tiptoes past it. “And I’m sorry about that. I really am. I want to do better for you, Misha. I really do. I’ve been trying.” Caressing my hand now, as though Jerry Nathanson, probably the most prominent lawyer in Elm Harbor, does not exist. “But, Misha, then he… he dies. And I know you’re aching and I’m sorry for that. I truly am. But, Misha, he’s all over the papers again. Your father. Everybody’s talking about him again. And I’m thinking, Okay, maybe I can still hold it together. So I go over and see the Senator, like a good little girl, and he just sits there with this… this supercilious grin, and I’m like, Why did I bother to come here? Because, you know, the whole thing is like fixed. Fixed so Marc wins, I mean. And then Ruthie won’t tell me squat. And Jack Ziegler at the cemetery, and then this FBI thing. What did those guys want? I mean, it’s like this thing with your father… it’s going to ruin it for me after all.”
There are tears on Kimmer’s cheeks. It has been years since she has opened herself to me this way; what she has said to others I don’t want to know. Her pain is genuine, and I warm to her. Although we were law school classmates, my wife is three years younger than I-she skipped a grade somewhere along the way; I wasted twenty-four months as a graduate student in philosophy and semiotics before turning to law-and there are moments when the three years feels like thirty.
“Kimmer, darling, I had no idea,” I whisper. And this is true. There are depths to my wife I am too often afraid to plumb; and my fears have done as much as her conduct to sour the sweetest parts of our marriage. I squeeze her hands. She squeezes back. As her tears reflect the candlelight, her face grows even more exquisite. “But none of it has to be ruined. The Judge was my father, not yours. And the Judge is not you. There isn’t any… I mean, you don’t have any scandals. They certainly can’t hold your father-in-law against you.”
Kimmer is miserable. “They can so,” she says, all at once childlike. “They can. They will.” A sniff. “They do. ”
“They won’t,” I insist, even though I am afraid she is right. “And you know I’m in your corner.”
“I know you are,” she says bleakly, as though nobody else would be so foolish.
“And Uncle Mal-”
“Oh, Misha, get real. Uncle Mal won’t be able to do anything unless this goes away. You see what I’m saying? It has to go away.”
“What does?”
“This thing with your father. Whatever it is, Misha. I don’t know. The FBI. Jack Ziegler, all of it. It has to go away, and it has to go away fast, or folks will be like, ‘No, uh-uh, not her, she’s married to you-know-whose son.’ So we can’t do anything to keep it alive, Misha. Not me, not you, not Uncle Mal, nobody. We have to let it die, or I don’t have a chance.” Her mysterious, tormented brown eyes burrow into mine. “Do you understand, Misha? It has to die.”
“I understand.” Her fervor, as always, overwhelms my caution. Kimmer has long had a talent for coaxing promises out of me before I know what I am saying.
“You have to let it die.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“But do you promise?”
She seems to think I have some choice. I am not sure I really do. Because love is a gift we deliver when we would rather not.
“I promise, darling.”
She slumps back in her chair as though worn out from all this pleading. “Thank you, honey. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome.” I smile. “I love you.”
“Oh, Misha,” she whispers, shaking her head.
The waiter brings a bottle of wine that I scarcely remember Kimmer ordering. I do not drink, given my father’s history, but the Madisons consider the prudent consumption of high-priced alcohol a part of the sophistication of the palate. She takes a few sips and smiles at me, then leans back in her chair again and looks out over the room. Then she suddenly hops up. I know this routine. She has spotted somebody she knows. Kimmer loves to work a room: that’s why she was president of her graduating class at Mount Holyoke and of our local bar association and might soon be a federal judge. As I watch, she hurries across the restaurant to greet an Asian American couple dining over by the far wall. They shake hands, and they all share a good laugh, and then she is back. The man writes editorials for the Post, she explains. She met him this morning, when she went to see her friend from college. His wife, Kimmer continues, is a producer for one of the Sunday-morning television talk shows. “You never know.” She shrugs. Then she retakes my hand and plays with my fingers in the candlelight until our main course arrives. I would usually be willing to let Kimmer play with my fingers all night, but my brain refuses to cooperate. As I cut into my overpriced steak, a thought occurs to me, prompted by my wife’s table-hopping.
“Darling?”
“Hmmm?”
“Do you remember the last time we saw my father? I mean, both of us, together?”
She nods. “Last year. He was in town for the alumni association or something.” She will not concede he might have wanted to see Bentley, or me, still less her. She shifts in her seat. “About this time.”
“And you said he looked… worried.”
“Yeah, I remember. We’d be sitting at dinner at the Faculty Club or something and you’d ask him a question and he wouldn’t say anything, he’d be looking into the middle of nowhere, and you’d ask again and he’d say, ‘You don’t have to shout.’” Her gaze softens. “Oh, Misha, I’m sorry. That’s not a very happy memory, is it?”
I choose not to go there. “I’ve seen him since then. Once.” When I was in Washington on business and we had dinner. He was distracted then, too. “I just wondered… did it seem to you… when you said he seemed ‘worried,’ did you mean…”
“Just tense, Misha. Stressed.” Taking my hand again. “That’s all.”
I shake my head, wondering why the image of the Judge’s last visit to Elm Harbor leaped so nimbly to mind. Maybe Mariah’s creepy insistence that the causes were not natural is starting to get to me.
The talk turns to other things: gossip about the law school, chitchat about the firm, jockeying our vacation schedules. She tells me what her sister, Lindy, is up to these days, and I recycle old stories about Addison. I tell Kimmer what fun Bentley had on his first day on in-line skates, but not about the woman who flirted with me, or about my temptation to flirt back. Kimmer, perhaps detecting something in my eyes before I glance guiltily away, teases me about the crush everyone once thought I had on Lindy, the more solid and reliable of the Madison sisters, whom my parents fervently hoped I would marry. We banter on, as we used to in the old days, the good days, our courting days, and then, as dessert arrives, Kimmer, who has been watching the time, tells me that an hour has passed. She is all business again. I sigh, but dutifully summon the waiter and ask him where the telephones are, and he produces one with a flourish, plugging it into a jack underneath the table. I wink at my wife.
“You could have used my cell phone,” she says glumly.
“I know, darling, but I’ve always wanted to do this. Just like in the movies.” Her return smile is tight; I realize just how overwrought she is. I pat her hand and push buttons on the phone. Grace picks up and, as promised, puts me right through.
“Talcott,” booms the great Mallory Corcoran, “I am so glad you called. I was just about to send out an all- points bulletin. Look, we have a serious problem. In the first place, Jack Ziegler is not currently under investigation by the Justice Department. They wish they had something on him, because, well, you know, it’s every prosecutor’s dream to put a powerful white guy away”-he barks these words with no sense of irony-“but right now they just don’t. So they are busy frying other fish.”
“I see,” I say, although I do not. Kimmer, reading my face, looks fearful.
“That’s not the problem, though. The problem is this. Morton Pearlman talked to the Attorney General and the AG talked to the director of the Federal Bureau and he talked to his people. And here’s what they tell me. I heard it from the AG himself. The FBI did not know that you talked to Jack Ziegler in the cemetery yesterday, Talcott. There was no surveillance. And nobody from the FBI came to see you today, Talcott. Why would they? Nobody from the FBI has asked you anything about Jack Ziegler at all. And the background check on Kimberly hasn’t really started yet.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. Now, you’re sure they said they were from the Bureau?”
“I’m sure.”
