Kaaterskill Falls (46 page)

He smiles now, leaning back in his lawn chair.

“That’s what I thought of when I decided to … go in, and inquire.”

“You thought of that?”

“Just the way you put it stuck in my mind—” She stops.

“No, go on,” Andras says. “It’s just strange you took it so seriously. I was just—”

“I didn’t know whether I should bother going in,” Elizabeth tells him, “and then I remembered what you said. I thought that you were right.”

“But people dream about living in Los Angeles,” Nina is telling Regina.

“Well,” Regina says, “everyone has different dreams, and I dream about Kaaterskill, right here.”

“What do you dream?” Nina asks.

Regina thinks about the question. Then she says slowly, “I dream about being right here in this garden with my parents alive, and Cecil a little boy. My dolls, Cynthia and Nancy, in the doll carriage. And you, Eva and Maja. Your onegs and garden parties. My mother’s rugelach. My fir tree.” She looks up at the blue-green fir towering above them. “It was planted when I was born. It’s the same age as I am. The sunsets here, the blueberry picking, the Escarpment Trail. The rainstorms. We used to sit on the porch in the rainstorms. We always felt safe here. We thought the summers would last forever. I remember looking up at the falls, and everything rushing and white and beautiful. You looked up there and you felt that you could do anything. That absolutely nothing could ever stop you. Do you know what I mean?”

No one answers. The stars are drifting over the sky. They were all watching for them, but no one saw them come. Yes, Elizabeth thinks. I do know.

They get up and go inside the house to make havdalah. The Landauers get out the spice box and kiddush cup. Brocha holds the braided candle, and Isaac says the prayer marking the end of Shabbat. After he says the last words,
Hamavdil ben kodesh lihol
, Nina asks, “What do you think is the best translation for that?”

“Blessed be he who separates the holy from the profane,” Isaac says.

“The sacred from the secular,” puts in Elizabeth.

“The transcendent moment from the workaday world,” suggests old Rabbi Sobel in his quavering voice.

“Mm.” They pause around the smoking candle.

“Take some cake home with you.”

“What about the Orpheum? We could see what’s showing.”

“Renée has her lesson tomorrow. I don’t know.”

“Tomorrow you said we could go to the lake.”

“We’ll see, Sorah. We’ll see.”

And so they walk home under the canopy of trees.

Allegra Goodman’s first collection of stories,
Total Immersion
, was published in 1989, followed by her critically acclaimed collection
The Family Markowitz.
She was a recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award. Her work has appeared in
The New Yorker, Allure, Food, Vogue, Commentary
, and
Slate.
She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

KAATERSKILL FALLS
A Dial Press Trade Paperback Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Dial Press hardcover edition / 1998
Delta Trade Paperback edition / August 1999
Dial Press Trade Paperback edition / July 2005

Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1998 by Allegra Goodman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: The Dial Press, New York, New York.

The Dial Press and Dial Press Trade Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-57360-5

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