|
I
was glad to have the Vineyard house, a tidy little Victorian on
Ocean Park in the town of Oak Bluffs, with lots of frilly carpenter's
Gothic along the sagging porch and a lovely morning view of the
white band shell set amidst a vast sea of smooth green grass and
outlined against a vaster sea of bright blue water. My parents
liked to tell how they bought the house for a song back in the
sixties, when Martha's Vineyard, and the black middle-class colony
that summers there, were still smart and secret. Lately, in my
father's oft-repeated view, the Vineyard had tumbled downhill,
for it was crowded and noisy and, besides, they let everyone in
now, by which he meant black people less well off than we. There
were too many new houses going up, he would moan, many of them
despoiling the roads and woods near the best beaches. There were
even condominiums, of all things, especially near Edgartown, which
he could not understand, because the southern part of the island
is what he always called Kennedy country, the land where rich
white vacationers and their bratty children congregate, and a
part-angry, part-jealous article of my father's faith held that
white people allow the members of what he liked to call the darker
nation to swarm and crowd while keeping the open spaces for themselves.
And yet, amidst all the clamor, the Vineyard house is a small
marvel. I loved it as a child and love it more now. Every room,
every dark wooden stair, every window whispers its secret share
of memories. As a child, I broke an ankle and a wrist in a fall
from the gabled roof outside the master bedroom; now, more than
thirty years after, I no longer recall why I thought it would
be fun to climb there. Two summers later, as I wandered the house
in post-midnight darkness, searching for a drink of water, an
odd mewling sound dropped me into a crouch on the landing, whence,
a week or so shy of my tenth birthday, I peered through the balustrade
and thus caught my first stimulating glimpse of the primal mystery
of the adult world. I saw my brother, Addison, four years older
than I, tussling with our cousin Sally, a dark beauty of fifteen,
on the threadbare burgundy sofa opposite the television down in
the shadowy nook of the stairwell, neither of them quite fully
dressed, although I was somehow unable to figure out precisely
what articles of clothing were missing. My instinct was to flee.
Instead, seized by a weirdly thrilling lethargy, I watched them
roll about, their arms and legs intertwined in seemingly random
postures--making out, we called it in those simpler days, a phrase
pregnant with purposeful ambiguity, perhaps as a protection against
the burden of specificity.
My
own teen years, like my adulthood dreary and overlong, brought
no similar adventures, least of all on the Vineyard; the highlight,
I suppose, came near the end of our last summer sojourn as a full
family, when I was about thirteen, and Mariah, a rather pudgy
fifteen and angry at me for some smart-mouthed crack about her
weight, borrowed a box of kitchen matches, then stole a Topps
Willie Mays baseball card that I treasured and climbed the dangerous
pull-down ladder to the attic, eight rickety wooden slats, most
of them loose. When I caught up with her, my sister burned the
card before my eyes as I wept helplessly, falling to my knees
in the wretched afternoon heat of the dusty, low-ceilinged loft--the
two of us already set in our lifelong pattern of animosity. That
same summer, my sister Abigail, in those days still known as the
baby, even though just a bit more than a year younger than I,
made the local paper, the Vineyard Gazette, when she won something
like eight different prizes at the county fair on a muggy August
night by throwing darts at balloons and baseballs at milk bottles,
and so solidified her position as the family's only potential
athlete--none of the rest of us dared try, for our parents always
preached brains over brawn.
Four
Augusts later, Abby's boyish laughter was no longer heard along
Ocean Park, or anywhere else, her joy in life, and ours in her,
having vanished in a confused instant of rain-slicked asphalt
and an inexperienced teenager's fruitless effort to evade an out-of-control
sports car, something fancy, seen by several witnesses but never
accurately described and therefore never found; for the driver
who killed my baby sister a few blocks north of the Washington
Cathedral in that first spring of Jimmy Carter's presidency left
the scene long before the police arrived. That Abby had only a
learner's permit, not a license, never became a matter of public
knowledge; and the marijuana that was found in her borrowed car
was never again mentioned, least of all by the police or even
the press, because my father was who he was and had the connections
that he did, and, besides, in those days it was not yet our national
sport to ravage the reputations of the great. Abby was therefore
able to die as innocently as we pretended that she had lived.
Addison by that time was on the verge of finishing college and
Mariah was about to begin her sophomore year, leaving me in the
nervous role of what my mother kept calling her only child. And
all that Oak Bluffs summer, as my father, tight-lipped, commuted
to the federal courthouse in Washington and my mother shuffled
aimlessly from one downstairs room to the next, I made it my task
to hunt through the house for memories of Abby--at the bottom
of a stack of books on the black metal cart underneath the television,
her favorite game of Life; in the back of the glass-fronted cabinet
over the sink, a white ceramic mug emblazoned with the legend
BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL, purchased to annoy my father; and, hiding
in a corner of the airless attic, a stuffed panda named George,
after the martyred black militant George Jackson, won at the fair
and now leaking from its joints some hideous pink substance--memories,
I must confess in my perilous middle age, that have grown ever
fainter with the passage of time.
Ah,
the Vineyard house! Addison was married in it, twice, once more
or less successfully, and I smashed the leaded glass in the double
front door, also twice, once more or less intentionally. Every
summer of my youth we went there to live, because that is what
one does with a summer home. Every winter my father griped about
the upkeep and threatened to sell it, because that is what one
does when happiness is a questionable investment. And when the
cancer that pursued her for six years finally won, my mother died
in it, in the smallest bedroom, with the nicest view of Nantucket
Sound, because that is what one does if one can choose one's end.
My
father died at his desk. And, at first, only my sister and a few
stoned callers to late-night radio shows believed he had been
murdered.
* * * * * *
THE
WHITE KITCHEN
(I)
The news of the Judge's death reached us several times in the
years before the event actually occurred. It is not that he was
ill; he was, as a rule, so vigorous that one tended to forget
his wavering health, which is why the heart attack that at last
cut him down was, at first, so difficult to credit. It is simply
that he led the sort of life that generated rumor. People disliked
my father, intensely, and he returned the favor. They spread stories
of his death because they prayed the stories were true. To his
enemies--they were legion, a fact in which he gloried--my father
was a plague, and rumors of a cure always raise hopes in those
who suffer, or love those who do. And, in this case, some of those
my father plagued were not people but causes, which, in America,
can always count their lovers in the millions, unlike individual
people, who die unloved every day. Not one of his enemies but
hated my father, and not one but spread the stories. Self-styled
friends would call. They were always whispering how sorry they
were. They had heard, they would say, about my father's heart
attack while promoting his latest book up in Boston. Or his stroke
while taping a television interview out in Cincinnati. Except
that there would not have been one: he would be alive and well
in San Antonio, speaking to the convention of some conservative
political action committee--the Rightpacs, Kimmer calls them.
But, oh, the gleeful rumors of his demise! My mother hated the
rumors, not for the heartache, she said, but for the humiliation--there
were standards, after all. But not in the rumor mill. Waiting
in the checkout line at the supermarket, just before my son Bentley
was born, I was astonished to read on the cover of one of the
more imaginative tabloids, just beneath the weekly Whitney Houston
story (TALKS CANDIDLY ABOUT HER HEARTBREAK) and just above the
latest way to lose as much weight as you want without diet or
exercise (A MIRACLE DOCTORS WON'T TELL YOU), the gladsome tidings
that the Mafia had put out a contract on my father, because of
his cooperation with federal prosecutors--although, when Kimmer
made me go back to the store and buy it and I read the whole thing,
all one hundred fifty words, I noticed a pointed lack of detail
as to what my father could possibly have to cooperate with prosecutors
about, or what he might know about the Mafia that would be so
dangerous. I called Mrs. Rose, the Judge's long-suffering assistant,
and finally caught up with him on the road in Seattle. He took
the opportunity to warn me yet again on the insidiousness of his
enemies.
"They
will do anything, Talcott, anything to destroy me," he announced
in the oracular tone he tended to adopt when discussing those
who disliked him. He repeated the word a third time, in case my
hearing was off: "Anything."
Including,
I noted while leafing through the pessimistic pages of The Nation
a few years back, accuse him of paranoia. Or was it megalomania?
Anyway, my father was sure they were out to get him, and my sister
was sure they were right. When the Judge skipped Bentley's christening
three years ago, worried the press might be there, Mariah defended
him, pointing out that he had missed half the baptisms of her
children--no difficult feat, given the numbers--but by then she
and I were barely speaking anyway.
Once
a false story of my father's demise made the real papers--not
the supermarket tabloids, but the Washington Post, which killed
him on a wintry morning in a commuter plane crash in Virginia,
one among a dozen victims, his apparent presence on board noted
poignantly, but also coyly: CONTROVERSIAL FORMER JUDGE FEARED
DEAD IN CRASH is what the headline said. The irony was plain to
the most casual follower of current events, because what people
feared was not my father dead but my father alive; and because
of the unhappy turning his career took, which was also, my father
liked to say, the fault of the Post and "its ilk." Left-wing muckrakers,
my father called them in his well-remunerated speeches to the
Rightpacs, who were pleased to hear this angry, articulate black
lawyer blaming the media for his resignation from the federal
bench not long after the collapse of his anticipated elevation
to the Supreme Court, where, his conservative fans loved to remind
his liberal critics, he had argued and won two key desegregation
cases in the sixties. Oh, but he could be confounding! Which is
why Mariah was certain that there were smiles of relief all along
the Cambridge-Washington axis (where she picked up that hackneyed
phrase I will never know, but I suspect it was from Addison, who
could always stand her) when the early editions of the Post carried
the crash story and a couple of the more careless news-radio stations
repeated it. The plague, it seemed for a glorious instant, was
at an end. But my wily father was not on board. Although his name
was on the manifest and he had checked in, he had prudently chosen
that occasion to argue via long distance with my mother, then
busily dying at the Vineyard house, over the cost of some repairs
to the gutters, and the discussion grew sufficiently extended
that he missed the flight. The airline got its passenger list
wrong, this being back in the days when it was still possible
to do such a thing. "That's how much she loved me," the Judge
told us in a drunken ramble the night of Claire Garland's funeral.
He cried, too, which none of us had seen before--only Addison
even claimed to have seen him take a drink since the bad period
just after Abby died--and Mariah slapped my face when, the very
next day, I pointed out to her that, in the six years of my mother's
illness, my father spent as much time on the road as he did at
her bedside. "So what?" my sister demanded as I groped for a suitable
riposte to a palm across the cheek--a question, once I thought
about it, that I was ill-prepared to answer.
And
perhaps I deserved the rebuke, for the Judge, despite his coldness
toward most of the world, including, usually, his children, was
never anything but tender and affectionate with our mother. Even
when my father was a practicing lawyer, before the move to government
service, he was constantly leaving meetings with clients to take
calls from his Claire. Later, on the Securities and Exchange Commission
and then on the bench, he would sometimes leave litigants waiting
while he chatted with his wife, who seemed to take such treatment
as her due. He smiled for her in a natural delight that told the
world how grateful he was for the day Claire Morrow said yes;
at least until Abby died, after which he did not do much smiling
for a while. Once a semblance of family stability was re-established,
my parents used to take evening walks along Shepard Street, holding
hands.
Of
course, my father was on the road constantly. At the time of his
death, he liked to call himself just another Washington lawyer,
which meant that when he wanted to reach me he would have Mrs.
Rose place the call, his own time being too precious, and, when
I came on the line, he would invariably put me on the speakerphone,
perhaps to leave his hands free for other work. Mrs. Rose told
me once that I should not be upset: he put everybody on the speakerphone,
treating it as though it had just been invented. Indeed, everything
that he was doing was new to him. He was, formally, of counsel
to the law firm of Corcoran & Klein--of counsel being a term of
art covering a multitude of awkward relationships, from the retired
partner who no longer does any lawyering to the out-of-work bureaucrat
trying to bring in enough business to earn a full partnership
to the go-go consultant looking for a respectable place to hang
a shingle. In my father's case, the firm offered a veneer of gentility
and a place to take his messages, but little more. He saw few
clients. He practiced no law. He wrote books, went on nationwide
speaking tours, and, when he needed a rest, showed up on Nightline
and Crossfire and Imus to beguile the evil armies of the left.
Indeed, he was the perfect talk-show guest: he was willing to
say nearly anything about nearly anybody, and he would call anyone
who argued with him the most erudite and puzzling names. (The
censors would have a terrible time when he used words like wittol
and pettifoggery, and he was once bleeped out on one of the radio
talk shows for describing a particular candidate's shift to the
right during the Republican presidential primaries as an act of
ecdysis.) Oh, yes, people hated him, and he reveled in their enmity.
Mariah,
naturally, made more of all this than I did. I have always thought
that the far left and far right need each other, desperately,
for if either one were to vanish the other would lose its reason
to exist, a conviction that has freshened in me from year to year,
as each grows ever more vehement in its search for somebody to
hate. Now and then, I even wondered aloud to Kimmer--I would say
it to no one else--whether my father manufactured half his political
views in order to keep his face on television, his enemies at
his heels, and his speaking fees in the range of half a million
dollars a year. But Mariah, having been in her time both philosophy
major and investigative journalist, sees oppositions as real;
the Judge and his enemies, she would say, were playing out the
great ideological debates of the era. It was the culture war,
she would insist, that brought him down. I thought this proposition
quite silly, and came to think, after years of reading about it,
that the scandal-mongers who drove him from the bench might have
had a point; and I made the mistake of saying this, too, on the
telephone to Mariah, not long after Bob Woodward published his
best-selling book about the case. The book, I told her, was pretty
convincing: the Judge was not a victim but a perjurer.
*
* * * * *
(II)
The first thing I notice about Uncle Jack is that he is ill. Jack
Ziegler was never a very large man, but he always seemed a menacing
one. I do not know how many people he has killed, although I often
fear that it is more than the numbers hinted at in the press.
I have not seen him in well over a decade and have not missed
him. But the changes in the man! Now he is frail, the suit of
fine gray wool and the dark blue scarf hanging loosely on his
emaciated frame. The square, strong face I remember from my boyhood,
when he would visit us on the Vineyard, armed with expensive gifts,
wonderful brainteasers, and terrible jokes, is falling in on itself;
the silver hair, still reasonably thick, lies matted on his head;
and his pale pink lips tremble when he is not speaking, and sometimes
when he is. He approaches in the company of a taller and broader
and much younger man, who silently steadies him when he stumbles.
A friend, I think, except that the Jack Zieglers of the world
have no friends. A bodyguard, then. Or, given Uncle Jack's physical
condition, perhaps a nurse.
"Well,
look who's here," Addison seethes.
Let
me handle this," I insist with my usual stupidity. I discipline
myself not to speculate about what Mariah suggested as we sat
in the kitchen Friday night.
"All
yours."
Before
Jack Ziegler quite reaches us, I warn Kimmer to stay down by the
car with Bentley, and, for once, she does as I ask without an
argument, for no potential judge can be seen even chatting with
such a man. Uncle Mal steps forward as though to run the same
interference for me that he does for his clients as they leave
the grand jury, but I motion him back and tell him I will be fine.
Then I turn and hurry up the hill. Mariah, of course, is already
gone, which is just as well, for this apparition might push her
over the edge. Only Addison remains nearby, just far enough away
to be polite, but close enough to be of help if . . . if what?
"Hello,
Uncle Jack," I say as Abby's godfather and I arrive, simultaneously,
at the grave. Then I wait. He does not extend his hand and I do
not offer mine. His bodyguard or whatever stands off to the side
and a little bit behind, eyeing my brother uneasily. (I myself
am evidently too unthreatening to excite his vigilance.)
"I
bring you my condolences, Talcott," Jack Ziegler murmurs in his
peculiar accent, vaguely East European, vaguely Brooklyn, vaguely
Harvard, which my father always insisted was manufactured, as
phony as Eddie Dozier's East Texas drawl. As Uncle Jack speaks,
his eyes are cast downward, toward the grave. "I am so sorry about
the death of your father."
"Thank
you. I'm afraid we missed you at the church--"
"I
despise funerals." Spoken matter-of-factly, like a discussion
of weather, or sports, or interstate flight to avoid prosecution.
"I have no interest in the celebration of death. I have seen too
many good men die."
Some
by your own hand, I am thinking, and I wonder if the other, rarely
mentioned rumors are true, if I am talking to a man who murdered
his own wife. Again Mariah's fears assail me. My sister's chronology
possesses a certain mad logic--emphasis on the adjective: my father
saw Jack Ziegler, my father called Mariah, my father died a few
days later, then Jack Ziegler called Mariah, and now Jack Ziegler
is here. I finally shared Mariah's notion with Kimmer as we lay
in bed last night. My wife, head on my shoulder, giggled and said
that it sounds to her more like two old friends who see each other
all the time. Having no basis, yet, to decide, I say only: "Thank
you for coming. Now, if you will excuse me--"
"Wait,"
says Jack Ziegler, and, for the first time, he turns his eyes
up to meet mine. I take half a step back, for his face, close
up, is a horror. His pale, papery skin is ravaged by nameless
diseases that seem to me--whatever they are--an appropriate punishment
for the life he has chosen to live. But it is his eyes that draw
my attention. They are twin coals, hot and alive, burning with
a dark, happy madness that should be visited on all murderers
at some time before they die.
"Uncle
Jack, I'm s-sorry," I manage. Did I actually stammer? "I have--I
have to get going--"
"Talcott,
I have traveled thousands of miles to see you. Surely you can
spare me five of your valuable minutes." His voice has a terrible
wheeze in it, and it occurs to me that I might be breathing whatever
has made him this way. But I stand my ground.
"I
understand you've been looking for me," I say at last.
"Yes."
He seems childishly eager now, and he almost smiles, but thinks
better of it. "Yes, that is so, I have been looking for you."
"You
knew where to find me." I was raised to be polite, but seeing
Uncle Jack like this, after all these years, brings out in me
an irresistible urge to be rude. "You could have called me at
home."
"That
would not be--it was not possible. They know, you see, they would
consider that, and I thought--I thought perhaps . . ." He trails
off, the dark eyes all at once confused, and I realize that Uncle
Jack is frightened of something. I hope it is the specter of prison
or of his obviously approaching death that is scaring him, because
anything else bad enough to scare Jack Ziegler is . . . well,
something I do not want to meet.
"Okay,
okay. You found me." Perhaps this is forward, but I am not so
frightened of him now; on the other hand, I am not very happy
about spending time in his company either. I want to flee this
sickly scarecrow and retreat to the warmth, such as it is, of
my family.
"Your
father was a very fine man," says Uncle Jack, "and a very good
friend. We did much together. Not much business, mostly pleasure."
"I
see."
"The
newspapers, you know, they wrote of our business dealings. There
were no business dealings. It was nonsense. Trumped-up nonsense."
"I
know," I lie, for Uncle Jack's benefit, but he is not interested
in my opinions.
"That
law clerk of his, perjuring himself that way." He makes a spitting
noise but does not actually spit. "Scum." He shakes his head in
feigned disbelief. "The papers, of course, they loved it. Left-wing
bastards. Because they hated your father."
Not having exchanged a word with Jack Ziegler since well before
my father's hearings, I have never heard his opinions about what
happened. Given the tenor of his comments, I doubt he would be
interested in mine. I remain silent.
"I
hear the fool has never been able to get a job," says Uncle Jack,
without a trace of humor, and I know who has been pulling at least
a few of the strings. "I am not surprised."
"He
was doing what he thought was right."
"He
was lying in an effort to destroy a great man, and he is deserving
of his fate."
I
cannot take much more of this. As Jack Ziegler continues to rant,
Mariah's nutty speculations of Friday seem . . . not so nutty.
"Uncle Jack . . ."
"He
was a great man, your father," Jack Ziegler interrupts. "A very
great man, a very good friend. But now that he is dead, well .
. ." He trails off and raises his hand, palm upmost, and tilts
it one way, then the other. "Now I would very much like to be
of assistance to you."
"To
me?"
"Correct,
Talcott. And to your family, naturally," he adds softly, rubbing
his temples. The skin is so loose it seems to move under his fingers.
I imagine it tearing away to leave only an unhappy skull.
I glance over at the cars. Kimmer is impatient. So is Uncle Mal.
I look down at my baby sister's godfather once more. His help
is the very last thing I want.
"Well,
thank you, but I think we have everything under control."
"But
you will call? If you need anything, you will call? Especially
if . . . an emergency should arise?"
I shrug. "Okay."
"With
your wife, for instance," he continues. "I understand that she
is going to become a judge. I think that is wonderful. I understand
that she has always wanted this."
"It
isn't certain yet," I answer automatically, surprised that the
secret has spread up into the Rocky Mountains, and also not wanting
Jack Ziegler anywhere near her nomination. He has already spoiled
one judicial career too many. "She isn't the only candidate."
"I
know this." The burning eyes are gleeful again. "I understand
that a colleague of yours believes the job to be his for the taking.
Some would call him the front-runner."
I
am thrown, once more, by the breadth of his knowledge; I choose
not to wonder how he knows what he knows. I am glad that Kimmer
is not within earshot.
"I
suppose so. But, look, I have to--"
"Listen,
Talcott. Are you listening?" He has drawn close to me again. "I
do not think he has the staying power, this colleague of yours.
It is my understanding that a fairly large skeleton is rattling
around in his closet. And we all know what that means, eh?" He
coughs violently. "Sooner or later, it is bound to tumble out."
"What
kind of skeleton?" I ask, sudden eagerness overwhelming my caution.
"I
would not concern myself with such things if I were you. I would
not share them with your lovely wife. I would wait patiently for
the wheel to turn."
I
am mystified, but not precisely unhappy. If there is information
that would kill off Marc Hadley's chances, I can hardly wait for
it to--what did he say?--tumble out. Even though Marc and I were
once friends, I cannot resist a rising excitement. Perhaps America's
obsession with the use of scandal to disqualify nominees for the
bench is absurd, but this is my wife we are talking about.
Still,
what can Jack Ziegler possibly know about Marc Hadley that nobody
else does?
"Thank
you, Uncle Jack," I say uncertainly.
"I
am always happy to be of assistance to any of Oliver's children."
His voice has assumed a curiously formal tone. I am chilled once
more. Is the skeleton something that he has somehow created? Is
a criminal maneuvering to help my wife attain her longed-for seat
on the bench? I have to say something, and it is not easy to decide
what.
"Uh,
Uncle Jack, I . . . I'm grateful that you would think to help,
but . . ."
His
disintegrating eyebrows slowly rise. Otherwise his expression
does not change. He knows what I am trying to say but has no intention
of making it easy.
"Well,
it's just that I think Kimmer . . . Kimberly . . . wants to have
the selection go forward so that, um, the better candidate wins.
On the merits. She wouldn't want anybody to . . . interfere."
And I am suddenly sure, as I say the difficult words, that what
I am telling him is true. My smart, ambitious wife never wants
to be beholden to anybody, for anything. When we were students,
she made a name for herself around the building with her outspoken
opposition to affirmative action, which she saw as just another
way for white liberals to place black people in their debt.
Maybe
she was right.
Uncle
Jack, meanwhile, has his answer ready: "Oh, Talcott, Talcott,
please have no fear on that account. I am not proposing to . .
. interfere." He chuckles lightly, then coughs. "I am only predicting
what is to occur. I have information. I am not going to use it.
Nor do you need to do so. Your colleague, your wife's rival, has
many, many enemies. One of them is certain to unlock the door
and allow the skeleton to tumble out. The service I am doing for
you is simply to let you know. Nothing more."
I
nod. Standing up to Jack Ziegler has drained me.
"And
now it is your turn," he continues. "I think perhaps you, Talcott,
might be of assistance to me."
I
close my eyes briefly. What did I expect? He did not travel all
this way to tell me that Marc Hadley's candidacy is going to collapse,
or to pay his last respects to my father. He came because he wants
something.
"Talcott,
you must listen to me. Listen with care. I must ask you one question."
"Go
ahead." I want suddenly to be free of him. I want to share his
odd news with Kimmer, even though he told me not to. I want her
to kiss me happily, overjoyed that she seems to be on the verge
of getting what she wants.
"Others
will ask this of you, some with good motives, some with ill,"
he explains unhelpfully in his mysterious accent. "Not all of
them will be who they say they are, and not all of them will mean
you well."
I
forgot Uncle Jack's eerie, unfathomable certainty that all the
world is conspiring, but he evidently has changed little from
the days when he used to drop by the Vineyard house with gifts
from foreign ports and complaints about the machinations of the
Kennedys, whose irresolution, he used to say, cost us Cuba. None
of the children knew what he was talking about, but we loved the
passion of his stories.
"Okay,"
I say.
"And
so I must ask what they will ask," he continues, the mad eyes
sparkling.
"Well,
fire away," I sigh. Over by the limousine, Kimmer is glancing
at her watch and raising her hand, beckoning, to urge me to hurry.
Maybe she has another telephone meeting coming up. Maybe she,
too, is scared of Jack Ziegler, whom she has never quite met.
Maybe I need to get this over with. "But I really only have a
few minutes to . . ."
"The
arrangements, Talcott," he interrupts in that wheezy whisper.
"I must know everything about the arrangements."
*
* * * * *
I
stand for a long moment in the narrow front yard, the key dangling
from limp fingers, remembering the glorious Martha's Vineyard
summers of my childhood, when friends and family swirled constantly
in and out of the double front doors with their tiny panes of
glass, some rose, some azure, some clear, held fast in frames
of involute leading; remembering the many sad and lonely visits
to this house through those endless months when my mother sat
dying, often alone, in the front bedroom on the first floor; and
remembering, too, how easy it became to avoid coming back here
once the Judge began his tumble toward megalomania. As Kimmer
fusses with Bentley and I stare at the summer home of my youth,
I find that I have difficulty recalling precisely why I was so
filled with joy when I learned that the Judge left me this cramped
and unhappy shell. With my parents both dead, the house should
by rights be dead as well, quiet and neutral; instead, it seems
almost a live thing, fiendishly sentient, brooding malevolently
on the family's misfortunes as it awaits the new owners. Quite
suddenly I am paralyzed with some emotion far more primal than
terror, a clear and utterly persuasive knowledge, shivering through
me from some unnatural source, that everything is about to go
wretchedly wrong: I fear that my legs will not move me to the
porch, or my hands will not work the key, or the key will break
off in the lock. In that terrible moment, I want to reject this
scary inheritance and all its ghosts, to grab my family and hurry
back to the mainland.
As
usual, it is worldly Kimmer who restores me to my senses.
"Can
you hurry up and open the door?" she demands sweetly. "Sorry,
but I have to piss in the worst way."
"No
need to be vulgar."
"There
is if nothing else will get you moving."
She
is correct, after a fashion, and I am being foolish. I smile at
her and she almost smiles back before she catches herself. I heft
the heavy suitcase in my left hand and bounce the key in my right.
Then I stride boldly up the steps, heedless of the demons who
caper in the shadows of memory. Drawing a breath, I dismiss them
like a veteran exorcist and rattle the key into the lock. Only
as the lock begins to turn do I notice that one of the tiny panes
of colored glass is missing--not broken, just not there, so that
through the space defined by the narrow gray leading I can see
into the darkness of the house. I frown, pushing the door wide
open, and, standing frozen on the threshold of the house I have
loved for thirty years, I realize that the goblins have not all
retreated. I try to swallow but cannot seem to gather any moisture
in my throat. My limbs refuse to move me forward. Through a slowly
descending curtain of the deepest angry red, I see my handsome
wife brushing past me with a whispered, "Sorry, but I gotta go,"
and I feel her transferring Bentley's hand to mine.
Kimmer is three steps into the house before she, too, stops and
stands perfectly still.
"Oh,
no," she whispers. "Oh Misha oh no."
The
house is a disaster. Furniture is upended, books are strewn over
the floor, cabinet doors broken, rugs sliced to ribbons. My father's
papers are everywhere, the breeze from the open front door ruffling
their edges. I peek into the kitchen. A few of the dishes are
smashed on the floor, but the mess is not as bad, and most of
the plates are simply stacked on the counter. While Kimmer waits
in the front room with Bentley, I force myself to go upstairs.
I discover that the four bedrooms are barely disturbed. As though
there was no need to bother, I am thinking as I stand in the window
of the master suite, telephone in hand, talking to the police
dispatcher. As I explain what has happened, I look down at the
BMW, parked illegally along the split-rail fence that guards the
south side of Ocean Avenue, doors still open, baggage not yet
unloaded. Something isn't right. They did not wreck the second
floor. The thought keeps swirling through my mind. They left the
second floor alone. As though ransacking the first floor was enough.
As though--as though--
As
though they found what they were looking for.
Now
more puzzled than frightened, I go back downstairs to join my
wife and son, who, wide-eyed, are hugging each other in the living
room. The police, arriving in minutes from their quaint headquarters
a block away, quickly pronounce the destruction the work of local
vandals, teenagers who, unfortunately, spend much of the winter
trashing the homes of the summer people. Not all the Vineyard's
teenagers are vandals, or even very many: just enough to annoy.
The very kind officers apologize to us on behalf of the Island
and assure us that they will do their best, but they also warn
us not to expect to catch the people who did it: vandalisms are
nearly impossible to solve.
Vandals.
Kimmer eagerly accepts this explanation, and I am quite sure the
insurance company will too. And, more important, the White House.
Kimmer promises to make plenty of trouble for the alarm company,
and I have no doubt she will keep her word. Vandals, my wife and
I agree over pizza and root beer at a nearby restaurant a couple
of hours later, after the man who looks after the house in the
off-season has dropped by to inspect the damage.
"I'll
make some calls," he told us when he finished tut-tutting his
way around the place.
Vandals. Of course they were vandals. The kind of vandals who
destroy one floor of the house and ignore the other. The kind
of vandals who steal neither stereo nor television. The kind of
vandals who know how to circumvent my late paranoid father's state-of-the-art
alarm system. And the kind of vandals who are in direct contact
with the spirits of the departed. For I do not tell either my
wife or the friendly police officers about the note I found upstairs
while waiting, sealed in a plain white envelope left on top of
the dresser in the master bedroom, my correct title and full name
typed neatly on the outside, the perplexing message on the inside
written in the crabbed, spiky hand I remember from my childhood,
when we would proudly leave copies of our school essays on the
Judge's desk and wait for him to return them, a day or so later,
with his comments inked redly in the margins, demonstrating what
idiots our teachers were to award us A's.
The
note on the dresser is from my father.
*
* *
Ordinarily,
on the third afternoon of a Vineyard sojourn, I would be at the
Flying Horses with my son. But our sojourns are usually in the
summer. Now it is autumn, and the carousel is closed for the season.
Fortunately, the Island offers other diversions. Yesterday, as
a hastily assembled clean-up crew tried to put Vinerd Howse back
in some kind of order, the three of us journeyed up-Island--that
is, to the westernmost end--and spent a marvelous afternoon walking
the breathtaking ancient cliffs at Gay Head in the chilly November
air, picnicking in our down parkas at the perfect pebbly beach
in the fishing village of Menemsha, and driving the wooded back
roads of Chilmark, near the sprawling property once owned by Jacqueline
Onassis, pretending not to be on the lookout for the rich and
famous. We had dinner at a fancy restaurant on the water in Edgartown,
where Bentley charmed the waitresses with his patter. How many
demons we exorcised I am not sure, but I saw no sign of the roller
woman, who might be a phantom after all, and Kimmer did not mention
the judgeship once and talked on her cell phone only twice. And
she kissed me quite carefully this morning when Bentley and I
dropped her at the airport for her flight back to the mainland
in one of the little turboprops that serve the Island. Bentley
and I are staying on because . . . well, because we need to. Kimmer
has work to do, I have a week or so of leave left, and Bentley
needs some rest and recreation. And there is another reason as
well. In Oak Bluffs, unlike Elm Harbor, I will never be tempted
for a moment to let my precious son out of my sight.
Right
now my son and I are preparing to go to the playground; or, more
precisely, Bentley is ready, waiting for me.
I am less ready.
I
am sitting at the table in our newly cleaned kitchen (full of
plastic plates and cups from one of the Island's two A&Ps), the
note from my father flattened on the surface, willing its secrets
to reveal themselves. In the next room, Bentley is watching the
Disney Channel and occasionally waddling to the door of the kitchen
and calling, "Dada, paygrown now. You say paygrown!" in the plaintive,
self-righteous tone that makes busy parents writhe with guilt.
To which I respond with the familiar "Yes, okay, just a minute,
sweetheart," which every busy parent uses with equal embarrassment.
Last
night, as my family slept uneasily, Kimmer curled protectively
around our son, I wandered Vinerd Howse from the foyer to the
attic crawl space, searching for something, but I do not know
what. I need to know what is going on. I need a clue.
Unfortunately, the most obvious clue, my father's note, remains
gibberish:
My
son,
There
is so much I wish I could share with you. Alas, at the present
moment, I cannot. I have asked a good friend to deliver this note
should anything befall me; if you are reading my words, one must
assume that something has. I apologize for the complexity of this
method of contact, but there are others who would also like to
know that which is for your eyes only. So, know this much: Angela's
boyfriend, despite his deteriorating condition, is in possession
of that which I want you to know. You are in no danger, neither
you nor your family, but you have little time. You are unlikely
to be the only one who is searching for the arrangements that
Angela's boyfriend alone can reveal. And you may not be the only
one who knows who Angela's boyfriend is.
Excelsior,
my son! Excelsior! It begins!
Sincerely,
Your
Father
The
handwriting is unmistakably the Judge's, as is the flowery, overwrought,
self-important prose, even the formality of the signature. Quite
unexpectedly, my fury at my father threatens suddenly to overwhelm
me. If you want to tell me, tell me! I rage against him in my
tortured mind, a tone I would never have selected in life. But
don't play these games! Jack Ziegler in the cemetery demanded
to know about the arrangements. Now, at last, I know for certain
that my father actually made some. But I do not know what they
are, and this hint, this clue, this post-mortem letter from my
paranoid father, whatever it is supposed to be, lends me no assistance
at all.
Excelsior?
Angela's boyfriend, despite his deteriorating condition? What
is all this?
One
point is clear: Not-McDermott's mission in Elm Harbor was neither
to apologize nor to reassure but, as I suspected, to see whether
I know an Angela or not--which means that he and, presumably,
Foreman are somehow privy to the contents of this letter. I wonder
if the letter was the reason for the destruction of the first
floor, except that I cannot quite fathom why they would break
into the house, find the letter, and then leave it behind.
Or,
for that matter, how the letter got here in the first place. Presumably
McDermott, if he was even here, would not have dropped it off.
The Judge wrote that he asked a good friend to deliver it should
anything befall him. But what good friend would break into Vinerd
Howse to drop it off? Why not mail it to my house or bring it
by my office? Why not deliver it to . . .
. . . to the soup kitchen?
Can
the pawn be connected to the letter? Did my father arrange that
delivery as well? I try to remember whether I ever mentioned to
my father that I volunteer at the soup kitchen, but my mind offers
every answer I could want: yes, I told him; no, I did not tell
him; yes, I hinted at it; no, I kept it secret. I shake my head
in rich red anger. If he wanted me to have the pawn, wouldn't
he have delivered pawn and letter together?
Not
that it matters. For my father's note is actually no help at all.
I
have a terrible memory for names, but it is good enough for me
to be sure that I do not know an Angela, and I have no idea who
her boyfriend could possibly be.
Excerpted
from The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter Copyright
2002 by Stephen L. Carter. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a
division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of
this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission
in writing from the publisher.
|