Red Hook Road (36 page)

In-laws
? Jane thought, almost shocked by the idea. Hardly. Whatever terrible moments of tragedy and loss they might have shared, she and Iris had been
in-laws
for all of an hour. And anyway, what kind of nonsense was this—she knew Iris didn’t respect her, but did the woman think she was an idiot? Whoever handed over their kid to be raised by an
in-law
?

“I don’t know what you think you are to me, Iris, but I know that she’s not your daughter,” Jane said. “And she’s not my daughter, either. Samantha’s got a mother already.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But you’re her legal guardian, aren’t you?”

“No,” Jane said.

“You aren’t?” Iris said.

Jane cursed herself for revealing what it wasn’t Iris’s business to know. “I’m taking care of her.”

“Because her mother isn’t in any shape to care for her, is she? The burden is falling on you.”

“It’s no burden. She’s family. And anyway her mother will be out of the hospital soon enough.”

“Jane, I absolutely understand that this is a difficult thing to contemplate. But I worry that if you insist on keeping her here you’ll cost her, not just her career, and it could be a marvelous career—my father says he’s never seen any child more talented. You’ll cost her her happiness. Music is Samantha’s whole world, Jane. You know that even better than I do. But most musicians with Samantha’s gifts have spent years learning the repertoire by the time they’re her age. As talented as she is, Samantha has a tremendous amount of catching up to do.”

“Last year you said that going to Bangor every week was the only way she’d catch up. Now she’s got to go to New York. What’s it going to be next year? China?”

Iris leaned forward, earnestly. “I know how hard this is for you, Jane. I’d have the same feelings if the roles were reversed. And of course you would still have ultimate authority over her—you and her mother. We’d follow any family rules that you expect her to follow. If she has a bedtime, for example.” Iris reached into her purse and pulled out a sheaf of pages. “And I’ve printed out the academic calendar for the year. You can see there are long periods of vacation that she could spend here with you. We could even arrange for her to come home one weekend a month. Or even every other weekend, if that feels more comfortable to you.”

Jane refused to allow herself to slip into an attitude of negotiation with Iris. Instead she said, “No.”

“Please, Jane. Samantha has the potential to be a world-class musician. A musician who, yes, someday might even play in China. China, Japan, Europe. All over the United States. Conceivably she might even make a handsome living. How can you stand in the way of her future?”

Jane pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. Her manifold debts to the Copakens had all been assumed grudgingly, and she was determined never to incur another. There was no way to repay them for the
gravesite, nor for the lessons Mr. Kimmelbrod had been giving Samantha. Iris had done a poor job, too, of concealing the fact that she was paying for the lessons from Mr. Weinstein. Jane had permitted the charade to continue because Samantha had been so desperate for them, so full of joy as she progressed, and Jane could not have afforded even a fraction of the cost. But there was only so much pride she was willing to sacrifice.

“I appreciate your and your father’s interest in Samantha,” Jane said, as politely as her fury would allow. “But the answer’s no, and that’s final. If you want to find somebody else to clean your house, I understand.”

Late in the evening a few days after Iris’s fruitless conversation with Jane, Daniel came upon his wife sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of tea, a pen, and a bottle of Wite-Out, working her way through a formidable stack of printed forms.

He’d been avoiding her as much as he could, spending his mornings at the gym and his afternoons in town, reading the newspapers at the library or just wandering around. A few times he’d even ducked into the Neptune for a beer or two. Anything to keep from going home.

Now he said, “What’s all this?”

“Some stuff I downloaded from the New York Board of Education Web site. I was looking to see what our school options would be if Samantha came to stay with us. There’s a middle school for gifted and talented kids on West Eighty-fourth Street.”

“The Anderson School,” Daniel said.

“Right. I thought I’d better get the application in now, just in case. We’ve already missed the deadline, but I’m hoping they’ll make an exception in her case, especially if my father asks the head of the Juilliard youth program to write a letter.”

Daniel stood behind a chair on the opposite side of the table, gripping the back. “She’s not coming to New York,” he said. “Jane said no.”

It was maddening to Daniel that Jane’s refusal to acquiesce to Iris’s plan to bring Samantha back to New York had had no effect on his wife. Nor had his own resistance to the idea. She continued to plot and plan. He could not understand his wife’s blithe embrace of the idea of taking on a child. It was as though she had forgotten what parenthood demanded, as though she were willfully refusing to consider how much work and expense
were involved. Although he knew that work and expense were not what was really troubling him. What bothered him was the idea of bringing into their home another witness to their struggles and disconnection.

Iris said, “I wish this school had been open back when the girls were young. It’s a really remarkable place.”

“Iris!” Daniel said.

Iris finally set down her pen. “She’ll be no trouble,” she said. “She’ll be in school all day, and she’ll be studying with my father. You’ll barely see her. And anyway, it will be nice to have a girl around the house again. Don’t you think?”

“We’ll have a girl around the house again. Or have you forgotten that Ruthie isn’t going back to England?”

“No, I have not forgotten. And at any rate, it’s likely that Ruthie will change her mind a dozen times before the end of the summer. But this isn’t about Ruthie. Even if Ruthie were to come back to live with us in New York, we would still have room for Samantha.”

“This isn’t about room.”

“Please, Daniel. Samantha desperately needs what we can give her. Why shouldn’t we do what we can for her?”

“Because her aunt doesn’t want us to. Iris, for Christ’s sake, Jane told you she wouldn’t let her go.”

“Jane doesn’t understand what’s at stake here. She doesn’t realize how important this is for Samantha.”

“Jane is her legal guardian. It doesn’t matter what she understands or doesn’t understand. She’s made her decision clear.”

“In fact, Daniel, Jane is
not
Samantha’s legal guardian. As I understand it, the relationship is completely ad hoc. When Connie goes into the hospital, Jane takes Samantha. When Connie comes out, she takes her back. On and on, like the girl is some kind of yo-yo. Samantha’s legal guardian is her adoptive mother, Connie Phelps. Jane has no authority in the matter at all.”

How much of his marriage had been spent deferring to Iris, allowing her to assume control of every aspect of their lives? Even their infrequent arguments belonged to her. Iris would state her position and then she would state
his
. She would make his points and then rebut them, one by
one, often with little input from him, because the angrier Daniel became, the more impenetrable the silence that engulfed him. But not today; today he would make his position known. Today they would do what
he
wanted.

“This is a terrible idea,” he said.

“It’s not a terrible idea,” Iris said.

“You know it is. We aren’t in any position to take on the burden of caring for a child.”

“She won’t be a burden.”

“She’s
already
a burden. Look, I like Samantha too, she’s a sweet kid, and I didn’t say anything when you started paying for her classes, or when you gave her Becca’s old violin. Not that it even occurred to you for an instant to ask my opinion. But now I’m telling you: enough is enough.”

“So this is about money?”

“No, it’s not about money. When have I ever given a
shit
about money?”

“Never,” Iris said. “That’s why it surprises me to hear you say it now. Since money has never been a big priority for you.”

Daniel’s jaw twitched. However much she protested he knew it galled her that he didn’t earn more. For all the feminist folderol Iris espoused, it came down to this. He felt an urge to punch the wall. Or her.

“It’s not a matter of the money.”

She tried to take his hand, but he shook her off. “Please, Daniel,” she said. “This will be good for us.”

“Us.”

“You and me.”

He stared at her, and the thought came into his mind that perhaps his marriage had been dead for years, for decades preceding the death of their daughter, and that for all that time up to the present moment the only force sustaining it was the incredible power of Iris Copaken’s capacity for self-delusion.

“Us,” he said.

“You and me. I just think that if we had someone, a child—”

With a sudden jerk, Daniel picked up the chair he was holding on to a few inches off the ground and then slammed it down. The legs shivered and there was an ominous crack of wood.

“I want you to listen to me, Iris,” he said, with a softness, a control, that struck him as remarkable under the circumstances. “I want you to shut up, and listen, and maybe, just this one fucking time, allow for the possibility that I may be
right
about something.”

Iris’s mouth dropped open, and she gazed at him, dumbfounded. Daniel continued, “I’m sick of this complicated psychodrama you’re playing out with Samantha. You can’t possibly believe that insinuating yourself into that kid’s life is ever,
ever
, going to replace what you and I lost. You’re too smart for that, for one thing. And for another thing—you and I have lost a lot more than our daughter, Iris. And maybe you want to keep kidding yourself about that. But I don’t.”

Iris’s chin was trembling; Daniel was glad to see that he had cracked the carapace of her superiority, her smugness, her certainty that she knew what was best for everyone.

“I’m not insinuating myself into her life,” she finally managed to say.

“Samantha already has a mother.”

“I know that, Daniel. Thanks for the insight. And, hey, as long as we’re going to stand around diagnosing each other? I have a couple of theories about why a fifty-five-year-old man suddenly decides the thing he wants most in the world is to get beaten to a bloody pulp in the boxing ring.”

Daniel froze, his dark eyebrows knit above his nose, his lips clamped into a thin line. His face slowly drained of color, his angry flush receding first from his brow, then his cheeks, and then inching down his neck.

Iris said, “Look, Daniel. I’m not stupid. I know that I’m not being entirely altruistic. I know that I need Samantha as much as she needs me. Having her live with us will be good; I know it will. You have to trust me. I know this is the right thing to do.”

Daniel’s face was now pale, cold, calm. His brow smoothed. His white-knuckled grip on the chair back loosened. Finally, he returned her look blankly, devoid of emotion. Then he said, “You know what? That’s fine. Do what you want.”

In two steps he crossed the room. He scooped up his gym bag and grabbed his keys. Forty-five minutes later he was in the Maine Event, pummeling the heavy bag so hard that beneath the thick padding of his gloves his fists ached.

The Riverview Psychiatric Center was a brand-new facility, opened just this month on the grounds of the forbidding Gothic pile that had been officially called the Augusta Mental Health Institute but was known to most by its original, grimmer name, the Maine Insane Hospital. Unlike its predecessor, Riverview had no iron-spiked gates or high granite walls. It looked more like the headquarters of a software company than a mental hospital, like a failed office park turned over to the purview of lunatics. A row of spindly trees shivered along the broad cement path between the parking lot and the front door.

The common room of the unit in which Samantha’s mother lived was more pleasant than Iris had expected it would be, perhaps because the furniture was brand-new, the walls freshly painted, the carpeting unmarked.