Kaaterskill Falls (25 page)

On the Thruway he passes cars with fir trees strapped onto their roofs. Christmas trees for apartments in the city. There are station wagons with long skis on top, locked into ski racks. A few cars on the road are loaded with deer trussed onto their roof racks. Each deer stiff on its side, back legs tied together, front legs tied together, brown eyes like glass.

The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground….

—S
AMUEL
J
OHNSON
Rasselas

B
EES
cover the goldenrod, the air floats with pollen and barbecue smoke, and Hamilton’s store bell rings with Elizabeth’s customers. There are Kirshners buying food in bulk, the women wheeling strollers loaded down with bags. Customers come up the road from Phoenicia and Bear Mountain, the weekenders bursting out of their cars like circus families. A Yiddish translator and his wife saw the ad Elizabeth stapled up on the community bulletin board in Palenville. They pull away with three grocery bags of meat and requests from their daughters for chicken pot pies. The Spiegelman family reunion drives up in Volkswagen vans and buys out Elizabeth’s entire stock of Hebrew National frankfurters and ground beef. Elizabeth rings up the huge purchase in Hamilton’s back room, and she feels strange, a bit jumpy. Even now in midsummer, whenever customers arrive, Elizabeth’s heart pounds with excitement; the rhythm of her ambition within her.

In a leaf-green dress elderly Mrs. Sobel picks out her groceries from Elizabeth’s stock. The graceful wife of the Conservative rabbi and historian Cecil Birnbaum admires, Mrs. Sobel comes into town from her forested estate, and buys blocks of cheese and frozen rib eye roasts. Cutting in front of her, two boys plunge their hands into the cooler where Elizabeth keeps kosher Popsicles and ice cream sandwiches on ice. Sleek and hungry from swimming in the lake, they
throw down their money on the counter, one of the quarters still spinning as they dive back through the door to the street.

Elizabeth knows Hamilton is watching her customers as they walk purposefully through his store. They find their way to the back, and make their purchases only from her, while Hamilton watches with a strange expression, partly annoyed, partly impressed.

“I’d like to put up a sign,” Elizabeth tells Hamilton one Friday afternoon, when she’s closing up. “A sign of my own.”

“I don’t want another sign,” says Hamilton.

“But it’s impossible for people walking by—”

“They seem to find you,” he says.

“Just a small sign,” she says. “Or something I can set up on the sidewalk. I’d take it down when the store is closed.”

Hamilton doesn’t answer. Thoughtfully, he walks out to the front of his little building. He opens the screen door and stands out on the steps, looking up at his own red-and-black sign:
HAMILTON’S
, in curlicues, 1890s style. He bought it from a mail order catalog two years ago.

“I don’t need another sign,” he says, stepping back inside.

“But I need one,” Elizabeth says.

Hamilton looks at her. “I may raise my rent next summer,” he says.

“Should I look for another place?” Elizabeth asks.

“Well, there aren’t so many places to put a store,” Hamilton tells her. He lights a cigarette and pulls his wood slat chair close to Elizabeth’s Dutch door. “I guess you could rent from King. He’d rent you something.”

“We do rent from him,” Elizabeth says. “We rent our bungalow.”

“Well, there you are. Course, I’ve known him for years. You know the father?”

“No,” says Elizabeth. She’s packing up the Popsicles and frozen chicken pieces. Over the weekend she keeps them sealed in boxes in Hamilton’s freezer.

“Michael King’s father. He was before your time. A dentist; rich. A—” Hamilton was about to say “a Jew,” but tactfully he substitutes, “Summer people like you. Name, Herb Klein. A short little man, and
dark. Not like the son. Dr. Klein took his summer fees in cash. He didn’t declare. Hid the money instead in his summer place. That old house had a black iron stove, potbelly for wood burning, and Dr. Klein kept his money there in bills, stuffed in the back. Maybe fifteen thousand in greenbacks.”

Elizabeth leans over the Dutch door.

“One fall, after old man Klein went back to the city.” Hamilton taps the ash off his cigarette. “The son, Michael, came back here hunting, with a girl from the city. Thought no one would notice them because the summer people were gone. So there they were, alone together fooling in Klein’s old house. There was no water, and the electricity turned off. All of a sudden we had a cold snap. October, and it went down to twenty-three degrees. The two of them were freezing in that house, and there wasn’t any heat. So Michael decided to light a fire in the old woodstove. Dragged up apple wood from the basement—”

“How do you know that about the wood?” Elizabeth asks.

“I made up that part,” Hamilton says evenly. “But the truth is he got a fire going and burned all that money his father kept in the stove. As long as he lives, no one in this town will ever forget it. He may be rich, but the moral is: Klein is Klein.”

Elizabeth laughs. She feels almost like a year-rounder, working at Hamilton’s store, and listening to his tales about Michael King. She feels that in some curious way Hamilton is extending his friendship to her, grousing with her about the one man in Kaaterskill they have in common, his interloping neighbor and her landlord.

“You’ve seen his house on Maple,” Hamilton says.

She nods.

“Take a look at the lions. Look at those lions in the front. He bought a pair of plaster lions, you know, with the paw upraised, one for each side of the entrance. But if you take a look, you’ll see that they both face right. He’s got a dispute now between him and the company. They claim he ordered two identical lions, not two lions facing each other. And I’m sure he did.”

As
ALWAYS
on Fridays, Elizabeth closes early, at two o’clock. She walks home, carrying the cash box along with her purse and a shopping
bag full of extra challahs. She has hired one of the mechanics from Boyd’s garage, James Boyd, to go down to the city for her every week with his pickup truck, and Ira Rubin, a boy from town, to help him with the heavy lifting. Of course, these are expenses. She has to charge more for everything, but what has surprised her is that people are paying the higher prices. Elizabeth marks up the fresh baked goods in particular, but every week she sells out of challah and babka, cookies and coffee cake. Her customers love the fresh bread and cake she brings up from Edelman’s. They will pay for that.

The little girls are playing in the yard in front of the house, but as soon as they see Elizabeth they jump up and follow her inside.

“Can I have a cookie?” Sorah asks her.

“Me too,” shouts Brocha.

Malki comes running from the girls’ bedroom with Chani after her. “Mommy. Look what Chani is reading. Look.”

“Give it back,” says Chani.

“Mommy, look,” Malki says, flashing a small book.

Chani charges, grabs the book, and pushes her sister so hard that Malki loses her balance and falls to the floor.

Elizabeth rushes over. She helps Malki up and scolds, “You know better than that, Chani. Are you listening to me?”

Chani says nothing. She is fourteen now, tall for her age, her hair thick and dark.

“She’s reading books about Israel,” Malki says doggedly.

“Are you being a tattletale?” Elizabeth asks her.

Malki’s eyes well up with tears.

“I can read whatever I want, stupid.” Chani glares at Malki.

“Don’t you ever call your sister stupid,” Elizabeth snaps. “Apologize. Now.”

“Sorry,” Chani says grudgingly to Malki.

When the house is calm again Elizabeth and Chani make dinner. “What did you do in camp today?” Elizabeth asks as they work together in the kitchen.

Chani makes a face. “Rav Lamkin talked about the fast days and how we should mourn for the calamities of our people and that we have no home. He likes fast days.”

“Does he?”

“That’s all he talks about. Calamities.” Chani cuts up celery for stuffing. “Why does he pretend Jews don’t have a home?”

“The rabbi meant we don’t have a homeland,” Elizabeth explains.

“But Israel is in the paper every day,” Chani says, puzzled. She sees it all the time. That Prime Minister Begin is coming to Washington to talk with President Carter. That Begin is allowing settlements in Judea and Samaria. Just last Shabbes after shul, Chani heard Mr. Melish and Mr. Birnbaum talking about the settlements and the territories and Jordan. Mr. Melish was grumbling about President Carter—that as far as Carter is concerned, he’d give all Israel’s land away for ten points in the polls, and that this Middle East peace conference of his is just a publicity stunt.

And Mr. Birnbaum answered with one of his strange sayings: “Blessed are the peacemakers. For they shall inherit the earth.”

“Everyone talks about Israel all the time,” Chani says now. “You can’t just pretend it isn’t there.”

“Chani,” Elizabeth begins. But she doesn’t know quite how to put it. She never imagined hearing words like these from her daughter. “I think reading and finding out about the world is good. It’s necessary to learn about the world. But the world is one thing and God is another. The two don’t fit together yet. And one day they will, and the Temple will be restored, and Israel will be ours again. But the place isn’t ready yet, and neither are we.”

“I know that,” says Chani. “But why do you and Daddy never talk about it? Why are you pretending it isn’t real? Look,” she says, and she runs and gets the
Times
from the living-room couch, and she holds it up so that her mother can see, right on the front page, the picture of a soldier standing guard while workers are building houses. “See,” she says. “It’s in the newspaper and in the maps—”

“But we don’t want just a place,” says Elizabeth. “You can’t substitute bare land for—for the mitzvos that must be done, and the transformation of all the lives in every place in the world…. We’re waiting, you see.”

“But if you just sit around and wait, nothing will get done—
that’s what you always say,” Chani points out, triumphantly practical. “So what good is it going to do if we’re all waiting over here in New York? Shouldn’t we be in Israel now?” she suggests recklessly.

“Well,” Elizabeth says, “if you wanted a house and I gave you a model of a house, would you take it?”

“I don’t want a house,” Chani says, and she puts the newspaper down on the counter. Houses in Chani’s mind are made up of chores. A house means making beds and preparing dinner. Picking up toys and washing dishes every night. But a country, a whole country, would be big and full of mountains. Places to climb and places to swim. Bare land. Those words sound good to Chani, like bare feet.

Elizabeth begins stuffing the capon they are having for dinner. Chani, Chana, Anna, Annette, she thinks. All the permutations of that name. All the different ways she imagined her child would grow up. Weren’t they all just variations on the thoughts she had about herself? Of course Chani has her own opinions. They all do, all her daughters. But Chani is so outspoken. That concerns her. Chani’s questions in themselves are natural. Bright children don’t accept ideas without asking for reasons. The explanations should hold them to belief, not blind obedience. But among the Kirshners questions like Chani’s are a private thing. They aren’t accepted publicly. There are bounds on discussions and arguments, and talk in public places. There are books that people simply do not read, and subjects that they avoid altogether. Chani is getting older. She needs to be more careful about what she says.

A
LL
the summer people are preparing for Shabbes. Peaches and nectarines cover the table in Eva and Maja’s big old-fashioned kitchen. Quilted appliance covers lie in a heap and all the appliances are whirring—the thirty-cup coffee urn, the white KitchenAid mixer on the counter. Andras sits and tells his sisters about Nina’s home improvements. This summer she is having an alarm system installed. She is redoing the bathroom downstairs. For reasons Andras cannot understand, she is getting estimates on finishing the basement.