The Final Judgment (18 page)

Alone in her room, Caroline did not call Masters Hill. She did not speak to anyone. On the bed beside her was the number of the Cahill Knife Company. In what felt like a final loss of will, Caroline reached for the phone. “Cahill,” the operator said. Caroline read the name she had written, asked for the clerk. When she answered, Caroline sounded quite calm. “This is Caroline Masters. You may remember I called the other day. About a serial number on a Cahill knife.” A moment’s silence. Coolly, the clerk told her, “Like I thought, we can’t tell you where we shipped it. Not who bought it, or even who sold it to them.” “I understand.” Caroline paused. “You thought you might know the year it was made.”

“Yes.” The voice was more patient now. “I can tell you that much.” A brief shuffling of papers, muffled by the phone. “Here it is. From what I’ve written down, it was made in 1964. Early in the year.” Caroline kept her voice steady. “Nineteen sixty-four.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Thank you,” Caroline said politely, and put the phone down. With an odd detachment, she held her hands in front of her and saw that they were shaking.

When Nicole Masters proposed to take her to Martha’s Vineyard three weeks earlier than planned, Caroline had been surprised.

“It will be the two of us,” her mother said with a smile. “A little time, perhaps, before we exile you to boarding school.”

Caroline adored her father and would miss him. But she loved the house at Eel Pond, the days spent sailing in the Crosby catboat her father had bought the summer before. And her mother’s excitement pleased her. Nicole was often distant, her moods so mutable that Caroline was never quite sure how her mother felt about her, or about Channing himself: as she moved toward young womanhood, Caroline had become preternaturally sensitive to the growing silences between her parents, divining some intricate scheme of cause and effect—in her father’s affection for her, Caroline felt her mother’s withdrawal.

To Caroline, the signs of this withdrawal were, as so often with her mother, unspoken. Her occasional trips with Channing to New York City—which had seemed Nicole’s greatest pleasure—no longer occurred, though Caroline did not know why. Nicole’s response was to take less interest in their home and village. She spent long days in her room; with the other women of their class—e wives of lawyers or doctors or bankers—Nicole maintained a polite acquaintance, the by-product of their husbands’ prominence, which now lacked all pretense of intimacy. This spring, Caroline had noticed that her mother, who loved small things of

beauty, no longer planted the bright flowers she once maintained in the rear garden. With instinctive caution, Caroline did not ask her why. The trip to Martha’s Vineyard happened suddenly. The three of them were at the dinner table; Caroline’s father was describing, as if to Caroline alone, how his grandfather had come to have their summer home pulled by oxen to Eel Pond. Across from her husband, Nicole listened with a politeness so unvarying that Caroline could feel the minutes passing in her mother’s mind. As if to compensate, Caroline said to her father, “I can’t wait to go back. When will we?” Her father smiled. “July. Only a month now.”

“Perhaps you can go sooner.” Her mother had not spoken for some time; as Nicole turned to her, Caroline felt surprise. “I may be able to discard my many obligations, Caroline, and leave early. With your father’s consent, of course.” This cool touch of irony made Caroline glance at Channing. But his fathomless gaze was fixed on Nicole. Her look at him was steady; perhaps only Caroline would have felt this as a challenge. In her own discomfort, Caroline said to Channing, “Do you think we could, Father? I could sail the new boat.” For another moment, Channing considered his wife. Then he turned to Caroline with a small, reflective smile. “Of course, Caroline. It was rather a long winter. For both of you.” Watching him, Caroline realized that the thought of having Nicole to herself, away from here, felt like desertion and yet came as a relief. And that her father knew all this. They left one day after Caroline finished school. They stopped in Boston, bought some summer dresses, had cocktails and dinner at the Ritz-Carlton. The next day, eyes alight, Nicole presented Caroline with a gold bracelet and her first set of expensive earrings. “We’ve become so provincial,” Nicole said lightly, “that we’re both at risk of becoming like the heroines of an English Gothic novel, so

earnest and unadorned that no one will read our pages. A tragedy for us and the world alike.” By the time they got to Martha’s Vineyard, the trip had begun to seem like an escapade, a high-spirited rebellion against a dreariness that only her mother felt. But Caroline was happy to sustain the mood. One afternoon, they played tennis at the Edgartown Yacht Club and then had dinner at that bastion of Republicanism and plaid pants; after much laughter and perhaps too much champagne, Nicole had wondered aloud why Barry Goldwater had so much compassion for Southern blacks that he would not burden them with the difficulty of voting. If a few heads had turned, Nicole did not care. “These people,” she murmured on leaving, “will forever wonder why everyone can’t be more like them, while I will forever wonder why they wear such foolish clothes.” But beneath this, her mother’s feelings were more serious. The island was alive with civil rights ferment—church services, rallies, speeches by young summer residents now working in the South. The next Sunday, a somber Nicole took Caroline to a memorial service for Medgar Evers, the murdered civil rights leader. Though her mother had said nothing, Caroline could not help but wonder whether she was thinking of her own family. When she touched her mother’s hand, Nicole squeezed Caroline’s fingertips. Yet much of their time was light, almost airy. When they went to the movies, Nicole chose a Taylor-Burton romance over The Longest Day, just as she chose a Beatles album for the record collection. When they played croquet on the lawn above Nantucket Sound, Nicole poured another glass of wine and began changing the rules: their contest became so antic, the antithesis of Channing’s geometric game, that Nicole and Caroline forfeited competition to laughter and shared the rest of the wine. But Nicole followed the presidential race with an intensity that brooked no humor: the night the Republican convention shouted down Nelson Rockefeller, she shook her head and murmured, “Frightening. And to think that last year there was Kennedy.” Then,

a short time later, she said, “Now Americans will have their own racist war.”

“What do you mean?”

“Vietnam. So murderous and yet so provincial—to learn nothing from the one thing the French truly have to teach: ethnocentrism.” To Caroline, it was like discovering a stranger, mordant and despairing, who lived below the shifting surface of her mother’s moods. Caroline found this sudden window on her mother’s soul both exciting and disturbing, as if discerning the distance that Nicole had moved from them, her family, beneath the cover of her silence. Not once in their first days together did Nicole refer to her husband. It was this realization that most unsettled Caroline. But it did not truly strike her until the night the telephone rang and, as Nicole answered it, Caroline knew that the call was not from Channing Masters. Perhaps it was a rise in her mother’s voice, the slightest change in her slender body, now catlike in its stillness. “Who was that?” Caroline asked. They sat ‘on the screened porch as sunset spread across the water. Nicole put down her wineglass; the veiled, considering look she gave Caroline seemed imported from New Hampshire, so different was it from their last few days. “Oh,” she said casually, “a friend—you remember Paul Nethelm. He hopes to see us sometime.”

“All of us?” Caroline asked. A second’s pause, her mother’s look keen, then vanishing with a wave of her hand. I suppose it depends on the time.” Her voice became dry. “But I will give you plenty of notice.” So she knows how I feel, Caroline thought. She was not sure that this was a comfort.

Caroline had disliked Paul Netheim’s smile before she sensed her father’s feelings. There was something about it that Caroline did not care

for—perhaps, she thought now, the way it seemed to linger on her mother. “You’re very tall,” he had said to Caroline. “Like a dancer or an athlete.” It had been the summer before, when Caroline was thirteen. She was not yet used to being taller than Nicole; her breasts had not filled out, and she was afraid of looking too much like her father. Knowing this, her mother had answered, “More like the runway model I could never become,” sparing Caroline the necessity of saying anything. As if in sympathy for Caroline, Channing Masters did not smile. Their family—Channing, Nicole, and Caroline—stood in the entryway of Nerheim’s summer home on Martha’s Vineyard. Caroline felt their presence as the kind of arbitrary social act peculiar to adults: for some reason, Nerheim had asked them here; someone—her mother, Caroline assumed—had accepted; and Caroline could not understand why anyone had bothered. In a vague way she knew that Nerheim was an investment banker from New York; that he had met her parents on the night when Nicole had inveigled a reluctant Channing into a summer dance in Edgartown; and that Nerheim was an acquaintance of John F. Kennedy. But what she sensed most keenly was that this man would never be her father’s friend. They even looked different: Nerheim with his even tan, white tennis sweater, gold-coin watch; Channing with his slacks, plain shirt, comfortable hiking shoes. Even Nerheim’s thin face, mobile eyes, and lively gestures seemed the opposite of Channing’s quiet dignity, his air of watchful judgment. Nicole stood smiling between them, lightly touching Nerheim’s arm. “You were so kind to ask us, Paul. And your ‘country place,’ as you put it, is lovely.” And it was, in a way. They had taken a twisting dirt road through the woods of Chilmark, close to the unseen bluffs of the Atlantic, which opened unexpectedly to an acre of green manicured lawn, fronting a mansion so eccentric that

Caroline found it startling. It was a sprawling, almost gingerbread structure with chimneys, windows, and dormers everywhere, and a glassed-in porch with panes shaped like waves, so that they seemed to flow and ripple across the porch. Nicole contrived to be enchanted. “This is wonderful,” she said. “So many people live as if they’re communing with their ancestors.” Caroline glanced at her father, who was studying Nicole with a faint half smile. “This would drive my ancestors crazy,” Nerheim said, and gave Nicole a smile of complicity that seemed to exclude Channing. “If I even knew who they were. Come, I’ll show you the attic.” Trailing after them, Caroline fell in next to her father. The attic was made of polished teak, shaped like the prow of a ship. In spite of herself, Caroline was impressed. “The original owner hired a shipbuilder and then ran out of money,” Nerheim explained. “It wasn’t finished for years, until I did the rest last summer. A masterpiece of the shipbuilder’s art.”

“Does it float?” Channing inquired mildly. Nerheim gave a short laugh. “Perhaps we’ll see,” he said. “During the next hurricane—”

“But where’s the ballroom?” Nicole interjected. “You, Paul, who seem to like dancing so much.”

“Oh,” he said. I’ll pour some champagne and show yOU.” Glasses in hand, her parents followed Nerheim across the grass to a carefully laid stone path that meandered artfully through the woods. At its end, a clearing suddenly opened to a clay tennis court. They stopped by the net. Surrounded by woods, they could not be seen or heard from the house. Nerheim gave a mock bow. “The ballroom?” Nicole asked. Nerheim smiled. “Of course.” At a dinner served by two silent servants, Nerheim turned the table talk to the opera season in New York, the symphony, the jazz clubs he knew here or there. Nicole listened appreciatively; her questions sent him on knowing tangents, which, Caroline saw, seemed of interest only to her mother. What inquiries Nerheim addressed to her father seemed so studiedly polite that they underscored Channing’s inability to speak to what seemed to engage his wife. To Caroline, Nerheim said almost nothing. “Can I go for a walk?” she asked before dessert. “I’d like to see the ocean from here.”

“Of course,” her father answered, excusing her from Nerheim’s table without glancing at their host. Outside, in the cool of early evening, Caroline breathed deeply. The sun was falling behind the trees. Caroline walked the darkening path through the woods until she reached a fork; she stopped, confused for a moment, and then chose the path which she guessed must lead to water But the woods were thick and gnarled; it was not until she climbed a steep rise, toward a sudden swatch of evening sky, that she found herself on a sheer cliff above the blue endless sweep of the Atlantic. The surprise of it caught her in a moment of vertigo, left her pulse racing. Two hundred feet below her was a sandy beach; the orange sandstone cliff, scarred by wind and rain, was so precipitous that it seemed to drop beneath her feet. Down the face of the cliff, stairs crisscrossed to the bottom; beside them were strewn the skeletal remains of other stairs, destroyed by storms. Caroline sat, gazing across the water. It was strange. She had always viewed the ocean with a respect close to awe, but never with fear. Yet beneath the gray-blue surface of the water she felt the savage roiling of a storm she could not see, save on the ruined cliffside. It was some time before she rose, a little unsteady, and backed away. When she returned, the adults were in the living room, still chatting about opera. Her father glanced up from his chair. “Tired?” he asked pleasantly. To her surprise, Nerheim summoned a look of deep

courtesy for Channing, a smile for Caroline that was close to rueful. “She should at least be bored,” he said. “I’ve been so alone lately that I ramble on about whatever interests me, without a care for my guests. My apologies, Caroline.” Caroline did not know what to say. But her mother’s expression changed, as if this last remark had engaged her more than what had gone before. “What may seem boredom,” she said gently, “is, in Caroline, self-sufficiency. As for us, there is very little opera in Resolve. You are kind to remind us of the larger world.” As he turned to Nicole, Nerheim’s smile became warm; perhaps it was only to Caroline that his humility seemed too self-assured. “Thank you, Nicole. I’m sure Resolve has other charms. Next time—and I hope there will be—I’ll leave room for you to tell me of them.” Nicole’s returning smile was oblique and ambiguous—to Caroline, it could have meant anything, from Of course, all of us know that we’ll never do this again to Please give me a few days to consider what Resolve charms are. As Channing put down his coffee, contemplating his wife, Caroline sensed an unspoken humiliation. “I am kind of tired,” she said to her mother. “If you don’t mind.”