The Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  “We’re having some fun,” I concede, smiling desperately at my son. Bentley, glaring, toddles to a corner of the kitchen and sits on the floor.

  “Well, that’s great, just great. I hope you’re getting some rest, too.”

  “Some,” I say. “So, what’s up?” I am rushing her, I am probably being rude, but I figure I have lots of excuses.

  “Well, Talcott, I’m actually calling for two reasons. First of all—and I wouldn’t make anything important of this”—meaning, of course, that she thinks it very important indeed—“first of all, I received the strangest call from one of our graduates who is a trustee of the university. Cameron Knowland. You must know Cameron?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he has been a great friend of this school, Tal, a great friend. In fact, Cameron and his wife just pledged three million toward our new law library. Anyway, he says that his son got kind of a rough going-over in your class. Said you made fun of him or something.”

  I am already steaming.

  “I assume you told Cameron to butt out.”

  Lynda Wyatt’s voice is amiable. “What I told him, Tal, was that it was probably blown out of proportion, that all first-year students complain. I told him that you weren’t the type to abuse a student in class.”

  “I see.” I grip the telephone but sway on my feet. I am appalled by the weakness of this defense of a professor from the dean of the law school. I am growing hotter and the kitchen is growing redder. Bentley is watching me closely, a hand to his ear as he holds an imaginary receiver of his own. He is mouthing occasional words, too.

  “I think it would be helpful,” Dean Lynda continues soberly, “if you were to give Cameron a call. Just to reassure him.”

  “Reassure him of what?”

  “Oh, Tal, you know how these alumni are.” Offering me her charming side. “They need to be stroked all the time. I’m not trying to interfere with how you run your classroom”—meaning she is trying to do exactly that—“but I’m just saying that Cameron Knowland is concerned. As a father. Think of how you would feel if you heard that one of Bentley’s teachers was beating up on him.”

  Red, red, red.

  “I didn’t beat up on Avery Knowland—”

  “Then tell his father that, Tal. That’s all I’m asking. Calm him down. As one father to another. For the good of the school.”

  For the three million dollars, she means. She seems to assume I care. In my current state, however, I would not object if the library sank into the earth. Gerald Nathanson is often there: it is quieter than his office, he says, and he can get more work done. Another reason I stay out of the place is to avoid running into him.

  “I’ll think about it,” I mutter, not sure what I will do the next time I see young Avery Knowland’s insolent face.

  “Thank you, Tal,” says my dean, knowing at once that this is as much as she will be able to get. “The school appreciates all that you do for us.” For us—as though I am an outsider. Which I pretty much am. “And Cameron’s a nice guy, Tal. You never know when you’ll need a friend.”

  “I told you I’ll think about it.” Letting some ice slip into my voice. I am recalling what Stuart Land said to me about pressures being brought to bear, and I wonder if this call is a part of it. Which leads me to be ruder still: “You said there were two things.”

  “Yes.” A pause. “Well.” Another. I imagine that she is leading up to a comment of some kind about the competition between Marc and Kimmer, along the lines of what Stuart attempted. Except that Lynda is unlikely to back down.

  I am right . . . but Lynda is more subtle than I am.

  “Tal, I also had a call from another one of our graduates. Morton Pearlman. Do you know Mort?”

  “I’ve heard the name.”

  “Well, he was four or five years ahead of you. Anyway, he works for the Attorney General these days. He called to see . . . he wanted to know . . . if you’re doing okay.”

  “If I’m doing okay? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Again Dean Lynda hesitates, and it occurs to me that she is trying to be kind, in the manner of a physician looking for the words to explain what the tests uncovered. “He said that you’ve been . . . well . . . that the FBI and various other agencies have received a lot of calls on your behalf recently. Most of them, I gather, at your behest. Calls about . . . oh, things related to your father. Questions about the autopsy, about that priest who got killed by the drug dealer, all sorts of things.”

  In the ensuing pause, I almost burst out that it was my sister, not me, who wanted those calls made, and sometimes who actually made them. But I am lawyer enough to wait for the rest. So I say only, “I see.”

  “Do you? I can’t make any sense of it at all.” Her voice is growing harder. “Now, we’ve known each other a long time, Tal, and I’m sure you have a good reason for just about everything you do.” I register, with dismay, just about. “But I have a feeling that what Mort was trying to ask, in a nice way, was whether you might need a little rest.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait. The Deputy Attorney General of the United States thinks I’m crazy? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Calm down, Tal, okay? I’m only the messenger here. I don’t know what you’re up to, and I don’t want to know. I’m just repeating what Mort asked me. And I probably shouldn’t even be telling you, because he said it was confidential.”

  I unclench my fist, make myself speak slowly and clearly. I am not worried, now, about Kimmer and her judgeship. That can wait. I am worried about whether the FBI plans to stop taking my concerns seriously. “Lynda. This is important. What did you tell him?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What did you tell Morton Pearlman? When he implied that I needed a rest?”

  “I told him I was sure you were fine, that I knew you were a little upset, and that you were away from the school for a few weeks.”

  “You didn’t say that.”

  “I did. What did you expect me to say? I didn’t want to mess anything up for you, but . . . well . . . Tal, I’m worried about you.”

  “Worried about me? Why are you worried about me?”

  “I think maybe . . . Tal, look. If you want to rest for a couple of more weeks before you come back, I’m sure it would be no problem.”

  For a moment I can think of nothing to say. The implications of her machinations briefly overwhelm me. Put simply, if Morton Pearlman can be persuaded that Kimberly Madison’s husband is a nutcase, then there is no way that she gets the seat on the court of appeals. Tagging me with that label, and thus helping Marc achieve his lifelong goal, is evidently Dean Lynda’s purpose. And although I am impressed by the elegance with which she is trying to do it, I am infuriated that she would use the complications of my father’s death this way—and that she would hold me in such low regard as to think she could get away with it. Well, Stuart tried to warn me.

  “No, Lynda, but thank you. I’ll be back next week, as planned.”

  “Tal, you really don’t have to rush. You really should take as much rest as you need.”

  I wish I were more political. I wish I were smooth, like Kimmer: then I could find the words to defuse the situation. But I am neither political nor smooth. I am just angry, and I am one of those strange people who sometimes, in anger, allow the truth to slip out.

  “Lynda, look. I appreciate your call. I understand why you don’t want me to come back just yet. But I’ll be back next week.”

  Her tone goes frosty at once. “Talcott, I value your friendship, but I resent your tone and your implication. I am trying to help you with a difficult situation . . . .”

  “Lynda,” I begin, wanting to make clear that we are not and have never been friends, and then I make myself stop, rubbing my temples and closing my eyes, because the world is bright red and I am probably shouting and my son, alarmed as he stands in the doorway, is shrinking back. I smile at him, with difficulty, and blow a kiss, then continue in what I hope is a mor
e reasonable tone. “Lynda, thank you. Really. I appreciate your concern. But it’s about time for me to get back to Elm Harbor anyway—”

  “Your students are really enjoying Stuart Land,” she interrupts cruelly.

  I force myself to respond with grace. “Well, that’s all the more reason for me to get back. They might forget about me.”

  “Oh, well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” She is furious. I am amazed. I am the one who should be enraged. I say nothing; even after all these years of living with mercurial Kimberly Madison—or perhaps because of them—I lack the confidence to deal with female anger. “Anyway,” the Dean concludes, “we all look forward to having you back among us.”

  “Thank you,” I lie.

  (IV)

  “I’M SORRY, sweetheart,” I am saying to Bentley as we sit in the booth, waiting for our cheeseburgers.

  “Paygrown,” moans my son. “Go paygrown.”

  “It’s too late, buddy,” I murmur, tousling his hair. He shrinks away. “See? It’s dark outside.”

  “You say paygrown! Dare you!”

  “I know, I know. I’m really sorry. Daddy got busy.”

  “Daddy say paygrown.”

  His tone is understandably accusatory, for I have committed one of those parental sins that children, in the innocence of their youthful integrity, find it all but impossible to forgive: I broke my promise to him. We never made it to the playground. Because, after my tussle with Dean Lynda, when I should have gathered up my son and rushed out the door, if only to remind myself of what really matters, I made the mistake of checking my office voice mail. I found two frantic messages from a lawyer at a New York firm that recently retained me as a consultant, to help some greedy corporation craft a constitutional argument to challenge new federal regulations concerning the disposal of toxic waste: not precisely the side of the angels, but law professors desperate to augment academic salaries take what work we can get. I sent a draft of the brief last week, and now, according to her message, one of the partners at the firm had a few questions. I decided to take a quick minute to call her back, forgetting that lawyers, particularly those at large law firms, prefer talking on the phone to any other activity. Her list of questions was about seven miles long, and some of them were genuinely tough ones. I was tied up for the next ninety minutes (two hours of billable time for both the lawyer and myself—her rates are higher, but I have no overhead), plying my poor son with cookies and fruit to keep him relatively quiet, watching the light fade from the November sky, promising myself every five minutes that I would be done in five more.

  Telling myself lies.

  When I informed Bentley that it was too late to swing by the playground, he literally fell to the floor in tears. Nothing theatrical or manipulative, nothing fake. He simply put a hand over his face and crumpled, like hope dying.

  My efforts to comfort him were unavailing.

  And so I pulled the other sad, spoiling trick of the contemporary parent: I bribed him. We bundled into our parkas and walked the two blocks from Vinerd Howse to Circuit Avenue, the commercial heart of Oak Bluffs, a few hundred yards of restaurants, boutiques, and shops offering the various knickknacks that one finds in any resort town. In the summer, we might have stopped in at Mad Martha’s ice-cream parlor for vanilla malts or strawberry cones, but the local outlet is closed for the season. Instead, we made our way down to Murdick’s candy shop—my son’s second-favorite place on the Island, ranking just behind the incomparable Flying Horses—to buy some of the cranberry fudge that is a specialty of the house. Then we meandered back up the street. I bought the local paper, the Vineyard Gazette, at the Corner Store, and we stopped in for dinner at Linda Jean’s, a quietly popular restaurant of unassuming decor and remarkably inexpensive food, and, at one time, my father’s favorite place to eat. In the summer, he used to drop in just about daily for a warm lobster roll, but only on the off-hours, never when Linda Jean’s was crowded, because, after his fall, the Judge worried constantly about being recognized.

  Some years ago, on the tenth anniversary of my father’s humiliation, Time did a story about his life since leaving the bench. The two-page spread revisited his angry books, quoted some of his stump speeches, and, in the interest of journalistic balance, gave some of his old enemies the chance to take fresh shots at him. Jack Ziegler’s name was mentioned three times, Addison’s twice, mine once, Mariah’s not at all, although her husband’s was, which seemed to displease her. A sidebar summarized the post-hearing life of Greg Haramoto, who, like my father, refused to be interviewed. But the main theme of the story was that, despite the frenetic activity that marked his days, my father was far lonelier than even many of his friends realized. The magazine noted that he was spending more and more time “at his summer home in Oak Bluffs,” nearly always by himself, and although Time made the house sound far grander than it is (“a five-bedroom cottage on the water”) and also got its name wrong (“known to friends and family as simply ‘The Vineyard House’”), the article caught the tenor of his life exactly. The piece was titled, with faint, depressing irony, “The Emperor of Ocean Park.” I was aghast and Mariah was furious. Addison, of course, could not be reached. As for my father, he shrugged it off, or pretended to: “The media,” he said to me at Shepard Street, “are all run by liberals. White liberals. Of course they are out to destroy me, because I know them for what they are. You see, Talcott, white liberals disapprove of black people they cannot control. My very existence is an affront to them.” And returned to the reassuring pages of his National Review.

  As to my father’s fear of being recognized, it was, I confess, no small concern. In the wake of his failed confirmation, he was occasionally accosted by strangers in airports or hotel lobbies or even on the street. Some of them wanted to tell him they were for him all along, some of them wanted to tell him the opposite, and I think he despised both kinds equally; for my father, whose income in his last years derived principally from public appearances, was forever a private man. He invited no one to share his life. A few years ago, when the Judge stayed a weekend with us in Elm Harbor, a lone protester somehow spotted him and spent the better part of two days patrolling the sidewalk in front of our house, his placard proclaiming to the world that JUDGE GARLEN SHOUD BE IN JAIL. I tried to cajole the man into leaving us alone. I even tried to bribe him. He refused to leave. The police told us they could do nothing as long as he remained off our property and did not block access, and my father stood in the window of my study, glaring his hatred and muttering that if this were an abortion clinic the protester would already have been arrested—not an accurate statement of the law but, certainly, an accurate statement of the Judge’s desire to be left alone. Which helps explain why, in Oak Bluffs, he would take his public meals only at the slack hours. Linda Jean’s has long been a favorite hangout of celebrity-watchers, especially during the summer: Spike Lee often stops in for breakfast, Bill Clinton used to drop by for brunch after church on Sunday, and, in the old days, there was always the chance that Jackie O would wander past the window, eating an ice-cream cone. Once my wife spotted Ellen Holly, the pioneering black actress who appeared for many years on the soap opera One Life to Live, and, in the best Kimmer Madison manner, popped over to her table for an introduction and a chat.

  But the best thing of all about Linda Jean’s is that it is open year-round, which many of the Island’s trendier restaurants are not.

  “Hey, buddy,” I say now to my beautiful son. He eyes me uncomfortably. Nibbling his cranberry fudge, he seems content, even if not yet ready to forgive. The doggie my brother gave him is on the seat next to him, a paper napkin tucked daintily into the ribbon around its neck. Have I always, I wonder, loved my son so much, yet felt such pure and piercing unhappiness?

  “You say,” Bentley whispers. His big brown eyes are sleepy. Not only did I break my promise, but I forgot his nap, and I am feeding him too late. I am quite sure there must be good fathers in the world; if I could meet one, maybe he cou
ld show me how to do it right.

  “I’m sorry,” I begin, marveling at how craven parenting has become in our strange new century. I do not recall my parents ever apologizing for failing to take me someplace I expected to go. Kimmer and I seem to do it all the time. So do most of our friends. “Sorry, sweetheart.”

  “Dare Mommy,” he replies—perhaps a hope, perhaps a preference, perhaps a threat. “Mommy kiss. Dare you!”

  My heart twists and my face burns, for he has learned how to use what few words he knows to skewer his guilt-ridden parents, but I am saved from having to answer my son’s riposte by the arrival of our cheeseburgers and lemonade. Bentley digs in eagerly, whatever he was trying to say quite forgotten, and, in my considerable relief, I take far too large a bite of my burger and begin at once to cough. Bentley laughs. Gazing at his smiling, ketchup-smeared face, I find myself wishing that Kimmer were here to see her son, to laugh along with us, the old Kimmer, the loving, gentle Kimmer, the witty Kimmer, the fun Kimmer, the Kimmer who still, now and then, wanders by for a visit; and, if my wife’s becoming Judge Madison will make it easier for that Kimmer to pop in, then it is my duty to do everything I can to help her achieve her goal. All the more reason not to let Marc and Lynda win.

  Duty. So old-fashioned a word. Yet I know I must do my duty, not just to my wife but to my son. And to that increasingly arcane concept known as family.

  I love my family.

  Love is an activity, not a feeling—didn’t one of the great theologians say that? Or maybe it was the Judge, who never ceased to stress duty rather than choice as the foundation of a civilized morality. I do not remember who coined the phrase, but I am beginning to understand what it means. True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one’s fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.