children but will never bear one, gave Bentley for his third birthday Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss, one of her favorites, she told us, when she was a child. Kimmer thanked Dana, leafed through the book in horror, and put it away in the attic without ever troubling to read it to our son. She forbade me to read it to him either. “An anti- choice tract,” she huffed, and, when I asked what she was talking about, she smiled dismissively and quoted the book’s recurring tag line, A person’s a person, no matter how small. “What else could it be about?” she demanded.
My turn to smile now. No matter what faces me in the rest of the world, I am revived by my sojourns on the Vineyard. And I am determined to make this one peaceful. Last week I had a fight with Mariah, our worst yet. Spurred on by Meadows, I made the long drive to Darien and took my sister to lunch. I tried to suggest, as gently as I could, that maybe she could tone down her constant invention of new conspiracies. I told her about the possible judgeship, told her that her conduct was hurting Kimmer’s chances, but did not tell her my source. She shot back that the whole thing-offering my wife a shot at the bench, threatening to take it back if Mariah kept speaking out- was itself a conspiracy, a way of shutting us up. I told her that seemed a little farfetched, we had words, and, suddenly, it was the terrible days after the Woodward book all over again. Only worse this time, because the Judge is not around to draw us back together by the force of his will.
And so I ache instead. Unable to concentrate in the classroom, I have asked for a few weeks’ leave from the law school, and Dean Lynda has happily granted it, both because she dislikes me and because she knows it will put me in her debt. Stuart Land has agreed to cover my torts class until I get back, and has already called three times, distressed by the disorganization of my lesson plan and my office, and offering to repair both. I have politely declined, not wanting anybody probing the shadowy nooks of my life.
Earlier this month, I attended Freeman Bishop’s funeral, my second funeral at Trinity and St. Michael within two weeks. Some visiting priest, a member of the paler nation, performed the service, and few mourners attended. I noticed a face or two that I remembered from the Judge’s service, and I strained unsuccessfully to call names into my tortured mind. Mariah skipped the service. Sergeant Ames was there, however, perhaps expecting more bad guys to show up. I chatted with her briefly before she slipped out a side door, and I learned only that Conan was still negotiating his plea bargain, which I already knew from the Washington Post’s Web site.
Then, last week, came our usual tense Thanksgiving with Kimmer’s parents, still waiting impatiently for me to tame their incorrigible daughter; evidently they do not realize that Kimmer is not quite tamable. Vera and the Colonel glared down the table at me as Kimmer and her childless sister Lindy gossiped and Bentley made a mess. If my wife does not become a judge, I suspect that my in-laws will somehow heap the blame on me.
But mostly I have been looking forward, with growing eagerness, to today’s journey.
The ferry at last!
Now, turning my face into the sea breeze as the ship breasts the surging waves, rushing me toward the island I love, I am able to smile at Kimmer’s eccentricity-and even at Kimmer herself, who is huddled near the snack bar, carrying on a conversation of vital importance on her cell phone. Perhaps the colloquy concerns her work, perhaps it concerns her candidacy, perhaps it concerns something more intimate. For once I refuse to care. Ever since I shared the news of trepidation in the Hadley household, Kimmer has turned loving and warm, as though to compensate for other behavior, a stark metamorphosis that I have seen before, and which, unlike Gregor Samsa’s, can reverse itself in an instant; but I am determined to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.
So, finally, here we are on the ferry, the day I have been awaiting. Kimmer has stolen forty-eight hours from the demands of litigating for her clients’ advancement (and lobbying for her own) to cross with me the threshold of the house that now is ours, and for that small act of theft, I am grateful. She might have forced me to go with only Bentley, or even alone. The fact that she did not I take as a signal of continuing armistice. Nearing the glory of the Vineyard, I find myself believing, against every objective indicator, in the possibility of happiness. Even with my wife. Which is why, I suppose, fidelity in a sad marriage can fairly be described as an act of faith: faith in life’s endless possibilities, which is another way, I am sure Rob Saltpeter would insist, of describing God’s bounty. And so I smile as I stand at the rail, my finger tucked into my son’s belt as he leans into the spray and calls to the gulls and laughs and laughs, and, as I glance around the deck at my fellow passengers, each, I am sure, as joyful as I as we rush on toward our island, my heart bursts with love: love for my child, love for my wife, love for the very idea of family, love for-
And suddenly she is there.
Right here, on the deck, long and nicely muscled, in jeans and a bomber jacket, not twenty paces away-the woman from the rollerdrome. It is not remotely possible, it is far too great a coincidence, I must be mistaken, my sullen libido is playing tricks on me… yet I know it is she. The roller woman. The woman who, a long month ago, flirted with me until she spied my wedding ring. The woman who haunted my dreams for the next couple of weeks. She is toward the prow, standing a little apart from the crowd, her face turned into the wind, so I see only a piece of her dark brown profile, but the smooth, broadly set jaw and the mass of impossible curls cannot belong to anyone else. A flamboyant purple overnight bag is slung over one shoulder and she is clutching a book: something genuine, hardcover, thick, the title in some other language, which my distant eye identifies tentatively as French. An edition of Moliere, perhaps. Student or teacher? I wonder, suspecting that the answer is neither, for the text feels like a stage prop. I am thrilled to see her. I am appalled. I continue to stand at the rail, gazing in astonishment at this improbable apparition, far too shy to-
“I would kill to have her body,” says Kimmer. So distracted have I been that I am not sure how long my wife has been next to me, but the wicked bemusement in her voice hurts as much as ever. On the other hand, I am guilty as charged. “She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?”
“Who?” I venture, careful not to turn around too suddenly, lest my wife conclude that I am actually staring where she thinks. I still have tight hold of Bentley’s belt, and he is still hanging over the rail, hypnotized by the wake. The roller woman might be carved from stone.
“That giant nzinga over there,” answers my learned Kimmer, who likes to pepper her conversation with the occasional Afrocentric non sequitur. She points with one hand, holds my arm with the other. The cellular phone is nowhere to be seen. “The one you can’t seem to take your eyes off of.” Kimmer laughs as I twist slowly back in her direction, then barks softly like a dog. “Down, boy,” she says, not kindly. No peace treaty after all.
“Kimmer, I-”
“Hey, she’s looking this way. Misha, she’s looking. She’s looking at you. Turn around and wave.” She grabs my shoulders and tries physically to make me do it, but I resist.
“Kimmer, come on.”
“Hurry up, honey, you’ll miss your chance.” Teasing, but also making her ancient point, that I should have affairs to balance hers; that I should fall in love with somebody else and leave, sparing her the necessity of hurting me any longer; that my constancy in the face of her dalliances marks not Christian virtue but secular wimpiness. We have argued this out so many times that she need raise only a hint of the long-standing quarrel to bring all the torment rushing back to my heart.
“Cut it out,” I hiss, allowing an edge to come into my tone.
“Misha, go on!” my wife laughs, ignoring whatever I am feeling. “Go say hello, fast!” Then she stops pushing. Her hands fall from my shoulders. “Too late,” she murmurs in mock sadness. “She’s gone.”
I cannot help myself. I do turn back now. The roller woman is gone. In her place are two plump white girls, stuffing Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups into their mouths and dropping the wrappers into the sea. The gulls hover nearby, either protesting the pollution or hoping for a bite. The roller woman has vanished as silently as she materialized; had Kimmer not confirmed the evidence of my eyes, I might decide the roller woman was never there at all.
“I just thought she was somebody I knew,” I say, knowing how lame it must sound.
“Or somebody you’d like to know,” my wife suggests. It occurs to me, against all evidence of our recent years together, that Kimmer is jealous.
“I’m a one-woman man,” I remind her, trying to keep it light.
“Yeah, but which one?”
I turn in her direction again. She likes to goad me into these arguments, and, although I try to keep my temper, she often succeeds. As she succeeds now: “Kimmer, I’ve told you before that really I don’t appreciate jokes about… about my fidelity.”
“Aw, honey, I’m only kidding.” A playful kiss on my nose. “Although, you know, it’s okay with me if you decide you want somebody else…”
