Red Hook Road (46 page)

He had found an inexpensive efficiency apartment, adequate for his needs, and set about doing exactly what it was he wanted to do. He ate what he liked, he ignored the heaps and piles of newspapers and magazines that quickly accumulated on every available surface. He trained four, sometimes five times a week, and on the days he wasn’t in the gym he ran four times around the reservoir in Central Park. He had no choice but to go to work, but all the while he was supervising student cases and dealing with his colleagues he tried to imagine what job he would choose if he could be anything he wanted to be.

For a while this was enough. The feeling of liberation he’d experienced when he first left Red Hook sustained him through the autumn and
into the winter. His only source of frustration during those months was his inability to come up with a satisfactory alternative to the career his wife had chosen for him. He had never considered himself an inspired teacher, had never found the academic environment to be particularly interesting. While many of his colleagues in the clinical department worked diligently on law review articles that they hoped would catapult them into the more legitimate academic side of law teaching, he had no such ambitions.

He’d for so long blamed Iris for his haplessness, for the frustrations of his failed career, and yet when confronted with the opportunity to make a change, he simply couldn’t think of anything else to do. There wasn’t another legal job that attracted him, and although he tried to come up with something, there was nothing outside of the law that he’d rather be doing. On the contrary, the more he tried to figure out an alternative, the more appealing his job, with its simple and achievable demands, its academic calendar and long vacations, began to seem.

Then, one evening in late February, while walking out of the locker room at the gym, he tripped over his shoelace and cracked his mouth on the edge of a table, knocking out his front tooth. Here he’d been training for months, even on occasion sparring with fighters younger and often in better shape than himself, and he’d gotten hurt because he forgot to double knot his shoe. For the next couple of months he spent far too much time in the company of dental professionals. Two root canals, an implant, and even a little gum work, just for the heck of it. By the time his last Percodan prescription had run out, he agreed with the dentist that it would be foolish to purposely put his teeth in harm’s way. He couldn’t keep away from tables, but he didn’t have to let anyone punch him in the face. Once sparring was no longer an option, his enthusiasm for training at the boxing gym ebbed. Maybe it was simply that he no longer felt much like hurting someone anymore. His fists no longer brought him peace.

Without boxing, it became harder for Daniel to fill his days. He was bored and, for the first time since he’d left home, lonely. It was in this mood that he made the trip up to Red Hook in April. He’d gone in order to spend some time with Ruthie and Matt, and that had indeed been a pleasure. Ruthie had seemed glad to see him, and although he couldn’t quite get a handle on her relationship with Matt, at least she was happy
with her job. And Daniel liked Matt. The boy reminded him of himself in a way. Like Daniel, Matt was plodding down a path not entirely of his own choosing. Daniel had wanted so much to help the kid, but he wasn’t sure if he hadn’t picked the worst possible way. Maybe if Daniel hadn’t offered to bail him out financially, Matt would have considered abandoning the project that was clearly giving him so little pleasure. But at least this way Daniel had helped him finish the boat. At least it was done now.

What Daniel had not anticipated from his visit was the feeling that overcame him when he walked into the bedroom he had shared with his wife for more than two decades. It smelled like Iris. Or, rather, it smelled like it always had, a scent he associated with his wife. Lavender from the spray she used on the sheets, the citrus tang of her hand lotion, the cedar chips she tucked between their sweaters, and something more difficult to identify, the barest hint of warm musk, the smell of Iris herself. He looked at the photographs on the wall. The one of his parents on their legendary cruise. The old sepia-toned shots of Iris’s ancestors. And the photographs of his daughters as babies, as young girls, and as young women. There was one photograph in particular that struck him. It was taken at the base of Red Hook Hill. The girls were about seven and twelve years old and they were sitting on the top rail of the fence that blocked the path from vehicle traffic. Iris stood between them, an arm looped around each of their waists. It was a blustery day and the girls’ hair whipped around their heads, hiding much of their faces. Iris’s was tied back, revealing her high forehead and her wide, easy grin. He bent closer to the picture. Around her neck Iris wore a glass pendant on a leather thong. It was a mottled purple blob, meant to be shaped, as he recalled, like an iris. Becca had made it for her in camp one summer. Iris wore it fairly often, long after Becca herself had come to be embarrassed by its lumpiness. Iris had always been like that, Daniel thought, loyal to a fault. She was that way with everyone she loved, tenacious in her defense of them, absolute in her allegiance. This was the other side of her bossiness, her pushiness. She always thought she knew what was best for you, always tried to force you to comply, but she did it because she wanted the best for you. Her love was fierce and unequivocal.

Steadily over the next couple of months, Daniel’s feelings about his
wife began to turn into a kind of pining. He missed her face across the breakfast table. The way she read sentences from books aloud to him, always so terribly disappointed if he didn’t understand the point or the joke, or whatever it was that had so moved her. He started to wonder if all along he’d been blaming Iris for his dissatisfaction, for his sense of being lost and disconnected from the person he used to be, when the truth was that everything that was good about his life wasn’t in spite of her, it was
because
of her.

He had tried, periodically, especially over the past two months, to bring himself to pick up the phone and call Iris, but between them lay so much, and he was not sure how to bridge the gap.

She would surely have changed over the past nine and a half months. How strange not to have witnessed those changes. How strange, when for decades he had been the cartographer of her face’s and her body’s myriad transformations. He could map out her contours, every freckle, every mole, the tiny starburst of a broken blood vessel behind her right knee. He could remember the shape of her breasts and nipples at every stage of their lives together. Creamy and firm when she was young; stippled with blue veins when she was pregnant and nursing, the nipples red and swollen; then slowly deflating as she grew older, her nipples turning pale pink. And his own body? Had it changed? He’d continued running even after he stopped training, but he was softer than he had been when last he saw her. His hair, even on his chest, was more gray now than black. Had Iris allowed the constellation of moles and freckles across his back to fade from her memory, extinguishing one by one like stars winking out in the night sky? Had she forced herself to forget? Was she as nervous about seeing him as he was about seeing her? Was she as eager?

Being back in Maine this time made Daniel long for Iris. Here in Red Hook Becca was constantly in his thoughts, in a way she had not been when he was in New York, and he wished he could share his memories with Iris. Only Iris would recall the way Becca used to purse her lips after she nursed, her eyes lolling, as if she were drunk on milk. Only with Iris could he talk about the time when Becca was two and had escaped his arms, running down the length of the dock and flinging herself into the water, then bobbing to the surface and laughing as Daniel, panicked,
dived in after her. He wanted to talk to his wife. He missed her. It was as simple as that. He had left her with his fists up, and he was returning with them down and his arms open.

Daniel was the first of the guests to arrive at the yard. He found Ruthie stacking bottles of cheap champagne and plastic wine cups on top of an oil drum. She’d filled a Mason jar with lupines and daisies, and Daniel recalled how she and Becca used to harvest huge armfuls of lupines every June, filling pitchers and jars all over the house. The memory was less wrenching than he might have expected it to be. Along with the expected pang of loss he felt a kind of warm flush, nearly pleasurable; almost the way he used to feel back before the accident when he’d recall a moment from his daughters’ childhoods. A wave of longing, knit with pride and sweetness. The pleasure of nostalgia, only slightly marred by grief.

Ruthie’s hair was long and frizzy, braided over her shoulder in a single, thick plait like the one Becca had worn. Daniel remembered how Becca used to complain that there wasn’t a decent place in the environs of Red Hook to get her hair cut. During her first couple of years in Maine, she would even take care to schedule an appointment whenever she came home to New York for a visit. Ruthie, on the other hand, had not bothered to come to New York to visit, let alone get her hair cut. She looked tired, Daniel thought. Mr. Kimmelbrod’s illness was taking its toll on everyone, but Daniel could not help but wonder if there was more to it than that.

When he hugged her, Daniel gave her an extra squeeze. After a moment, she returned it.

When they separated she said, “You should go look at the boat. It’s all loaded up on the Travelift and ready to go.”

The Travelift boat hoist stood about twenty-five feet tall and was painted a cheery, bright marine blue. It was a steel frame with four legs, each on three-foot tractor wheels. Two narrow docks led out over the water, a gap between them. Each wheel would roll along its dock, the boat hanging in the hoist over the water between them. Attached to one leg of the Travelift was a small driver’s cage, no more than a seat and a steering wheel, with levers that worked the winches that raised and lowered the straps. At one end the hoist was open at both the top and the bottom, supported by only the two vertical legs, so that the boat could enter. On
the sides, the legs were supported by horizontal beams, one directly above the wheels, one across the top. It was from these top horizontal beams that the Alden hung, slung across two yellow canvas straps attached to steel cables on either side of the Travelift.

The white hull glistened in the sun, reflecting the images of the young men gathered around her, almost mirrorlike in her shine. The metal railings sparkled, too, and the varnished wood on deck glowed a deep, warm orange. Nothing looks so new, so sharp, as a wooden boat hanging in the cradle of a hoist, ready to be launched. In the end she might not even float, but for now she looked as if she could fly, a shining sea bird about to take off into the sky.

Daniel joined Matt and the group of men milling around the boat. It was a fairly typical crowd for a boat launch. The boatbuilders, men with scruffy beards, frayed shirts, and worn-out work boots; the odd back-to-earther who, when he wasn’t baking loaves of twelve-grain bread to sell at the farmers’ market, earned a few bucks fetching and carrying at the yard; the grizzled marine rats who showed up early every morning to fish off the ends of the yard’s docks and who never missed the free drinks on offer at a boat launch; and a few members of the yacht club set, wealthy men who liked to hang out at the boatyard, where they affected a tone of nearly obsequious respect for the craftsmen, careful never to indicate by word or deed what everyone knew—that they could buy the yard and every builder in it a dozen times over without missing a nickel from their pockets.

“She looks great,” Daniel said.

Matt reached out his hand and stroked the glossy white bow. “She does, doesn’t she?” He sounded amazed, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had accomplished.

When Daniel saw her in the spring she had been so far from completion that it was almost impossible to believe that this was the same boat. Everything was perfectly fitted out, the built-in tables, benches, and shelves were impeccably crafted. Everything fit, everything worked, the drawers smooth on their runners, the cushions well sewn and tight in the bunks. There was a neat little four-burner stove in the galley, and every brass light fixture gleamed with polish. Matt had even bought pale-blue towels that matched the piping on the upholstery, and had them monogrammed
with the boat’s name. They hung on a brass towel warmer in the head. The boy had done, in the end, a magnificent job. A job his brother would have been proud of. And that was fortunate, considering how much sweat and treasure and time had gone into it, how many years and tens of thousands of dollars it cost. Daniel wondered whether, in the end, a beautiful boat might not be worthy of all that. He supposed it had a lot to do with how you felt about boats.

Daniel slung his arm around Matt’s shoulders. “You should be proud,” he said.

Matt flushed and ducked his head as if trying to dodge the compliment.

Ruthie called out, “Are you guys almost ready? Everybody’s here.”

Daniel turned and saw Iris heading right for him, looking as if she hadn’t spotted him yet. He stood still, watching her smooth gait, the way she swung her arms as she walked, the long, capable stride that so easily matched his own. There it was, the body about which he had been thinking so much lately, same as it ever was. Lovely, elegant, beautiful. And then she saw him and stopped in her tracks.

She was wearing a white sunhat with a floppy brim that covered much of her face. A pair of oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses hid most of the rest from view. He recognized neither the hat nor the sunglasses. Her blue seersucker skirt he remembered. It had been one of her favorites one summer maybe a decade ago, when she had worn little else. She must have lost weight, because she had not been able to fit into that skirt for a while. He recognized, as well, the white cotton button-down shirt she wore, rolled up at the sleeves and tied in a knot at her waist. It was his. Or had been his, before she’d appropriated it.

And around her neck, on its homely leather thong, hung the lumpy glass pendant that Becca had so labored over all those years ago.