The Final Judgment (33 page)

“Take your pick,” Scott answered, and went to the stove. He would not explain himself, Caroline realized; perhaps there was nothing to explain. From over his shoulder, Scott asked, “How do you like your coffee?”

“Strong and black. Like for final exams.” Caroline drifted to the window. Beneath them, she heard the ebb and flow of Nantucket Sound; the sensation was not unlike standing on the prow of a ship. She remembered Scott on the night of the storm, gazing out to sea. “Where do you sleep?” she asked. He bent over the coffeepot. “On the porch. There’s a screen to frustrate bugs, and it gets the breeze at night.” He filled two mugs of coffee. As he gave her one, his hand brushing the back of hers, Caroline’s skin tingled. It startled her: the shared tension with the police seemed to have created a current that did not exist before. She was keenly aware of standing close to him. Caroline turned away. “Can I see the porch?” His small smile seemed part inquiry, part amusement. “I guess it’s all that’s left,” he answered, and opened a door near the stove. Caroline stepped out onto the shadowed porch. The steady soughing of the wind and the sea came through the screen. The air was warm and heavy and smelled of salt. Caroline paused, breathing deeply, and then Scott switched on a lamp. She turned. Out of the darkness materialized a cot, a nightstand stacked with books, a chair facing the water. There was a pen and what appeared to be a half-finished letter beneath the books, the first two of which, somewhat to Caroline’s surprise, were One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Jack Newfield’s biography of Robert Kennedy. She found herself wondering just who it was he was writing to. He waved her to the chair. “Have a seat—I’m used to being horizontal.” She had a sudden image, Scott lying on the bed, and then the few things that were his own seemed to ache with his aloneness. Scott stretched out on the cot, mug cupped in his hands. “I didn’t really thank you, did I?”

“For what?”

“For trying to protect me from the law.” He seemed to watch her. “Funny work for a future prosecutor.” Caroline shrugged. “It just seemed like too good a night to end with getting busted.” Scott smiled a little. “Except for that, it was good. My debut in Vineyard society.” Caroline paused, a question forming, and then decided not to ask it. “Except for your driving,” she said wryly, “it was a real success. I even know where you can find a date.”

Scott watched her over his smile. “Not interested,” he said. “Oh, well.” There was an awkward silence. “Speaking of.society,” Scott said, “who else is over there? So far I’ve counted a skinny guy who doesn’t come out much, and a woman who walks the beach alone. But no one who looks like the patriarch.” This somewhat cavalier summary made Caroline bridle. And it struck her how much he had seemed to glean from very little—the predominance of her father; her relationship to Jackson. “The ‘skinny guy,’” she answered tartly, “is my very nice brother-in-law, Larry, who’s working on a Ph.D. The woman is my sister, Betty—who happens to like nature. As for the ‘patriarch,’ as you put it, he’s coming to inspect his holdings later.” He grinned, refusing to be discouraged. “So what do the three of you do all day?”

“Oh, we perform weird and secret rituals. Play Scrabble, argue about the election.” Her tone grew solemn, hushed. “Sometimes Larry and I wash dishes. In the dark ...” His grin became a smile, perhaps a little chastened. “Sorry. Families interest me, that’s ‘all. I haven’t seen mine in a while.” This snippet of biography sounded genuine. Her sense of him kept shifting; at one moment he was flippant, the next, a lonely person with people he seemed to care for. “What does your family come with?” she asked. “The all-American package.” He gazed at his mug. “Two parents who still like each other. A brother in college who’s not too bad. And a sixteen-year-old kid sister, who was born so late that I never got over the fact that she was cute. Still is, unless she’s eaten too much junk food.” Beneath the observation, offhand and affectionate, Caroline heard an undertone of regret. “So why don’t you go home?” she asked. “You don’t have to live in exile just to feel lost.”

For an instant he gave her a funny look—vulnerable, caught—and then his gaze grew veiled. “Losing yourself,” he said, “is not as simple as you think.” The comment puzzled her. Scott looked away; she found herself studying the unfinished letter on the nightstand, and then the book on Robert Kennedy. She nodded toward the book. “Did you work for him?” she asked. “Uh-huh. I sacrificed a few weeks of college to the Indiana primary.” He seemed to study his mug again. “The night he was shot was the worst thing I’ve experienced that didn’t happen to me personally. Sometimes I wonder how many other people died because of it. Or just lost hope.” Scott was not looking for a response, Caroline saw—he could have been talking to himself. It made her quiet: as wrong as this might be, as lacking in what her father would call perspective, Scott seemed to feel, as Caroline sometimes did, that something irretrievable had been lost. “I was a little young for that,” she said at last. “Later, it hit me that maybe our best leaders are dead and without them all the rest of us are slowly drifting apart.” Gazing at his coffee cup, Scott did not answer. And then he looked up, giving her a faint smile that mingled irony and kinship. “We’re a sad pair, aren’t we. Nothing to look forward to but the rest of our lives.”

“Like sailing trips and graduate school. If you can ever figure out which graduate school you want.” Scott shrugged, silent. Perhaps, Caroline thought, he was simply glad to have backed away from seriousness. But the moment had left something behind that was not there before; once more, she was aware of the ocean sounds, the smell of salt, of him. And that, until tonight, he had pretended to be someone nowhere close to who he was. As if sensing her thoughts, he shifted subjects again. “Your brother-in-law,” he said. “What’s his Ph.D. in?”

“English. From Syracuse.”

“And Betty?”

“Wants to have a baby.”

Scott’s look was quizzical. “Is your father paying the freight?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Ouch.” Caroline pondered whether some explanation was more, or less, fair to Betty. “Betty’s nice, really. But I think somehow she felt displaced, and now she’s got an image of family that goes deeper than for other people.” Caroline paused. “The problem is that it’s making her a little crazy. Like everyone from here to Mongolia is pregnant except for her.” Scott gave a comic wince, and then inspiration crossed his face. “Wait,” he said, got up, and went inside. He came back with his guitar. “What’s this?” Caroline asked. He sat on the edge of the bed, assuming a pose of great seriousness. And then, eyes suddenly limpid, he gazed at Caroline and began to sing in a mock-soulful voice.

“She’s having my baby ...”

Caroline grinned. “Oh, no ...” Scott seemed undeterred. In a parody of blissed-out rapture, he closed his eyes. His features in the pale light looked sculpted, fine.

“She’s having my baby. What a lovely way to tell the world she loves me ...”

Caroline burst out laughing. With a look of wounded dignity, an artist misunderstood in his own time, Scott sang each heartfelt line.

“Could have swept it .from her life but she wouldn’t do it... She’s having my baby.”

The lyrics, Caroline thought, were preposterous. What silenced her was how good he was, Only when he was finished did Scott open his eyes again. His sudden gaze startled her. “My favorite song,” she told him. “It captures my whole worldview.” Scott grinned, giving her a mock bow. Caroline sat with her elbows resting on her knees, face cupped in her hands, looking at him. Quietly, she said, “You’re really good, you know?” He tried to make a joke of it. “Just good enough to become a bad lounge act. ‘Scott Johnson, coming to a Holiday Inn near you.”“ He said it lightly, smiling. And then their eyes met, and they both no longer smiled. In that instant, Caroline sensed that he was more than lost or sad or sweet, felt that something in each of them called to the other, and that he felt it, too. Caroline did not know what it was. She knew only that—in a fleeting, imperishable moment—something changed for her. Scott put down the guitar. He stood, gazing at her, silent. There was only a few feet between them. Walking toward him, Caroline saw nothing but his eyes, felt nothing but her own pulse. His mouth was warm. Where had she been? some part of Caroline wondered. Who had she been? Her arms went tight around him. Slowly, gently, Scott pulled back, forehead resting against hers. Only then did she think of Jackson. “Jesus,” Scott murmured. So he felt it too. This strange pull, yet the instinct to resist. Her voice was quiet. “I’d better go.” She went to the door, hardly aware of her own movements. He did not try to stop her. She turned in the doorway. Scott stood by the bed, gazing at her as if at something he could not have.

As though in consolation, Caroline said, “Tomorrow we’ll go sailing, okay?” And then, hearing herself, she softly added, “If you want to.”

He watched her, not moving. “I want to,” he said at last.

They went sailing the next morning, and the two days after that.

It was different now. There was a new gentleness between them, an unspoken affinity, although, for Caroline, something about Scott remained elusive, just out of reach. At odd moments, she felt them try to read the other’s thoughts. But neither crossed their unspoken line. He never touched her.

He was always ready for her company. They hiked in the hills near Menemsha; went to hear Tom Rush sing and play guitar; swam in the freshwater pond at Long Point, the rough surf of the Atlantic a mere hundred feet away. Sometimes it seemed close to effortless; Scott knew the grace of silence, of letting Caroline think her own thoughts. His sarcasm now was sparing, turned solely on himself; he treated Caroline with respect, as if coming too close might harm them. The days fell gently, one upon the other, until time seemed not to matter. There was nothing to tell Jackson.

Perhaps, Caroline later thought, Scott knew more than she did. But for her—almost to the moment when it happened—the night that changed this seemed like any other.

The idea of eating lobster on the beach was hers.

Scott had smiled. “You mean like Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair?”

Caroline shook her head. “Did you ever wonder how

they got the lobster pot in his dune buggy? I’m talking take-out lobster. From the Homeport.” Scott rolled his eyes. “Take-out lobster) Where’s your New England work ethic.”?”

“Dead and buried,” she answered firmly. “Come on.” They drove to Edgartown for bread and a bottle of chilled wine. Caroline found bread; looking for Scott at the package store, she saw him eyeing the California Chardonnay with a certain practiced leisure, as if such a grave decision should not be rushed. “Hard to choose)” Caroline said from behind him. He turned to her, surprised. “Only when you don’t know wine,” he said, and seemed to pluck a bottle at random. “Let’s take a chance on this one.” By some unspoken consensus, Caroline always drove now, taking her time. They reached Menemsha a little before eight. The fishing village was quaint and quiet—the trawlers were in, the beach was almost deserted, and the sun was slipping beneath the distant line where ocean met a darkening sky. The gentle putt of an outboard motor echoed in the harbor. All that was open was the Homeport restaurant. People wandered in and out of the wood-frame building, a few tourists on the deck watched the sunset over dinner. Caroline led Scott to the take-out window and ordered two lobster dinners. Patient, he waited with the wine and a woolen blanket tucked beneath his arm until their food was ready, and then they set out to find the right spot on the beach. There was no hurry. The night felt close and warm; the moon, slowly replacing the sun, cast a first glow on the waves. Caroline felt the luxury of time. They walked the beach until the lights of Menemsha were far behind, and they were alone. Scott broke their silence. “I was looking at your catboat the other day. The dinghy’s sprung a leak—you should have it fixed pretty soon. And one of the ribs in the hull looks weak.”

Caroline smiled at this: among the bonds between them, she sometimes thought, was the proprietary interest he had taken in the catboat. “After I leave,” she asked, “would you look after my boat for me? I might decide to keep it here.” Scott stopped, facing the water. “If I’m here,” he said at length. “But I don’t think I will be.” Caroline turned to him, puzzled by her sadness. Perhaps it was the irapermanence of things: as days went by, and the summer grew more precious to her, Scott and the Vineyard had come together in her mind. She could not quite imagine this place without him. Together, they spread the blanket. Caroline laid out the bread and the lobster; Scott took a corkscrew to the wine, filled two glasses, and handed one to Caroline. He seemed about to propose a toast, and then looked at her again. “Is something wrong?” he asked. Caroline made herself busy with the blanket. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said at last. “I think in some stupid way I imagined you still here when I came back. Like I’m entitled to arrange every corner of my world just the way l want it.”

“And populate it too?”

“I suppose.” Scott studied her. “I guess that happens when things seem good. But they always change. It’s a little hard to imagine you, your husband, your kids, and me all going sailing together.” He smiled, as if to remove any sting. “For openers, you’ll need a bigger boat.” Caroline smiled back. “How many kids do you think I want?” Scott grinned. “Don’t know. Just more than I think I want.” He raised his glass. “To population control.” Caroline touched her glass to his and sipped. The wine, she realized, was the best she had ever tasted. She settled back on her elbows. “So what will you do?”

“I don’t have a clue—I just know I can’t stay here.” He gazed out at the water. “Maybe it’s the flip side of what

yOU were saying. That when you go off next month, to begin your real life, the island will seem a little lonely.” He gave a dismissive shrug. “There are other places—I’m not that big on nostalgia.” She turned to watch him. There was something very still about him, as if he were holding some moment in his mind. And then, with the sudden realization that she knew parts of him by instinct, came the certainty that he was lying to her but not to himself: that he carried pieces of the past within him, and that this summer would become one. “Well,” she said, “we’ve got the time we’ve got. Which hasn’t been so bad.” He turned to her, smiling. “Not bad at all. Unless the lobster cold.” She spread out paper plates and drawn butter. The lobster shells were already cut; all they had to do was eat. The night was calm, peaceful. The water lapped at their feet; a faint breeze carried the smell of sea and salt. Neither of them spoke, or needed to. “Remember when you were a kid,” he said at last, “and camped out?” Caroline smiled to herself. It was just right, she realized: the sense of being away from things and yet quite safe, with night closing around you. She knew that Scott required no answer. All at once, Caroline’s senses opened. She felt everything come together. Felt the breeze on her skin and hair. Saw the moon-streaked ripple on the water, the stars grow bright and close. Felt Scott lying next to her, as lost in the night as she was. Time seemed to stop. She did not know how long they lay there, not moving. She knew only what the night had become, and would not have been without him. Until, finally, she found a way to say this. “Have you ever had a perfect day?” Scott did not turn. “No,” he said at last. “But I’ve had a perfect hour. Now.”