The Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  Stuart nods, then leans back in his chair, steepling his long fingers, signaling that he is about to deliver a little sermon. I admire Stuart, but I hate his sermons.

  “I don’t like it when members of our faculty compete against one another,” he says sadly, his tone proposing that his opinion matters. “It’s not good for our collegiality. It’s not good for the school.” He points toward his wall of windows, through which one can see spires and towers and the huge, blocky library, the Gothic glory of the campus proper. “We are, first and foremost, a faculty. That’s what it means to be in a university. We are scholars, and those of us who have tenure, what the university calls ‘Permanent Officers,’ are supposed to be leaders in our fields. Not politicians, Talcott, but Officers. Scholars. Every one of us is charged with precisely the same responsibility: to immerse himself in a chosen discipline, and then to teach his students what he happens to discover. Anything that distracts from that task is injurious to our common enterprise. You see that, don’t you?”

  I am somewhere between astonished and furious. Stuart is surely not taking the side of the man who orchestrated his own fall from power. I never thought Kimmer would have many supporters on the faculty, but I assumed that Stuart Land would be one.

  “Do you see?” he says again. He does not wait to see whether I see. He continues his oration, raising an admonitory forefinger. “You know, Talcott, over my many years on this faculty, I have often been approached by this administration or that one, asking after my interest in some presidential appointment. A judgeship. Associate attorney general. Some post in an agency.” He smiles in soft reminiscence. “Once, during a scandal, the Reagan people asked if I would be willing to come down and clean up a Cabinet department. But every time, Talcott, I have declined. Every single time. You see, it is my experience, my invariant observation, that a professor who is bitten by the political bug ceases to be effective as a scholar. No longer is he studying the world and teaching what he discovers. He is, in effect, running for office, and it affects everything from the subjects he chooses for his writing to the arguments he is willing to press in the classroom. He worries about leaving a paper trail and, if he has one, spends his time cleaning it up. As you can imagine, when two members of the faculty find themselves both bitten by the political bug at the same time, and both in competition for the same single slot on a court, well, the deleterious effects are . . . oh, geometrically increased. Quadrupled.”

  I cannot let this go on any longer. “Stuart, look. I appreciate what you’re saying. But my wife is not a member of the faculty.”

  “Well, no, Talcott, you’re right. She isn’t.” Nodding as though he knew this before and I, the slower thinker, have just realized it. “Not formally.”

  “Not even informally.”

  “Well, your wife may not be faculty, but she’s family. Part of the law school family.”

  I almost laugh at that one. In Kimmer’s ideal world, she would not even have to see the law school, much less think of herself as part of it. “Come on, Stuart. No matter what she is, the fact that she is in the running can’t possibly affect how she does her job around the law school if she doesn’t have a job around the law school.” Refusing to fall into Stuart’s cadences, in which the entire faculty is male.

  The steely eyes hold mine. “Well, that isn’t quite the end of the matter, Talcott. That your wife is, as you put it, in the running could have an effect on you.”

  “On me?”

  “Oh, yes, Talcott, of course. Why is that so hard to believe? Your wife wanting to be a judge, you not wanting to spoil her chances—why couldn’t such a situation lead to an excess of caution on your part?”

  “An excess of . . .”

  “Have you been yourself lately?” He chuckles to ease the blow. “The Talcott Garland we know and love? I think not.”

  Enough is enough. “Stuart, come on. My father just died. And then the preacher who did the funeral . . .”

  “Was murdered. Yes, I know. And I am terribly sorry.” He hunches forward, folds his small hands on the desk. “But, Talcott, listen to me. You’ve been distracted lately. A bit disorganized.” Then, to my surprise, a shrug. “But this is wide of the point . . . .”

  “Wide of the point! You just said the competition is affecting how I do my job!”

  “And perhaps I was speaking out of school. Maybe it’s none of my business. Maybe I was merely speculating. The truth is, I was not thinking about how you do your job. I was thinking about Marc.”

  “What about Marc?” I demand, anger still burning fiercely, even though I am utterly confused. A moment ago Stuart thought I was distracted and disorganized. Now it is none of his business.

  “Marc is not doing his job well. I think the competition may be too much for him.”

  “Then why are you talking to me instead of to Marc?” Stuart says nothing, but only stares, scarcely blinking. I feel a little heady, an odd déjà vu, even though I cannot say what it is I am reexperiencing. I try again. “Did Marc put you up to this? Did he ask you to talk to me? Because if he did . . .”

  “Nobody put me up to anything, Talcott. My only concern is this school.” Talking as though he is still the dean. “And I know that, like me, you want what is best for the school.”

  “You’re not suggesting . . . You don’t think . . .” I stop, swallow the surging red anger, and try again. “I mean, if you’re suggesting that I should tell my wife to drop out of the process, to give up her chance to be a federal judge, for the good of the law school or the good of Marc Hadley . . . well, Stuart, I’m sorry, but that isn’t going to happen.”

  “It is just possible, Talcott, that the good of the school and the good of Marc Hadley are, in this case, identical.”

  “What do you mean by . . . Oh!” Did I happen to mention that Stuart Land is devious? I should have seen it earlier. Naturally he wants to help Marc obtain his treasured judgeship. Probably Marc could not have been a finalist without his help, for Stuart may be the only member of the faculty whom the administration would trust to vouch for the truth of Marc’s own repeated assertion that he is a political liberal but a judicial reactionary. And why would Stuart assist the ambition of the man most responsible for his downfall? Because, if Marc were to become a judge, Stuart would be rid of him at last; and Dean Lynda, his rival, would lose the cornerstone on which her power base in the faculty is built.

  Stuart has a hoary witticism to offer: “Perhaps Marc Hadley’s departure from the law school to join the bench would enhance the quality of both institutions.”

  Again I choose my words with care. “I appreciate your point of view, Stuart. I really do. But Kimmer is more deserving of this seat than Marc is. I am not about to suggest to her that she withdraw her name.”

  Stuart nods slowly. He even finds a smile somewhere. “Very well. I had to give it a shot. I was fairly sure your answer would be what it was. And I respect you for it. But, you know, Talcott, there will be those around the building who will not.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “You have many friends on this faculty, Talcott, but you have . . . well, there are those who are not fond of you. Surely this comes as no surprise.”

  The curtain of red finally descends across my eyes. “What are you telling me, Stuart? Just spell it out.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, Talcott, if certain . . . pressures . . . were brought to bear on you, to try to get you to convince your wife to drop out, to let Marc have the seat. That is a most unfortunate fact, but it is still a fact. I would prefer that the school be otherwise, that we retain our collegiality, but, when the political bug bites one of our own, we behave less like Permanent Officers than like Temporary Schoolchildren.” He waits for me to grin at his small joke, but I do not. “I am afraid, Talcott, that some of the schoolchildren may try to . . . persuade you.”

  “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this.”

  “I will not be a part of it, of course, and I will happily use m
y influence to protect you. But, Talcott, you have to realize that I, too, have enemies on the faculty. It may be that my influence is less than I might prefer.” He sighs, contriving to suggest that the school would be a better place if he were still at the top of the heap. Perhaps it would. Say what you want about Stuart Land, his only ambitions, ever, have been for the school.

  “I understand.”

  Stuart hesitates, and I realize he has not quite finished his sermon. “On the other hand, Talcott, if you are determined to go down this path, I think I might be rather helpful to you in Washington.”

  “Oh?”

  “I believe I might have some influence there, and, if I do, I would gladly use it to help your wife along.”

  Which brings us, I see, to the point of the whole meeting. Tired of Stuart’s subtle politicking, I try some directness: “And in return for your help, you want me to do what?”

  Stuart frowns and steeples his fingers again. I brace for another speech, but he gets to his feet instead. “Not everything has a quid pro quo, Talcott. Don’t be such a cynic. When you were young and untenured, you were more optimistic. I think the return of that peppy fellow would be a fine thing, for both you and the school.” He picks up the volume of Holmes’s collected papers he was reading when I came in, a signal of dismissal. But, before I have managed to excuse myself, he offers a revision of his point. “Of course, it is possible, Talcott, that you will have the chance later on to do the school a favor in return. If the opportunity arises, I assume you will take it.”

  “I . . . I’m not sure what you mean, Stuart.”

  “You’ll be sure when the time comes.”

  Out in the hall, I feel a sudden chill. I realize now who it was that Stuart reminded me of during his lecture: Jack Ziegler, back in the cemetery, promising to protect my family, and asking me, in return, to tell him whatever I learn about the arrangements.

  I wonder, uneasily, if Stuart is asking for the same thing.

  CHAPTER 12

  A SPECIAL DELIVERY

  (I)

  ELM HARBOR was founded in 1682, built around a trading post at the mouth of the State River. The original name of the town was Harbor-on-the-Hill, because the flatland near the water is so small and the ground slopes away from the harbor fast; and also because of the influence of John Winthrop’s sermon half a century earlier about the shining city on the hill. The city fathers were dour Congregationalists who came down the coast seeking religious freedom and immediately set about adopting laws to prohibit it to everybody else. So they banned, among other things, blasphemy, popery, exposing one’s ankles in public, idolatry, usury, disobeying one’s father, and doing business on the Sabbath. Although they would have been aghast to think they might be worshiping a graven image, they laid out their city in the shape of a cross, building it around two long avenues, an east-west road known in those days as The East-West Road and now known as Eastern Avenue, and a north-south road called North Road, later changed to The King’s Road, and now King Avenue.

  The university opened its doors thirty years later, essentially a finishing school for dour Congregationalist men who wanted to study—along with their Bible—rhetoric, Greek and Latin, mathematics, and astronomy. The original campus was two wooden buildings in the long oval where King Avenue swings in a wide arc to follow the curve of the State River; that precious riverfront property is now owned by the medical school. Over the ensuing three centuries, the campus has spread like an aggressive cancer through the area west of King Avenue, invading one block, metastasizing on the next, demolishing whatever is in its way, or converting it to the university’s purposes. Clapboard homes have come down, along with factories, schools, stores, flophouses, churches, mansions, warehouses, brothels, taverns, tanneries, and blocks upon blocks of tenements. In their place have risen libraries and laboratories and classrooms and offices and dormitories and administration buildings . . . and open space. Lots and lots of open space. The university likes to describe itself as Elm Harbor’s number one builder of parkland, even if nobody from the city dares tread on any of the school’s beautiful parks. The university has built museums and an aquarium and the region’s leading performing arts center. Its hospital is one of the best in the world. The university invests in the community, providing capital to build new housing and start small businesses. No institution in the area provides more jobs.

  Or so say our press releases.

  The university also buys up entire streets, closing them to traffic, constructs massive edifices for parking cars, but only the cars of students and faculty, and, with its private security force with full powers of arrest, creates an island of relative tranquillity, surrounded by an almost visible wall to keep the townies out.

  Elm Harbor itself is demographically complex. About thirty percent of the residents are black, another twenty percent are Hispanic, and the rest are white—but so diverse! We have Greek Americans and Italian Americans and Irish Americans and German Americans and Russian Americans. The residents whom the Census Bureau arbitrarily labels Hispanic are largely of Puerto Rican descent, but many others trace their families to Central America—as do many of our black residents, who are otherwise about equally divided between West Indians and those whose most distant identifiable roots are in the South. The city is hopelessly sundered along these many lines, as we learn every three years in municipal elections, where the city council is an endlessly bickering rainbow, and as many as five or six different ethnic groups often field mayoral candidates in the Democratic primary. (The local Republican Party is a joke.) Only two things unite the multi-original residents of Elm Harbor: a shared hatred of the university, and a shared dream that their own children will one day attend it.

  Kimmer does not like living here, and the university, although an occasional client, is one of the reasons.

  And my own view? I am a fan of no city, and Elm Harbor, with its many problems, seems to me no worse than any other. What I have learned over the years from my colleagues—especially the great conservative Stuart Land and the great liberal Theo Mountain—is that those of us who are members of the university community share a special responsibility for improving what Theo likes to call the metropole. The concept of responsibility, I know, is nowadays passé, especially the idea of obligation to those Eleanor Roosevelt used to call less fortunate than ourselves, but the Judge raised his children to it, and none of us can fully escape it. The Judge believed that his social conservatism demanded service: if the role of the state was going to be small, the role of volunteers had to be large. So Mariah holds parties for homeless children, Addison tutors inner-city high-school students . . . and I serve food.

  (II)

  THE SOUP KITCHEN where I sometimes volunteer serves hot lunches to women and children at half past twelve each weekday in the basement of a Congregationalist church a block east of the campus, and it is the perfect place to forget mystery and death, for the difficulties in which its customers find themselves are far more profound than my own. As I sat in my office preparing for my torts class following the baffling conversation with Stuart Land, I felt its call. Trying to explain to my wary students the intricacies of comparative negligence, I knew I was botching it, and sensed Avery Knowland looking daggers any time my back was turned. When the class ended, I dumped the books in my office and rushed out the front door of the building.

  The soup kitchen, I decided, is the only place for me just now.

  Service, I remind myself as I descend the steps to the church basement. We are all of us called to actual service. Not just giving money, Theo Mountain likes to preach, and not fighting to change the law, either, for Theo considers the law a lost cause. Service to real people, who ache and cry and challenge us.

  The manager of the soup kitchen, a seventyish Teutonic widow who insists that we call her Dee Dee, greets me with a scowl as I bound through the door a few minutes shy of opening time. Her cane snapping against the vinyl floor, Dee Dee follows me into the kitchen, where the rest of the
staff is slicing several donated pizzas, baked yesterday and now desert-dry. “Setup is at noon,” she scolds me in her elegant voice as I pull on a pair of disposable latex gloves. “We expect everybody here by twelve-fifteen.”

  “I had a class, Dee Dee. I’m sorry.”

  “A class.”

  “Yes.” Trying to think how my charming brother would handle Dee Dee. Badly, I bet.