That was the other reason she had not left Lemaster.
She had stayed with him because she thought he might be right.
(III)
AT THE BEACH, later, watching Jeans frolic, darling of the Clan, Julia sat on a towel, straw hat and sunglasses shielding her eyes, and finished the letter to Granny Mo.
Dear Mona:
I have often wondered why, with all the world to choose from, you decided to raise us in New Hampshire. I loved every minute of Hanover, but you were never truly happy. We were nowhere near anything—anything, at least, of the world that formed you and your whole generation of our people, the world to which you wanted your children, at whatever distance, to remain connected. The summers were beautiful, but the winters were preposterous. The town was wonderful, but, like all New England, white.
Now at last I think I understand. To be a great people is also to be an old people, and to be an old people is to be a people with a past. In the past are great triumphs, but also great tragedies. Wisdom is knowing one from the other—and how to keep the secrets. I think you moved us to Hanover for the winters. Time covers truth like snow. The best part of New England life is that it is a very long time before the snow melts.
Love always,
Julia
She posted the letter in the morning mail.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
READERS OF The Emperor of Ocean Park, the novel in which Lemaster and Julia Carlyle first appeared, might remember the family as residents of a suburb called Canner’s Point, not Tyler’s Landing. For a variety of story-related reasons, I moved their house. As I explained in the author’s note to the previous novel, Elm Harbor is not a thinly disguised New Haven, although I will say again, as I said there, that the two towns share a lot of the same ghosts. The same caveat must apply to any comparisons between Kepler Quadrangle and the Yale Divinity School. And of course it should be unnecessary to add, but probably is not, that whatever events might have inspired the story, it is only a story—a “what-if”—and makes no larger claim than that.
Neither Ladybugs nor Empyreals is a real organization, nor is either based on one. Nor are their members based on any clubmen or club-women of whom I am aware. I greatly admire the ability of the traditional clubs of the darker nation to preserve their traditions in an untraditional age. The story of the Black Lady is told around Arkadelphia, Arkansas, to this day, albeit with far more emendations and additions than the bare-bones tale repeated by Vanessa Carlyle in the novel. The Internet Anagram Server may be found at www.wordsmith.org but—fair warning—its powers are quite addictive. The Web site Gainful Nonsenses does not exist.
As of this writing, Dartmouth College does not offer a Ph.D. in economics, and therefore Kellen Zant could not have done his graduate work there. I could have placed his affair with Julia at one of the other New England Ivies, but the image of Julia tramping through all that astonishing campus snow was too perfect to resist. In 2004, the Iowa caucuses were held in the middle of January, but that was too early to make my story work, so I moved them, rudely, a little later. I have also shoved around, in I hope minor ways, certain other aspects of the pace of a modern presidential campaign.
Lemaster Carlyle’s argument about how man desires to create a God who needs man’s advice is inspired in part by the discussion of Dostoevsky in David Bentley Hart’s startlingly exquisite 2005 book, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?—although Hart is not of course responsible for any holes in Lemaster’s exposition.
I am grateful as always to my alarmingly patient literary agent, Lynn Nesbit. I have benefited enormously from the guidance and encouragement of my editors, Robin Desser and Phyllis Grann, who waited through the frustrations of the pace at which I delivered the manuscript, and protected the story against many poor choices. I would also like to thank fans of my hesitantly offered first novel, whose persistent demands for another kept me working on this one. I have also had the useful advice of the small circle of intimates who read all or part of the manuscript along the way, particularly my dear friends George Jones and Loretta Pleasant-Jones.
Finally, no words can express my gratitude to my wife, Enola, my most careful and critical reader, and our wonderful children, Leah and Andrew, the three of them truly God’s gifts in my life.
June 2006
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught since 1982. He is the author of The New York Times best seller, The Emperor of Ocean Park, as well as seven acclaimed nonfiction books, including The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion and Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy. He and his family live near New Haven, Connecticut.
ALSO BY STEPHEN L. CARTER
Fiction
The Emperor of Ocean Park
Nonfiction
God’s Name in Vain:
The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics
The Dissent of the Governed:
A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty
Civility:
Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy
Integrity
The Confirmation Mess:
Cleaning Up the Federal Appointments Process
The Culture of Disbelief:
How American Law and Politics
Trivialize Religious Devotion
Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2007 by Stephen L. Carter
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carter, Stephen L., [date]
New England white / by Stephen L. Carter.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. African American college teachers—Fiction. 2. New England—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.A78N48 2007
813'.6—dc22 2006019721
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eISBN: 978-0-307-26696-5
v3.0
Stephen L. Carter Page 62