The Final Judgment (35 page)

“Depends on the school.” Larry smiled. “Think there’s a spot for me at Ohio Presbyterian?” Scott seemed to reflect. “There should be. My last English course was more like a saiance than a seminar. Even the dead dropped out.” His voice turned wry. “The professor had published extensively.” From the end of the table, Channing watched him. “Were you an English major?” he asked.

Scott shook his head. “History. Twentieth-century European, mostly. It wasn’t very cheerful.” Channing did not smile. “History seldom is. And seldom will be. It’s in our nature, I’m afraid.” Caroline turned to her father. “That’s rather Hobbesian, isn’t it?” Channing seemed to consider her. I don’t believe in the infinite perfectibility of man, Caroline. If I ever did, I stopped. In Germany.” Caroline looked to Scott. “Father served with the Nuremberg tribunal. As an investigator.”

“Out of which,” Channing said to Scott, I came to believe in law. But not in men. People are, in the end, who they are.” Her father’s eyes had fixed on Scott. “But men make laws,” Caroline interjected. “And write history. Like we’re trying to do in Vietnam.” She saw Larry surreptitiously cover his eyes and emit a silent groan. “The V word,” he murmured. Channing gave a slight smile and raised his eyebrows at Caroline. “You were saying, Caroline?”

“That if the Vietnamese wrote history, and convened their own tribunal, Nixon and Kissinger might be condemned as war criminals.” Channing frowned. “I think that’s much too facile. What our government committed were not crimes of war but acts of war—”

“They bombed civilians, Father. Thousands of them, and for what? To save face in a war we’ll never win and now don’t even plan to win. Because human beings are only pieces on their geopolitical chessboard.” Channing shook his head. “With respect, Communism is a form of tyranny which has killed at least as many people as the Nazis did. With whom you so blithely compare Messrs. Nixon and Kissinger.” His voice became gentle. “Forgive me, Caroline—you’re more than entitled to your own ideas. But I hardly think your maternal grandparents,

who died at Auschwitz, would grant your comparison. Or even your own mother.” Caroline felt herself flush. Through her shame, she remembered that Nicole had felt much as she now did and that her father knew this. But it was beyond her now to say so. In the silence, she saw Scott gaze at her with deep surprise, and then compassion. Channing turned to him. “Tell me, Scott, do you have a view on this? Perhaps I’ve been too harsh.” Caroline saw Scott fold his hands. He paused, gazing at her father quite openly, as if coming to some decision. “I wouldn’t know,” he said quietly. “But then I haven’t just been trumped with the death of six million Jews. Two of whom were my own grandparents.” Channing looked at him fixedly. To Caroline, everyone else were figures in a painting: Betty with her eyes downcast, Larry quite pale. “Do you believe,” Channing asked softly, “that the Vietnamese are our Jews?” Scott’s faint smile did nothing to his eyes. “What I’m saying,” he answered with equal quiet, “is that if the same platoon of Americans had marched into a German village and begun killing and raping everyone in sight until there was pretty much no one left, they wouldn’t have put out a record called ‘The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant CaIley.” They’d have strung him up—”

“And quite legitimately, I’m sumre But it does point out a larger problem with your reference to My Lai.” Channing’s voice took on a lethal quiet. “Because the young people with, shall we say, the ‘finer sensibilities’ have claimed the right to select their wars. Sensibilities so fine, in fact, that they left this war to those with so few advantages that Vietnam looks like a career opportunity. And to, as you put it, the war criminals. Whom the absence of their moral betters, safely deferred, deprived of so many good examples.” For a moment, the room was silent. “Yes,” Scott said.

“I’m lucky that I haven’t had to die to justify my position. Which leaves me hem, free to argue, among the living. Unlike my college roommate, who died there, uselessly.” Channing’s face hardened. Then, as if remembering himself, he looked suddenly embarrassed. “Please forgive me, Scott. I’ve become so used to argument and advocacy that I forget my role as host.” Scott seemed to study him. “No need to apologize,” he said. “My dad and I used to do this all the time. Before we stopped speaking.” In the nervous laughter that followed, Caroline saw that her father barely smiled.

“Why haven’t you ever told me,” Scott asked an hour later, “about your mother?” Caroline did not face him. “It’s not the kind of thing that comes up.” They stood on his deck, hands on the railing, watching the Nantucket Sound at sunset. He turned to her. “But it’s important, don’t you think?” She tilted her head. Softly, she asked, “Do I know everything that’s important about you?” He did not answer. Caroline was quiet for a time. “Anyhow,” she said, “I’m very sorry. For starting that whole argument about Vietnam.” Scott’s eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t about Vietnam, Caroline. It was about you. And me and you.” He paused for a moment. “Do you really think there’s ever a time when your father doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing? And what he wants?” She touched his hand. “He’s been a good father, Scott. By his own lights, he wants whatever seems best for me.” Scott’s hand closed around hers. “I always thought the test of a good parent,” he said softly, “was to raise adults.” Withdrawing her hand, Caroline felt herself stiffen. “Are you saying that I’m not one?” Scott’s eyes were still and serious. “What I’m saying,” he finally answered, “is that he may force you to choose.

But the choice isn’t the one he imagines—between him and whatever bad stuff I or anyone else may symbolize for him.” He paused, ending quietly. “It’ll be between him and you.”

She found her father on the porch, sipping a brandy. In the dusk, his eyes looked deep-set, shrouded. Caroline did not sit. “That was unforgivable,” she said flatly. He looked down. “Yes, I suppose it was. Especially when I insisted that he come.” He sounded genuinely contrite. “Why did you do that?” she asked. “Because I believe that ideas matter. That rigorous thought matters,” He looked away. “Perhaps it was more than that, Caroline. I find that being here, I think of Nicole. “I remember all she went through during the war, and what I thought I meant to her because of that—that I could somehow save her, when her own people could not. And then I think about Paul Nerheim.” He paused, finishing softly. “And, in spite of myself, I feel the anger of her betrayal. Which I inflicted on all of you at dinner, without meaning to. It was as if the two of you had cheapened what I felt. For which, of course, I’m quite ashamed.” It was painful for Caroline to hear this, to know how little the years of silent restraint had healed him. She felt her anger deflate, become the sadness of her own memories. There was, she thought, nothing more she could say. Caroline went to Channing and kissed him on the forehead. “Good night, Father.” She turned to leave. “Do you want to know what I think?” he asked mildly. “About Scott.” Caroline faced him again. After a moment, she said, “All right.” Her father put down his brandy, as if gathering his thoughts. “There’s something wrong with him, Caroline.” His tone was still soft, reluctant. “A real person is

integrated—they’re simply the sum of who they are and what they’ve done. They don’t have to think about it.” He looked up at her. “Haven’t you noticed this boy thinking? Not so much about his ideas—the passion is real enough. But about who he is. Or pretends to be.”

“Just what are you trying to say, Father?”

“I don’t know yet.” His eyes narrowed. “It’s the sense you’ll have, perhaps a decade from now, after you’ve cross-examined a hundred witnesses. You watch their eyes and see that split second of calculation. And you know that they’re thinking just a little too hard. Just as this boy spent the first hour of our dinner pretending to be less clever than he is.” He paused again. “I don’t know where you and Jackson stand. I’m not sure I want to know. But Jackson is a real person, and a fine one.”

“Who never disagrees with you.” Caroline’s voice rose. “Isn’t that your trouble with Scott? That he stood up to you?”

“How can you think that? This is about character, not ideas.” Her father’s gaze grew distant. “I don’t want to be intrusive, Caroline. I like to think I haven’t been—at least no more than any only parent with basically good intentions. But bad character is a rot, and there is no cure. The only thing you can do is resolve to avoid the taint yourself.” With sudden intuition, Caroline sensed that this conversation, too, was not simply about Scott Johnson, but about her own mother. “There is no taint,” she snapped. “Except in your mind.” Before he could answer, she turned and left the room.

But the confrontation with her father ran like a fault line between Caroline and Scott. With him, she felt joy and passion, yet the undertow of doubt: all her instincts told her that, in some sense she could not identify, Channing Masters was right. Alone in her room, she would add up the discrepancies—between Scott’s air of carelessness and his deeply ingrained caution; his supposed unsophistication and his evident worldliness; his studied unsociability and his ease with the few people they had met; his persona of cynical purposelessness and the incisiveness of his mind. Their time was running short, and Caroline might never know him. Some part of her felt that to penetrate Scott’s veneer was dangerous—if there were certain things he did not wish to share, there must be a reason for it. But as each day passed, and Caroline knew only that she wanted to be with him every moment she could, the sense of something between them that they could never say, never reach, ate through her until she feared his silence even more than the reason for it. “There are things you haven’t told me,” she said. “Things about you. I want to know why.” They were sitting on the deck after a long day on the water, enjoying wine and cheese and a sunset that stained the wispy clouds orange red. Caroline had broken a pleasant silence; her question, sharp and sudden, so at odds with the mood of their day, startled her. Yet Scott did not look surprised. With a veiled, wary look, he asked, “Where’s this coming from, Caroline? Your father?” “Quit sparring with me, all right? You’re playing at being someone you’re not, and I’m supposed to sit on everything I think or feel.” She stood, feeling the depth of her anger. “I spend every minute I can with you, like it’s life and death, and all I’ve really been doing is fucking you for the summer. Because I can’t reach you.” He put down his wineglass and faced her. “It’s you who’s going away, Caroline. I don’t expect you to drop out of law school. So don’t expect me to open up a vein.” Beneath the chill words was an undertone of emotion. Caroline placed both hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. “All the time I’m planning to go on with my life, I feel like you’ve turned me inside out. Please, doesn’t this summer mean anything to you?” She saw him blanch at her intensity. Suddenly, Caroline felt naked and exposed, without any defense between Scott and her emotions. “Look at me,” Scott said softly. Slowly, she did that. The tears ran down her face. Seeing this, his own eyes shut. Caroline saw him swallow. And then his eyes opened; as he touched her face, tracing her tears with his fingertips, he looked at her with a tenderness so open that it was hurtful. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Don’t you know by now how much I love you?” Caroline felt stunned. Mute, she shook her head. He seemed to slump. “Why do you think I stayed here, Caroline? I should have left weeks ago.” Caroline clasped his shoulders. “Why?” Shaking his head, Scott put his arms around her. He seemed to hold her with a desperate longing. “Make love with me,” he murmured. “Please.” His voice was hoarse; Caroline felt her body tremble. They went to the bed like children drawn to a flame. Now they were fumbling, desperate, tearing the clothes from each other, hands and mouths seeking each other’s

bodies, like two lovers meeting after weeks apart. Yet they had never been like this—lost, heedless, their bodies from the moment he entered her moving with a frenzy so deep that Caroline no longer knew herself. They cried out together. Afterward they lay in the dark. Stunned, defenseless, Caroline pretended to sleep. She felt ripped open. Beside her, Scott stirred, restless, rose from bed. Caroline said nothing. She lay in the dark, alone. Scott did not return. Naked, Caroline stood. The air was cool. She felt her skin rise, her nipples. Picking through the clothes on the floor, she found his T-shirt and slid it over her head. He was on the deck, wearing only his jeans, staring out at the water. She walked behind him. From his stillness, she knew he was aware of her. But he did not move. “What is it’?” she asked. He turned to her. In the moonlight, she saw him pause. “My name,” he said quietly, “is David Stern.” It was almost as if, Caroline felt, he were talking of someone he had lost. She took both his hands in hers. He gazed down at their fingers, laced together. “The funny thing,” he said, “is that I chose Johnson as a joke, because of Lyndon. But Scott was because I always liked Fitzgerald. I guess you and I will never agree on everything.” Caroline stared at him. “But why pretend like this.”?” “Haven’t you figured it out?” His voice was low and bitter. “I gave myself my own exemption, Caroline. I’m a draft dodger.” It made Caroline quiet; she felt both shaken and relieved. She looked at him, waiting. I’m from California, not Ohio,” he said at last. “I went to Berkeley and was going to Stanford law.” He gazed at the deck. “I was also 1-A. I absolutely opposed the war. My father screamed at me about World War II; my mother begged me to go to

Canada; my draft counselor told me to work on becoming a conscientious objector. “Nothing was right. I hated the war, and I didn’t want to die there. Canada’s not my home. And I would have fought in my father’s war. “For two years, I tried for a medical deferment. Until my appeals ran out. “The only principled thing, I told myself, was to go to jail.” He paused and then looked directly at her. “Your father had me pegged. At the last minute, I couldn’t face it. The day before I was supposed to report, I just took off.” His tone was laced with self-contempt. As if to encourage him, Caroline squeezed his hands. “My mother gave me some money,” he finally said. “My father never knew. One morning, I just lit out with my guitar, a suitcase full of stuff, and a plane ticket to Miami under the name Scott Johnson. “I picked Miami because I’d never been there.” He shook his head. “All I had was two thousand dollars and a California license that said I was David Stern. “I got myself a crummy room in a hotel that didn’t care who I was, and made contact with a draft resisters group I knew about from law school. Some of them had a side business—turning birth certificates for dead people into a new identity. So I gave them some money and waited in my room, working on my interim story.” His voice softened again. “Day by day, what I’d done sank in .... “I was no one anymore. I had no friends. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth. I couldn’t call my folks or write them—the FBI could tap their phone or read the mail, which happened to that friend of mine who did end up in jail. And I wasn’t sure that my dad wouldn’t do something stupid, like come look for me, or that my brother or sister wouldn’t blow it somehow.” Caroline watched his face. “So they’re real. Your family.”