Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 17

Many years ago, when as a child I first visited the town of Oak Bluffs, I at once became entranced by the grand old wooden building at the foot of Circuit Avenue housing the Flying Horses, which bills itself as the oldest carousel in America, having been in continuous operation now since 1876. The idea was to make riding a game. You sat astride your horse while leaning, each time around, toward a stationary wooden arm that dispensed tiny rings. As you passed, you would grab the ring on the end of the arm, and a new one would snap into its place. Nearly all of the rings were made of steel, but the last one in the arm was made of brass. A rider lucky enough to catch the brass ring won a free ride. During that first delirious summer, I would stay aboard the carousel for hours, spending my quarters one by one, forsaking even the beach to fill my days mastering the tricks of the older children (including how to catch two or sometimes three rings at once on my stubby brown fingers), paying for turn after turn, trying, almost always in vain, to grab the brass ring and earn a free ride.

As a child, I imagined that the Flying Horses was the only carousel in the world with the marvelous idea of awarding a free turn to the lucky rider who caught the brass ring. As I grew older, I learned that this was not so, that the idea of winning a prize for catching a brass ring was in fact rather ubiquitous, if not actually mundane. Intellectually, I have long ago made my peace with this development. Emotionally, I continue to feel that the brass ring on the Flying Horses in Oak Bluffs is the only one that really counts. Perhaps the reason is that our summer house on Ocean Park was little more than a child’s hop-skip-and-jump from the carousel. I grew up with the Flying Horses around the corner, and with a child’s freedom to visit whenever I pleased; and, having learned its lessons, I have been stretching for that brass ring ever since.

Of course, the Flying Horses of today are not the Flying Horses of my youth. The organ music, for example, now comes from compact discs, and the crowds push and jostle so that it is no longer possible to imagine riding all day. A couple of the wooden steeds have lost their genuine horsehair tails. But, then, so much of the Vineyard seems to need a coat of paint, the scrub of a brush, the whisk of a broom. The Island is neither as tidy nor as friendly as it once was. And it is all so sudden, so sudden. Blink once and a dusty road where you used to play tag is paved and clogged with traffic. Blink twice and the vacant lot where you had your ball games has a gigantic house on it. Blink again and the vast, dreamy beaches of your youth have lost half or more of their sand to the sea. Blink a fourth time and the pharmacy where your mother used to buy Coricidin when you were sick is a boutique. The Judge blamed the changes on demographics-the new people was his term for everybody who discovered the Island later than we did. I try to be wary of such generalizing sentiments, however, not least so that I do not sound too much like my father. So I look around and try to tell myself that little, after all, has really changed. And if a few more candy wrappers than I remember from my youth seem to be blowing along the streets, I like to think it is only because the new people have not yet learned how to love an island-not because they do not care.

Ordinarily, on the third afternoon of a Vineyard sojourn, I would be at the Flying Horses with my son. But our sojourns are usually in the summer. Now it is autumn, and the carousel is closed for the season. Fortunately, the Island offers other diversions. Yesterday, as a hastily assembled clean-up crew tried to put Vinerd Howse back in some kind of order, the three of us journeyed up-Island-that is, to the westernmost end-and spent a marvelous afternoon walking the breathtaking ancient cliffs at Gay Head in the chilly November air, picnicking in our down parkas at the perfect pebbly beach in the fishing village of Menemsha, and driving the wooded back roads of Chilmark, near the sprawling property once owned by Jacqueline Onassis, pretending not to be on the lookout for the rich and famous. We had dinner at a fancy restaurant on the water in Edgartown, where Bentley charmed the waitresses with his patter. How many demons we exorcised I am not sure, but I saw no sign of the roller woman, who might be a phantom after all, and Kimmer did not mention the judgeship once and talked on her cell phone only twice. And she kissed me quite carefully this morning when Bentley and I dropped her at the airport for her flight back to the mainland in one of the little turboprops that serve the Island. Bentley and I are staying on because… well, because we need to. Kimmer has work to do, I have a week or so of leave left, and Bentley needs some rest and recreation. And there is another reason as well. In Oak Bluffs, unlike Elm Harbor, I will never be tempted for a moment to let my precious son out of my sight.

Right now my son and I are preparing to go to the playground; or, more precisely, Bentley is ready, waiting for me.

I am less ready.

I am sitting at the table in our newly cleaned kitchen (full of plastic plates and cups from one of the Island’s two A amp;Ps), the note from my father flattened on the surface, willing its secrets to reveal themselves. In the next room, Bentley is watching the Disney Channel and occasionally waddling to the door of the kitchen and calling, “Dada, paygrown now. You say paygrown!” in the plaintive, self-righteous tone that makes busy parents writhe with guilt. To which I respond with the familiar “Yes, okay, just a minute, sweetheart,” which every busy parent uses with equal embarrassment.

Last night, as my family slept uneasily, Kimmer curled protectively around our son, I wandered Vinerd Howse from the foyer to the attic crawl space, searching for something, but I do not know what. I need to know what is going on. I need a clue.

Unfortunately, the most obvious clue, my father’s note, remains gibberish: My son, There is so much I wish I could share with you. Alas, at the present moment, I cannot. I have asked a good friend to deliver this note should anything befall me; if you are reading my words, one must assume that something has. I apologize for the complexity of this method of contact, but there are others who would also like to know that which is for your eyes only. So, know this much: Angela’s boyfriend, despite his deteriorating condition, is in possession of that which I want you to know. You are in no danger, neither you nor your family, but you have little time. You are unlikely to be the only one who is searching for the arrangements that Angela’s boyfriend alone can reveal. And you may not be the only one who knows who Angela’s boyfriend is. Excelsior, my son! Excelsior! It begins! Sincerely,

Your Father

The handwriting is unmistakably the Judge’s, as is the flowery, overwrought, self-important prose, even the formality of the signature. Quite unexpectedly, my fury at my father threatens suddenly to overwhelm me. If you want to tell me, tell me! I rage against him in my tortured mind, a tone I would never have selected in life. But don’t play these games! Jack Ziegler in the cemetery demanded to know about the arrangements. Now, at last, I know for certain that my father actually made some. But I do not know what they are, and this hint, this clue, this post-mortem letter from my paranoid father, whatever it is supposed to be, lends me no assistance at all.

Excelsior? Angela’s boyfriend, despite his deteriorating condition? What is all this?

One point is clear: Not-McDermott’s mission in Elm Harbor was neither to apologize nor to reassure but, as I suspected, to see whether I know an Angela or not-which means that he and, presumably, Foreman are somehow privy to the contents of this letter. I wonder if the letter was the reason for the destruction of the first floor, except that I cannot quite fathom why they would break into the house, find the letter, and then leave it behind.

Or, for that matter, how the letter got here in the first place. Presumably McDermott, if he was even here, would not have dropped it off. The Judge wrote that he asked a good friend to deliver it should anything befall him. But what good friend would break into Vinerd Howse to drop it off? Why not mail it to my house or bring it by my office? Why not deliver it to…

… to the soup kitchen?

Can the pawn be connected to the letter? Did my father arrange that delivery as well? I try to remember whether I ever mentioned to my father that I volunteer at the soup kitchen, but my mind offers every answer I could want: yes, I told him; no, I did not tell him; yes, I hinted at it; no, I kept it secret. I shake my head in rich red anger. If he wanted me to have the pawn, wouldn’t he have delivered pawn and letter together?

Not that it matters. For my father’s note is actually no help at all.

I have a terrible memory for names, but it is good enough for me to be sure that I do not know an Angela, and I have no idea who her boyfriend could possibly be.

“Paygrown now now now!” Bentley calls. “Dare you!”

“One minute!” I shout back, still puzzling over the letter. How am I to locate Angela’s boyfriend, who is in deteriorating condition? Does that mean that the man I should be talking to is sick? Perhaps dying? Is that why I have little time? I know who the others are, who would also like to know, having met a pair of them, but I do not understand why the Judge is at such pains to assure me that my family is in no danger, the fourth such reassurance I have received in the past month: first Jack Ziegler, then McDermott, next Agent Nunzio, now my late father.

I shake my head.

I try to think of famous Angelas: Lansbury? Bassett? I do not know enough about them to know if they even have husbands, still less boyfriends-and, anyway, my father did not exactly run with the Hollywood crowd. I have already had my secretary search the student directory at the law school: three Angelas, one black, two white, none of whom I have ever had in class or have any reason to think my father knew. Maybe there is a way to put together a list of all the Angelas my father might have met, but not without involving somebody official-Uncle Mal, for instance-or somebody who knows lots of the Judge’s friends-Mariah, for instance-and I cannot quite imagine sharing the note with either of them.

Not yet.

Little time.

I almost smile. The phrase explains nothing about Angela’s boyfriend, but a good deal about the Judge. He used those words often in his speeches, in trying to explain to his friends in the Rightpacs why they needed… well, racial diversity. The median American, he loved to tell his eager audiences, is socially conservative. The median black American, the Judge would add, is even more conservative. Look at the data on any question, he would rumble. School prayer? Black Americans favor it more than whites do. Abortion? Black Americans are more pro-life than whites. Vouchers? Black Americans support them more strongly than whites. Gay rights? Black Americans are more skeptical than whites. The applause would roll across his (overwhelmingly white) audience. Then he would hit them with the big windup: Conservatives are the last people who can afford to be racist. Because the future of conservatism is black America! They would go wild for him. I never saw it in person, but I saw it, often, on C-SPAN. And whichever Rightpac he was speaking to would march out to try to recruit black members, because, he would insist, there is little time… and, almost always, the recruitment effort would fail… quite abysmally. Because there were a few little details the Judge always left out. Like the fact that it was conservatives who fought against just about every civil rights law ever proposed. Like the fact that many of the wealthy men who paid for his expensive speeches would not have him in their clubs. Like the fact that it was the great conservative hero Ronald Reagan who kicked off his campaign by talking about states’ rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a location with a certain wicked resonance for the darker nation, and who, as President, backed tax exemptions for the South’s many segregation academies. The Judge was surely right to insist that the time has come for black Americans to stop trusting white liberals, who are far more comfortable telling us what we need than asking us what we want, but he never did come up with a particularly persuasive reason for us to start trusting white conservatives instead.

My father trusted them, however, and they trusted him right back. I wander into the dining room, where the long wooden table could easily seat fourteen or more and, during my childhood, often did. On the long wall of the room is a crumbling brick fireplace which has been unusable for as long as I can remember. Above the hearth hangs an enlarged version of my father’s treasured Newsweek cover the week after his nomination was announced. THE CONSERVATIVE HOUR, reads the caption, and, in smaller type, A New Direction on the Court? Well, yes, the answer might be-yes, there was a new direction on the Court, but my father was not destined to be one of its leaders. I examine the picture. The Judge looks bold, handsome, smart, ready for anything. He looks alive. In those days, for some reason, the press decided to like him; but you should never fall in love with your own press clippings, because it is very much the nature of the beast that the same journalists who build you up between Monday and Friday tear you down for weekend fun. And suddenly, instead of fame, you have infamy; instead of a life of public service, you have a life of private bitterness; and you turn your house into a museum of what might have been. Again I recall my father’s nostalgic phrase: the way it was before. My family’s habit of living in the past seems to me pathological, even dangerous. If all greatness lies in the past, what is the point of the future? There is no going back, and the Judge, of all people, should have known better than to change his vacation home, his hideaway, his place of respite, into a shrine to his shattered dreams. Kimmer, I know, is waiting for a suitable moment to let me know that it is time to remove this and the other selfcongratulatory emblems scattered around Vinerd Howse, to bury them in the attic with my old baseball-card collection and Abby’s stuffed animals-

“Paygrown now!” Bentley announces from the doorway to the kitchen, stomping his foot. I look up at him, ready to be angry, and smile instead. He is wearing his midnight-blue parka and has even pulled his sneakers onto the wrong feet. He is dragging my wind-breaker behind him. Oh, how I love this child!

“Okay, sweetheart.” I fold my father’s letter, return it to the envelope, and slip it into my pocket. “Paygrown now.”

Bentley jumps up and down. “Paygrown! Dare you! Wuv you!”

“Wuv you, too.” I hug him and kneel down to fix his shoes, and, of course, the phone immediately starts to ring.

Don’t answer it, Bentley tells me with his earnest, judgmental brown eyes, for he does not yet know how to say the words. Please, Daddy, don’t answer it. And at first, I consider ignoring the phone. After all, it is most likely Cassie Meadows calling from Washington, or Mariah calling from Darien, or Not-McDermott calling from Canada. On the other hand, it might be Kimmer with good news, or Kimmer with bad, Kimmer to say she loves me, or Kimmer to say she doesn’t.

It might be Kimmer.

“Just one quick minute,” I say to my son, who eyes me with the sort of hopeless disappointment that some psychiatrist in his future will doubtless unearth. “It’s probably Mommy.”

Only it isn’t.

“ Talcott? Hi, it’s Lynda Wyatt.”

The Dean. Great.

“Hi, Lynda, how are you?” I am deflating fast, and I know my voice betrays my disappointment.

“I’m fine, Talcott. But how are you?”

“I’m just fine, Lynda, thanks.”

“I hope that you’re having lots of fun on the Vineyard. I love it up there in the fall, but Heaven knows when Norm and I will have a chance to get to our place.” Serving to remind me that she and her husband own a huge, modern house on the pond in West Tisbury, the up-Island town where many artists and writers spend their summers. Actually, I know about the house only by the tales my law school colleagues tell, because, in all the years that Lynda Wyatt and I have both been vacationing on the Island, she has invited my family to her house exactly never. (I have reciprocated just as often, so perhaps the fault is mine.)

“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 more 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.

“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 pay grown.”

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 could 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.

I wink at Bentley again and he grins back, chewing thoughtfully on a french fry. I unfold the Vineyard Gazette- and nearly choke again: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR DROWNS AT MENEMSHA BEACH, the headline blares. Police Consider Death “Suspicious,” the next line informs us. Staring up at me from the right-hand side of the page is a very bad photograph of a man the newspaper identifies as one Colin Scott; but I knew him somewhat better as Special Agent McDermott.