know?”
My sister and I get moving later than we planned, but eventually we arrive at the crowded skating rink, which is across the highway from one of Washington’s countless suburban shopping malls. Marcus has a cold and stays at Shepard Street with the au pair, so we are seven altogether, and can all squeeze into Mariah’s justacquired Lincoln Navigator, that luxurious monster masquerading as a sports-utility vehicle. Everybody skates but me. Mariah’s children, who apparently do this all the time, are quite good, and Bentley, who has never done it before, is eager to try, for his introspective streak does nothing to reduce his childlike bravado. Mariah takes personal charge of him and promises not to leave his side. Mariah takes promises more seriously than anybody I have ever known, so I have no doubts about his safety. Bentley, however, must have a few; just before stepping onto the rink itself, he turns to me, so festooned with pads and helmet that he can scarcely be seen, and whispers, “Dare you?” Smiling, I shake my head and assure my son that Aunt Mariah will take good care of him. Bentley smiles tentatively back at me, then steps out into the rink, holding on to my sister with both hands. The Denton children have long since whirled away, to the beat of a song by Celine Dion or Mariah Carey or some other PG-motion-picture-soundtrack diva.
I lean on the heavy wooden boards that form the sides of the rink, and watch. I am not skating because I do not want to embarrass myself, but also because I want to think. I want to think because I want to make sure that I am not in trouble. I want to make sure that I am not in trouble because I did not tell Foreman and McDermott everything that happened. I did not lie to them, exactly, but I did not reveal the entire conversation with Uncle Jack. I told them about the condolences he offered. I told them he seemed sick. I told them about his repeated demands to know about the arrangements. I told them about his concern that others, who would mean us ill, would ask the same questions. But I did not tell them about his promise to protect me and my family, for fear that it might be misconstrued. I did not tell them what he said about Marc Hadley.
The odd part was that, after I finished my recitation (which they interrupted only now and then, for minor clarifications), the FBI men had just one question, asked with polite emphasis by Agent Foreman: “So, Mr. Garland, what arrangements did your father make?” When I repeated what I had earlier told Uncle Jack, that I did not have the slightest idea what arrangements he was talking about, Foreman walked me, with lawyerlike precision, through a series of possibilities: Were there any special financial arrangements? Burial arrangements? Had my father left any special instructions about what should be done upon his death? Special instructions to open a safe-deposit box, for example? Or an envelope to be sealed until after he died? Did I recall any conversations or communications over the past year in which my father used the word arrangements? (That last question would have left me laughing had their faces, and McDermott’s silky threat about Kimmer, not been so serious.)
I responded to every question with some version of the same hackneyed Washington phrase: I don’t know, Not to my knowledge, I don’t recall, sounding much like my father before the Judiciary Committee, and reminding me yet again just how much I hate the city. Once it became clear that this was the only answer I was prepared to offer, McDermott seemed ready to lose his temper again. But, for once, Foreman got there first. He told me how helpful I had been. He told me how they knew it was a difficult time and they were grateful for my cooperation. He told me that he would personally see to it that none of this created the slightest adverse reflection on my wife’s chances for nomination-another nicely meaningless lawyerly turn of a phrase. And he told me they would see themselves out, which I allowed them to do.
A few minutes after the agents left, I found myself regretting that I had not told them all I knew-and only then did I realize that they had not left me business cards telling me how to get in touch with them if I remembered anything else. This struck me as odd, because the many FBI agents I regularly encounter when my former students go through security checks for government jobs always leave their cards. I worried over this omission, wondering why they were so confident that they had all they needed to know, wondering whether I had, without realizing it, given them the decisive link in their investigation. Then I forgot all about the question, because an impatient Mariah, tapping her foot in the foyer, pointed out that we had to leave, lest we not have time to skate and still get back for my appointment with Mallory Corcoran. On the way to the skating rink, she sat in silence for a while, then asked whether I thought Sally really knew McDermott. I said something inconsequential about how I had no way to tell. Mariah said she did not think Sally was the sort to make stuff up. As it happens, I agree, but I only nodded, humoring my worried sister. Next, I figured, she would be telling me that the FBI killed the Judge. Or a cabal of liberals with strawberry birthmarks on their hands. Or a conspiracy of men with scars on their lips. But she said nothing, just brooded all the rest of the way to the rink, and I apologized telepathically for my unworthy thoughts.
Now, watching my son grow gradually less tentative under my sister’s tutelage, I am impressed by her patience, her maternal thoroughness. She has coaxed him to the point where he is willing to let go of her hand. I smile. Mariah knows how to mother, puts lots of time and thought into it. I wish I knew as much about how to father. Feeling a sudden surge of love for my sister, I try to put her wild theories out of my mind, pondering instead a far more pressing question: how to catch up with the work I am paid for. I must schedule makeup classes for torts and for my seminar, which I am missing for this entire week, and still find time to finish the overdue revised draft of my article on mass tort litigation for the law review, which I originally planned to pursue this past weekend. Maybe if I-
Suddenly, an astonishingly well muscled woman of our nation thwacks against the boards below me, grabs the top of the wall with two gloved hands, and favors me with a sunny smile. She is clad in black spandex and red skates, and she moves with the easy grace of the natural athlete. “Hey, handsome, how come you’re not skating?” she calls, as though we have known each other for years. Her skin is gorgeously brown, her face plain yet roundly pleasant, her mouth full of huge teeth, her head unfortunately topped by a shock of hideously pressed flat curls. Two gold loops, one large, one small, hang from each pierced ear. She is close to six feet tall, and older than I first thought: perhaps in her mid-thirties. “Are you there?” she asks, still smiling, when at first I say nothing. “Hello?” She is, I realize in surprise, flirting with me, not an activity with which I have much recent experience. Her eyes sparkle with secret mischief, and her toothy grin is contagious.
I find myself smiling back, but my throat is dry, and it is an effort for me to say, “I’m afraid I’m not much of a skater.”
“So what?” she laughs, shuffling her feet in place, a fist on each strong hip. “I’ll teach you if you want.” She reaches a hand toward me, palm upward, fingers splayed, and tilts her head to one side as if to stretch her neck. “Come on, handsome, you need to have some fun, I can tell.”
Unexpectedly stirred by her aggressiveness, and, I confess, already having fun, I am about to reply with a remark every bit as flirtatious as hers, when she casts a practiced eye down at my hand, observes my wedding band, loses her smile, says, “Oops, oh, hey, sorry,” spreads her long arms, and skates off, backward. With a last saucy wave, she swirls away and is lost in the crowded rink. To my surprise, I am pierced with a sense of loss so strong that for an instant I forget to watch out for Bentley, who naturally chooses that moment to collide with another skater. He leaves the rink wailing, his lip split bloodily. Mariah, full of apologies, is in tears herself. A couple of her spoiled children laugh at Bentley’s clumsiness, the others sob at all the blood. I hug my son and apply an ice pack helpfully supplied by the management, but he is shaking his head and crying for his mother. I was nowhere near him when the accident happened and could have done nothing to prevent it, but Bentley seems to think I am guilty nevertheless.
Most likely, he is right, for the roller woman cavorts through my dreams for weeks to come.
CHAPTER 8
At twenty minutes of four, I step out of a taxi in front of the building in which, just a week ago, my father had
