Halcyon, p.10
Halcyon, page 10
—
I was slow to recognize the voice that called out my name. I turned in its direction, toward a woman behind me on the vacant sidewalk. She stood among the tossed cups and pitched signs from the morning’s demonstration. “What are you doing here?” she asked as though I were a social inferior who’d snuck unwanted into a party; it was her characteristic superiority that placed her so firmly in my mind despite the several years since I had last seen Annette Harlow.
She and I had both lost the people we’d come here with. In my case, that was Boose and Ableson, though I understood he was somewhere inside the records office. For Annette, that was her husband and Ginny.
“You came with Ginny?” I asked.
“Lucas invited her. He thought it might take her mind off things.” Annette walked beside me wearing flats and a skirt. She swished its hem back and forth across her shins in a playful, schoolgirlish way between steps, and like a schoolgirl she began to gossip. “Or did you not hear?”
“I’m sorry, hear what?”
“Oh, well, I just assumed you knew. She and Daryl split up a few weeks ago.”
Annette arched a finely plucked eyebrow as I succumbed to a grin; this, my reaction, she would surely report to Ginny, and she would surely misinterpret it too. Perhaps they would decide I was pleased Ginny was again available because I still harbored a hope, no matter how remote, that we might reconcile; or perhaps she and Ginny would decide that I was still bitter, and my little grin revealed how I relished Ginny’s failed romance. Neither of these interpretations would be correct. The source of my amusement was far simpler; it was a single memory, that of poor hapless Daryl turning pirouettes at the Four Seasons bar while he searched the crowd for Ginny.
I didn’t need Annette to explain the reason for their breakup. Daryl hadn’t stood a chance with Ginny—just as I hadn’t stood a chance with her. If I recalled Daryl being a bit of a dope, what did that say about me? He hadn’t married Ginny. I had. Beautiful, intelligent, driven, Ginny could only respect a man who was at least her equal. Except give-and-take wasn’t in her nature. She also needed to dominate a relationship. The type of man she needed—meaning the type of accomplished man she could respect—wasn’t one who would be so dominated. She could only dominate her inferiors: men like Daryl; men like me. When we could no longer hide our weaknesses from her, she came to resent us for them. Hers was a paradox. Annette was familiar with it, as was I. When we were newlyweds in Philadelphia, Annette and Lucas were frequent houseguests, visiting the city to escape provincial life at Gettysburg College. Over the course of those years—when Lucas’s first book had become a sensation and his associate professorship had become a chaired professorship—I had failed to even finish my dissertation. I wasn’t bringing in an income, so Ginny eventually quit her work at the public defender’s office, signing on to a firm that specialized in forensic accounting applied to matrimonial law. Her higher hourly rate eased the strain on our finances but the diminished meaning she found in her career only heightened the strain on our marriage. When I finally did finish my dissertation, the plan had been to settle where I could find an academic job. Rural Virginia wasn’t what Ginny had in mind. Which led to my lashing out with a single yet clichéd indiscretion with my undergraduate research assistant. It wasn’t so much an affair as a cry for help. I threw myself on the floor to see whether Ginny would pick me up. When she found the hotel room receipts and text messages, she’d called me a loser instead.
I told Annette that I was sorry to hear about Daryl and Ginny going their separate ways. She nodded, as if only to acknowledge that she’d heard my answer and would take it under advisement. “And who did you come down here with?” she asked, changing the subject.
Before I could answer, we turned the sidewalk’s corner and bumped into Ginny. She was delighted to find Annette, but equally perplexed to discover the two of us walking together. After a quick hello, Ginny repeated Annette’s question, wondering who I’d traveled here with. When I explained that I’d come along with Robert Ableson and his daughter, Ginny was incredulous. “He’s here?”
“Yes, but I can’t seem to find—”
When Annette interjected “Isn’t that your landlord?” Ginny launched into an aria of Ableson’s professional accomplishments. Some of which—like his work on the Equal Rights Amendment and his successful defense of Roe v. Wade in the lower courts—were familiar to me. Others—like his work in Roe v. Roe representing a gay father who because of his sexual orientation was denied custody of his son, and his work in Bottoms v. Bottoms, representing a gay mother who was similarly denied child custody—I had never heard of before. His opinions were taught widely, Ginny explained. He could formidably argue any side of a case. He was one of the only jurists ever vetted by presidents of both parties for a nomination to the D.C. Court of Appeals (although he had mysteriously removed his name from consideration on each occasion). Eventually, he cashed out for the private sector, working for defense and healthcare companies by the end of his career. Still, Ginny’s admiration knew no bounds. It occurred to me as I listened to her that this was the level of respect she would need to have for any man she could possibly hope to love—clearly, I had never stood a chance.
Ginny’s summary of Ableson’s achievements ran out of steam, and so I observed, “Aren’t you leaving something out?” She glanced back at me, momentarily forgetful, before adding, “Oh yes, and he’s recently participated in that project with the Lazarus mice. He’s one of the people they brought back.”
I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Ginny asked.
I said, “He’s risen from the dead but in your mind this is the least of his achievements.” She shrugged, and then explained to Annette how she and Lucas had arranged to meet at the same café where I’d eaten breakfast. Believing that Ableson and Boose might search for me there, I decided to tag along.
When we arrived at the café, it was mostly empty. Lucas was waiting for us inside, brooding alone at a table in the back. With a wooden stirrer he poked at the dregs in his cup. Unlike Annette and Ginny, he seemed content to keep to himself. He simply nodded and then said my name not so much as a greeting but as an acknowledgment of my presence. The three of us joined Lucas and we fell into a long silence. As if to escape it, Annette offered to buy another round of coffee. Ginny waited until she left to mention “Martin is here with Robert Ableson.”
“I’d heard,” said Lucas. He turned to me, adding, “And I suppose it’s only a coincidence that he’s come today?” Lucas tilted his chair onto its back two legs. “I suppose you’re going to try to convince me that you didn’t bring him here to sabotage our petition…to undermine my work?” He dropped his chair down loudly onto four legs, and if on occasion I ever forgot that Lucas, erudite professor that he was, had once played nose tackle for Ole Miss, the smacking force with which his chair hit the ground served as a reminder. Leaning forward, with his ample chest hovering halfway across the table, he said, “I know you don’t support what I’m doing. But I have always been supportive of you. Even when I had no reason to be. Even now, with your inherently problematic Shelby Foote project. And how do you thank me? You bring Robert Ableson here.”
Before I could answer, Annette returned with our coffees. She placed one in front of each of us along with a pile of creamers and sweeteners in the center of the table. “What are you all talking about?” she asked, while Lucas extended our standoff with an icy stare, refusing to look anywhere but at me.
“Robert Ableson,” said Ginny.
Annette, recognizing her husband’s frustration, muttered, “Seems he’s on everyone’s mind.”
Then the door to the café opened. It was Boose. She made a quick inspection and, upon finding me, leaned back outside. “He’s in here!” she shouted down the sidewalk. Ableson jogged up behind her. The two of them approached our table.
At the sight of Ableson, I instinctively stood.
So did Ginny. Followed by Annette. And, reluctantly, Lucas.
“We checked almost every café and diner,” said an exasperated Boose. I proceeded to make a round of introductions, starting with Annette followed by Ginny. But before I could go further, Ableson said, “You’re Lucas Harlow. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.” Ableson’s hand was extended. Lucas took it, and as he did Ableson added, “Congratulations on the petition.” The two shook but on instinct Lucas angled his body awkwardly to the side, so he faced Ableson in profile, in much the same way a duelist turns himself in profile to offer less of a target to his opponent. Ableson added, “Your remarks today were very”—and there was a pause, a beat passed, as Ableson uncharacteristically struggled for a word, settling on “effective.”
Lucas glanced at me, and then back at Ableson. “Thank you.”
Annette offered to grab two more cups of coffee, while Ginny pulled out her chair, making room for us to combine our table with an empty one, so we six might sit together. Ableson declined, noting the length of the drive back to Halcyon and his desire to return home in time for dinner with his wife. Although relieved to avoid an awkward confrontation between Lucas and Ableson, I knew Ginny was disappointed. In consolation to her, I mentioned that she’d studied some of Ableson’s cases in law school.
“Is that so?” he answered. “Which ones?”
Ginny recited a few of the cases she’d already mentioned as well as a few others I’d never heard of before. Ableson nodded appreciatively in much the same way a musician might to a fan who can tick off a list of his B-side tracks. “I’d offer you my business card,” said Ableson, “but I’m afraid I no longer carry one.” His smile was decorous and it sufficiently disarmed Ginny so that she was soon rifling through her handbag for a business card of her own, which she handed to Ableson. He read it carefully and took the opportunity to remark how impressive it was that someone as young as her was already a partner at so prestigious a law firm.
We were by the door as Ginny and Ableson finished their goodbyes. I had thought for a moment she might never let us leave and would follow us all the way out to the car and said as much to Ableson as we searched for where we’d parked.
“Oh, don’t be a bad sport,” Ableson said, still turning Ginny’s business card over in his fingers. “Your ex-wife is lovely. It’s to your credit that you were once married to her.” I chose not to acknowledge the remark, or its obverse, which was that it was to my discredit we’d divorced. We piled into my Volvo. Ableson sat in the passenger seat and Boose in the backseat. Inch by inch the sun descended across the windshield as we navigated out of Richmond, toward the interstate. The city’s tallest buildings fragmented our view, their windows winking back at us through the hazed light. We crossed the inky James River and beneath us a barge ambled sleepily along on its current. Not much was said, until Ableson observed, “That Lucas Harlow, he doesn’t much like me, does he?”
It was odd to hear Ableson speak in terms of who “liked” or “disliked” him. Had such considerations ever bothered him when as a much younger man he’d argued the controversial cases that had made his name? I couldn’t say, so only offered him what I knew about Lucas Harlow, which included my history with him and Lucas’s unsubstantiated belief that Ableson planned to undermine his petition.
“What exactly do you mean?” Ableson asked.
I was staring straight ahead, into the torrent of oncoming traffic, as I explained the accusation Lucas had leveled against me that afternoon in the café. “He thinks I brought you to the demonstration to sabotage his petition.” Ableson grew silent. The only sound was the swoosh of cars passing in the opposite direction. I glanced into the rearview mirror. Boose was asleep.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said.
“I know.”
“You didn’t bring me. I’m the one who brought you.”
“Right…,” I said, feeling as if Ableson and I might be speaking past one another. “What upset him was not who brought who, but that you would try to sabotage his efforts…It’s absurd.”
“What’s so absurd about it?” he asked. “Of course I’m not in favor of that misguided petition. Those kids don’t understand what they’re protesting. They want to rewrite history, but they couldn’t tell you what side Longstreet, Meade, Pickett, or Armistead fought for. They want to tear up that battlefield. They want to trash the old monuments and replace them with something new despite having no knowledge of what happened on that ground. Their certainty about the present infects their understanding of the past. From the records office, I could hear them outside chanting ‘Burn, baby, burn’…A bunch of ridiculous pyromaniacs; tell me, what is it that they want to burn?”
“What were you doing in the records office?”
“Helping Susan.”
“Helping her with what?”
“Helping her avoid embarrassment. She’s a public official. What do you think would happen if she certified those signatures? We’re in Virginia. The validity of the petition would immediately come under scrutiny. Public scrutiny. Do you think she’d survive as state registrar? It’d cost Susan her job.”
“But the petition? What happens to all those signatures?”
Overwhelmed by his own cleverness, Ableson’s eyes slitted and his lips drew back from his teeth. He explained how the petition form contained a variety of contradictory instructions. The signature line, for instance, read “Sign here in block letters.” Did this require a signature, or your name written in print? The instruction could be interpreted in either way. Also, the address provided by each signatory needed to match the address on file at the Department of Elections, which only updated their voter rolls annually. This meant that if a single person on the petition had moved in the past year state authorities could elect to classify the entire sheet of signatures as fraudulent. Ableson went on at length about the ins and outs of this single form, diagramming it as though he were a professor and it were a page torn from a great work of literature.
“How do you know so much about this?” I asked rather naively.
“Well…I designed the form.” We were now far from the city. He stared out his window into the impenetrable darkness. It seemed that from memory he was reconstructing the countryside as it passed by. Absently, he continued, “Someone else had designed the version before mine, and someone else the version before that. Interpretation is everything, it’s not the instructions on the form that count but how you interpret them, so that nothing changes around here unless the powers that be want it changed—that’s the point. Susan needed a little reminder of that; otherwise, she was liable to get herself in a heap of trouble.”
“Lucas was right then?”
“No,” said Ableson, turning away from his window. “Nobody sabotaged your friend’s petition. He accomplished that on his own. He’s a history teacher. Why doesn’t he focus on teaching history instead of trying to destroy it?” Ableson pointed out that I seemed bothered, which perhaps I did. This was hardly fair, and I found myself increasingly unsettled as he regurgitated many of my own arguments back to me, arguments about the compromises hardwired into American life, whether they be the division between church and state; or the essential tension between federalism and republicanism; or even the format of a petition drawn up by a records office in Virginia. The more he spoke, the more eloquent he became, expounding at length about the dangers of absolutism. He even went so far as to quote back to me Shelby Foote, who said that the Civil War was “a failure on our part to find a way not to fight that war. It was because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise…” But was Ableson’s genius and the genius of this country really compromise? Compromise wasn’t what would preserve the Virginia Monument at Gettysburg. Compromise wasn’t what had undermined Lucas Harlow and the petitioners with their chants of “burn, baby, burn.” No, I had to give it another word. I had to call it something else…I had to call it cheating.
Ableson had cheated them. This was the conclusion I arrived at, shaken as we turned off the interstate and onto the unmarked, weed-fringed roads that ran the last few miles toward Halcyon. Boose was awake now in the backseat and she was the first to comment on the presence of Dr. Shields’s car in the driveway. He should have left early that morning, but he remained there. Boose, growing concerned, wondered why. Recalling our dinner from the night before and how Mary had excused herself early, I suspected that I knew why. I also felt certain of the news that awaited Boose and Ableson when they entered the house. Something had happened. Some lapse in her health. Mary could no longer keep her secret.
I parked the car. Boose and Ableson stepped onto the driveway. They invited me inside. None of us had eaten dinner and I had every reason to join them. But I didn’t. Boose said goodnight and walked up to the front door, but Ableson lingered. He leaned forward and spoke to me through the car’s open window, now holding the rim of it in both hands as though he thought to hold the car motionless before it could begin to move, saying what it seemed he’d been thinking off and on for the entirety of our drive: “I’m sorry if you’re upset with me.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Just tired.”
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Because I wouldn’t want you ever to feel as though I’d been dishonest with you.” From over his shoulder, I could see Boose standing on the porch fumbling for her key. A silhouette appeared through the vestibule window. It must’ve been Dr. Shields. “So we understand each other?” Ableson asked me.
“Yeah. We understand each other.”
FOUR
DIAGNOSIS
The phone rang itself out. When it started to ring a second time, I rolled over to answer. It was Ginny on the caller ID. The sun was right at the trees, falling onto my bed in dusty strips. It was too early.
