“Really,” Rachel said. “Let’s dance.”
As Rachel and Fiona danced—with each other, with Chad, with some of the other counselors they were friendly with—Rachel often found her thoughts turning to her father, and as a knee-jerk reaction, she would look away, as if to look away from the memories, and her glance would land fondly on her girls, who were beginning to dance with the boys now, or on Jack walking around the perimeter of the basketball courts with his arms crossed, or on Yonatan, who was DJing the dance, playing music from his iPod.
Some of Yonatan’s friends or campers would go over and say hi to him or request a song, and he would bop along as he humored them, but he seemed mostly interested in picking what songs played next himself. He could very easily have made a playlist for the dance and left the iPod playing on its own so he could enjoy himself, but he was clearly interested in curating the music live. Rachel was dancing and also watching him, so curious about who he was, what his life was like back in Israel, when she felt a soft hand on her shoulder. She turned around to see Mo, the British woman who was her boss, the head of the Hemlock section.
“Rachel,” she said, “you have a phone call.”
Mo was an uptight person, aloof. She kept Rachel at a cold distance as if she were Rachel’s supervisor in a stuffy office setting, not at a summer camp.
“Rachel?” Fiona said, understanding as quickly as Rachel did. “Should I come?”
Rachel shook her head, and she walked to the camp office with Mo in silence. She wasn’t sure if Mo knew exactly what had happened or not, but she was suddenly grateful for Mo’s silence. As they ascended the hill, the gleeful talk of children and the blaring pop music receded while the truer sounds of summer resurfaced: the birds chirping at one another from their treetops, the evening breeze sighing over the high grass. It was as if she and Mo were walking onto a higher, more peaceful plane. If only for a moment, the landscape made Rachel feel at ease. It was an ease that felt like the calm, knowing moment before a downpour, when the leaves on the trees turn upward and the clouds roll in and you know you have a few minutes to find shelter. An ease entirely at odds with what she was on her way to do: pick up the phone and learn that her father, who had disowned her three years earlier, was now actually, heart-stoppingly dead.
—
When Rachel was fourteen, she didn’t want to spend time with either of her parents. She had started high school and had begun to discover the joy of getting sexual attention, the way it made her feel instantly powerful. Boys were such a quick fix. There had been a “Piece of Ass” list that went around the cafeteria during her first week of high school, with a list of the five hottest girls from each grade. She ranked as number two in her freshman class of four hundred girls. How easy it was to pretend to be offended.
Some weekend in the fall, not long after September 11, she and her father went for a hike an hour upstate.
“I wanted to take you out of the city,” he explained in the car. Rachel was annoyed; she had been asked to go to the movies that day with an eleventh-grade boy.
“With everything that’s been happening,” he said, “I think it’s healthy. Don’t you?”
“I guess.”
“I try to convince your mother to move to the suburbs. I think it would be better for you both.”
“We would never leave the city.”
“I know.”
He exited the highway, and they drove onto a winding road that wrapped around and ascended the side of the mountain. About halfway up, he pulled into an inconspicuous dirt parking lot off the side of the road.
“Here we are!” he joked. “Hike’s over!”
She didn’t laugh.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “This is where our trail starts.”
He wasn’t a healthy man by any means, and it was unusual for him to suggest something active for them to do together; meals and “cultural” activities, like going to museums or the theater, were much more the norm. He had a solid paunch around his middle and still smoked a pack a day, as he had been doing since he was a teenager. He was almost sixty now, and when he and Rachel went to dinners, he always ordered some sort of red meat and glass after glass of red wine, which he slugged back like it was water. So it was strange—sweet and a little sad—to see him in his version of active wear now: Adidas gym pants with the white stripes down the side, some sort of spandex-looking T-shirt that clung too much to his extra weight, and what looked like brand-new sneakers. He was carrying a backpack that was way too big for the two-mile hike they were about to embark upon. Rachel was used to seeing him dressed in an expensive suit.
“I brought sandwiches,” he said.
They climbed mostly in silence. Once they got onto the trail, Rachel did not think as much about what she was missing in the city. She would not admit that it was, indeed, nice to get out. She was in good shape from field hockey, but her father often needed to stop, sit on a rock, and drink from his water bottle.
“I’m good. I’m good,” he’d say after a minute, pressing himself back to standing.
When they got to the top, he poured some water over his head, like a football player who had just gotten off the field.
They sat on a boulder overlooking the Hudson River.
“That’s Bear Mountain.” Her father pointed to the other side. “See, there’s the ice-skating rink. I took you there once, when you were really little.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Your mom was with us.” Rachel wondered, as she imagined the scene, which she didn’t remember, if he had been nervous that day, taking his second family around so close to his first. Then Rachel realized he’d probably planned it all out; he’d made sure he knew where his real family would be that day so as to not run into them.
He took out the sandwiches from a white plastic bag in his backpack. “Turkey and pastrami on a roll, lettuce, tomato, mustard, banana peppers.” He handed it to her.
She couldn’t remember the last time they’d eaten deli sandwiches. “You didn’t even ask if my order was the same.”
“Is it?” A look of panic crossed his face.
She kept a straight face for a beat and then broke into a smile. “Yeah,” she said. He smiled back.
They ate their sandwiches with their feet dangling in front of them, like children. The mountainside sloped dramatically beneath them, with thorny brambles and miles of woods leading all the way down to the Hudson. Across the way was the quaint Bear Mountain Bridge, with its drawbridge and its two lanes, and beyond it a range of blue and green mountains. A large tugboat was pulling a much smaller motorboat along the murky river.
He took another bite of his roast beef sandwich, chewed thoroughly, and swallowed.
“So,” he said. “Your mother tells me you’re starting to date.”