth says they should wash the car. Of course, for Pesach, they must get it cleaned. Elizabeth enjoys the
luxury, the water sheeting over the windshield, the long flannel strips like jungle vines that slap and slide over the station wagon.

After she pays for the wash, she sits for a moment in the gleaming car. She has finished all these little chores. Now her own thoughts come rushing back at her. Where should she go? What should she do? It comes to her. There is one thing, if she can manage it. She takes a deep breath and begins driving.

She drives with Chaya to the hospital and takes her upstairs in the elevator to the little office tucked away on the fifth floor. With effort she manages to carry the baby, along with her diaper bag and purse. She is sweating in her long winter coat, but she has to wear it because her hands are full. In the office she says to the woman registrar, “I’ve come to record the name of my baby. We left it blank, and we were supposed to come back and record it.”

“All right,” the registrar says, and she takes out her book. “Date of birth? All right. Time? … Female, Shulman. Here we are. And the name as you would like it to appear on the birth certificate? Last name Shulman. First name …”

“Celia,” says Elizabeth, shifting Chaya in her arms. They will never use the name. No one will say the name aloud, but in sharp black print the registrar is typing onto the official New York state birth certificate, the English name Celia. C-E-L-I-A.

T
HE
buds on the bushes in front of the apartment buildings are still clenched shut like tiny fists; the thin trees in May look like upended brooms. Elizabeth walks home from the dry cleaner at the end of the block. Edelman’s Bakery has reopened, now that Pesach is over. Its door is propped open, and the smell of fresh bread wafts out to the sidewalk. At the corner Grimaldi’s window is stacked high with oranges and apples, improbably bright. She sees it now, the sign Isaac mentioned weeks ago.
HELP WANTED
. She wonders briefly what kind of help Grimaldi needs. He has never seemed to want help before. The place has been here for years with its odd assortment of produce and tchotchkes and imported food. Perhaps she should go in. But what would she say? Mr. Grimaldi does not much care for his Kirshner neighbors. She might tell him she would like to learn the business and go into it herself. That she has had some experience. A little. Working in a store might be what she needs. She might like to start her own someday. They don’t sound very persuasive to her in her mind, these ideas. They are small, idle thoughts. The main thought is that no, she wouldn’t want to take a job, really. She has the baby, after all. As Isaac says, Pearl could watch her. But she doesn’t want to start again now, start making a fool of herself. And the business wouldn’t be hers.

Elizabeth looks at the window and feels awkward standing there on the sidewalk loaded with the dry cleaning. Of course,
there is nothing wrong with going in and asking. Introducing herself to the old man. She might have liked to—perhaps she will someday. What is he going to do to her? Putting herself forward might be a little embarrassing. She will seem completely inexperienced and odd, naive.

She begins walking again. Chani is watching the baby at home, and Elizabeth should get back and put up the meat for dinner. And she’ll heat up the sweet potatoes. Malki doesn’t like them, but she has some frozen vegetables. There are peas. Malki eats peas if they’re bright green. Only from frozen, not from a can. The girls love them fresh, of course. In Kaaterskill they break open the pea pods and pop out the tiny peas, smooth and pale. Well, all Elizabeth has is canned. She is no farmer, or great retailer. She stops short. She remembers how she said those words to Andras, sitting in the back of Cecil’s crowded living room. In another time, maybe, in another life, she might have been these things, businesswoman, philosopher, traveler, artist. And it comes back to her suddenly, what Andras said to her. His words, half whispered, his voice conspiratorial and dry. “Elizabeth, this is the United States of America. You can do whatever you damn well please.” She laughs softly at the memory. She turns around and walks back to Grimaldi’s door. She ducks her head down and walks in.