The Last of the Savages (33 page)

As a judge, Carson Colchester had a reputation for toughness, a patrician
manner and a scathing wit. I dreaded the moment when he would interrogate me about my motives in marrying his daughter—not that I necessarily believed they were dishonorable. Father of six, he was a handsome, weathered man who relished the role of patriarch, who expected obedience and respect, whose claim on authority was only emphasized by the fact that at fifty-seven he remained taller than his grown sons, as if by design. In conversation he tended to assume an impatient, knowing smile that stopped just short of a sneer, as if he had heard it all before and could, in any case, look right into your soul—but if you kept it short and lively he might hear you out. It was as if I’d found a more liberal, Yankee version of Cordell Savage for a father-in-law. Stacey was his youngest child, and if he largely spared me his withering skepticism, it might well have been because he didn’t perceive me as a threat or because Stacey did not merit as much of his attention as her older siblings.

I had waited until we were engaged to take Stacey home to my parents, somehow fearing they might blow the deal, though in fact my father’s fortunes had taken a dramatic upturn. He had opened three new appliance stores and was just then beginning to sell computers. My parents had moved to a large new house on a lake outside of Taunton. My grandmother Keane had passed away, rejoining all those souls who had been so very fond of her, who had thought the world of her before they left it. Her place had been taken by Aunt Colleen, whose son, Jimmy, had died of a heroin overdose, his body discovered in Tompkins Square Park, a victim either of maternal repression or of rock and roll, depending on your vantage point. Colleen lived in the so-called mother-in-law suite over the garage of the new lakefront split-level. My father was fiendishly proud of his pool, the game room in the basement and the golf cart in which he cruised down to the lake and back, and if anyone had told him that there was anything to aspire to beyond his present state he would have been politely and understandably skeptical. The first night home with my fiancée, I stayed up with him after the women had gone to bed. A sense of father-son business was hovering in the air.

“She’s a great girl,” he said, lighting a fresh cigarette. And then, “You know, I’ve always been faithful to your mother.” I took this to be a piece
of fatherly advice. “I’m not saying we haven’t had our problems. With work and money worries, I haven’t always come through for her when she needed me. But we’ve always loved each other. And we both love you.” He paused. “Luckily she stood by me. If she hadn’t, all this”—he waved his smoking hand to encompass the house and the lake—“it wouldn’t be worth a damn. If the money was all gone again tomorrow, we’d still have each other.”

“I love Stacey,” I said, answering what I understood to be the question—was it a reproach?—embedded in his speech. And I almost believed it. I had convinced myself that the tender regard I had for Stacey was far more enduring than the usual hormonal fever, and indeed my affection for her has acquired depth and patina over the years. I was about to say she’s my best friend—at any rate she’s my second-best friend. That she is not the object of my desire incarnate does not invalidate our partnership. Most of the parents we see at our daughters’ school are divorced. Sometimes I think the Japanese have it right, arranging their marriages like corporate mergers, without reference to the poets or the moon.

Looking at my father that night in the smoky den, I realized with a shock that after my long flight and all my fantasies of nobler parentage I still wanted him to be proud of me. Some part of me felt fraudulent, and yet for the first time in many years I felt almost comfortable in my parents’ home.

I wondered if anyone was ever at ease with Stacey’s father. After dinner one evening, on a long weekend at the family home on Nantucket, he invited me out to the porch for a brandy. The dreaded moment of inquisition was suddenly upon me. We sat down in rocking chairs on the big porch, the brightly lit windows of the gray shingled house glowing behind us, the ocean audible but invisible out beyond the white beach.

When he finally spoke he said, “This has been Stacey’s summer home since she was born.”

“It’s a beautiful place, sir,” I said.

“Stacey tells me you’re planning to ask your friend William Savage to be best man.”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“I know his father. Very shrewd businessman, and I gather young William has done well in his way.”

I nodded.

“Quite the unconventional character, I’m told.” He took a long sip of brandy. “That in itself doesn’t concern me. However, I’ve learned that he has a drug conviction in California.”

His intelligence was correct. Two years after his arrest in New York Will was stopped and searched by the state police in Sausalito. “It was a misdemeanor,” I noted.

“Be that as it may, I sit on the bench of the second-highest court in the land. How do you think it would look if my son-in-law’s best man had been convicted on narcotics charges?”

“He’s my best friend,” I said firmly.

“I’m not asking you to bar him from the wedding. But I don’t think it would be appropriate for him to assume an official role. I know Stacey’s brother Charlie would be happy to do the honors. In that way you might avoid offending your friend. If you wish you can always lay it at my doorstep. I’d like you to think hard about this, Patrick.”

If there was another option, I didn’t hear it in his tone. But I could hardly sleep that night or the next, wondering how to accommodate my divergent loyalties. Though the idea of defying the judge was daunting, Will
was
my best friend. And I had just resolved to tell Carson Colchester, respectfully, to fuck himself when a letter arrived from Will—a rare, almost unheard-of event—rendered in a nearly indecipherable scrawl:

However much it angered me, the letter provided the solution to my dilemma. Feeling as he did, Will could hardly expect to be my best man. As for his concerns and reservations, I knew perfectly well what I wanted, thank you very much.

But I had already caught a glimpse of the demands that would be placed on me as a son-in-law. And in a rebellious frame of mind that Will might have approved I impulsively asked Aaron to serve as my best man. I was so pleased with this gambit that I forgot, until after I had asked him, that my best man was dating Will’s wife.

In an unofficial capacity, Will did attend my wedding and even came to the rehearsal dinner at the Colchester house in Marblehead. Standing on the front steps with Stacey’s father, I watched Will roll up the gravel driveway in a vintage maroon-and-cream Rolls. Having fortified the judge with tales of Will’s business prowess and wealth in hopes of ameliorating his actual presence, I still hoped Will would seduce the company, charm them all into dancing to his own beat.

My father-in-law, however, was amused by neither the music that blared from Will’s chauffeured car nor the purple smoking jacket and jeans he’d selected for the occasion.

“I know your father,” the judge said, after I had performed the introduction.

Will shook his hand. “I won’t hold it against you.”

“That’s quite an outfit you’ve got on.”

“Tell me, Judge,” Will countered. “What constituency do you dress for?”

“I beg your pardon?” A dark cloud passed over Judge Colchester’s craggy features.

“You probably dress for your peers,” Will explained. “I don’t imagine
you’re wearing that penguin suit sheerly out of considerations of comfort. It’s kind of a father-of-the-bride uniform in your circles. And I expect you wear black robes in court. Very appropriate for your role—dignity of the bench and so forth. We all have our roles, don’t we?”

“And how exactly would you define
yours?
”

“I have many roles,” Will said, but the arrival of several Colchester cousins thankfully abbreviated this discussion.

When I caught up with him a few minutes later he was in the library pretending to examine the books. I wanted to warn him that Taleesha was here with Aaron, but I was distracted by the sight of the white powder in his black mustache.

“Jesus, Will. Are you
trying
to ruin my wedding?” After our long, dark night in Memphis, I had found buyers for several pieces of Will’s empire, and now I suspected that he was going to make me pay for helping him out when he was down.

“I’m here to celebrate your nuptials,” he said, hoisting his glass.

“For God’s sake,” I said, reaching up to brush away the coke, or whatever. “The governor’s here, and the attorney general.”

“You must be very proud, Dink.”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “The state police come with them, goddamnit. I told you on the phone—no drugs. Stacey’s dad’s a judge—”

“You still hear from that old bastard over in London,” he asked abruptly. “That lecherous piece of right-wing shit? You tell him his happy days are numbered ’cause I’m coming to get him. I got a plan’s gonna put him flat out of bidness.”

Beyond the door I saw my own parents hovering, clutching their drinks with the fervor of those who wouldn’t otherwise know what to do with their hands. I waved for them to join us, then turned back to Will. “Try to do a little better with my parents than you did with the judge.”

Suddenly it seemed amazing to me that they’d never met. At some other point in the history of our friendship, I might have been more nervous about Will’s impression of my parents; now I could only wonder what they would make of him—a wild-eyed, badly dressed hippie. But Will was on his best behavior, immediately shedding his anger and arrogance.

My father clapped both hands over Will’s, one successful businessman to another. “Will, a real pleasure,” he said.

“Likewise, Mr. Keane.” Will bowed deeply. “And Mrs. Keane—an honor and a pleasure. Patrick’s told me so much about you.” He kissed her hand, then hugged her. In his bearish embrace, my mother giggled with delight.

“I see you both have a cocktail,” he said after releasing her. “And I can’t help noticing that I’ve finished mine. Perhaps you’d be so good as to accompany me while I freshen it.” When I left them at the bar, Will and my father were discussing Caribbean real estate.

I tended to the new arrivals, most notably Lollie Baker, now a celebrated playwright. I was touched that she’d come. I hadn’t seen her in more than a year, and I was afraid that her new celebrity would keep her away.

“I take it as a flagrant insult, Patrick, that you’d think for a minute I might miss this. Do they by any chance have a bar around here? No, wait.” She slapped a hand on my arm. “Can we take a little walk or something?”

We slipped around the back of the house and walked down the lawn to the seawall. The water was a steely gray, and Lollie held her hand over her short coif to keep it from rising in the salty wind. She put her other arm around me and we both looked out over the waves, hypnotized by the vanishing point of the horizon.

“I was so goddamn happy to get your invitation. I was afraid you hadn’t forgiven me for the play.”

“Is that your idea of an apology?”

I had my season of disapproval after seeing Lollie’s second play, which involves a love triangle: a salty actress from New Orleans, a brilliant Jim Morrison-like rock star and a repressed Irish-Catholic banker. Lollie had managed to absent herself from the matinee performance I attended; and on a hunch, I hadn’t asked Stacey along. When the lights came up I cowered in my seat, certain that I would be pointed out and jeered. But in the end it seemed there were only three people in the world who recognized me as the model for Ian Rourke, the sexually confused banker who hangs himself at the end of the play.

“Just say you forgive me.”

“No one would have ever guessed you were a fan of Tennessee Williams,” I said, looking out over the water.

Lollie leaned into me, thrusting her breasts authoritatively into my ribs. “I just want you to know,” she said, “my offer still stands. No, wait, hear me out. If you’re ever going to have second thoughts they’ll come in the next twenty hours or so. And I’m ready to stand in.” From her capacious and cluttered purse she removed two airline tickets. “Round-trip to Paris, first-class, in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Keane. Say the word and we’re out of here.”

“It’s tempting,” I said. “A lifetime of watching my weaknesses revealed onstage.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Patrick. Marriages don’t last a lifetime anymore.”

“Mine will.”

“You don’t have to tell me now. Offer good right up to the altar. My friend Sissie told me that’s when you know, when you’re walking down the aisle. That’s when you suddenly realize you’re making a hideous mistake. She should know, she’s on her fourth husband.”

I hugged her. Amazed at her offer, I could think of no way to adequately express my gratitude. “Am I doing a terrible thing,” I asked, whispering into her hair.

She shrugged. “That’s what I’m asking you to consider. Try to be honest with yourself, even if you can’t be a hundred percent honest with her.” Freeing herself, she handed me the tickets. “Your wedding present, if you go through with it. And don’t forget, I was almost your first. Now, where can I get a damn drink?”

After showing Lollie to the bar, I saw Will through the bay window. Out on the lawn, Taleesha was restraining him as he lunged toward Aaron, who was holding a hand to his cheek. Having brooded about this possibility for weeks, I started toward the door, but I was intercepted by Stacey, whose obvious distress turned out to be related to a last-minute seating crisis.