The Emperor of Ocean Park (100 page)

Authors: Stephen L. Carter

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BOOK: The Emperor of Ocean Park

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My imaginary law school is not modeled on Yale, where I have taught for two happy decades, and my imaginary city of Elm Harbor is not a thinly disguised New Haven, although the careful reader will notice that the two communities share a few of the same ghosts. None of Misha Garland’s rumbling complaints about his colleagues or students should be taken as representing my opinions of my own colleagues or students, whom I treasure and respect.

My character Oliver Garland, Misha’s father and a former judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, bears no connection whatever with the Honorable Merrick Garland, an actual judge of that very court, who was appointed long after my fictitious Garland family was invented. By that time it was too late to change the family name: they were already alive for me.

I have taken certain liberties with the geography of Martha’s Vineyard, especially the wonderful village of Menemsha, where the shoreline behind the restaurants and shops is not lined with the fishing shacks that Misha investigates, and where I have never met anybody as selfish and unpleasant as the fisherman with whom Misha argues. The view of Oak Bluffs Harbor from the park where Misha and Maxine have their heart-to-heart is actually obscured nowadays by a hideous public bathhouse, but I prefer to remember the beauty of the vista before the monstrosity was built, so it does not exist in this novel. The Edgartown Road, as it nears the airport, is far flatter in reality than it is in my story. My only excuse is that the narrative works better if there are steep hills. The ancient wooden staircase from Seaview Avenue down to the Inkwell would not really be straight across the grass from a house on the south side of Ocean Park, but I needed it there, so I moved it a few hundred yards west of its actual location.

In 1997, the town of Gay Head was officially renamed Aquinnah, but, like Misha Garland and many who love the Island, I find the usage of three decades difficult to overcome. I am sure I will learn to do better with time. In Oak Bluffs, neither Murdick’s Fudge nor the Corner Store would likely be open the week after Thanksgiving, when Misha and Bentley visit them, but I have taken a bit of poetic license to make late autumn on Circuit Avenue a little cheerier in my story than in real life. It is unlikely that Misha could have taken his car back and forth to the Island as often as he does in the story, because reservations for the auto ferry are scarce and the standby possibilities greatly reduced from what they once were. But one is permitted to dream.

Washington, D.C., is also not precisely the same in my novel as it is on the map. In particular, the downtown branch of Brooks Brothers moved a few years ago from its quiet location on L Street to a somewhat fancier and busier corner on Connecticut Avenue. But the new establishment is too close to Dupont Circle for the story to work, so I have kept the store where it sat for so long.

I have altered the history of America’s past two decades in minor but noticeable respects, and I hope that none of the true-life figures whose lives I have rudely shoved around to fit the story will be offended. On the other hand, some things the reader may suspect are inventions are not. The ProLife Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, to take one example, is a real organization, and one of its national officers did indeed say to me, more or less in so many words, “Everybody hates us.”

I am grateful to David Brown, a columnist for
Chess Life
magazine, for teaching me some of the intricacies of the chess problem that forms a part of the book’s motif. I am also grateful to George Jones, Esq., a partner in the law firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, L.L.P., a former member of the American Bar Association’s standing committee on ethics, and president of the District of Columbia bar (2002–3), for guiding me through some thorny questions about the rules governing the lawyer-client relationship, and to Natalie Roche, M.D., FA.C.O.G, at the time on the staff of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City for helpful conversations about medical problems that can occur during childbirth. Any errors that occur in the story, whether in these areas or any others, are mine, or perhaps my characters’.

And, indeed, some of the characters do make embarrassing mistakes. Misha Garland incorrectly states the law regarding cooperation with federal investigators in his argument with Agents Foreman and McDermott, but the reader should remember that criminal law is not his area of expertise. Marc Hadley, in his enthusiasm for his own ideas, misstates both the facts and the holding of the Supreme Court’s decision in
Griswold v. Connecticut,
which had nothing to do with physicians or unmarried women. (He may be thinking of
Eisenstadt v. Baird,
or he may, as so often, be making it up as he goes along.) Lionel “Sweet Nellie” Eldridge always inflates his career scoring average
from the National Basketball Association, rounding his points per game upward, from 18.6 to 19. Still, as Pony Eldridge, his wife and statistician, likes to say, this is permissible license, because his career scoring average would have been 19.5, had he not come back bravely after his injury for that last disastrous season—this is Pony talking—trying to reach ten thousand career points before retiring.

Most chess writers attribute the quotation used as the epigraph to this book to Siegbert Tarrasch, but it is sometimes said to have originated with the former world champion Alexander Alekhine. Different sources provide various renderings of the line from Felix Frankfurter quoted by Wallace Wainwright. I have chosen what seems to me the most authoritative, the late Bernard Schwartz’s influential 1996 book
Decision: How the Supreme Court Decides Cases.
Professor Schwartz confirmed the quotation with a law clerk who was present when the statement was made.

Finally, I must confess that not every line in this book is my own creation. The precise wording of Bentley’s announcement that he is riding on a boat was actually devised not by Misha Garland’s son but by my own. Rob Saltpeter’s
bon mot
about the United States as a Christian nation I first heard from the thoughtful David Bleich, who is both a rabbi and a law professor. The rules to the courtroom polka are not my own invention, nor are they Misha Garland’s; they draw on a dim memory from my childhood, a joke about President Lyndon Johnson dancing the “press-conference polka.” (I would be grateful to any reader who might direct me to the original source.) And Dana Worth’s zinger about Bonnie Ziffren was actually coined, in a similar context, by my late Yale colleague Leon Lipson, whose subtlety, wit, and sheer joy in knowledge will always inspire but can never be replaced.

I must acknowledge my gratitude to my literary agent, Lynn Nesbit, who waited many patient years for me to finish the manuscript I kept promising next month. Lynn encouraged me through my frequent blocks and never tried to make me rush. The novel has benefitted immeasurably from the graceful and sympathetic editing of Robin Desser at Knopf, and from the thoughtful comments of the small circle of intimates who read the manuscript prior to publication.

Finally, as always, I have no adequate words to express my gratitude to my family: my children, Leah and Andrew, with whom I missed many a Saturday afternoon of fun because “Daddy has to write”; their great-aunt Maria Reid, who put up with my ignoring her for hours as I sat, chained to my computer, in my study; and, most of all, to my wife, Enola Ard, without whose steadfast love, clear-eyed readings, gentle cajoling, and spiritual guidance this novel could never have been completed. May God bless you all.

May 2001

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught since 1982. He is the author of seven acclaimed nonfiction books, including
The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion
and
Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy.
He and his family live near New Haven, Connecticut.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carter, Stephen L., [date]
The emperor of Ocean Park / Stephen L. Carter—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-4000-4010-0
1. African American college teachers—Fiction. 2. Martha’s Vineyard (Mass.)—Fiction. 3. African American families—Fiction. 4. African American judges—Fiction. 5. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 6. Fathers—Death—Fiction. 7. Law teachers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.A78 E4 2002
813’.6—dc21

2001038227

v3.0

Table of Contents

Other Books by This Author

Dedication

Prologue: The Vineyard House

Part 1 - Nowotny Interference