Red Hook Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

anyone can, John will,” Daniel said. Then, seeming finally to notice that he was in danger of renewing the argument he himself had previously squelched, he said, “Can I get you ladies a drink? Mary Lou, some champagne?”
    “I’ll take a G&T,” Mary Lou said.
    “I’ll get it,” Iris said.
    She arrived at the bar to find that the young members of the bridal party had made a disturbing rush for the alcohol, and had by now completely crowded out the other guests. Iris put a restraining hand on one of the groomsmen’s sleeves, and tried gently to steer him out of the way. At the same time, Jane Tetherly, John’s mother, swam into the fray.
    “Enough of that now,” Jane said, pushing the young people aside. “You need to wait your turn. You’re not the only folks who need a drink.” Barking at the bartender to move over, she rolled up her sleeves and began pouring drinks. “Take this,” Jane said, handing a tumbler of vodka and cranberry juice to one of the girls. “And I don’t want to see you back here until everyone else in this room’s got a drink in their hands.”
    Iris watched Jane thrust drinks at the kids and shoo them away from the bar. Jane knew how to take charge, you had to give her that. Jane popped the top off a bottle of beer and took a long gulp before wiping the mouth of the bottle with her sleeve and passing it to one of the boys.
    Within a few minutes Jane, with the assistance of the much slower bartender, managed to fill the groping hands of the young people and send them on their way. She looked up and caught Iris’s eye.
    “What can I get you?” she asked.
    “Leave that and go enjoy yourself, Jane,” Iris said. “You’re going to get us in trouble with the bartenders’ union.” For some reason Iris always found herself assuming a false jocularity with Jane. She made bad jokes, and Jane never laughed, or even smiled. And still, Iris would do it again the next time they met.
    Jane pursed her lips and then shrugged. “Fine,” she said. Briskly, she wiped her hands on a napkin. She had splashed tonic across the front of her dress, and when she stepped out from behind the bar you could see the wet fabric clinging to her heavy thighs.
    As with so many awkward, painful, or hopeless situations, there was a Yiddish word for the relationship that as of this afternoon obtained between Iris and her cleaning woman. Her father had reminded her of it before they left for the church, as she was rushing around straightening up the house.
    “You’ll have to fire Jane,” he’d said. “It will be awkward to have her cleaning your house now that the two of you are …” What was the word he’d used? Iris had motioned him out of the way with her broom, refusing to concede that there was any need to let Jane go. The woman owned and managed a service, Iris argued; it had been years since she had actually cleaned houses. In truth, Iris knew that Jane had cleaned the Copaken house just last summer, when one of her “girls” (who ranged in age from sixteen to seventy-six) had gone into preterm labor.
    If Iris and Jane were not on close, or even truly amiable, terms, at least, Iris thought, they could take comfort in the weekly smoothness of their transactions. Iris had once supposed that, with the kids dating each other, she and Jane might gradually achieve a more familial, or at least a simply friendly, relationship. After all, but for the lucky accident of Iris’s grandmother having married a banker from New York rather than a local fisherman, and her father being a concert violinist rather than a boatbuilder, they might have had similar lives. But Jane had no interest in any relationship with Iris other than the most formal, her manner making Iris so uncomfortable that she inevitably found herself fulfilling what she imagined to be Jane’s worst expectations of the fancy-pants New York from-away: frivolous, silly, and, above all, condescending. When Iris spoketo Jane, her voice crept into