The Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  Like trying to figure out why the Judge was scared enough to get a gun.

  Off toward the gift shop, I spy two law professors from the symposium, members of the paler nation, looking rather lost in flannels and tweeds as they watch the dark conclave with apprehensive eyes. They wave to me as though relieved to come across a friendly face in a lobby that suddenly resembles the Essence fashion show, and I smile back but decide not to go over to join them for the usual evening round of postconference academic gossip, which would feel, somehow, like rejecting my own. I decide instead to head upstairs to play chess on my laptop until I get sleepy, which is how I spend most evenings when I am away from home, and many when I am not. I weave through the happy multitude, trying not to bump into anybody and intermittently succeeding, now and then nodding at a vaguely familiar face. I have nearly reached the elevator bank when a pleasantly round shape, draped in an outrageously tight purple gown, detaches itself from a circle of laughing friends and strides purposefully in my direction.

  “Tal! I had no idea you were in town!”

  I stare in disbelief as Sarah Catherine Stillman née Garland materializes before me.

  “Sally?” I manage. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” Cousin Sally giggles and pats my cheek and takes my hand in both of hers. Her palm is moist. Her eyes are slightly wild from whatever substance she is abusing this week. She is wearing her hair in long, beaded braids now, some of which are black, some of which are light brown, most of which are quite fake. “I’m here for the fundraiser. The real question, sweetie, is, what are you doing here? And where the hell’s your tux?” Tapping my wool jacket with feigned disapproval.

  “Uh, I’m not here for the fund-raiser. I’m here for the tort-reform conference.” I am babbling but seem unable to stop. “It’s just a bunch of law professors. I delivered a paper yesterday.” I wave vaguely toward the stairway down to the room where we have been meeting. I am sure she has no clue what I am talking about.

  Sally is peering at me closely. Her eyes shine wetly “Are you all right, Talcott? You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m fine. Listen, Sally, it’s nice to see you, but I really have to go.”

  I wait for what seems an eternity but is probably two seconds, and then she answers me, ignoring my brisk effort to escape as she conveys her own message: “I’m so glad I ran into you, Tal. I’ve been thinking about calling you.” Sally gets up on her toes—no easy trick in heels that high—to whisper in my ear: “Tal, listen. I need to talk to you about where I saw Agent McDermott before.”

  After the events of the past several hours, it takes me an awkward moment to recall that McDermott was the name used by the late Colin Scott; that Sally told me on the day I met him that she thought she knew him.

  All at once I am tired of theories. My father is dead but leaving me notes, my wife is doing goodness-knows-what, and I am being followed by a mysterious woman who was on the Vineyard when Scott/McDermott drowned. The human mind, especially when under stress, can assimilate only so much information. And I am beyond my capacity.

  “I appreciate it, Sally, but I don’t think this is the time or the place—”

  She cuts me off, her wine-soaked breath tickling the side of my face.

  “I saw him in the house, Tal. On Shepard Street. Years ago.” A pause. “He knew your father.”

  CHAPTER 23

  THE AMBIGUOUS FIGURE

  (I)

  “IT WAS SUMMER,” Sally begins, sipping a bottle of beer from the mini-bar. I would rather have given her plain water, or maybe coffee, but standing up to tough women has never been my forte. “Maybe a year or two after Abby died. Mariah was in college. I think maybe you were, too, but I can’t remember. But I know where I saw him. I’m sure of that part.”

  I wait for my cousin to get the story out. She is lounging on one of the two double beds in my hotel room. I am seated at the tiny desk, the chair turned in her direction. We have ordered food from room service, because Sally told me she has not eaten all day. I would rather not have this meeting in my room—she has a certain reputation, after all—but one look at her in the lobby made clear that she was in no shape to sit in a public place. Still, I tried a variety of excuses to avoid talking to her at all. Sally blew each of them away. A pile of work awaiting me? Oh, this won’t take too long. Her children? Oh, they’re with my mom for a couple of days. And the ever-jealous Bud? Oh, he’s not around so much any more. So we came up here, where my stout, showy, overdressed cousin, the hem of whose flaming purple gown is several inches too short, immediately kicked off her shoes and demanded a drink.

  If I am going to hear the story, this is the only way.

  “I was at your house,” she says. “On Shepard Street. It was nighttime. I guess I was sort of asleep. Until . . . until the sound of an argument woke me up.”

  “Where was I?”

  “I think you were probably on the Vineyard. You and your mom. Maybe Mariah. But not your father. And not Addison. That’s why I was over at your house. I was, um, sort of with Addison.” Sally is a very dark woman, but she blushes anyway. Lying on the bed, she twists physically away, as though it is easier to tell her story if she can pretend she is alone. And she at once launches a digression, in which Misha is the villain: “I know what I used to do with Addison was wrong, Tal, so I don’t need you to tell me that. It’s over, okay? It’s been over like forever. I know you never approved. You always let me know. Oh, you never said a word, but you’ve always been, in the family, I mean, sort of like your father—you have all these rules and things, and when somebody doesn’t follow them, you don’t get mad, you get this disapproving look. Like everybody’s morally smaller than you are. I hate that look. Everybody hates it, Tal. Your brother, your sister, everybody.” I almost speak up, but remind myself that Sally is probably on something, that she certainly is not herself: knowledge that does nothing to reduce the sting of her words.

  “My dad hated it, too,” she is saying. “Your Uncle Derek, I mean”—as though I have some question about who her father is, or was. “He hated it when Uncle Oliver would look at him that way, and Uncle Oliver looked at him that way a lot. Because he hated my dad’s, you know, his politics. He thought my dad was a Communist.”

  I venture my second interruption: “Sally, your dad was a Communist.”

  “I know, I know, but, what’s that old joke? He made it sound so dirty.” She laughs screechily as she repeats this line, although it cannot possibly be the whole joke, and then, suddenly, she is weeping. Whatever drug she is using, it seems to cause severe mood swings. Or perhaps there is no drug and she is simply unhappy. Either way, I decide to let her cry. There are no words of comfort I can offer, really, and putting my arms around her on the bed is out of the question.

  “See, Tal,” she resumes after a couple of minutes, “you think the world is made up of simple moral rules. You think there are just two kinds of people in the world, people who obey the rules and people who break them. You think you’re so different from Uncle Oliver, but you’re just like him. In some good ways, sure, but in some of the worst ways, too. You look down your nose at people you think are your moral inferiors. People like your brother. People like me.”

  Now I remember why Kimmer and I never socialize with Sally: you have to fight through ten minutes of her verbal abuse before you can have anything resembling a normal conversation. So I grit my teeth and keep silent, reminding myself that she is not a well woman.

  Besides, what she says about me is probably right.

  “So, anyway, that’s why I didn’t tell you before. About McDermott, I mean. I sort of pretended I didn’t remember, but that wasn’t true. I knew who McDermott was the minute I saw him. I probably should have said something, but I knew I would have to tell you why I was in the house that night, and I didn’t want to see that disapproving look.” She turns toward me long enough to glare, and I ponder the way belief in right and wrong can interfere with the project
of human communication. “See, Tal, that’s why we always had to sneak around, because people like you and Uncle Oliver . . .”

  She stops. A shudder runs through her. Another sob? No, a memory, a recollection she prefers to hold at bay.

  “It’s ancient history,” I murmur, trying to divert her. If Sally is seeking an apology, she is out of luck, for I cannot pretend there was nothing wrong with what she and Addison did.

  Sally knows what I am thinking. “Even Mariah’s not as bad as you are, Tal. You know what? When Mariah is in D.C., she always calls me up. We have some good times . . . .”

  “She told me you’ve been helping her go through the Judge’s papers.”

  Sally snickers. “Is that what she told you? Well, yeah, we do that sometimes, but that’s not what I mean. I mean we have good times. We talk. She listens to me, Tal. We go to the clubs. You know. Your sister likes to get down sometimes. Not like you. And she isn’t judging me all the time like you are. She takes people just the way they are. So that’s why I didn’t tell you, Talcott. Because of the way you are. Because it involves Addison, too. I mean, me and Addison. You’re just like your father,” she repeats. I am playing catch-up, stuck on the image of my sister in a club—the kind of club that Sally likes—getting down. You would not think, to look at Mariah, that she was the partying type; sole black member of the yacht club is more her style. My cousin, on the other hand, is a party and a half all by herself.

  “You could never understand about Addison,” Sally continues, her voice excited and angry and full of life’s broken promises. “You could never understand what we had. Okay, it was wrong. But it was special”—as though I have disputed her. “We were lovers, Tal. It wasn’t just sex, it was love. Now, is that crude enough for you?”

  She is up on her elbow, eyes aglow with belligerence. Her mood is swinging, all right, and she is saying anything that comes to mind.

  “I’m not judging you, Sally,” I lie carefully, my tone as neutral as I can make it. “I just want to know what you remember about McDermott.”

  “You are judging me.”

  “I’m just glad it’s over,” I assure her. But I marvel at how a civilized world can make a virtue of having no judgment, teach it to kids, preach it from the pulpit.

  “You know something, Tal? You’re a fake. Misha. Mikhail. A fake.” A harsher laugh. “My dad gave you that nickname, in case you forgot, and you still treat his daughter like trash.” My cousin flops back onto the bed, her braids settling around her head like an ebon halo. The tirade seems to be over.

  The room-service waiter wisely chooses that moment to arrive. When Sally makes no effort to get up from the bed, I sign the bill in the corridor, blocking the waiter’s view of the room, and roll the cart in myself.

  We eat in silence for a few minutes: mushroom soup and a club sandwich for me, shrimp cocktail and filet mignon for Sally. Having shared a healthy repast with my in-laws just an hour ago, I should not be eating again so soon, but I tend to find the self all too easy to indulge, which perhaps explains my burgeoning waistline. In short, I eat too much; when I am nervous or stressed, my will to resist is weaker still. I am, unfortunately, like Mark Twain, who once said that he ate more on some occasions than others, but never less. Sally and I sit facing each other on the two beds with the table between us. She eats fast and without any finesse, simply fulfilling a bodily desire. The food seems to revive her, or maybe the drug, if there is one, has worn off; whatever the reason, when she next opens her mouth, she is her old flirty self.

  “I’m sorry I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, Tal, but men don’t buy me dinner very often any more, so I figured, what the hell, make the most of it.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Of course, sometimes a man expects something in return.”

  “All I expect is to hear about Mr. McDermott.” Giving her my best stone face.

  “Sure that’s all you want?” Coy, as if the intimacy of sharing a secret dinner with a man in a hotel room has given her permission to misbehave. “Most men have other things in mind.”

  “I’m not most men.”

  “Come on, Tal, don’t you ever relax and have fun?”

  “Only on Tuesdays and alternate Saturdays.”

  This, at least, brings a genuine smile. “Okay, Tal,” she says. “Let’s be friends.”

  “Okay.”

  “Look, I’m sorry for what I said before.” Although she does not sound very sorry. She curls her solid legs underneath her. “I just can’t seem to help myself tonight. I guess that’s my flaw, I always say what I’m thinking. At least, when I’m with a man.”

  “That’s not necessarily a flaw.” Not liking, however, her use of the word with.

  “Well, no, not if the man I’m with happens to like what I’m thinking.” A pause as she contemplates a punch line. “And if he doesn’t? To hell with him.”

  Again she laughs, a light, trilling sound: there is nothing hateful in her words. Sally does not dislike men, even though she has not been well treated by them. She is amused by them. By us. It occurs to me that Sally, when she is not being melancholy, can probably be a lot of fun. I begin to see why Addison, and so many other men, have found my plump cousin attractive. Last year, I saw an exhibit at the university museum of some of those drawings that used to be popular early in the twentieth century, the ones that look like smiling dogs until you invert them, when they turn into angry cats, or change from a beautiful woman to an unhappy sultan, and so on. “Ambiguous Figures,” the exhibit was called. Sally is like one of those ambiguous figures: at first glance she seems wild, overweight, hopeless, pill-popping, pathetic; catch her from another angle and she is bold, bright, sexy, scathingly witty. I am catching her, at this moment, from that second angle, which means that I need, quickly, to bring some discipline to our conversation.

  “About McDermott—”

  “Yes, sir!” She snaps off a mock salute. “At your service, sir!”

  And then she tells me the story.

  (II)

  WE HAVE FINISHED DESSERT—the fruit cup for me, tiramisù for Sally. I have rolled the room-service cart back into the hallway. Sally is lounging on the bed, weight on her elbow, one toe touching the carpet. I am at the desk once more, my hands folded in my lap, as I wait for her to begin.

  “I was at the house on Shepard Street, like I said. I don’t know if you remember or not, but in those days, Dad and Mom and I lived down in Southeast. He used to work for that little private library. You remember.”

  Indeed I do: Were you aware, Judge Garland, that the library where your brother worked was a known Communist front? And, inevitably: No, Senator, I was not aware. My brother and I did not have much to do with each other. Then the switch to maudlin mode: That must have been a source of some pain, Judge. My father at his coldest, yet his most disarming: I loved my brother, Senator, but our differences were pretty strong. Communism is a terrible, terrible thing—at least as bad as racism. Maybe worse in some ways. I could not be a part of his world. He could not be a part of mine. I suppose I wasn’t the best brother in the world, and if I hurt my brother, I’m very sorry. Each of us thought the other was pretty dangerous, I guess. But I admit I don’t think about it much. Absolutely destroying this line of questioning.

  “I remember,” I say softly.

  “Well, anyway, in those days, I used to take a bus—was it the S4?—up to your house. You know, to see Addison? I mean, if he happened to be in town? I never went when your parents were there, or when you and Mariah were there either. I sort of only went to meet Addison alone.” A small, sheepish grin. “The truth is, I never told my folks where I was going either. Dad was just as bad as Uncle Oliver—that disapproving look, I mean. Maybe all the guys in your family have that frown. I mean, except Addison.”

  I consider suggesting that we were disapproving because there was something to be disapproving of, that a sexual relationship between first cousins is incest. But Sally would probab
ly remind me that she and Addison are not blood relations. Or perhaps she would cite Eleanor and FDR at me; and I would answer that they were actually first cousins once removed, contrary to popular understanding, which means that their family relationship was distant indeed, their last common ancestor something like five generations back; and Sally would accuse me of patronizing her; and the conversation would spiral downhill from there.

  Besides, she has already admitted that what they did was wrong.

  I say: “If I could just hear about McDermott . . .”

  “You’re so damn single-minded.” She laughs and lies down on the bed again, this time with her heavy knees in the air. “The thing is, Tal, you have to understand, I would never have been in that house if I knew your father was going to be there. I was supposed to meet Addison, and we were supposed to be alone. Your father—well, he was supposed to be away.” She closes her eyes, frowns. “Not on the Vineyard, though. I think—I think he was supposed to be at some judges’ convention.”

  “Probably the Judicial Conference,” I murmur.

  “Huh?”

  “The Judicial Conference. Federal judges’ group. Meets during the summer. He was probably there.”

  She shakes her head. “Maybe he was supposed to be there, maybe he told Aunt Claire he would be there, but where he was, was in D.C.”

  I bite my tongue. If Sally is telling the truth, she has caught the Judge lying to my mother, which, I would have sworn until this moment, never happened once.

  “Anyway, I didn’t know your father was around. I was supposed to see Addison. We were both just out of college, both in town for the summer, and he was living at home. So was I. And he called me up and said everybody was away for a few days, so we could . . . we could spend some time together if I wanted. Well, I wanted.”