Angel Landing

by Alice Hoffman

  The morning after Thanksgiving, Finn had simply walked out the front door, out of my life. He had never promised anything—no phone calls, no letters; and in return he had asked for nothing except the one promise I now knew I would break: that I attend the trial only to testify.

  “Carter’s convinced me to go to the trial,” I told Minnie.

  “I could never understand why you ever said you weren’t going,” my aunt said. “It isn’t everybody whose lover goes on trial.”

  “That’s an unsubstantiated conclusion.”

  “Wait a minute,” Minnie said. “Do you think I’m dead? Do you think I’m blind?”

  “All that is over with,” I said.

  I reached for my coat and went out to warm up the car. There was a tap at my window; Minnie was standing there, bundled up in scarves. I rolled down the window.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Move over,” Minnie said. She opened the driver’s door. “You’re too nervous to drive.”

  I slid over into the passenger’s seat. “I’m not nervous at all,” I said.

  “Really?” Minnie said. “What’s the capital of South Dakota?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Aha,” Minnie said, shifting into reverse. “I’ll drive.”

  “We’ll have to hurry,” I said. “I’m supposed to meet Carter inside the courtroom.”

  I hadn’t seen Carter since he had gone to New Hampshire; I dreaded our meeting, I was afraid of arguments and careless words, I was afraid I wouldn’t have the courage to tell him goodbye.

  Minnie drove well above the speed limit, but when we reached the courthouse, there was already a crowd and we couldn’t find a space to park.

  “Damn,” Minnie said. “We should have walked.”

  Outside, the courthouse camera crews had set up; a line of reporters and Fishers Cove residents wound along Main Street. Minnie and I circled the block looking for a parking space. On our second time around I spotted Reno LeKnight’s car.

  “Stop,” I said to Minnie. “Is that Finn?”

  Even though the spotlight in front of us was green, Minnie slammed on the brakes. We strained our necks to see, but a crowd gathered around LeKnight’s car and we couldn’t tell if Finn was a passenger.

  “Just park anywhere,” I said to Minnie. “Park illegally.”

  We left the Mustang in a space marked DELIVERIES ONLY, then hurried to the court.

  “We’ll never get in,” I said when we reached the courthouse.

  A group of local residents had already been turned away from the courthouse, but the group lingered, buying chestnuts and pretzels from a vendor who had set up near the courthouse stairs. Two police officers watched over the street; unused to crowds, the officers patted their nightsticks and waited for signs of a riot.

  “We’ll get in,” Minnie said, and I followed as she pushed her way through. The courthouse was filled. Minnie spotted Congressman Bruner, but there was no one I recognized except Carter, who was sitting close to where we stood in the aisle. I had expected to see Danny Finn, but he wasn’t there.

  “Natalie,” Carter called. “Come on, I’ve saved you a seat.”

  Minnie and I both inched through the crowd and sat in the space Carter had saved.

  “How was New Hampshire?” I asked Carter.

  “Terrific,” he said. “I didn’t know you were bringing her with you,” he whispered.

  “Would you like me to sit somewhere else?” Minnie said. “Is that what you’d like?”

  “Minnie, please,” I said.

  “I have as much right to be here as anyone,” Minnie told Carter. “I consider myself a friend of the defendant, how about you?”

  “I’m a friend of the people,” Carter said.

  “Well, well, well,” Minnie said. “Isn’t that nice.”

  “Will you two stop it?” I said.

  A door in the front of the room opened and Finn and Reno LeKnight walked out and went to the defendant’s bench. Away from the streets, away from all the places I had seen him, Finn looked more helpless than ever before, he looked as he must have when he slept in the parked car above Montauk Point, when he stood alone on the wide lawn of the Stockley School. LeKnight spoke to him, and although Finn nodded calmly, his profile was tight, as if his skin were too small, as if he might suddenly explode right there in the courthouse.

  “He looks terrible,” Minnie said. “Just look at what tension can do to a man.”

  While we waited for the judge to enter, Carter and Minnie talked about Reno.

  “I just don’t like him,” Minnie said. “He looks too slick. He’s not my type.”

  “Minnie, he just happens to be the best lawyer around,” Carter said.

  “I don’t care,” my aunt shrugged. “What kind of lawyer wears a suede sport coat?”

  “With Reno LeKnight here, you don’t have to worry about Finn going to jail.”

  “Well, I am worried,” I said.

  Carter removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses. “You sound upset,” he said.

  When the judge entered and we all stood, I watched Finn: his long hair fell over the collar of his black sports jacket, his shoulders fluttered nervously, like wings.

  After we sat again, Carter turned to Minnie. “What kind of judge can he be? A judge in Fishers Cove is used to traffic fines. I’d like to know the last time he tried a criminal case.”

  “Just because we’re a small town, don’t think we don’t have crime,” Minnie said. “We’ve got everything here. You name it, we’ve got it.”

  “Murder,” Carter said. “Have you ever had that?”

  “In nineteen sixty-seven,” Minnie said. “A dentist murdered his entire family. Including his children.”

  Reno LeKnight stood and faced the judge. “My client would like to offer a plea of not guilty,” he said. “Although Michael Finn did install the faulty valve in the second unit at Angel Landing Three, he was unaware of his error until after the explosion.”

  The district attorney looked puzzled. When he was recognized, he turned to LeKnight. “You admit your client installed the valve?”

  “Of course,” LeKnight said.

  “He installed it with the intent of destroying the power plant?” the district attorney asked.

  “Absolutely not,” LeKnight said. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

  “How does it look?” I said to Carter. “Do you think Finn has a chance?”

  “The trial’s just begun,” Carter said. “Who can tell?”

  We spent the rest of the day listening to the opening arguments. The district attorney announced that Michael Finn had been an accomplished welder for more than ten years. A sudden accident? The D.A. smiled. An error? he said. Later, Reno LeKnight insisted that Finn had been plagued by insomnia and headaches, he had been suffering from dizziness and loneliness and viruses of every sort in the weeks before the explosion; he had been touched by all of the things which would lead a welder into the realm of human error. By the end of that day, both sides had argued with passion, and without facts.

  Carter said he was annoyed; he had expected a better performance from Reno LeKnight, he had paid for it, and now he announced he was driving out to the attorney’s house in West Hampton to question LeKnight’s tactics.

  “I’ll drive out there with you,” I said to Carter.

  “You?” Carter said. “Why do you want to do that?”

  “You’re not the only one who cares about this trial,” I said.

  I watched as Finn followed LeKnight from the courtroom. He looked at no one, he never even noticed I was there in the room. My presence in the courtroom that day could have been kept secret, all our promises would look as if they had never been broken, unless I went out to the beach with Carter, unless I gave myself away.

  “I want to go,” I said to Carter. “That’s all there is to it.”

  We walked out of the courthouse together, but Minnie stopped on the stairs when Congressman Bruner wa
lked by. “Congressman,” Minnie called. “It’s me, Minnie Lansky.”

  The congressman came over and embraced Minnie like a long-lost relative. Minnie looked up at him, surprised. “Mrs. Lansky,” the congressman said. “How is your work at the nursing home?” He turned then to a reporter at his side. “Seventy-two, and Mrs. Lansky still finds the strength to volunteer in the Mercy Home. She would make a good human-interest story, don’t you think?”

  “Seventy-four,” Minnie said. “And to tell you the truth, things aren’t going so great at the home.”

  “Seventy-two, seventy-four.” The congressman smiled.

  “Not good at all,” Minnie went on. “The food is still terrible, and too many people are there who don’t belong. In fact, I’m thinking of getting some of those senior citizens out of Mercy, I’m thinking of starting a halfway house of my own.”

  “Halfway house,” the congressman said. “Halfway between this world and the next,” he said to the reporter at his side. “Tell me, Mrs. Lansky, when are things ever good enough? Can a nursing home become a palace overnight?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Minnie said. “But we’ll certainly give it a try, won’t we? And if an elected official like you can’t take care of it, tell me who can?”

  “I’ll do my best,” the congressman said. “I always have the people in mind,” he stated hurriedly as he led the reporter away.

  Carter and I walked Minnie to her car, and then went on to the lot where Carter’s MG was parked. Before he turned the key in the ignition, he crossed his fingers; luckily for us the old sports car decided to start in spite of its damp wires and old alternator. We drove to the Long Island Expressway, and then went east. It was dangerous for the MG to go faster than forty-five miles an hour, the engine block might explode, and so we drove slowly toward West Hampton, slower still when it began to sleet. I had fallen in love with the MG almost faster than I had with Carter; five years ago the car had been old enough to be a classic, but had not yet begun falling apart. Carter and I would drive for hours, listening to the radio, wearing sweaters, insisting on keeping the top down even on cool nights. Now the radio no longer worked, rust and salt had eaten away the floorboards so that I could look through to the highway as we drove.

  “Is there something wrong?” Carter asked as he switched on the windshield wipers.

  “No,” I said.

  “We used to talk to each other,” Carter said sadly.

  “Look, I just told you nothing is wrong.”

  He turned off the expressway at the West Hampton exit.

  “All right,” I said. “I’m upset about the trial.”

  “Of course you are,” Carter said when we stopped for gas at a station in the town of West Hampton. “You’ve never been through it before. You’re beginning to understand how unfair the legal system is.”

  “It’s not that,” I said.

  When Carter rolled down his window to pay the gas station attendant I wondered how I could tell him what a traitor I was. Even if Finn refused to see me when we got to West Hampton, I would still continue to betray Carter every time I sat calmly beside him and pretended that my feelings for him were the same as before. When we rode over the wooden drawbridge which led to Dune Road I was racked with nerves and remorse.

  “Maybe I should have stayed home,” I said.

  But we had already crossed the bridge.

  “I’m glad you’re with me,” Carter said.

  Dune Road was deserted, the summer people would not return for months, huge houses had been boarded up and forgotten; alone with the winter sea, they rose up before us like giants. The closer we came to LeKnight’s house the more afraid I was of forcing Finn into a corner.

  “It’s Finn.” There was a lump in my throat. “I think about him a lot,” I said, watching Carter carefully.

  “So do I,” Carter said.

  “No, I don’t think you know what I mean,” I said.

  “Yes, I do,” Carter told me as he turned into a long driveway which led to the wooden beach house. “The guy’s a mystery, he’s a real unusual case.”

  I wished then that Carter would have guessed; it would have been so much easier if he could have taken my pulse whenever Finn’s name was mentioned, if only he could have seen photographs of us together in bed, there wouldn’t be a need for explanations or sorrow; Carter would have simply turned and said goodbye. Instead he kept going up the long driveway, avoiding the deep ruts in the sand. He parked by the garage near a grove of gray reeds which grew taller than our heads.

  When I got out and closed the car door behind me, I was afraid I might be lost in the reeds; they towered above me, they moved and sighed.

  “This way,” Carter called, and I followed the footprints he made in the sand. I could have turned back, I could have run back down the driveway and hidden in the feathery reeds, I might even have hitchhiked down Dune Road; if I waited long enough a car would certainly come, no matter how desolate the road looked. But I wanted to see Finn, so I followed Carter’s steps and stood beside him at the door. And when Reno LeKnight answered the bell I walked inside. Through the doors to a wooden deck we could see the white stretch of foam the waves left along the sand.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Reno LeKnight said irritably.

  “I want to make certain Finn’s entirely satisfied with his legal representative,” Carter said.

  “Of course he’s satisfied,” LeKnight said.

  “I don’t know,” Carter shrugged. “I wasn’t too pleased with what I saw in court today.”

  “I thought you told me you had experience in court?” LeKnight said to Carter. “But it seems to me you’re an amateur. The first day is nothing, you should know that.”

  It occurred to me that Michael Finn might not even be in the house; Reno might have hidden him away, protected from people who cared too much. “Are you sure he’s even here?” I asked Carter.

  “And I’d like to know what she’s doing here?” LeKnight asked Carter. “She’s supposed to be an objective witness and you’re supposed to have nothing at all to do with the trial. Do you know how a judge would react if he knew Finn was consorting with some radical fringe?”

  “We’re a grass-roots movement, not a fringe.”

  “To be perfectly frank,” LeKnight said, “I don’t give a damn about your organization.”

  “I was sure you didn’t,” Carter nodded.

  “But all of us are interested in Finn’s winning,” Reno went on. “So take my suggestion. Stay away.”

  It was then I saw Finn; he was out on the deck, standing by the railing watching the slow, dark Atlantic.

  “Why don’t I get you both a drink and then you can go,” LeKnight said. And when he left the room I turned to Carter.

  “He’s out there,” I said. “On the deck.”

  “You’re not going to try and stop us from seeing him, are you?” Carter asked the attorney when he returned with our drinks.

  “I can’t,” Reno LeKnight said. “But let me just warn you, the man is depressed and depression doesn’t go over well in court. Contrition is fine, humility is even better, but once a district attorney smells depression, it’s all over.”

  Carter walked over and slid the doors open.

  “Five minutes,” LeKnight called to us. “Don’t stay a minute longer,” he said as Carter closed the doors behind us.

  Finn stood out there without a coat, he held onto the railing tightly, his hair was tangled with salt. Carter went over and tapped Finn’s shoulder, and I was glad that he did; if I had been the first person Finn had turned to see, he might have bolted and run over the sand dunes like a horse crazy with moonlight.

  “Here you go,” Carter said as he handed Finn his own whiskey. “I came to find out what you think of LeKnight. I want to make certain you have faith in him.”

  “Oh, he’s great,” Finn said bitterly, “considering he has no case to present.” He took a sip of whiskey and then saw me in the shadows. “What
are you doing here?”

  “She came with me for the ride,” Carter explained. “Listen, LeKnight just said you were depressed. Is that true?”

  Finn was looking at me. “What?” he said to Carter.

  “Because I know a cure for your depression,” Carter went on. “Come work for Soft Skies, think about a cause larger than yourself.”

  “Please,” Finn said. “Leave me alone.”

  “Are you certain that’s what you want?” Carter asked.

  “I’m certain that’s exactly what I want.”

  “Then I’ll go,” Carter said. “But if you want to change your mind, if you decide to come and work for our office when the trial is over, call me.”

  “Please,” Finn said. He moved away from us. “I just want to be alone. Can’t you understand that?”

  “I want to stay for a few minutes,” I told Carter.

  “What?” Carter said.

  “Just give me some time. I’ll meet you in the driveway. Please.”

  Carter eyed me suspiciously, but he nodded and then walked down the deck stairs to the sand.

  “I’m not here to pressure you,” I said quickly. “I’m not here because of that one night. I’m here because I wanted to make sure you were all right. I just want to stand here for a few minutes with you. We don’t even have to talk.”

  Finn still faced away from me. The sleet had ended, yet there was a hard, salty wind. I had on a heavy winter coat, but Michael Finn wore only jeans and a white shirt.

  “What is he going to think?” Finn nodded toward Carter, who was slowly walking back to the driveway.

  “He’ll think I care about you,” I said. “After all, it’s true.”

  “You shouldn’t have come out here,” Finn said. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. This way, sooner or later someone will.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “I know what happened before,” Finn said.

  He looked frozen, and beneath all my heavy winter clothes, I shivered, too.

  “I left someone,” Finn said absently. “I just took off.” He turned to face me. “I’m not to be trusted.”