The Emperor of Ocean Park (28 page)

“Of course,” I say, certain that something unpleasant is coming.

Dahlia takes my large hand in her small one and draws me off to another corner of the long room, where wooden blocks lie helter-skelter, sloppiness passing as juvenile creativity.

“It has to do with our
mutual
concern,” she says, glancing around.
Her indigo jeans and matching sweater are a little showy, but that is Dahlia. “Do you know what I am talking about, Talcott?”

Of course I know, but I am still free to pretend that I do not, because the
Elm Harbor Clarion,
no whiz at digging up stories unrelated to municipal corruption (of which our fine city has plenty), has yet to run the obligatory article on the finalists for the seat on the court of appeals. But I decide not to play games.

“Ah . . . I think so.”

She hesitates, then meets my eyes and smiles again. Dahlia Hadley is in her early thirties, a raucous, hennaed Bolivian even Kimmer, in spite of her best efforts, cannot help liking. Marc and Dahlia met, Dahlia points out whenever somebody will listen,
after
his first marriage was on the rocks. (But
before
he left his wife, Kimmer adds savagely.) Marc’s first wife was Margaret Story, a very distinguished historian a year older than he, with whom he had two children, the younger of whom is Heather, now a student at the law school, and the older of whom is Rick, a poet often published in
The New Yorker,
who lives in California. Margaret was broad and quiet and distant, even forbidding, whereas Dahlia is slim and loud and gregarious and loves to tease. But she is no mere trophy. Although she lacks a full-time academic appointment (which, in a university, makes her a citizen of the second class), she possesses a doctorate in biochemistry from MIT and, supported by various corporate grants, labors in some obscure corner of the Science Quad, testing unlikely cures for unknown diseases, passionately killing lab rats by the hundreds. The greatest threats to the impoverished, according to Dahlia, who has been one of them, are neither political nor military nor economic but biological: scientific progress and nature alike are constantly releasing new microbes into the ecosystem, and it is the poor they usually kill first and fastest. Dahlia believes that justice will be found at the bottom of a test tube. Once a group of animal-rights activists invaded her laboratory, smashing reagents, releasing contagious rodents from their cages, and spreading dangerous germs. Most of the staff fled, but Dahlia stood her ground and called the protesters racists, which first confused and then defeated them. The leader of the group, struggling to respond, made things worse, drawing an awkward analogy between the situation of the rats and the situation of the people in the barrios. He evidently assumed that Dahlia, whose skin is the red-brown of desert clay, was Mexican American. She corrected him furiously in two languages. The campus
police arrived while the leader was struggling to explain his solidarity with the oppressed people of Bolivia—which, unfortunately for his argument, happens to be a democracy.

Later, Dahlia testified at the trial. She talked about the experiments he wrecked, the people who might die: not testimony that would ordinarily be admissible, but the prosecutor pretended Dr. Hadley was merely describing the damage, and the judge went along. Dahlia drew plenty of hate mail from people who love animals more than they do human beings, but won a substantial increase in the grant from the pharmaceutical company that backs her research.

Dahlia is a wise woman.

“This is not an easy
time
for us,” she says now, and I find myself wondering briefly, and foolishly, whether she might after all have pulled me aside to discuss another subject, whether perhaps Ruthie has kept confidential what is confidential and not told Marc that his main rival for the post he craves is my wife—or, if she has told him, whether Marc might have kept it secret from his wife. Dahlia herself answers my unspoken question, saying, almost casually: “You know, Tal, the FBI has started to bother all our friends. I guess it must be the same for you.”

“Oh, yes, right,” I mumble, quite taken by surprise, and now forced to wonder why no friends have called us to share the same news, other than John Brown’s call about Foreman, which obviously doesn’t count. Maybe the FBI has made no visits. Certainly no agents—no real agents—have been by to talk to Kimmer herself. Have they interviewed Marc? If so, the fight presumably is already over . . . and with it, possibly, my marriage.

“Marc is very tense just now,” Dahlia whispers. “How is Kimberly holding up?”

“Hmmm? Oh, fine, fine.”

Mguel calls out to his mother in Spanish. Dahlia half turns in his direction and says
“En un minuto, querido,”
but does not release my hand. She glances at the teachers, all of whom have been watching, all of whom now pointedly look away. She pulls me farther into the corner. She seems not to want to be overheard. The teachers are probably wondering what kind of tête-à-tête they are observing. Most people consider Dahlia quite an attractive woman, but I find her features too soft and undefined, and her ambition far too openly worn, for true beauty.

“It’s just so hard to get any news,” she pouts. “Have you heard anything?”

And then I have it—and am stunned. Marc doesn’t know any more than we do. All of Dahlia’s clumsy pumping is a fishing expedition on her husband’s behalf. It isn’t over at all! I want to laugh aloud, so great is my relief. But I control my instincts and, as usual, my facial expression.

“Not a word, Dahlia.” I have seen very little of Marc these past weeks: nothing more than an occasional tense hello as we pass in the hallway. I decide to do a little investigating of my own. “I guess we’ll all have to wait.”

Dahlia does not seem to hear. She looks up at me again. She is no longer smiling. “Do you know Ruth Silverman?” Not
Ruthie,
I notice.

“Yes, I know her.”

Dahlia closes her eyes briefly. There is a girlish innocence about the gesture. Out in the parking lot, a couple of fathers are in the midst of a loud dissing match over the relative merits of the Jets and the Giants. I want to be a part of their universe, not Dahlia’s.

“Well, she was Marc’s
student.
He got her
her job.
But she is so ungrateful. She will not tell us anything.” She shakes her head. Across the room, the restless teachers are casting surreptitious glances in our direction and irritated glances at the clock. Very likely marveling at what they take to be our intimacy, in a hurry to get home to gossip to spouses, lovers, friends, because Elm Harbor, for all its Ivy League sophistication, is nothing but a small town.
You’ll never guess who I saw together at school today!
I realize I am oversensitive to appearances, but my history with Kimmer has left me with that burden. “Marc keeps telling me that she has an obligation to keep quiet, but I was raised to believe you return a favor for a favor.” She has released my hand. She is gritting her perfect teeth and making fists. I notice that her nails are bitten so deeply that the flesh is fiery pink.

“Marc is right, Dahlia. Ruthie—Ruth can’t talk about her work.”

“It is just all so sudden,” she explains, which I take to mean that Ruthie revealed confidences to Marc earlier but, for some reason, has now stopped. Dahlia’s next words confirm my suspicion. “Three weeks ago, Marc was the leading candidate. That is what Ruth Silverman said. Then she told us that the President was looking at other names, in the interest of
diversity.”
Emphasizing the word in a way that suggests how little it should count when anything real is at stake. Last year, I greatly upset the students in my seminar on Law and Social Movements by suggesting to them the following proposition:
Any white person who truly believes in affirmative action should be willing to pledge that, if his or her child is admitted to a Harvard or a Princeton, he or she will at once write to the school saying, “My child will not be attending. Please hold the slot for a member of a minority group.”
The consternation among my students confirmed my belief that few white people, even among the most liberal, support affirmative action when it actually costs them something. They like it precisely because they can tell themselves that they are working for racial justice while pretending that the costs do not exist. But it is not their fault: who believes in sacrifice these days?

Diversity,
I am now thinking. Ordinarily a word so empty of content that everybody can sign on without agreeing to anything, but, in this case, doubtless a code for Kimberly Madison. Which Marc must realize and, obviously, Dahlia as well. My wife’s chances are better than I thought, better than Kimmer hoped . . . if we can just manage to keep the lid on everything else. An image of Jerry Nathanson drifts across my mind, and I stifle a surge of anger at my wife, less for violating her vows than for taking such a risk with so much at stake.

“I’m sure the President will pick the person he thinks will be the best judge,” I say, even though no President in history has actually selected judges that way.

“I don’t know,” says Dahlia—but, then, of course, she thinks that Marc would be the best judge. Never mind that he has never practiced law a day in his life. “To tell you the truth, Tal, Marc has . . . not been himself.”

“I’m sorry, Dahlia.”

“This is not like him, missing his son’s party,” she continues. She somewhere lapsed from the interrogative mode into the confessional, but I am not sure when. She notices my distraction. “You remember, last Sunday? Mguel’s birthday?”

I do remember. I had to take Bentley to the party, because Kimmer, who had promised our son she would be there, had to fly to San Francisco on Sunday morning. My wife and I fought about that, as we fight about so many things. And I remember, too, that Marc was absent. Dahlia made excuses for him: he had to attend a conference in Miami, she said, something about Cardozo. I noticed even at the time that she did not seem particularly happy about it.

“I’m sorry.” Just something to say.

Dahlia gazes at the dying brown carpet. Tears glisten in her dark eyes. “Usually Marc is so loving. With me and with Miguelito. But now the tension . . .” She shakes her head once more. “He has grown short-tempered. He will not talk to me.”

I do not know what has prompted Dahlia to open this window on
the private life of the Hadley family, but it is not a burden I want to bear. Unfortunately, I continue to take refuge in inanities: “It’s a tough time for everybody,” I disclose.

Dahlia is hardly listening. “You are lucky, Tal. Kimberly is young. If it does not happen for her this time, there is another time. But so much in Marc’s life has not been what he hoped it would. All the writing he has not . . . managed to complete. I worry about what will happen to him if this position goes to somebody else. I’m scared for him.”

So that’s the game.
Marc is going to jump if he doesn’t get it, and Kimmer will have another shot, so, pretty please, won’t you make your wife withdraw?
Desperate indeed! I remember Stuart Land’s complaint that Marc has not been attending to his work because he is so upset . . . and his comment that he could help Kimmer in Washington. Perhaps he did.

“It isn’t easy for any of us. I’m sure it’ll come out the way it’s supposed to.” A little unfeeling, I guess, but how can Dahlia Hadley think it is my job to reassure her?

Dahlia refuses to give up. “You do not understand, Talcott. This is not just jitters. Marc is worried. Yes, that is the word. He is worried, Talcott. He will not tell me what is on his mind. We have always shared everything, ever since we have been together, and now he is keeping something from me. And it is . . . eating him.” She shakes her head, waving her hand vaguely toward her son, who is drawing a picture with Bentley. “It is wrecking my family, Talcott.”

I am not sure how to respond, but I want to say the right thing, my sense that it is not my place to comfort her blasted from my mind by the sudden exposure of her pain. Maybe Dahlia is not manipulating me. Maybe she really is worried about her husband. Maybe there is really something to worry about.

“I’m sorry, Dahlia,” I say at last, patting her shoulder. “I really am.”

She clutches my jacket, and, for a scary moment, her head bobs forward, as though she is about to rest it on my chest. Then Dahlia stiffens, less in anger than in embarrassment: she let the conversation get away from her and, belatedly, is concerned about what the wide-eyed teachers must be thinking.

“Oh, Talcott, I am sorry too.” Standing straight once more, no longer holding my hand, she is wiping her nose with a handkerchief. There are tears on her face, but I did not see them begin. “It is not right to burden you. Go and get your boy, take him home, and hug him. That makes everything better.”

“You do the same, Dahlia. And don’t worry.”

“Or you. And thank you.” Still sniffling. “You’re a kind man.” Spoken as though she does not meet a lot of them.

I walk heavily across the room to get my son. The teachers step away, making a path: my furtive chat with Dahlia has transformed me into a celebrity.

Strapping a sleepy Bentley into the car seat he has probably outgrown, I glance back at the school I am beginning to hate. Miguel and his mother are in the doorway, holding hands. Dahlia, evidently herself once more, is chatting with one of the teachers, making her laugh. Miguel waves haughtily, very much his father’s son. As I steer around the potholes, bumping the undercarriage of the Camry no more than three or four times, I marvel at the vicissitudes of fortune. If McDermott has truly fled to Canada, and if Conan Deveaux truly killed Freeman Bishop, then Kimmer is right: it is time for me to stop worrying. It is just a matter of getting my sister to stop all the conspiracy nonsense. If Addison will help, maybe I can.

The skeleton, I remind myself exultantly, as sharp memories of Jack Ziegler’s sickly face swim upward into my consciousness. Marc is worried about the skeleton.

(II)