At Shepard street, the door is opened by Cousin Sally, who is skipping work this morning in order to sit in my father’s kitchen torturing my sister with dubious stories from our shared childhoods. Sally smothers me in those powerful arms, which is the way she greets just about everybody, but Addison in particular. Inside the house, smooth jazz is playing: Grover Washington, I think.
Bentley shrieks at his first sight of little Martin and Martina, who are, as usual, hand in hand. Within minutes, my son has joined the younger members of my sister’s posse in some complicated game that has them trooping through the house in a dignified line, led by Marcus, the youngest, touching one and exactly one piece of furniture in each room before proceeding to the next, then reversing course and doing the same backward. I find Mariah and Just Alma in the twin wicker rocking chairs on the back porch. Alma, a Kool protruding jauntily from her mouth, grins in what could be delight, and Mariah allows me to kiss her cheek. Alma seems to be at the tail end of one of her raunchy stories, as well as her energy: she has to be going, she says, explaining for my benefit that one of her granddaughters will be along any minute to drive her back to Philadelphia. As she stands up, Alma pulls one of her famous tricks, squeezing the tip of the cigarette to put it out, then slipping it into the pocket of her cardigan.
I nod at the empty rocker, and Sally, reading my signal, takes Just Alma’s seat. I then walk with Alma into the house. In the foyer, while she hunts for her coat, I ask her casually what she meant when she said the other day that they would let me know about the plans my father had made for me.
Alma’s wise old eyes move in her dark face, but she does not quite look at me. “It ain’t nothin to do with me,” she murmurs after a moment.
I haven’t a clue what she is talking about, and I say so.
“Ain’t no they, ” she explains as I help her into her coat. “Just you and your family.”
“Alma…”
“Your job is to take care of the family.”
The honking of a horn announces the arrival of her granddaughter, who is, like quite a few of the numberless cousins, too young to consider the possibility that one should try to be polite, even the day after a funeral.
“Gotta go,” Alma informs me.
“Alma, wait a second. Wait.”
She is walking away from me, but her voice floats over her shoulder. “If your daddy has plans, he’ll tell you soon enough.”
“How can he possibly…”
We are standing at the open front door. Alma’s huge suitcase is sitting on the floor of the foyer. A brown Dodge Durango is in the driveway, her rude granddaughter a blur behind the windshield. Alma takes my hand, and this time she does look at me.
“Your daddy was smarter than all of them, Talcott. That’s why they were afraid of him.” This is another precious bit of family mythology: that the Judge was denied his seat on the Supreme Court by lesser intellects who were jealous and racist at the same time. “You just wait and see.”
“See what?”
“See how afraid of your father they were. When they come. But don’t let it worry you none.”
“When who comes?”
“They might not come, though. Your father thought they would. But they might be afraid.”
“I’m not following…”
“Like Jack. Jack Ziegler. He was afraid of your father, too.”
It takes me a moment to process this. Somewhere deep in the house, I hear the shrieks of joyful children.
“Alma, I…”
“Gotta go, Talcott.” She has rescued her Kool from her pocket and seems to want to light it. “I just emptied my bladder and I wanna get back to Philly before I gotta do it again.”
“Alma, wait. Please. Wait a second.”
“What is it, Talcott?” The peeved tone of an exhausted but indulgent parent.
“Jack Ziegler-what were you saying about him?”
“He’s just an old man, Talcott, Jack Ziegler is. Don’t let him scare you. He didn’t scare your father none, and he shouldn’t scare you none either.”
I suggest we go for a walk, but my sister declines. Mariah is lonely, tired, and irritable-not hard to understand, perhaps, when her only grown-up company so far this morning has consisted of the self-centered, confusing Alma and the intermittently reliable Sally. I persuade my sister to come in from the porch. We sit down together in the kitchen. Mariah’s makeup lacks its usual precision, her hair is in curlers, and the house she will formally inherit as soon as the will is admitted to probate is already the worse for wear, with evidence of young inhabitants-everything from tiny shoes to Playmobil sailors-scattered everywhere. Howard is gone, having returned to New York on the first shuttle to repair some collapsing deal, and leaving Sally and me to sit in that remarkably white kitchen listening to Mariah rail against Addison for his insufficiently vigorous defense of the Judge when he spoke at the funeral. And, indeed, I found my brother’s brief reference to the hearings confusing, perhaps because he was trying to please too many constituencies: Some of the attacks on my father were unfair. Some were pretty nasty. But some were thoughtful. Some were respectful. There were issues about which reasonable people could differ. We must never, in our love for Dad, forget that. And, certainly, the Christian in me will not allow me to condemn those who took the other side, because they, too, were doing what they thought was right.
“He can be a real bastard,” my sister informs us, her finger stabbing the air. “All Addison ever thinks about is Addison.” Her tone suggesting that this is news. Sally’s pug mouth twists in a half-grin, half-grimace: she adores my big brother, but also knows him to be a selfish… what-Mariah-said. Sally’s mother, Thera, avoids my father’s side of the family, even skipping the funeral, and I suppose what happened between Addison and her daughter is one of the reasons. Addison himself, along with Beth Olin, the great white poet, left town shortly after the funeral, heading on to Fort Lauderdale, where my brother had a speaking engagement. “Love amongst the Rats,” sniffed Kimmer, when she learned that Beth was going along. “Good riddance,” sniffs Mariah now, who is more like my wife than she will ever admit.
Yet Addison also has another side, the side for which I admire him. At Shepard Street yesterday afternoon, before he left with Beth, my brother took me aside, into the library, the same room where I found the diabolical scrapbook. Some relative murmured condescendingly that the brothers were going off to plan the future of the family. With the door closed behind us, I once more managed to place my body in front of the bookshelf, not wanting Addison to see the worrisome volume. But he wasn’t looking. He surprised me with an earnest bear hug, then let me loose and offered his handsome smile. He told me he had caught snatches of the conversation with Jack Ziegler, and that I had acquitted myself admirably-one of the Judge’s favorite phrases. We both laughed. He asked me what I planned to do about whatever Uncle Jack was looking for, and added, before I could speak, that he would help in any way he could. I had only to call. My heart hammered with sibling love. For so much of my youth, and even my early adulthood, Addison was protector, helper, role model. He cheered when I succeeded and consoled me when I failed. Strong Addison, wise Addison, popular Addison, whose advice at critical turnings of my life was far more helpful than the Judge’s. He was there for the trivial-like when I was trounced in the election for editor in chief of the law review-and for the profound-like when my work kept me from making a planned trip to see my ailing mother, and she died while I was busily writing an article on mass tort litigation. And he urged me, against the wishes of the family, to go ahead and marry Kimmer-a decision, despite its occasional difficulties, that I believe I will never regret.
Looking into his somber, caring eyes yesterday, however, I could think of nothing with which I needed help. I told him the truth: that I had no idea what Uncle Jack was asking about, and therefore had no plans to do anything about it. Addison shifted tracks swiftly, as a good politician should, and said that might be best: Jack Ziegler is crazy as a loon.
