“What are you so happy about?” Kimmer asks, her arm surprisingly around my waist. In response, I kiss her forehead. There is no safe answer to her question, even though there are many true ones. I realize that I have finally bested the Judge: I am his equal at hiding my feelings, and his superior in pretending to be delighted when I am miserable.
Over breakfast, we leaf through our two daily newspapers, the New York Times and the Elm Harbor Clarion, each of us, for very different reasons, searching for articles about my father. I am deep inside the Clarion sports page, mulling over the latest injuries to players on the university’s hapless basketball team, when I decide that the time has come to tell my wife the one last thing I must do. I do not expect her to like it.
I fold the newspaper carefully and look at her exquisite face, the bright brown eyes intense behind her glasses, the lines of middle age deepening above her cheeks with every passing month. Her mouth is drawn up in a little bow. I know she knows I am watching her.
“Kimmer, darling,” I begin.
She flicks her gaze at me, then drops it once more to the Times editorial page. “Wanna hear a funny op-ed about the President’s tax plan?”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s really clever, though.”
“No, Kimmer. I mean, not just now. We need to talk.”
Eyes rolling in my direction, rolling back to the paper. “Is it important? Can it wait?”
“Yes. And, no, I don’t think so.”
My wife, looking splendid as always in a robe, glances up and blows me a kiss. “You’ve found her? Your nzinga from the ferry?”
At first I am nonplussed, thinking that she has somehow discovered my tete-a-tete with Maxine on the Vineyard, but then I see that she is only joking, or maybe hoping.
“Nothing that interesting.”
“Too bad.”
“No, not too bad. I love you, Kimmer.”
“Yeah, but only because you’re a glutton for punishment.”
Smiling as she says it, putting me off, not wanting to hear what I am going to say. But I have to make my point and, seeing no way to sugarcoat it, I decide to say it right out.
“Kimmer, I have to go see Jack Ziegler.”
The paper closes with a snap. I have all of her attention. When my wife speaks, her voice is dangerously low. “Oh, no, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“You don’t. ”
“I would just call him,” I propose, pretending that our disagreement is on a slightly different subject, “but he doesn’t really talk on the telephone much.”
“Fear of wiretaps, no doubt.”
“Probably.”
Kimmer’s gaze is unwavering. “Misha, honey, I love you, and I also trust you, but, in case you’ve forgotten, I am being considered for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals. If my hubby traipses off to visit a Jack Ziegler, it is not going to do my chances any good.”
“Nobody has to know,” I say, but I am reaching.
“I think a whole lot of people would know, and most of them happen to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
I have considered this, of course. “I would clear it with Uncle Mal first.”
“Oh, goody. Then he can tell everybody else in Washington.”
“Kimmer, please. You know what’s been going on. Some of it. As much as you’ve let me tell you.” Her eyes widen at that one, but I cannot stop now. “I’ve learned a lot of… of ugly things about my father in the past few weeks. Now I have to know if they are as ugly as I think they are. And I think Jack Ziegler knows.”
“If the facts are ugly, there’s no question that Jack Ziegler knows them.”
“Well, that’s why I have to go. People will understand.”
“People will not understand.”
“I have to know what’s going on.” But I think of Morris Young and the story of Noah and wonder if I am mistaken.
“I don’t think there is anything going on, Misha. Not like what you seem to think, anyway.”
“You’re probably right, darling, but…”
“If you talk to him, there is going to be more trouble. You know there is.” She does not say from whom, so I suppose it could be a threat.
“Kimmer, come on.” My tone is gentle. I am concerned that Kimmer will start shouting, as she sometimes does, and wake Bentley. Or the neighbors. Neither of which would be a first. “Come on,” I say again, still softly, hoping Kimmer will be soft in reply.
“You’re the one who always says Jack Ziegler is a monster.” Her tone is indeed soft, but more in hiss than compromise.
“I know, but-”
“He’s a murderer, Msha.”
“Well, he was never convicted of murder.” She has me sounding like one of Uncle Jack’s countless lawyers now, and I don’t much like it. “Other crimes, but not murder.”
“Except he killed his wife, right?”
“Well, there were rumors.” I try to remember the way the Judge answered that one before the Judiciary Committee, for it was that single question from Senator Biden, and my father’s unhelpful response, that cost him more than any other. I don’t judge my friends based on rumors, my father said-something like that. And he folded his arms across his chest in a gesture that even the most incompetent public relations coach could have warned him never, ever, to make on national television. Although understandably angry at what he considered an unfair line of inquiry, my father came off as haughty and disdainful. One columnist wrote that Judge Garland seemed to be dismissing a man’s possible murder of his wife as a triviality-a ridiculous assertion, but one my father invited by losing his temper before tens of millions of viewers. I knew, at that horrible televised instant, that the fight was lost; that, no matter how the Judge might duck and weave, his opponents had backed him into the corner of the ring; that the knockout punch would, at any moment, come flashing into his vision, just before it laid him flat. And I felt a rampant anger, not at the Senate or at the press, but at my father: How could he be so stupid? There were about six thousand possible answers to Biden’s perfectly reasonable question, and the Judge picked the worst of them. Yet now, under Kimmer’s cross-examination, I find myself following my father’s lead.
“But he was never indicted, darling. He was never even arrested. As far as I know, what happened to his wife was an accident.” Almost letter-perfect, I am sure: exactly what the Judge said to Senator Biden. Except for the darling.
“She fell off her horse after twenty years of riding and broke her neck by accident?”
“It’s not a very good way to murder somebody,” I point out. “You could fall off and walk away with a few scratches and live to tell everybody who pushed you.”
Kimmer gives me a look. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m serious. I’m saying we don’t know exactly what happened to Jack Ziegler’s wife, but murder doesn’t seem very likely. Am I supposed to hang him on rumors?”
Oh, I hate this side of myself, I truly do, the same way I hated this side of the Judge, but I cannot seem to stop.
“Rumors!”
“Well, since he was never charged…”
“Oh, Misha, listen to yourself. I mean, how legalistic can you get?” You sound just like your father, she is saying. Which is true.
“It’s just a visit, Kimmer. One hour, maybe thirty minutes.”
“He’s a nut, Misha. A dangerous nut. I don’t want us to have anything to do with him.” Her voice is growing louder, and a clear edge of hysteria is creeping in.
