The Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  As I nod and offer no comment, I see something behind Sally’s words: Addison was the pursuer. He was a year younger than his cousin, but, from the start, even on the Vineyard, my brother was the seducer, not, as family folklore has it, the other way around; and a part of her hates him for it.

  “So, anyway,” Sally is saying, “I told my folks I was going out with some girlfriends or something and not to wait up for me, then I hopped on, let’s see, must have been the 30 bus, or the 32, and then got on the S4”—wanting me to know, from all this, how hard she worked to see her love—“and, well, anyway, I got to Shepard Street and went up to the house, and Addison was there . . . .”

  Pausing to see if I have any reaction. When I do not, she resumes.

  “Anyway, after a while, I fell asleep. I don’t know how late it was. I know it was dark when these voices woke me up. Not loud. Kind of whispery. But still angry. I mean, they were arguing, and maybe they were trying to argue quietly, but I still heard them. I realized there was somebody else in the house, and I sort of got scared. So I turned to wake up Addison, but he wasn’t there. So I figured it must be Addison arguing with somebody. I thought it must be Uncle Oliver, which would probably mean we were caught, which would mean we were seriously up the creek. So I put my clothes on. I figured I would sneak out the back door. I’ve snuck out of a lot of back doors in my life, haven’t I?” Another one of her mirthless laughs. There is no point in responding; the question is clearly rhetorical, and we both know what the answer is.

  “Addison’s bedroom was on the third floor,” she continues, rolling onto her side, facing me now, except that her eyes are still closed. “At the end of that long hallway. The old servants’ quarters, I guess. You know, low ceiling, gables, the Nathaniel Hawthorne thing.” Actually, I know perfectly well what the house looks like, having grown up in it, but I have no intention of breaking the flow, now that she is telling the story. “The argument was way down in the foyer, two floors away, but I heard it anyway. I think it was some trick of the ducts or something.”

  Now it is my turn to smile in memory. The Shepard Street house has old-fashioned heating grates, metal screens covering what are basically holes in the wall with chutes behind them, left over, I suspect, from the days when the whole house was heated by a single stove. We had radiators, of course, but they were added sometime after the house was built. The ducts themselves were never removed. My parents never realized that sounds from the first floor, especially the foyer, routinely found their way to the top floor, where Addison and I slept. Perhaps there was some common vent: I never figured out how all the old ductwork ran. In any event, my brother and I were always able to hear what was going on down there.

  “So, anyway,” Sally resumes, “I got dressed and went on downstairs. I planned to sneak out, but first I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Down the back stairs, I mean. The servants’ stairs.”

  We both laugh, although nothing is funny. I glance at the digital clock on the nightstand. It is close to ten.

  “So I went down to the second floor and then went out into the hall. You remember there’s this long landing that runs all around the foyer, what do they call it?”

  “The gallery.”

  “Oh, right. And the gallery has this, um, this balustrade, I think is the word, and the, uh, the wooden posts—what are they called? Spindles? Dowels? Whatever they are, the posts that hold the balustrade? They’re very wide. Almost wide enough to hide behind.”

  “Especially for a child.” I smile briefly, remembering how, when we were children, Addison and Mariah and Abby and I loved to play hide-and-seek, and I used to hide up in the gallery there all the time. One of the things I quickly discovered was that, if the lights were on in the foyer and off in the hall, and the one who was it was down in the foyer, he—or she—couldn’t see me hiding in the gallery.

  “Well,” says Sally tartly, “I was never that tiny, but I could hide up there anyway. Or I did that night.” She stirs: the memory is starting to bother her. Maybe her moral sense has kicked to life. But she does not stop talking. “Anyway, the only light that was on was in your father’s study. That’s the part I remember best. It was so dark in the foyer, like Uncle Oliver was . . . oh, like he was doing something that needed the darkness. I know that sounds crazy, Tal, but that’s the way it felt. And the voices I heard were from inside the study. I couldn’t make out what your father was saying, I think because he was trying to keep his voice down, but the other man was yelling: ‘That’s not how the game is played.’ Something like that.”

  “He said ‘the game’?”

  “That’s what I said he said.” She pouts, not as prettily as she probably thinks, and continues. “Well, anyway, the other man, the man who was yelling, came out into the hallway, and he was pointing at your father, shaking his finger like he was angry or something. That’s how I saw the birthmark, when his hand moved into the light. It was McDermott. Whatever his name is in real life. Was.”

  So Sally knows he is dead. Which means Mariah probably knows. Which means that everybody knows. Maybe that is why Sally has chosen to break her silence. I say, “His name was Colin Scott.”

  “Fine, Colin Scott. The same man who was in the living room the week after your father died, okay? He was right there in the foyer, talking to your father, twenty years ago. I swear he was. And he was saying something like, ‘There are rules for this kind of thing.’ Something like that. And then I heard Uncle Oliver’s voice. You know, his lecturing tone: ‘There are no rules where a’—and then he said some word I couldn’t quite understand—‘is involved.’ He sort of dropped his voice on that word I missed. Not because he thought anybody was listening. It was sort of like a hiss. But I kind of heard it, Tal, and I think—I think it sounded like dollar. Like ‘There are no rules where a dollar is involved.’”

  “They were arguing about money?”

  “I don’t know. I might not have it exactly right. But it sounded like that. And the other man, he was shaking his head, like No. And then Uncle Oliver came into the light, and his face, his face was wild, it was scary. I figured he had been drinking.”

  “It’s possible, I guess.” I cannot, at the moment, imagine why McDermott/Scott and my father would have been arguing about money. “He drank a lot after Abby died.”

  “I know, Tal. I remember. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” I wonder how we got off on this tangent.

  “My family had problems, too.”

  I only nod. Garlands do not talk about growing up, or about anything else that it is impossible to change. But Sally is undeterred.

  “Nobody’s childhood is what they want, you know? We don’t choose our parents. We don’t choose our parents’ problems either. Once you recognize that, you’re halfway home.” A New Age feel-good comment, possessing no meaning I am able to identify.

  “I just want to hear the story, Sally. I just want to know what happened with my father and . . . and the man he was arguing with.”

  Sally gives me a long look, provocative and disconcerting. I do not want this woman in my head. I do not even want her in my room. But I have to have the rest.

  “Well, so, anyway, now they were staring at each other, like they were gonna have a fight or something. And then Uncle Oliver said, pretty loud, he almost shouted, ‘I’m sick of following the rules.’ The other man just shook his head. I think he wanted Uncle Oliver to be quiet. And he said something like, ‘That’s not the way it’s done.’ And then your father, his voice got real soft and cold, and he said, ‘You’d do it for Jack.’”

  “Meaning Jack Ziegler.”

  “I think so. I don’t know for sure. He didn’t say the whole name, but I think that’s who he meant.”

  I rub a hand across my face. A few moments ago the room was too small. Now the walls seem to be receding, or maybe I am shrinking. I feel lost and giddy: this is a little too much, a little too fast. I rally, asking a lawyer’s question to gain
time.

  “You’re sure it was the same man? The same man who came to the house the day after the funeral?”

  To my relief, my skepticism sparks no explosion. “I’m sure, Tal.” She relaxes again, shifting her position on the bed. I can see she is about done. Still, like a good witness, she recites her reasons. “I remember his voice. It was so cold and so angry. I remember the birthmark on his hand from when he was shaking his finger at Uncle Oliver. I remember the big white scar on his lip. And I remember something else. I was uncomfortable kneeling on the ground up there, so I moved around, and one of the floorboards creaked? And that other man, McDermott, his head whipped around and he looked straight up at where I was hiding. His eyes were like, I don’t know, some hunting animal. I was sure he was gonna see me. I was scared, Tal.” She yawns, then shivers. “It was the same man, Tal. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles.”

  I take this in phlegmatically, calculating the possibilities of error, of wishful thinking, of false memories. Or of simple lying.

  “‘No rules where a dollar is concerned’? That’s what he said?”

  “That’s what he said,” Sally confirms. Her confidence in her recollection is growing with each passing second. Lawyers often see this in witnesses. Sometimes it means they really do have it right; sometimes it means they have become comfortable with a version manufactured on the spot.

  Sally yawns again. I can tell she is fading.

  “So, what happened next?”

  “Hmm? What?”

  “After the argument you heard.”

  “Oh. Well, that was about it. McDermott or Scott or whatever his name was, well, he stopped looking up at the gallery and looked back at your father and put a finger to his lips, and they whispered together a few minutes, and then they both nodded and shook hands. They . . . they didn’t seem mad any more. Then Uncle Oliver walked him across the foyer and opened the door, and I went down the back stairs, and I guess your father went back into his study.” She yawns again.

  I sit silently for a couple of minutes. Sally’s forearm is across her eyes. I have no reason to think she is making any of this up. Sally is not a liar; as she told me, she says whatever is on her mind. So Scott knew my father, knew him more than twenty years ago, visited our house one summer night when the Judge lied to my mother and said he was going to the Judicial Conference, argued with him in the foyer about dollars and rules and what he would do for Jack Ziegler. I find my irritation rising—not at my father, but at Sally, for holding this back. Not telling me earlier because she was worried about my disapproval. I glance at her now. My irritation melts away. She has had a rough life, has Sally, yet she somehow manages to find the energy for a smile or two. As she is smiling now, with her eyes closed, yet aware, I am sure, of my scrutiny. I do not like the way my feelings toward her are running. The Judge’s words come drifting back: Nobody can resist temptation all the time. The trick is to avoid it.

  Avoid it. Right. I have to think about easing Sally out of here. Her gown is badly rumpled, her expensively braided hair a brown wreck. She will be quite a sight going back downstairs. I find myself hoping that anyone who notices her will think she is sneaking out of somebody else’s room.

  And then I realize that a piece of the story is missing.

  “So where was Addison?” I ask. No response. Louder: “Sally?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Addison, Sally. Where was my brother when all this was happening?”

  “Hmm? Addison?” She snickers. “See, well, that’s the thing.” She turns onto her other side, facing away from me. Her voice is slow. The drug? The drink? Exhaustion? All of them, I suspect. “That’s the thing,” she says again. “You know how the servants’ stairs go down to that little hall behind the kitchen, right? Well, when I got down there, the kitchen was dark, but I was scared to turn on a light, because I didn’t want Uncle Oliver, you know, to catch me. I was gonna go out through the mudroom? Well, I took about two steps, and then I bumped my shin on a stool, and I guess I was a little too loud or something, because the next thing I know, there’s this hand over my mouth, I try to scream, I try to bite, I try to kick, I’m scared to death, and of course it’s your damn brother.” She stops for a moment. Shakes her head. “Addison,” she mutters. “Addison, Addison, Addison.” Her mantra. “Addison.” Then nothing.

  “Sally? Sally, what about Addison? What happened in the kitchen?”

  “Hmmm? Kitchen?”

  “Of my father’s house. When Addison put his hand over your mouth.”

  “Oh. Oh, yeah. Well. He told me to hush, and I asked him was he in the kitchen the whole time, and he asked me what whole time, and I said all the time your father was arguing with that white guy, and he said what white guy, and I said the guy who was talking to Uncle Oliver, and he said he didn’t know what I was talking about, and I tried to argue with him, but then he said we had to get out of there, fast. So we went on out the kitchen door, and, well, that was the end of that.”

  I have the sense that I am missing something here.

  “Sally, listen. Wake up. Sally, did you believe him? Did you believe Addison? About not hearing anything?”

  Another snicker. “Believe Addison? Are you shitting me? That nigger never told the truth about anything in his life.” Sally’s speech is growing less cultured as fatigue claims her. “He would say any damn thing to get . . . to get what he wants. To get over.” A small giggle.

  “Sally. Sally, listen. Please. This is important, okay? Do you think Addison heard the argument?”

  “Of course he did.” A barking cackle. Sally possesses a remarkable repertoire of laughing sounds.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.” Another yawn, longer. She has very little left. “He told me when I called to tell him what . . . that the same man was in your house the day after the funeral.”

  What!

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, I dunno.” Sleepy. “A week later. Maybe two.”

  Of course.

  He heard. And never said anything. Keeping his cards, as always, close to his chest. My family! All we know how to do is keep secrets! Addison heard the argument between my father and Colin Scott at Shepard Street twenty years ago; he knew it was the same man who pretended to be Special Agent McDermott because Sally, his former lover, told him a week or so after the funeral. And he never told me. I will bet he never told Mariah, either, who would have added that information to her conspiracy theory, and immediately blabbed it to me.

  “Sally?”

  Only snoring.

  I sigh and settle in the chair. Exhausted, I immediately doze, a terrifying dream of perdition.

  My eyes snap open. A moment’s disorientation, and then everything comes flooding back in. I am still chewing on cotton, my cousin is still asleep on the bed, and it is now well past eleven.

  “Sally, hey, wake up. Sally, you’ve got to go. Sally!”

  More snoring. The hard, alcoholic kind. The kind I used to hear coming from the Judge’s study at night in those terrible days after Abby died; maybe the kind that Addison heard when he got back to the house after seeing Sally home on the night Colin Scott fought with my father. Or maybe he just walked her to the S4 bus.

  My brother, the late-night talk king. Oh, Sally has his number all right. Do anything, say anything.

  “Sally? Sally, wake up. Come on, Sally!”

  I stand up and cross to the bed. Asleep, breathing through her slightly open mouth, her small fists curled near her throat, Sally Stillman has a vulnerable look; it is easy, now, to see the cute teenager she once was, back when I spied her with Addison at Vinerd Howse. I touch Sally’s bare shoulder, my fingers lingering a few seconds longer than they should. Her flesh is warm and dangerously alive.

  “Hey, Sally, come on.”

  She mutters something and curls away from my hand. I doubt that I can wake her, not without physically shaking her, which I am not about to do. The events of the last few weeks have left me e
motionally sick, and what I want to do most is snuggle close to Sally’s ample body, wrap my arms around her, and lose myself in her warmth.

  I am so, so tired. Of so, so much. Of worrying about conspiracies, of running from phantoms, of fighting with my wife. So tired. And so lonely.

  I decide to let Sally stay. Even if I could wake her, I can hardly send her home like this. Which means she will have to stay here in my hotel room and sleep it off.

  For her own good.

  Temptation. The trick is to avoid it.

  “It’s not that easy, Dad,” I mutter, sitting gingerly on the edge of the rumpled bed where my cousin slumbers on, oblivious to my distress. I remind myself that I am a married man, but the room feels so terribly small, the bed so terribly large. My throat is dry. My fingers, without my quite willing it, reach toward Sally’s round, inviting shoulder once more.

  Then they fall back.

  Avoid it.

  I go to the closet for an extra blanket, which I drape over Sally’s somnolent form. I remove my tie, slip out of my shoes, and return to the desk chair to keep vigil.

  What a mess.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE DIAGNOSIS

  (I)

  IF YOU DRIVE along Seventh Street near Howard University, you discover a little college town of remarkable complexity, buried in the heart of Washington, D.C. It is only a couple of blocks long, so it is easy to miss, but it is there. It features fast-food outlets instead of delis, Southern-style kitchens rather than pizza parlors, but you also find the usual scattering of small office buildings, apartment houses, and photocopying outlets. To be sure, this particular little college town also includes an unhealthy proportion of boarded-up windows, empty, weed-choked lots, and warehouses surrounded by razor wire. But, if one wants to look beyond the expensive brochures my own university sends out, Elm Harbor has many of the same sordid features; and if we disguise them better, it is only because we have that much more money with which to purchase camouflage.