The Emperor of Ocean Park Read online

  ALSO BY STEPHEN L. CARTER

  God’s Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics

  The Dissent of the Governed: A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty

  Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy

  Integrity

  The Confirmation Mess:

  Cleaning Up the Federal Appointments Process

  The Culture of Disbelief:

  How American Law and Politics

  Trivialize Religious Devotion

  Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby

  For Mom, who loved a mystery,

  and for Dad, who is not in this one:

  I love you both, always

  Deux fous gagnent toujours, mais trois fous, non!

  (Loosely: Two fools always win, but three fools, never!)

  —Siegbert Tarrasch

  (Note: The chess piece Americans call the bishop,

  the French call le fou.)

  PROLOGUE

  THE VINEYARD HOUSE

  WHEN MY FATHER finally died, he left the Redskins tickets to my brother, the house on Shepard Street to my sister, and the house on the Vineyard to me. The football tickets, of course, were the most valuable item in the estate, but then Addison was always the biggest favorite and the biggest fan, the only one of the children who came close to sharing my father’s obsession, as well as the only one of us actually on speaking terms with my father the last time he drew his will. Addison is a gem, if you don’t mind the religious nonsense, but Mariah and I have not been close in the years since I joined the enemy, as she puts it, which is why my father bequeathed us houses four hundred miles apart. I was glad to have the Vineyard house, a tidy little Victorian on Ocean Park in the town of Oak Bluffs, with lots of frilly carpenter’s Gothic along the sagging porch and a lovely morning view of the white band shell set amidst a vast sea of smooth green grass and outlined against a vaster sea of bright blue water. My parents liked to tell how they bought the house for a song back in the sixties, when Martha’s Vineyard, and the black middle-class colony that summers there, were still smart and secret. Lately, in my father’s oft-repeated view, the Vineyard had tumbled downhill, for it was crowded and noisy and, besides, they let everyone in now, by which he meant black people less well off than we. There were too many new houses going up, he would moan, many of them despoiling the roads and woods near the best beaches. There were even condominiums, of all things, especially near Edgartown, which he could not understand, because the southern part of the Island is what he always called Kennedy country, the land where rich white vacationers and their bratty children congregate, and a part-angry, part-jealous article of my father’s faith held that white people allow the members of what he liked to call the darker nation to swarm and crowd while keeping the open spaces for themselves.

  And yet, amidst all the clamor, the Vineyard house is a small marvel. I loved it as a child and love it more now. Every room, every dark wooden stair, every window whispers its secret share of memories. As a child, I broke an ankle and a wrist in a fall from the gabled roof outside the master bedroom; now, more than thirty years after, I no longer recall why I thought it would be fun to climb there. Two summers later, as I wandered the house in postmidnight darkness, searching for a drink of water, an odd mewling sound dropped me into a crouch on the landing, whence, a week or so shy of my tenth birthday, I peered through the balustrade and thus caught my first stimulating glimpse of the primal mystery of the adult world. I saw my brother, Addison, four years older than I, tussling with our cousin Sally, a dark beauty of fifteen, on the threadbare burgundy sofa opposite the television down in the shadowy nook of the stairwell, neither of them quite fully dressed, although I was somehow unable to figure out precisely what articles of clothing were missing. My instinct was to flee. Instead, seized by a weirdly thrilling lethargy, I watched them roll about, their arms and legs intertwined in seemingly random postures—making out, we called it in those simpler days, a phrase pregnant with purposeful ambiguity, perhaps as a protection against the burden of specificity.

  My own teen years, like my adulthood dreary and overlong, brought no similar adventures, least of all on the Vineyard; the highlight, I suppose, came near the end of our last summer sojourn as a full family, when I was about thirteen, and Mariah, a rather pudgy fifteen and angry at me for some smart-mouthed crack about her weight, borrowed a box of kitchen matches, then stole a Topps Willie Mays baseball card that I treasured and climbed the dangerous pull-down ladder to the attic, eight rickety wooden slats, most of them loose. When I caught up with her, my sister burned the card before my eyes as I wept helplessly, falling to my knees in the wretched afternoon heat of the dusty, low-ceilinged loft—the two of us already set in our lifelong pattern of animosity. That same summer, my sister Abigail, in those days still known as the baby, even though just a bit more than a year younger than I, made the local paper, the Vineyard Gazette, when she won something like eight different prizes at the county fair on a muggy August night by throwing darts at balloons and baseballs at milk bottles, and so solidified her position as the family’s only potential athlete—none of the rest of us dared try, for our parents always preached brains over brawn.

  Four Augusts later, Abby’s boyish laughter was no longer heard along Ocean Park, or anywhere else, her joy in life, and ours in her, having vanished in a confused instant of rain-slicked asphalt and an inexperienced teenager’s fruitless effort to evade an out-of-control sports car, something fancy, seen by several witnesses but never accurately described and therefore never found; for the driver who killed my baby sister a few blocks north of the Washington Cathedral in that first spring of Jimmy Carter’s presidency left the scene long before the police arrived. That Abby had only a learner’s permit, not a license, never became a matter of public knowledge; and the marijuana that was found in her borrowed car was never again mentioned, least of all by the police or even the press, because my father was who he was and had the connections that he did, and, besides, in those days it was not yet our national sport to ravage the reputations of the great. Abby was therefore able to die as innocently as we pretended that she had lived. Addison by that time was on the verge of finishing college and Mariah was about to begin her sophomore year, leaving me in the nervous role of what my mother kept calling her only child. And all that Oak Bluffs summer, as my father, tight-lipped, commuted to the federal courthouse in Washington and my mother shuffled aimlessly from one downstairs room to the next, I made it my task to hunt through the house for memories of Abby—at the bottom of a stack of books on the black metal cart underneath the television, her favorite game of Life; in the back of the glass-fronted cabinet over the sink, a white ceramic mug emblazoned with the legend BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL, purchased to annoy my father; and, hiding in a corner of the airless attic, a stuffed panda named George, after the martyred black militant George Jackson, won at the fair and now leaking from its joints some hideous pink substance—memories, I must confess in my perilous middle age, that have grown ever fainter with the passage of time.

  Ah, the Vineyard house! Addison was married in it, twice, once more or less successfully, and I smashed the leaded glass in the double front door, also twice, once more or less intentionally. Every summer of my youth we went there to live, because that is what one does with a summer home. Every winter my father griped about the upkeep and threatened to sell it, because that is what one does when happiness is a questionable investment. And when the cancer that pursued her for six years finally won, my mother died in it, in the smallest bedroom, with the nicest view of Nantucket Sound, because that is what one does if one can choose one’s end.

  My father died at his desk. And, at first,
only my sister and a few stoned callers to late-night radio shows believed he had been murdered.

  PART I

  NOWOTNY INTERFERENCE

  Nowotny interference—In the composition of chess problems, a theme in which two Black pieces obstruct one another’s ability to protect vital squares.

  CHAPTER I

  THE LATEST NEWS BY PHONE

  (I)

  “THIS IS the happiest day of my life,” burbles my wife of nearly nine years on what will shortly become one of the saddest days of mine.

  “I see,” I answer, my tone conveying my hurt.

  “Oh, Misha, grow up. I’m not comparing it with marrying you.” A pause. “Or with having a baby,” she adds as a footnote.

  “I know, I understand.”

  Another pause. I hate pauses on the telephone, but, then, I hate the telephone itself, and much else besides. In the background, I hear a laughing male voice. Although it is almost eleven in the morning in the East, it is just nearing eight in San Francisco. But there is no need to be suspicious: she could be calling from a restaurant, a shopping mall, or a conference room.

  Or not.

  “I thought you would be happy for me,” Kimmer says at last.

  “I am happy for you,” I assure her, far too late. “It’s just—”

  “Oh, Misha, come on.” She is impatient now. “I’m not your father, okay? I know what I’m getting into. What happened to him is not going to happen to me. What happened to you is not going to happen to our son. Okay? Honey?”

  Nothing happened to me, I almost lie, but I refrain, in part because I like the rare and scrumptious taste of Honey. With Kimmer for once so happy, I do not want to cause trouble. I certainly do not want to tell her that the joy I feel at her accomplishment is diminished by my concern over how my father will react. I say softly, “I just worry about you, that’s all.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Kimmer assures me, a proposition so utterly true that it is frightening. I marvel at my wife’s capacity to hide good news, at least from her husband. She learned some time yesterday that her years of subtle lobbying and careful political contributions have at last paid off, that she is among the finalists for a vacancy on the federal court of appeals. I try not to wonder how many people she shared her joy with before she got around to calling home.

  “I miss you,” I say.

  “Well, that’s sweet, but, unfortunately, it’s starting to look like I gotta stay out here till tomorrow.”

  “I thought you were coming home tonight.”

  “I was, but—well, I just can’t.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, Misha, I’m not staying away on purpose. It’s my job. There’s nothing I can do about it.” A few seconds while we think this through together. “I’ll be home as soon as I can, you know that.”

  “I know, darling, I know.” I am standing behind my desk and looking down into the courtyard at the students lying on the grass, noses in their casebooks, or playing volleyball, trying to stretch the New England summer as they leap about in the dying October sun. My office is spacious and bright but a bit disorderly, which is also generally the state of my life. “I know,” I say a third time, for we are at that stage in our marriage when we seem to be running out of conversation.

  After a suitable period of silence, Kimmer returns to practicalities. “Guess what? The FBI will be starting to talk to my friends soon. My husband too. When Ruthie said that, I’m like, ‘I hope he won’t tell them all my sins.’” A small laugh, wary and confident at the same time. My wife knows she can count on me. And, so knowing, she turns suddenly humble. “I realize they’re thinking about other people,” she continues, “and some of them have awfully good résumés. But Ruthie says I have a really good shot.” Ruthie being Ruth Silverman, our law school classmate, Kimmer’s sometime friend, and now deputy White House counsel.

  “You do if they go on merit,” I say loyally.

  “You don’t sound like you think I’m gonna get it.”

  “I think you should get it.” And this is true. My wife is the second-smartest lawyer I know. She is a partner in the biggest law firm in Elm Harbor, which Kimmer considers a small town and I consider a fair-sized city. Only two other women have risen so high, and nobody else who isn’t white.

  “I guess the fix could be in,” she concedes.

  “I hope it isn’t. I want you to get what you want. And deserve.” I hesitate, then plunge. “I love you, Kimmer. I always will.”

  My wife, reluctant to return this sentiment, strikes out in another direction. “There are maybe four or five finalists. Ruthie says some of them are law professors. She says two or three of them are your colleagues.” This makes me smile, but not with pleasure. Ruthie is far too cagey to have mentioned any names, but Kimmer and I both know perfectly well that two or three colleagues boils down to Marc Hadley, considered by some the most brilliant member of the faculty, even though he has published exactly one book in a quarter-century of law teaching, and that came almost twenty years ago. Marc and I used to be fairly close, and I am not close to many people, especially at the university; but the unexpected death of Judge Julius Krantz four months ago ruined what slight friendship we had, sparking the behind-the-scenes competition that has led us to this moment.

  “It’s hard to believe the President would pick another law professor,” I offer, just for something to say. Marc has been lobbying for a judgeship longer than my wife, and helped Ruthie, once a favored student, land her current position.

  “The best judges are people who have practiced real law for a while.” My wife speaks as though quoting an official contest rule.

  “I tend to agree.”

  “Let’s hope the President agrees.”

  “Right.” I stretch a creaky arm. My body is aching in just the right places to make it impossible to sit still. After breakfast this morning, I dropped Bentley at his overpriced preschool, then met Rob Saltpeter, another colleague, although not quite a friend, for our occasional game of basketball, not at the university gym, where we might embarrass ourselves in front of the students, but at the YMCA, where everybody else was at least as middle-aged as we.

  “Ruthie says they’ll be deciding in the next six to eight weeks,” my wife adds, reinforcing my secret suspicion that she is celebrating far too soon. Kimmer pronounces Ruthie’s name with remarkable affection, given that, just two weeks ago, she derided her old friend to my private ear as Little Miss Judge-Picker. “Just in time for Christmas.”

  “Well, I think it’s great news, darling. Maybe when you come home we can—”

  “Oh, Misha, honey, I have to go. Jerry’s calling me. Sorry. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay. I love you,” I offer again. But I am declaring my affection to empty air.

  (II)

  Jerry’s calling me. To a meeting? To the telephone? Back to bed? I torture myself with risqué speculations until it is time for my eleven o’clock class, then gather my books together and rush off to teach. I am, as you may have gathered, a professor of law. I am in the vicinity of forty years of age and was once, in the mists of history, a practicing lawyer. Nowadays, I earn my bread by writing learned articles too arcane to have any influence and, several mornings a week, trying to stuff some torts (fall term) or administrative law (spring term) into the heads of students too intelligent to content themselves with B’s but too self-absorbed to waste their precious energy on the tedious details one must master to earn A’s. Most of our students crave only the credential we award, not the knowledge we offer; and as generation after generation, each more than the last, views us as a merely vocational school, the connection between the desire for the degree and the desire to understand the law grows more and more attenuated. These are not, perhaps, the happiest thoughts a law professor might endure, but most of us think them at some time or other, and today seems to be my day.

  I hurry through my torts class—what new is there to say, really, on the subject of no-fault insura
nce?—and I get off several nice lines, none of them original, that keep my fifty-three students laughing for much of the hour. At half past twelve, I trudge off to lunch with two of my colleagues, Ethan Brinkley, who is young enough still to be excited about being a tenured professor, and Theo Mountain, who taught constitutional law to my father as well as to me and who, thanks to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and an indefatigable physical constitution, may well teach my grandchildren. Sitting with them in a disintegrating booth at Post (only the uninitiated call it Post’s), a grim deli two blocks from the law school, I listen as Ethan tells a story about something hilarious that Tish Kirschbaum said at a party last weekend at Peter Van Dyke’s house, and I am struck, as so often, by the sense that there is a white law school social circle that whirls around me so fast that I discern it only in tiny glimpses: until Ethan mentioned it, I had no idea that there was a party last weekend at Peter Van Dyke’s house, and I certainly was offered no opportunity to decline to attend. Peter lives two blocks away from me, but stands miles above me in the law school’s hierarchy. Ethan, in theory, stands miles below. But skin color, even on the most liberal of campuses, contrives a hierarchy of its own.

  Ethan keeps talking. Theo, his bushy white beard spotted with mustard, laughs in delight; as I try my best to join in, I wonder whether to tell them about Kimmer, just to see the pomposity drain for a splendid moment from their satisfied Caucasian faces. I want to tell somebody. Then it occurs to me that if I spread the news around and Marc subsequently beats out Kimmer for the nomination—as I suspect he will, albeit undeservingly—all the arrogance will come flooding back, only worse.

  Besides, Marc probably knows anyway. Ruthie would not tell Kimmer Marc’s name, but I bet she has told Marc Kimmer’s. Or so I assure myself as I walk, alone, back along Town Street to the law school. Lunch is over. Theo, old enough to have a granddaughter at the college when most of us still have children in grade school, is off to a meeting; Ethan, an expert on both terrorism and the law of war, is off to the gym, for he keeps himself athletically taut in case MSNBC or CNN should call. I, with nothing in particular to do, return to the office. Students flurry past, all colors, all styles of dress, and all shambling along in that oddly insolent gait that today’s young people affect, heads down, shoulders hunched, elbows in at the sides, feet hardly leaving the ground, yet managing all the same to convey a sense of energy ready to be unleashed. Marc probably knows anyway. I cannot escape the thought. I pass the granite glory of the Science Quad, into which the university seems to pour all its spare cash nowadays. I pass a gaggle of beggars, all members of the darker nation, to each of whom I give a dollar—paying guilt money, Kimmer calls this habit of mine. I wonder, briefly, how many of them are hustlers, but this is what my father used to call an “unworthy thought”: You are better than such ideas, he would preach to his children, with rare anger, commanding us to patrol our minds.