Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 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 resumes. 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.

Jerry’s calling me. To a meeting? To the telephone? Back to bed? I torture myself with risque 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 insurance?-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.

Marc probably knows, I tell myself once more as I trip up the wide stairs at the main entrance to the law buildings. Ruthie Silverman, I am willing to bet, has told him everything. Theo taught Ruthie, too, and my wife and I were her classmates; but it is Marc Hadley upon whom she, like so many of our students, lavishes her most lasting devotion.

“That’s the problem with students,” I murmur just under my breath as I cross the threshold, for talking to myself, which my wife assures me is a sign of insanity, has been my lifelong habit. “They never stop being grateful.”

Nevertheless, prudence prevails. I decide to keep Kimmer’s news to myself. I keep most things to myself. My world, although occasionally painful, is usually quiet, which is how I like it. That it might suddenly be overtaken by violence and terror is, on this sunny autumn afternoon, quite beyond my imagining.

In the high-ceilinged lobby, I run into one of my favorite students, Crysta Smallwood, who has a tremendous crush on data. Crysta is a dark, chunky woman of not inconsiderable intellectual gifts who, before law school, majored in French at Pomona and was never called upon to manipulate numbers. Since her arrival in Elm Harbor, the discovery of statistics has made her delightfully crazy. She was in my torts class last fall and has spent most of her time since on her twin loves: our legal-aid clinic, where she helps welfare mothers avoid eviction, and her collection of statistics, by which she hopes to show that the white race is headed for self-destruction, a prospect that gladdens her.

“Hey, Professor Garland?” she calls in her best West Coast slur.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Smallwood,” I answer formally, because I have learned through hard experience not to be too familiar with students. I walk toward the stairs.

“Guess what?” she enthuses, cutting off my escape, heedless of the possibility that I might be headed someplace. Her hair is a very short Afro, one of the last in the school. I am old enough to remember when few black women of her age wore their hair any other way, but nationalism turned out to be less an ideology than a fad. Her eyes are a little too far apart, giving her a mildly unsettling walleyed look when she meets your gaze. She moves very fast for a woman of her bulk, and is consequently not so easy to avoid. “I’ve been looking at those numbers again. On white women?”

“I see.” Trapped, I gaze up at the ceiling, decorated with ornate plaster sculptures: religious symbols, garlands of yew leaves, hints of justice, all repainted so often that they are losing their sharp definition.

“Yeah, and, so, guess what? Their fertility rate-white women?-is so low now that there won’t be any white babies by about 2050.”

“Ah-are you sure about those figures?” Because Crysta, although brilliant, is also completely nuts. As her teacher, I have discovered that her enthusiasm makes her careless, for she often cites data, with great confidence, before taking the time to understand them.

“Maybe 2075?” she proposes, her friendly tone implying that we can negotiate.

“Sounds a little shaky, Ms. Smallwood.”

“It’s because of abortion.” I am on the move again, but Crysta easily keeps stride. “Because they’re killing their babies? That’s the main reason.”

“I really think you should consider another topic for your paper,” I answer, feinting around her to reach the sweeping marble staircase to the faculty offices.

“It’s not just abortion”-her voice carries up the stairwell after me, causing one of my colleagues, nervous little Joe Janowsky, to peer over the marble railing in his thick glasses to see who is shouting-“it’s also interracial marriages, because white women-”

Then I am through the double doors to the corridor and Crysta’s speculations are mercifully inaudible.

I was like her once, I remind myself as I slip into my office. Every bit as certain I was right on subjects I knew nothing about. Which is probably how I got hired in the first place, for I was intellectually bolder when I was intellectually younger.

That, plus the happenstance of being my father’s son, for his influence around the campus faded only slightly after the trauma of his confirmation hearings. Even today, well over a decade after the Judge’s fall, I am buttonholed by students who want to hear from my own mouth that my father is indeed who they have heard he is, and by colleagues who want me to explain to them how it felt to sit there day after miserable day, listening stoically as the Senate methodically destroyed him.

“Like watching somebody in zugzwang, ” I always say, but they are not serious chess players, so they never get it. Although, being professors, they pretend to.

Searching for a distraction, I leaf through my IN box. A memorandum from the provost’s office about parking rates. An invitation to a conference on tort reform in California three months from now, but only if I pay my own way. A postcard from some fellow out in Idaho, my opponent in a postal chess tournament, who has found the one move I hoped he would miss. A reminder from Ben Montoya, the deputy dean, about some big lawyer who is speaking tonight. A moderately threatening letter from the university library about some book I have evidently lost. From the middle of the stack, I pull out the new Harvard Law Review, skim the table of contents, then drop it, fast, after coming across yet another scholarly article explaining why my infamous father is a traitor to his race, for that is the level to which the darker nation has been reduced: being unable to influence the course of a single event in white America, we waste our precious time and intellectual energy maligning each other, as though we best serve the cause of racial progress by kicking other black folks around.

All right, I have done my work for the day.

The telephone rings.

I stare at the instrument, thinking-not for the first time-what a nasty, intrusive, uncivil thing the telephone really is, demanding, irritating, interrupting, invading the mind’s space. I wonder why Alexander Graham Bell is such a hero. His invention destroyed the private realm. The device has no conscience. It rings when we are sleeping, showering, praying, arguing, reading, making love. Or when we just want desperately to be left alone. I think about not answering. I have suffered enough. And not only because my mercurial wife hung up so abruptly. This has been one of those peculiar Thursdays on which the telephone refuses to stop its angry clamor for attention: a frustrated law-review editor demanding that I dispatch an overdue draft of an article, an unhappy student seeking an appointment, American Express looking for last month’s payment, all have had their innings. The dean of the law school, Lynda Wyatt-or Dean Lynda, as she likes to be addressed by everybody, students, faculty, and alumni alike-called just before lunch to assign me to yet another of the ad hoc committees she is always creating. “I only ask because I love you,” she crooned in her motherly way, which is what she says to everybody she dislikes.

The phone keeps ringing. I wait for the voice mail to answer, but the voice mail, like most of the university’s cut-rate technology, operates best when not needed. I decide to ignore it, but then I remember that my conversation with Kimmer ended badly, so perhaps she is calling to make up.

Or to argue some more.

Bracing myself for either alternative, I snatch up the handset, hoping for the voice of my possibly repentant wife, but it is only the great Mallory Corcoran, my father’s law partner and last remaining friend, as well as a Washington fixer of some repute, calling to tell me that the Judge is gone.