“So what? Listen. I could tell you a few things you don’t wanna know about … about our father. That confirmation thing, it just about wiped him out. You never realized that, you and Mariah, but you weren’t the ones he used to call up at night, drunk—yeah, he started drinking again. You didn’t know that, did you?”
I do know, of course, because Lanie Cross told me, but, now that my brother seems to want to talk, I am not about to break his narrative flow.
“So, yeah, he used to call me up in the middle of the night, crying about this or that. Because I was the eldest. ‘I wouldn’t share this with anybody but you, son.’ That’s what he used to say. Like it was some great honor, having him wake me up at two in the morning to tell me how he deserved to die for his sins, how they were gonna kill him one day, never mind worrying about who they were. So, yeah, Dad was a paranoid, okay? He thought everybody in the world was coming after him. The truth is, he was as crazy as a bedbug. Is that what you want to hear, bro? Is that straight enough for you? Yeah, great, so he had some kind of story about how somebody came to see him and now he was in real trouble and he needed me to look at these papers. And me, I’m sitting there in his hotel trying to figure out how me reading this report is gonna get him out of trouble. Not that I completely cared. I was so sick of him, so sick of all the crap I took from him over the years—”
Addison makes himself stop. Garland men can do that, like turning a switch. Surely that is one of the reasons that our women always grow to loathe us.
“Maybe I was wrong,” he continues in a milder tone. “The Judge came to me for help and I turned him away. That was wrong in every religion I know. And to talk about him the way I am now, that’s wrong, too.” Another pause. I imagine him in his house in Chicago, eyes closed, for he is whispering what sounds like a prayer, maybe for forgiveness, maybe for strength, maybe for show.
“Addison.” The whispering continues. “Addison!”
“You don’t have to yell, Misha.” The cocky big brother is back. The furious, nearly inarticulate Addison of two minutes ago is gone, a demon driven out. “There’s this great new invention, the telephone? And you can talk in a normal tone and the person at the other end can be all the way in Chicago and he can still hear you just fine.”
“Okay okay, I’m sorry. But look. What was the story? Who came to see him? You said somebody spooked him … .”
“Well, you know, I don’t think I should talk about that part. I mean, the Judge kind of made me promise not to tell.”
I ponder. I am close, so close, and Addison has never been any good at keeping secrets, except when he has to hide one girlfriend from another. There must be a way to pry this one loose. Certainly I am determined to try. Somewhere deep down, in that place that Garland men never reveal, my anger is beginning to burn. A degree of anger at my brother, for playing these games, but mostly anger at my father, for confiding in his first son, the fly-by-night activist, instead of his second son, the lawyer. If you wanted to confide in Addison, I wish I could shout at him, then why in the world didn’t you arrange to have the pawn and the note delivered to him instead of to me?
Not that I would ever shout at the Judge.
Then I remember how Addison, alone among the children, argued with our father. When the Judge would take over the dinner table for one of his lectures on what to do and what to avoid doing, Mariah and I would sit dutifully, mouthing all the right responses, Yessir, No sir, Whatever you say, sir—and Addison, even as a teenager, would look him dead in the eye and say, Bullshit, Dad. He would be grounded for a week, of course, but we could see the pride in his handsome eyes, and even in the Judge’s. I like the boy’s chutzpah, he would tell our mother, even if it’s misdirected.
Well, his chutzpah has carried him a good long way. Let’s see how far.
“So, what happened to the report?”
“What do you mean, what happened to it?” Combative.
“Did you read it? Did Dad take it with him?”
Addison’s voice is suddenly slow. “No, I took it with me. I promised him I would look at it.” I hear his ragged breathing as he tries to control his anger. “And it’s gone, Misha. Don’t even ask. I got rid of it.”
“How? You mean, you threw it away?”
“It’s gone. That’s all.”
I believe him. Whatever was in Villard’s report, Addison did not want anybody seeing it. And he is not about to tell me why.
“Okay, Addison. Forget about what happened to the report. Forget about why the Judge was spooked. Let me tell you the other reason I’ve been trying to reach you.” Addison, likely relieved that I am changing topics, offers no objection. “I want to ask you about something the Judge could not have sworn you to silence about, because he didn’t know about it.”
“Fire away,” he says indulgently, guessing that I have no ammunition left.
And so I tell him about my meeting with Sally. I describe the night the two of them were in the house together, making love, and were interrupted by the Judge’s furious argument with Colin Scott.
“Yeah,” he says when I am done. “Yeah, Sally told me she talked to you and that she kind of let the cat out of the bag. Poor kid.”
“Addison …”
“You have to understand, Misha, Sally’s been through some rough times. You have any idea how many times she’s been in and out of rehab? Sometimes she embellishes things a little bit, okay? It wasn’t necessarily the way she makes it sound.”
The sex, he is talking about, not the argument.
“Addison, that’s fine. I don’t care about you and Sally. I really don’t.” A lie, but I see no reason to remind him how wrong it was, especially when I have him cornered. “What I care about is what the Judge and Colin Scott were talking about. Sally said you overheard part of the conversation. That’s what I need to know about. What you overheard.”
Silence.
“Come on, Addison. You heard the whole thing, I bet. Or most of it.”
“I heard most of it,” he finally concedes, “but I can’t tell you about it, Misha. Really. I just can’t.”
“You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Addison, the Judge isn’t your property. He was my father, too.”
“Yeah, but there are things about a father that …” He hesitates, then tries again. “Look, Misha. There’s stuff you don’t really wanna know, believe me. About Dad. I know you think you wanna know, but you don’t. I mean—look, bro, he did some bad shit, okay? We all do, but Dad—well, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you, and I’m not gonna tell you. No way.” Another pause. He is sensing my pain, perhaps. Or my bewilderment. Or my simple need. He grunts: Addison really cannot bear the pain of another human being, which is an element of his personality I have always loved and envied. I sometimes think it is this aspect of his character, not mere carnal desire, that has led my brother to rampant promiscuity. He cannot bear to say no. Perhaps that explains his frequent mysterious disappearances from the family for months or years at a time: in order to stay sane, he has to find a path to refuse what others, through their neediness, demand of him.
I play, shamelessly, to his weakness.
“Addison, come on. You have to tell me something. I’m going to go crazy if I don’t have some hint of what’s going on. Of what happened that night.” I lower my voice. “Look, Addison, I can’t go into the details now, but this is destroying my life.”
“Get serious, bro.”
“Seriously. Remember when Uncle Jack came to the cemetery? Ever since then … well, you wouldn’t believe what’s been going on. But it’s wrecking my marriage, Addison, and it’s driving me nuts. So, please, anything you can tell me. I have to know.”
My brother goes into another long think. I am supposed to be finishing another article, trying to work my way back into the respect of my colleagues, but I am prepared to wait all afternoon to get this one answer. And Addison, bless him, seems to sense the truth of my need, and so compassion draws out of him what argument w
ould not.
“Well, okay, Misha, okay. You’ve got a point. Listen. Tell you what. I can maybe tell you one little fact, but that’s gotta be it, bro. Seriously. This is, like, a sacred trust.”
“I know, Addison, I know. And I respect that.”
My brother’s silence bespeaks a certain suspicion, and why not? I am lying through my teeth. Addison continues to make me wait. Even sitting a thousand miles away in his Chicago townhouse, holding my sanity in his large hands, he has a way with silence. I try to be patient, try not to put a word wrong, try not to speak at all, because I respect the fragility of the moment. Underneath my brother’s silence, I sense bewilderment, even fury. He never wanted to tell me anything; he wanted to talk me out of my search. He failed, and he is furious about it.
I sense something else, too, something I faintly scented at the beginning of our call and can now confirm. My brother is afraid. I only wish I knew what of.
At last he deigns to speak: “One fact, Misha, that’s all. Please don’t ask me to tell you any more, because I won’t. One fact, and then I’m not answering any more questions.” He sounds like a politician refusing to talk about his personal life.
“One fact. I understand.”
“Okay. Listen. When Colin Scott was at Shepard Street that night? Yeah, Sally is right, I heard the whole thing. Every word.” My brother lets out a long sigh. “Sally told you she heard Dad say, ‘There are no rules where a dollar is involved,’ right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I heard it too. And I was a lot closer.” A final pause, perhaps trying to find a way out of this, a phrase, an argument, a warning that will make me stop. Evidently, he cannot come up with one. “Sally got it wrong as usual, bro. The word Dad used wasn’t dollar. The word was daughter.”
Click. Dial tone.
(III)
MORRIS YOUNG MAKES TIME FOR ME later that night, because he can tell that I am desperate. We meet at his church around eight, and he hears me out patiently. When I am done, he offers no advice. Instead, he tells me a story.
“In the Old Testament—in Genesis—there’s the tale of Noah.”
“The flood?”
His pocked face softens. “No, no, of course not the flood. There is much more to the tale of Noah than the flood, Talcott.”
“I know.” As though I do.
“I am sure you do. I am sure you remember the account, in Genesis 9, of the time when Noah got drunk and was lying naked in his tent. His son Ham went looking for him and found him naked and went and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth—remember? And Shem and Japheth went into the tent backward, so they wouldn’t see their father naked, and covered him up. Noah, when he awakened, cursed his son Ham. Ham, you see, did not respect his father. He wanted to see his father naked. Wanted his brothers to see. What kind of son is that, Talcott? Do you understand the story? Sons are not supposed to see their fathers naked. A son is not supposed to know all his father’s secrets … or all his father’s sins. And if he does know, he is not supposed to tell. Do you understand, Talcott?”
“You think I should stop? I shouldn’t try to find out what my father was really up to?”
“I cannot tell you what to do, Talcott. I can tell you, however, that the Lord requires you to honor your father. I can tell you that sons who go looking for their father’s sins are bound to find them. And I can tell you that the Bible teaches us that such sons will almost always come to grief.”
CHAPTER 37
SOME HISTORICAL NOTES
THE LARGEST EGO ON THE FACULTY is owned not by Dana Worth or Lemaster Carlyle or Arnie Rosen or even the recently humiliated Marc Hadley; no, it is the sole possession of my Oldie neighbor Ethan Brinkley. Little Ethan takes enormous pride in his achievements in advance, according to Dear Dana Worth, the faculty wit. That way, says Dana, he avoids the stress of worrying about whether he ever actually achieves them or not.
Over the years, Ethan has told everybody who will listen, and quite a few who would rather not, about the secret appendices he has stored around his office: photocopies of hundreds of files and reports that he somehow neglected to turn in when he ended his stint on the staff of the Intelligence Committee. Little Ethan, as Theo Mountain derisively calls him, likes to pepper conversations with delectable tidbits from the files, the identities of John Kennedy’s lovers, for instance, or the brand of Fidel Castro’s cologne. At times, it is a little like living with a budding J. Edgar Hoover. Stuart Land has told Ethan to his face that he should be in prison, and Lem Carlyle, the ex-prosecutor, has contemplated turning him in, but, so far, nobody has quite gotten up the nerve to do anything, even when Little Ethan, beguiling sprite that he can be, was a regular television guest during the Clinton impeachment proceedings, issuing vehement calls for a return of integrity to the federal government.
Ethan possesses considerable ambition, but no scintilla of either irony or shame. And so it is, on the first afternoon of the spring term, less than a week after the collapse of Marc’s hopes for the judgeship that now seems Kimmer’s for the taking, and one day after my debilitating conversation with Addison, that I stand in front of Ethan’s door, right across the dim hallway from mine. I am nervous, partly because Ethan and I are not remotely friends, but mostly because what I plan to ask of him is somewhat tricky. No, let me be truthful: what I plan to ask of him is probably against the law.
Not that mere illegality will bother Ethan Brinkley.
“Misha!” he booms when I step into his office. The little man bounds from behind his desk to give my hand a practiced pump. I have never invited Ethan to address me by my nickname, which is reserved for a handful of intimates, but he has heard Dana use it and adopted it as his own, assuming, in the manner of salesmen and politicians everywhere, that his choice to call me what he wants rather than what I want somehow cements our intimacy.
Actually, it offends me, but, as so often, I keep that fact to myself, confident that a secret time of reckoning will come.
A few pleasantries as Ethan waves me to a hard wooden chair. His office is the size of a large closet, and his two smallish windows on the longer wall look out on nothing except the next wing of the building. But the vista and the square footage will come with time, believes Ethan, whose ambition knows a certain patience, thus enabling him to take the long view. The day will arrive, Ethan told me in a careless moment well before he was voted tenure, when I am a power in this place.
He already has the swagger, muttered Dana when I shared this bon mot.
Ethan reads my mood. His face is composed and sympathetic as he settles himself on the chair next to mine. Another politician’s move: he does not sit across the desk from me, perhaps believing that it lends too much formality. Everything Ethan does is purposeful, designed to make people like him, and most people do. Some say he is already running for dean, ready to tilt against Arnie Rosen and Lem Carlyle for the job when Lynda Wyatt decides to retire. I am surprised that people think he is aiming so low.
Ethan is an athletic and clever little man, with untidy brown hair and innocent brown eyes. He favors scuffed shoes and tweed blazers just rumpled enough to assure the people that he is one of them, except that his rumpled blazers cost a thousand dollars a throw. His gaze never wavers from the face of the person he is talking to, or listening to, but you have the sense from the set of his small mouth and the deep frowning lines on his forehead that it is all show, that behind the ingenuous eyes he is calculating, move and countermove, like a chess player working out his response while your clock is ticking.
“So, Misha, what can I do for you?” Ethan asks, brown eyes twinkling, as though I do not have five years of seniority on him.
“I need some information that I think you might have.”
He almost smiles: Ethan is happiest when helping others, not because it excites his passion for charitable works, but because it leaves the people he helps in his debt. Little Ethan is spreading markers around the law school as fast as he can, teaching extra courses,
attending every workshop, volunteering to write the committee reports no sane professor would touch, even showing up at the endless receptions for visiting assistant attorneys general from brand-new countries of which nobody has ever heard.
“Misha, you know me—anything for a buddy.”
I nod, then gather my courage, for I am making a leap, one I have been pondering ever since my return from the Vineyard, and one that was cemented by what my brother told me. So, with a silent prayer, I voice the name: “Colin Scott.”
Ethan frowns for a moment, not in distaste, but in concentration. His memory is part of his fast-growing legend. Our students are astonished by his ability to quote long passages from cases without troubling to look at a book or notes, a trick that most academics can do, but which Ethan renders with a certain implike flourish. And, if the truth is told, he has mastered the illusion far earlier in his career than most of us did.
“Rings a bell,” Ethan concedes. The sympathetic look is back. “What about him?”
I wave my hand toward his painstakingly organized and carefully locked cabinets. “I need to know whatever you know about him.”
“He’s dead.”
“I know that. I was on the Vineyard when it happened.”
“Were you, now? Were you? Well!” He stands up to head to the cabinet, but claps me on the back as he passes, somehow implying that we have been to war together, but only I have seen combat. I do not even mind the gesture, for it signals what I have been half hoping, half hating: that Colin Scott is mentioned somewhere deep in the files of the Select Committee on Intelligence. Which explains, among other things, why the FBI was so reluctant to give Meadows his name.
“Colin Scott,” he mutters, twirling the combination lock on one of the black metal monstrosities that line the far wall. “Colin Scott. You’re around here somewhere.” He makes a show of leafing slowly through the files, although I have no doubt that he knows exactly where to find whatever he knows about Mr. Scott, maybe because of his memory, or maybe because he would have had the folder out recently in order to add the information on Scott’s death.
Emperor of Ocean Park Page 52
