markers, praying, yes, and remembering, of course, but very often actually speaking to the deceased, an oddly pagan ritual in which we engage, this shared pretense that the rotted corpses in warped wooden boxes are able to hear and understand us if we stand before their graves-and would not hear these same messages (“One day soon I’ll be with you, darling” or “I’m doing everything you told me, Mom”) if we merely took the time while, say, driving a car to project our thoughts into the next world. Unless we are here present, facing the appropriate gravestone, the messages do not get through-or so our behavior signals.
The other reason a cemetery appeals to the irrational side is its obtrusive, irresistible habit of sneaking past the civilized veneer with which we cover the primitive planks of our childhood fears. When we are children, we know that what our parents insist is merely a tree branch blowing in the wind is really the gnarled fingertip of some horrific creature of the night, waiting outside the window, tapping, tapping, tapping, to let us know that, as soon as our parents close the door and sentence us to the gloom which they insist builds character, he will lift the sash and dart inside and…
And there childhood imagination usually runs out, unable to give shape to the precise fears that have kept us awake and that will, in a few months, be forgotten entirely. Until we next visit a cemetery, that is, when, suddenly, the possibility of some terrifying creature of the night seems remarkably real.
Tonight, for instance. Tonight, I know some terrifying creature is abroad. I pause, my flashlight pointed down at the ground, and raise my head, listening, sniffing the air. The creature is nearby. I can sense it. Probably, the creature is human; possibly, the creature has done violence; certainly, the creature has betrayed me.
As has my wife. I do not even know if I am married any longer. After church on Sunday, the day before I began spreading around the law school the intelligence that I was about to put an end to the search, I finally confronted Kimmer with Lionel, sitting with her in the kitchen while Bentley played with his computer in the next room. She sat there for a while in a light-blue dress, lovely against her maple skin, and then said what spouses always say: I never meant to hurt you. We were very civilized. She told me bits and pieces of the story- yes, it began last summer, yes, I tried to stop it, no, he wouldn’t go away, and we were just supposed to talk that day when you saw him at the house -but it swiftly dawned on me that Kimmer was talking around the actual issue at stake. So I stopped her and forced her to look at me and asked one of two relevant questions. Is it over between you? She said she didn’t know. So I asked the other. Are you leaving? She held my gaze and told me she thought some time apart might be the best thing for us. We had, she said, a lot of issues to work through. When I had my voice back, I mentioned Bentley, and how hard this would be on him. She nodded sadly and said, But you can come and see him whenever you want. It took me a moment to get the point. I asked her if she was taking our son. He needs his mother, she answered. And, besides, he is accustomed to this house. As I sat there, flummoxed, Kimmer just shook her head unhappily. I asked if she was really leaving me for Lionel. She told me no, I was missing the point. Lionel wasn’t the issue. My behavior was. I didn’t want it to come to this, Misha, I really didn’t. I do love you. But you’ve been too weird lately, and I can’t deal with it any more. We just need some time. Time apart, she meant. Time during which she gets the house and I move out. It’s not an ideal answer, but custody fights can be hard on children.
She gave me one week. That was two days ago.
I went to see Morris Young. I was unreasonably accusatory. He waited for me to calm down and reminded me that my wife’s fidelity was never the issue. The promise I made to him was a promise of Christian duty, my obligation to treat her with love as long as we were married. I asked if the promise still holds. He asked if we are still married.
I keep walking.
I am angry still, but not at Dr. Young, for he is not the cause of my pain. No, I am angry at myself, and furious, finally, at my wife. I have passed from How could she do this? to How dare she do this! I am old-fashioned enough to think of the marriage vow not as a promise to stay as long as you want to, but a promise to stay whatever happens. Kimmer, obviously, believes otherwise-yet I love her still. There lies the true absurdity: if love is an activity, I find myself unable, or perhaps unwilling, to stop acting.
Still seething, I shake my head. I cannot be distracted now, even by the wreck of my marriage. Maybe, when this is over, Kimmer will have a change of heart. I have five days left to persuade her, and perhaps I can start tonight. I have calculated the moves as a chess player must. I am reasonably confident that my gambit will defeat the unknown but omnipresent adversary who sits, wraithlike, on the other side of the board. When that battle ends, I will be able to focus on saving my marriage. I know that my own actions have helped drive Kimmer away from me. I will apologize, bring flowers, and, best of all, bring her the news that the search is finally over, no more craziness. I persuaded her to marry me a decade ago, surely I can persuade her to stay.
Surely.
Or else I cannot. A wave of fatalism sweeps over me, and I wonder whether I could have done anything differently, or if, once the Judge died, setting his awful plan in motion, and Jack Ziegler showed up demanding to know about the arrangements, everything else was fixed. Whether my marriage, even, was doomed from the day of the funeral.
I remind myself to concentrate on the moment.
In my notebook are several genealogies and a handful of carefully drawn maps. Each is a map of a part of the cemetery, each points the way to a different plot. A casual reader who came across my notebook and leafed through it would probably think I was trying to figure out which plot was the one I wanted. This would be literally correct, but not at all accurate. During my visits, I have studied the great majority of plots in the cemetery-not in person, but in the ancient books entrusted to Samuel’s care. I have been testing theories. I have been narrowing things down. Rob Saltpeter, the constitutional futurist, likes to refer to Supreme Court decisions as creating “plausible opportunities for dialogue and discovery.” That is the purpose of my map: to create plausible opportunities. I have held plenty of dialogues.
The discovery part will have to take care of itself.
The cemetery is divided by a series of straight lanes crossing at right angles, forming a pattern of squares, each square holding a number of plots.
Kind of like a chessboard.
Following the map in my notebook, the carefully drawn grid, I walk along the main road, passing shadowy headstones, some stark, some ornate, some with angels or crosses, and many no more than tiny plaques at ground level. I keep my flashlight beam low, pointed at the gravel path before me. I walk all the way to the far wall of the cemetery, opposite the main gate, not far from the tunnel through which Kimmer and I made our silly escape back when we were of the age when everything was yet ahead of us. I wait, listening to the sounds of the night. A crunch of gravel: a human being far away, or a small animal much closer? I strain my eyes looking for other flashlights. Here and there a glimmer: somebody searching for me, or the headlight of a distant automobile, glimpsed briefly through the gate?
No way to tell.
I have done this walk enough times now that I no longer need the map. I am in the southwestern corner, the right-hand corner from the perspective of the front gate. I stroll to my right-to the east-left as seen from the gate, passing one lane, then turning north along the second. The squares of a chessboard are numbered on an eight-by- eight grid, from A1 in the lower left corner on white’s side of the board to H8 in the upper right. Were the cemetery grid a chessboard, with the gate on the black side, the lane I am now walking would be the B file. I pass three crossing lanes, labeled in my notes as B1, B2, and B3, although they are actually named for various founders of the city. At the fourth lane I stop.
B4, according to my notes.
B4, if one accepts the cemetery as a chessboard, even though it does not have sixty-four squares, and if one arbitrarily takes the gate as the black side.
Plausible.
B4, the first move of the Double Excelsior, with the knight, if black wins and white loses. I called Karl on the day of my argument with Jerry, because I wanted to be absolutely sure. He said yes, if the composer is an artist and a romantic. My father fancied himself both. Excelsior! It begins! If white loses, then it begins with the white queen’s knight pawn sliding two squares forward. That is why my father arranged for me to receive the white pawn first. Lanie Cross was surely right: the Judge wanted to fix it so black would finally win. The move is b4, the square is b4, the move is written b4, and I am here, at B4. Thin, but plausible, at least if I told my father the story of my escape with Kimmer from the cemetery years ago. Thin, but plausible, and plausible is all I have just now.
