Read Online Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman - Free Book Online Page A

go home,” she says.
    “So let’s go tomorrow. Let’s go to North Lake.”
    “All the way up there? It’s far.”
    “So we’ll take the bus,” Stephanie says. “What’s the matter with you, woman?”
    Renée chokes up again with giggles.
    “What’re you laughing about?” Stephanie asks, half joking.
    “Just the way you talk,” says Renée.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Just—calling me a woman.”
    “That’s what we are,” says Stephanie, and she looks over at Renée and her eyes sparkle, and her hair streams out like a banner behind her.
    “Okay,” Renée says, “we are.”
    R ENÉE ’ S aunts are gone, but her parents are sitting on the porch when she comes home. Nina smells manure instantly.
    “Renée! Take off your shoes,” she says. “Where have you been? Don’t bring those shoes into the house!”
    Renée does as she is told, and takes some cookies from the table on the porch. Tired out from biking, she settles down next to her father on the glider.
    “You thought I was wrong about what I said?” her mother is asking.
    “Well …” Andras hesitates.
    “You agreed with them,” says Nina. She shakes her head. “I still say, a sense of identity is what young people need.”
    “No, Nina, no one was arguing about that,” he says. “It’s just a question of how much a school can provide—that’s all Eva meant. There is only so much a school, even a private school, can do. And as for public schools, they have a certain mission to—”
    Impatiently, Nina begins clearing away the empty glasses of iced tea, and puts the dessert plates on a tray. “The children don’t knowtheir history,” she says. “They know nothing about the war. Nothing. Who will teach them this in the public schools? I spoke to Regina about this. What do her children learn? They learn
American
history; they learn about Pearl Harbor. To them that’s what the war is. They don’t learn about their heritage. They don’t learn about Israel. It’s a shanda.”
    “All right, fine,” says Andras, “it’s a shanda.” He gets up and stretches.
    “Renée, do you want a glass of milk with that?” Nina asks.
    “No, thank you,” says Renée, and she pushes the glider with her feet as her mother bustles around, clearing the dishes. Of course Renée doesn’t mention that she and Stephanie have decided to go to North Lake tomorrow.
    T HAT afternoon Andras walks up Mohican. The sky is growing cloudy, the light dim. On either side of the road the forest grows thick and lush. Secretive. Nina’s words echo in Andras’s mind. She believes in education. She thinks that finding the right school, insisting on the best teacher, will solve every problem. When the children learned about the Holocaust in school, Nina wanted Andras to talk to Renée’s class about how he got out of Budapest. He wouldn’t do it. He’s never talked about it, not even to Nina. There are people who lecture about that sort of thing, so it won’t be forgotten. Andras can’t do that. It’s not because it is too painful for him. That isn’t the reason at all. He wasn’t in the camps. It’s because there is no way for him to convey his experience. It lies within him, a separate place within his present life. He couldn’t begin to explain it to his children, really just born and unscratched, all of a piece; knowing just one world, one language.
    It’s disingenuous, he thinks, to teach that kind of thing, that tragic history. You can never fully tell another person what you know. You can’t imagine what you don’t know. There is no way to conceive, to picture, someone else’s life. There is no way to transfer memories. His own experience of the war is one of confusion, ignorance. When Andras was sixteen his parents said good-bye to him. They put him on a train and sent him to France. Andras had not wanted to go; his mother cried. But his father was adamant. Henearly pushed Andras away at the station. The urgency of the moment prevented any