The Emperor of Ocean Park (31 page)

As usual, it is worldly Kimmer who restores me to my senses.

“Can you hurry up and open the door?” she demands sweetly. “Sorry, but I have to piss in the worst way.”

“No need to be vulgar.”

“There is if nothing else will get you moving.”

She is correct, after a fashion, and I am being foolish. I smile at her and she almost smiles back before she catches herself. I heft the heavy suitcase in my left hand and bounce the key in my right. Then I stride boldly up the steps, heedless of the demons who caper in the shadows of memory. Drawing a breath, I dismiss them like a veteran exorcist and rattle the key into the lock. Only as the lock begins to turn do I notice that one of the tiny panes of colored glass is missing—not broken, just not there, so that through the space defined by the narrow gray leading I can see into the darkness of the house. I frown, pushing the door wide open, and, standing frozen on the threshold of the house I have loved for thirty years, I realize that the goblins have not all retreated. I try to swallow but cannot seem to gather any moisture in my throat. My limbs refuse to move me forward. Through a slowly descending curtain of the deepest angry red, I see my handsome wife brushing past me with a whispered, “Sorry, but I gotta go,” and I feel her transferring Bentley’s hand to mine.

Kimmer is three steps into the house before she, too, stops and stands perfectly still.

“Oh, no,” she whispers. “Oh Misha oh no.”

The house is a disaster. Furniture is upended, books are strewn over the floor, cabinet doors broken, rugs sliced to ribbons. My father’s papers are everywhere, the breeze from the open front door ruffling their edges. I peek into the kitchen. A few of the dishes are smashed on the floor, but the mess is not as bad, and most of the plates are simply stacked on the counter. While Kimmer waits in the front room with Bentley, I force myself to go upstairs. I discover that the four bedrooms are barely disturbed. As though there was no need to bother, I am thinking as I stand in the window of the master suite, telephone in hand, talking to the police dispatcher. As I explain what has happened, I look down at the BMW, parked illegally along the split-rail fence that guards the south side of Ocean Avenue, doors still open, baggage not yet unloaded. Something isn’t right. They did not wreck the second
floor. The thought keeps swirling through my mind. They left the second floor alone. As though ransacking the first floor was enough. As though—as though—

As though they found what they were looking for.

Now more puzzled than frightened, I go back downstairs to join my wife and son, who, wide-eyed, are hugging each other in the living room. The police, arriving in minutes from their quaint headquarters a block away, quickly pronounce the destruction the work of local vandals, teenagers who, unfortunately, spend much of the winter trashing the homes of the summer people. Not all the Vineyard’s teenagers are vandals, or even very many: just enough to annoy. The very kind officers apologize to us on behalf of the Island and assure us that they will do their best, but they also warn us not to expect to catch the people who did it: vandalisms are nearly impossible to solve.

Vandals. Kimmer eagerly accepts this explanation, and I am quite sure the insurance company will too. And, more important, the White House. Kimmer promises to make plenty of trouble for the alarm company, and I have no doubt she will keep her word. Vandals, my wife and I agree over pizza and root beer at a nearby restaurant a couple of hours later, after the man who looks after the house in the off-season has dropped by to inspect the damage.

“I’ll make some calls,” he told us when he finished tut-tutting his way around the place.

Vandals. Of course they were vandals. The kind of vandals who destroy one floor of the house and ignore the other. The kind of vandals who steal neither stereo nor television. The kind of vandals who know how to circumvent my late paranoid father’s state-of-the-art alarm system. And the kind of vandals who are in direct contact with the spirits of the departed. For I do not tell either my wife or the friendly police officers about the note I found upstairs while waiting, sealed in a plain white envelope left on top of the dresser in the master bedroom, my correct title and full name typed neatly on the outside, the perplexing message on the inside written in the crabbed, spiky hand I remember from my childhood, when we would proudly leave copies of our school essays on the Judge’s desk and wait for him to return them, a day or so later, with his comments inked redly in the margins, demonstrating what idiots our teachers were to award us A’s.

The note on the dresser is from my father.

CHAPTER 17
THE BRASS RING

(I)

M
ANY YEARS AGO
, when as a child I first visited the town of Oak Bluffs, I at once became entranced by the grand old wooden building at the foot of Circuit Avenue housing the Flying Horses, which bills itself as the oldest carousel in America, having been in continuous operation now since 1876. The idea was to make riding a game. You sat astride your horse while leaning, each time around, toward a stationary wooden arm that dispensed tiny rings. As you passed, you would grab the ring on the end of the arm, and a new one would snap into its place. Nearly all of the rings were made of steel, but the last one in the arm was made of brass. A rider lucky enough to catch the brass ring won a free ride. During that first delirious summer, I would stay aboard the carousel for hours, spending my quarters one by one, forsaking even the beach to fill my days mastering the tricks of the older children (including how to catch two or sometimes three rings at once on my stubby brown fingers), paying for turn after turn, trying, almost always in vain, to grab the brass ring and earn a free ride.

As a child, I imagined that the Flying Horses was the only carousel in the world with the marvelous idea of awarding a free turn to the lucky rider who caught the brass ring. As I grew older, I learned that this was not so, that the idea of winning a prize for catching a brass ring was in fact rather ubiquitous, if not actually mundane. Intellectually, I have long ago made my peace with this development. Emotionally, I continue to feel that the brass ring on the Flying Horses in Oak Bluffs is the only one that really counts. Perhaps the reason is that our summer house on Ocean Park was little more than a child’s hop-skip-and-jump from the carousel. I grew up with the Flying Horses around the corner, and with a child’s freedom to visit whenever I pleased; and, having
learned its lessons, I have been stretching for that brass ring ever since.

Of course, the Flying Horses of today are not the Flying Horses of my youth. The organ music, for example, now comes from compact discs, and the crowds push and jostle so that it is no longer possible to imagine riding all day. A couple of the wooden steeds have lost their genuine horsehair tails. But, then, so much of the Vineyard seems to need a coat of paint, the scrub of a brush, the whisk of a broom. The Island is neither as tidy nor as friendly as it once was. And it is all so sudden, so sudden. Blink once and a dusty road where you used to play tag is paved and clogged with traffic. Blink twice and the vacant lot where you had your ball games has a gigantic house on it. Blink again and the vast, dreamy beaches of your youth have lost half or more of their sand to the sea. Blink a fourth time and the pharmacy where your mother used to buy Coricidin when you were sick is a boutique. The Judge blamed the changes on demographics—the
new people
was his term for everybody who discovered the Island later than we did. I try to be wary of such generalizing sentiments, however, not least so that I do not sound too much like my father. So I look around and try to tell myself that little, after all, has really changed. And if a few more candy wrappers than I remember from my youth seem to be blowing along the streets, I like to think it is only because the new people have not yet learned how to love an island—not because they do not care.

Ordinarily, on the third afternoon of a Vineyard sojourn, I would be at the Flying Horses with my son. But our sojourns are usually in the summer. Now it is autumn, and the carousel is closed for the season. Fortunately, the Island offers other diversions. Yesterday, as a hastily assembled clean-up crew tried to put Vinerd Howse back in some kind of order, the three of us journeyed up-Island—that is, to the westernmost end—and spent a marvelous afternoon walking the breathtaking ancient cliffs at Gay Head in the chilly November air, picnicking in our down parkas at the perfect pebbly beach in the fishing village of Menemsha, and driving the wooded back roads of Chilmark, near the sprawling property once owned by Jacqueline Onassis, pretending not to be on the lookout for the rich and famous. We had dinner at a fancy restaurant on the water in Edgartown, where Bentley charmed the waitresses with his patter. How many demons we exorcised I am not sure, but I saw no sign of the roller woman, who might be a phantom after all, and Kimmer did not mention the judgeship once and talked on her cell phone only twice. And she kissed me quite carefully this morning when Bentley and I
dropped her at the airport for her flight back to the mainland in one of the little turboprops that serve the Island. Bentley and I are staying on because . . . well, because we need to. Kimmer has work to do, I have a week or so of leave left, and Bentley needs some rest and recreation. And there is another reason as well. In Oak Bluffs, unlike Elm Harbor, I will never be tempted for a moment to let my precious son out of my sight.

Right now my son and I are preparing to go to the playground; or, more precisely, Bentley is ready, waiting for me.

I am less ready.

I am sitting at the table in our newly cleaned kitchen (full of plastic plates and cups from one of the Island’s two A&Ps), the note from my father flattened on the surface, willing its secrets to reveal themselves. In the next room, Bentley is watching the Disney Channel and occasionally waddling to the door of the kitchen and calling, “Dada, paygrown now. You say paygrown!” in the plaintive, self-righteous tone that makes busy parents writhe with guilt. To which I respond with the familiar “Yes, okay, just a minute, sweetheart,” which every busy parent uses with equal embarrassment.

Last night, as my family slept uneasily, Kimmer curled protectively around our son, I wandered Vinerd Howse from the foyer to the attic crawl space, searching for something, but I do not know what. I need to know what is going on. I need a clue.

Unfortunately, the most obvious clue, my father’s note, remains gibberish:

My son,

There is so much I wish I could share with you. Alas, at the present moment, I cannot. I have asked a good friend to deliver this note should anything befall me; if you are reading my words, one must assume that something has. I apologize for the complexity of this method of contact, but there are others who would also like to know that which is for your eyes only. So, know this much: Angela’s boyfriend, despite his deteriorating condition, is in possession of that which I want you to know. You are in no danger, neither you nor your family, but you have little time. You are unlikely to be the only one who is searching for the arrangements that Angela’s boyfriend alone can reveal. And you may not be the only one who knows who Angela’s boyfriend is.

Excelsior, my son! Excelsior! It begins!

Sincerely,
Your Father

The handwriting is unmistakably the Judge’s, as is the flowery, overwrought, self-important prose, even the formality of the signature. Quite unexpectedly, my fury at my father threatens suddenly to overwhelm me.
If you want to tell me, tell me!
I rage against him in my tortured mind, a tone I would never have selected in life.
But don’t play these games!
Jack Ziegler in the cemetery demanded to know about
the arrangements.
Now, at last, I know for certain that my father actually made some. But I do not know what they are, and this hint, this clue, this post-mortem letter from my paranoid father, whatever it is supposed to be, lends me no assistance at all.

Excelsior? Angela’s boyfriend, despite his deteriorating condition?
What is all this?

One point is clear: Not-McDermott’s mission in Elm Harbor was neither to apologize nor to reassure but, as I suspected, to see whether I know an Angela or not—which means that he and, presumably, Foreman are somehow privy to the contents of this letter. I wonder if the letter was the reason for the destruction of the first floor, except that I cannot quite fathom why they would break into the house, find the letter, and then leave it behind.

Or, for that matter, how the letter got here in the first place. Presumably McDermott, if he was even here, would not have dropped it off. The Judge wrote that he asked
a good friend
to deliver it should anything
befall
him. But what good friend would break into Vinerd Howse to drop it off? Why not mail it to my house or bring it by my office? Why not deliver it to . . .

. . . to the soup kitchen?

Can the pawn be connected to the letter? Did my father arrange that delivery as well? I try to remember whether I ever mentioned to my father that I volunteer at the soup kitchen, but my mind offers every answer I could want: yes, I told him; no, I did not tell him; yes, I hinted at it; no, I kept it secret. I shake my head in rich red anger. If he wanted me to have the pawn, wouldn’t he have delivered pawn and letter together?

Not that it matters. For my father’s note is actually no help at all.

I have a terrible memory for names, but it is good enough for me to be sure that I do not know an Angela, and I have no idea who her boyfriend could possibly be.

(II)

“P
AYGROWN NOW
now
now!”
Bentley calls. “Dare
you!”