Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman Read Free Book Online Page B

Cecil says to Beatrix. “In a situation like this you wouldn’t be inheriting souls at all; they would be inheriting you.”
    “No one is going to be inheriting me, I’m afraid,” Jeremy says dryly.
    “But suppose you grew a white beard and became all wrinkled and sagelike,” Beatrix proposes.
    “Tell me about the wedding,” Jeremy says.
    “You were supposed to be there,” Beatrix says.
    “If I hadn’t been in Spain, I would have been,” says Jeremy.
    “H E’S very strange,” Beatrix says to Cecil after Jeremy leaves.
    “Of course you know he isn’t Kirshner’s scion at all,” Cecil says.
    “Yes, I suppose he had to give it up when he started teaching on the outside. A profane university. All sorts of atheists. But then, can you ever give it up completely? Isn’t it bred in the bone?”
    “I think he does what he wants,” says Cecil.
    “Oh, a secret identity. Different rules for different places.”
    “Different manners, in any case. He didn’t like all your questions.”
    “No, I suppose not.”
    “I liked them, though.”
    “So you say he has all sorts of secrets.”
    “Not secrets. Personas.”
    Beatrix thinks for a moment. Then she grins. “Of course. He must. That way he can be Jack in the country and Ernest in town!”

    E LIZABETH and the girls arrive that evening carrying their badminton racquets, and Elizabeth can see that Cecil’s wife is a true geometer. Beatrix has surveyed and chalked a real court over the levelest place on the hilly Birnbaum lawn. The lines are all measured out, the corners square, the net pins driven firmly into the ground.
    “Are they
all
yours?” Beatrix asks, looking at the girls. “How very clever of you! A captive audience. What do you usually do with them during the day?”
    Elizabeth herself used to wonder how to occupy her daughters. She’s found, though, that with a steady stream of projects, puzzles, and excursions she and the children survive quite well in the summers. She goes to flea markets and buys odd lots of yarn and fabric remnants. And so under the trees each girl works on handicrafts according to her age and skill. Chani embroiders, although she doesn’t much like it. Malki crochets. Ruchel is learning bargello. Sorah is learning to crochet, but she can only make chains. She plays with Brocha in the pine cones.
    “Don’t you worry they’ll become overly domestic?” asks Beatrix. “Too—too little-womanish?”
    Elizabeth shrugs and concentrates on her game. She does look Victorian in her long dirndl skirt and white blouse, kerchief over her hair, but running over the lawn she’s much faster and more fluid than Beatrix. Watching the two of them from the window in the pantry, Cecil calls out, “She really has you, Bea! You’re all over the court!” Elizabeth is hot, but she loves badminton, and she has so little opportunity for exercise. She’s always envied Isaac’s ability to sit and be content. Somehow she can’t savor quiet the way he does. She loves to run. She whips her badminton racquet and the birdie whooshes through the air.
    “I’d like to play against you,” Cecil tells Elizabeth after she’s beaten Beatrix twice.
    “Oh, good,” says Beatrix. “Now she’ll trounce you, my boy.” And she retires to watch in the shade.
    Elizabeth’s daughters stare at Beatrix in her shorts and tank top. Her legs show, and her arms and shoulders.
    “She’s got
you
all over the court now!” Beatrix calls out gleefully to her husband. And Cecil, breathing hard as he stretches for elliptical shots, looks at his neighbor with new respect.
    Partly because Elizabeth has an insurmountable lead, Cecil pauses before his serve. “Listen,” he says.
    They all look up, and they can hear faint music drifting in the trees.
    “I think you’re stalling for time,” Elizabeth chides Cecil.
    “It must be from the Sobels in back,” Cecil says. “The wedding reception for their niece. I remember they were going to have a trio up from