The White Rose (32 page)

The ocean is close now. Oliver turns right at the end of the lane and half-jogs toward it. By this point, he has entirely lost his desire to see the water. The cold assaults him through his inadequate clothing with an icy wind, but he resists turning around. This expedition is all goal now, all mindless attainment. Oliver is too depleted to be really angry. He will merely stamp his way across the sand and insert one boot in the first wave that approaches, then turn and run back the way he came. With luck, he won't remember any of it in the morning.

The road ends in a broken parking lot. Oliver steps onto the edge of the sand and his boot sinks. The effort of motion increases instantly. He can hear his breath in tandem with the waves. The night is unlovely, overcast and dull, the sand and water gray. He moves his arms in an exaggerated pump, like a power walker intent on the finish line, and crosses the beach by the briefest possible route. There is no pleasure for him, and—when the wet moment finally comes—not even any sense of accomplishment, but when he turns around, he is rewarded by the surreal skyline of houses, postmodern and glassy black, arrayed at the edge of the beach as far as the eye can see. No one is home, he understands. In all the Hamptons there is only himself and billions of dollars' worth of vacant real estate. It is the loneliest thing he has ever felt. And it is so cold.

Then, quite suddenly, he is not alone. Headlights flick to life in the distance, far down the road he now faces, coming nearer. Oliver stands uncertainly, and then with growing unease. The car, he now sees, is a police car.

The car stops. A man steps out on the passenger's side.

Oliver lifts a hand in tentative greeting, then walks toward him. “Good evening!” he hears himself call, with false heartiness. “Good morning?”

“May I see some ID?” the humorless cop says.

Oliver reflexively reaches for his back pocket, but there is nothing there. He has not thought to bring his wallet on this ridiculous excursion.

“I left it at the house,” he says, hoping “the house” will, at least, establish his validity.

“What house, sir?” the man says. The “sir” is especially disconcerting. The guy is about Oliver's age, but huskier, with jowls.

“My… a friend's house. On Hedges Lane.” He can't make out the man driving the car. There is a sheen on the windshield. “I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd walk to the ocean. I should have brought a coat!” he says, trying for humor. “My name's Oliver Stern.”

The man leans over and speaks into the open door. Then he straightens again. “Let me have the name of your friend, and the address on Hedges Lane.”

“It's…,” Oliver begins. Then he stops. What would Marian want him to do in this situation? He thinks frantically. The idea that something might come of this, that any complications might ensue from these incredibly stupid circumstances, horrifies him. “Look,” says Oliver, “I'm here for a few days with my friend. I'm willing to give you the information, but can I ask you to be discreet about it?”

The guy gives him an incredulous look. “This isn't a cocktail party. Give me the name and address.”

So Oliver does, cringing. He can't remember Marian's number on Hedges Lane. Sixty-something? Ninety-something? “It's near where they're putting up that colossal house,” he offers, trying to be conversational, but the cop only stares at him and then goes back to the car, and—he can just make out—to the small computer screen on the dashboard. Is it against the law to go for a walk in the Hamptons? Oliver thinks bitterly, arms crossed tightly over his chest. He hates it here. If they let him out, he promises never to return.

“Mr. Stern,” the cop says, “I would like your own address. If you can remember that.”

Oliver bites back his first response, then gives his address. He gives his telephone number, his social security number, his mother's maiden name. He is asked to wait while a phone call is made. A phone call to whom? The FBI?
His mother?

“Please get in the car,” the cop says, and Oliver stares.

“You're kidding. I was just walking!”

“Please get in,” he repeats.

“But… Listen, I just came to see the ocean!”

“Hey!” A voice comes from across the car. Deeper voice. Older voice. Oliver instinctively stops. “Get in the car now.”

“Look,” he says desperately, “I'm not a criminal! I—” He stops, stunned to realize that he has been on the point of saying,
I went to Brown
. Then he is so ashamed of himself that he climbs into the car.

In the backseat there is a cloying smell, borderline offensive. Oliver sits stiffly, his hands on his thighs, trying not to think about what might happen next, how he is going to explain himself to Marian. Freedom Summer scenarios needle away at him, and it takes real effort to allay them: will some rash of beachfront break-ins be laid at his feet? Is there some even more nefarious crime wave under way in the Hamptons for which he has just volunteered himself as a suspect?

The two cops in the front seat murmur, their conversation indistinguishable. Oliver hears beeps from the computer console, static from the radio, and the sounds of the engine. Oliver feels ignored, as if they have moved on to other matters. He does not know how to respond to this, or what to think about his circumstances. He has never been in trouble before. Is he in trouble now?

The car moves. They back up and turn, driving away from the ocean. Neither of the two men in the front seat says a word to Oliver. They go up the road, then left on Hedges Lane. They slow as they near Marian's house, and then the police car turns in, driving over the familiar cobblestones. Oliver feels a surge of buoyancy, then, seeing Marian ahead in the doorway, wrapped in one of Marshall's heavy flannel robes with a phone in one hand, his buoyancy is replaced by abject humiliation. Are they going to deliver him and leave? Are they going to give him a talking to? Are they—oh God—going to give
her
a talking to?

Oliver closes his eyes. He would very nearly prefer arrest, he thinks, to Marian's expression, which—now that he is close enough to see it—is a piteous amalgamation of indignity and dejection.

The passenger-side cop opens his door and walks across the courtyard. Marian clutches her robe at the throat. She nods. She speaks too softly for her words to carry. She nods again. And then it is over. The men barely look at Oliver again as his door is opened and he scrambles out, and they drive off without either apology or explanation, as if he is no longer worth the effort of acknowledgment. Watching them go, Oliver feels his heart drum with rage.

“I was just going for a walk!” he shouts after the car. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

“Oliver,” Marian hisses. “Don't do that. God, I hope there isn't going to be a report.”

Forgetting that he has had the identical thought only minutes before, Oliver yells, “Well, so what, Marian? Maybe that's what we need. What
you
need.”

He is standing outside the threshold. She stands just inside. Cold air rushes past them both into the living room.

“I hate this fucking place,” he goes on. “How can you like it here? How can you relax in a place where you're Ted Bundy if you go for a walk?”

“Come inside,” she says tersely. “Stop shouting.”

“No, seriously. Tell me. What kind of people come all the way out here and never bother to go look at the shore? That doesn't strike you as strange?”

Marian seems to consider her response. “You'd better come in now,” she says quietly. “Or you might find the door locked.”

Oliver, suddenly deflated, looks at his own feet. “I couldn't sleep,” he says, morosely, as if this admission ranks with the most shameful. “I didn't want to wake you up.”

“I wish you had,” she says, stepping back inside and holding open the door. Oliver, at last, walks past her and collapses on one of the couches. The room is gray with light from upstairs and from the kitchen. He is, without warning, exhausted. Finally.

“Oliver,” Marian cries, as if the strain of the past half hour has just caught up with her, too, “what were you thinking?”

He shrugs.

“Did you do it to… Were you trying to push me?”

Oliver looks up. She is sitting across from him, stiff, her knees together. She is absolutely miserable.

“I don't know. I don't think so, but I can't rule it out.”

Marian shakes her head. “Why didn't you say something if you were that unhappy? We could have talked about it.”

“Talked about it! Are you kidding? We've done nothing but talk about it since we met. I've been straightforward with you from the first day, Marian. But here I am, all these months later, sleeping in somebody else's house. In somebody else's bed. With somebody else's
wife
.”

“That may be all I can offer you,” she says carefully. “I never suggested you had to be satisfied with it.”

“Are
you
satisfied?” Even to his own ears, Oliver sounds unnecessarily harsh, almost punishing. “Is this enough for you?”

Marian looks at him. “This? You mean the twenty-year-marriage this? The beautiful home—
two
beautiful homes—this? The thriving career this?” She glares at him. He refuses to answer. “Which part of
this
am I supposed to find deficient, Oliver? I have a hell of a lot to be thankful for. Some might even think that having an affair with the son of my oldest friend is not the most appropriate way to show my gratitude!”

“Marian—”

“No! I know you don't like to hear this, but when you get to my age—”

“Jesus,” says Oliver.

“When you get to my age”—she is gasping now, choking it out—“you see. How little people have. How hard their lives are. How much pain they get handed. And me! I've never gone hungry. I've never been without a home.”

“Marian, what the hell are you talking about? Without a home?”

But she is off, galloping through parts unknown.

“I always had enough. I had teachers who appreciated what I could do, and a husband who let me do it.”

“Let you!” he says scornfully.

“Which wasn't nothing when I was your age, Oliver!” Marian shouts. “And maybe it's never crossed your mind that I might not have been the ideal wife, either. Maybe there were things Marshall wanted that I couldn't give him, and he forgave me for that.”

“Forgave you!” howls Oliver. “This is getting worse and worse! It wasn't his job to forgive you! It was his job to love you and be your partner.”

She shakes her head. The light from the kitchen makes her cheeks glisten. Wet, he sees. She is crying.

“Not true,” says Marian. “Well, true, but not entirely true. You're very young, you know.”

“Fuck you!” he explodes, pushing off the couch and crossing the room so quickly that he arrives even before the awareness of what he has just done. An instant later, though, that arrives, too. “Oh,” says Oliver helplessly, hovering above her. “Oh, no. Oh Marian, I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be sorry,” she says, her voice flat.

“I couldn't sleep,” he says. Useless, pointless.

“No,” agrees Marian, in a falsely bright tone of voice. “Well, I'm going to bed.”

And she leaves him, wavering above the place she is no longer sitting, torn between dragging her back and letting her go but frankly too depleted to do either. Instead, he takes her place on the sofa and pulls a blanket from the armrest to cover himself, though he isn't really cold anymore, and sits, not feeling anything. At the top of the stairs, the bedroom light goes out.

I
n the morning, they are not angry with each other, or not outwardly angry, but they are careful—overly courteous, intent on not touching the bruises of the night just past. Marian makes coffee, Oliver goes to the Sagaponack General Store for the
Times
, and they sit at the kitchen table, reading and sipping and building a wall around what has happened, at least while they can.

Outside, the new day mirrors their shared mood: dank and chilly gray, promising no warmth. Marian retrieves a student's thesis chapter from her bag and begins to read, marking somberly with a fountain pen as she completes each page, her reading glasses slipping down her nose. Oliver itches to reach across the table and nudge them up, but she always beats him to it without once distracting herself from her reading. After the first several times he understands that she is not ignoring him; she has simply been absorbed by something else.

Oliver wishes he could follow her, if not to wherever she is then to some place of his own, some place equally absorbing. Instead, he is jittery, agitated, his unease unsourced and ambient. He wants to get up, stay still, start shouting, but there is no apparent object for his blame. Besides, he has that vaguely ill feeling from having gone without sleep, and he does not trust himself to say anything right now. He turns the pages of the Real Estate section, the Sports section, trying to focus. Marian finishes her chapter and methodically retrieves another project, a draft of her paper for the AHA, and sets it on the table.

“When do you want to go back?” she says suddenly.

Oliver looks at her. “Weren't we…I thought we were staying another night.”

“Oh,” she says carefully. “I have a departmental meeting. I can't get out of it. I'm sure I said so.”

“I don't remember that, Marian.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sure I told you.”

“But you didn't.” He hates this. He hates the way he sounds. Why does he have to sound like this? “It isn't…Marian, I'm so sorry about last night.”

“No, no,” she shakes her head. “No, sweetheart, don't worry. I overreacted. I mean,
they
overreacted.”

She says this, but she does not look at him. She looks past him, out the kitchen door, at the dormant garden.

“We need to vote on job candidates for next year. We're doing the interviews at the AHA. We have about fifty serious candidates for two jobs, and we need to get a shortlist, otherwise we'll never get out of the hotel room. So…”

He notices her left hand, not at rest. It tenses and releases, the knuckles emerging in peaks like a pianist's, the diamond of her engagement ring glinting in the overhead kitchen light. He wants to take that hand and stop it moving, but he seems incapable of making contact.

“We can leave whenever you like,” Oliver hears himself say, and Marian nods and goes back to her paper. She does not leap to her feet and begin packing, tidying, setting things right for departure. She maintains a studied nonchalance, as if she were not really trying to get away from him, but of course she is, Oliver thinks. She is, she is. And this is all his fault!

Forty-five minutes later, she gets up, languid, unhurried. She puts the dishes in the dishwasher, the paper in the recycling bin, then sets about removing all traces of Oliver Stern from the house she shares with her husband. Sheets go in the washer, trash from the bathroom is brought to the kitchen, then bagged and carried outside, a copy of
The New Yorker
with his subscription label, thoughtlessly left on the coffee table, is thoughtfully placed in his bag. From the kitchen table, Oliver watches this subtle choreography with growing dismay, and when Marian emerges in fresh clothing, clothing for the journey, he understands that his inactivity is now officially detaining her. “I'll just get my things,” he says sadly.

“No rush!” she says, with forced cheer.

They drive out on the uncharacteristically empty Route 27, passing the closed farm stands and the self-consciously retro motels, the garden centers with their stock wrapped in burlap and the sad-looking summer restaurants. Oliver sits stiffly in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Leaving the Hamptons, they head for Riverhead and the LIE, and when Oliver sees the first signs for the highway, hunger occurs to him. He is hungry. He would like to stop and eat. And perhaps, at the same time, talk. “I'm so hungry,” he says, floating the concept. “Aren't you hungry?”

“Not really,” says Marian.

“Well, I am. Really hungry. Can we stop?”

She looks briefly at him, trying—and failing—to hide her annoyance. Then she nods and turns off into Riverhead, driving slowly along Main Street and looking for something likely. “How about this?” she asks, meaning the diner.

“Great,” says Oliver enthusiastically.

They pull in and get out of the car. The lot is nearly full—a good sign for the food but a bad one for seating, and indeed when they get inside there are seats available only at the counter, chrome-edged octagons with red leatherette tops. Marian takes one as Oliver hangs up their coats by the door.

“The diner that time forgot,” she says when he returns. “What do you think?”

Oliver looks around. A half century of continuous grease seems to hang about the place. Still, it's cheery and loud, with photos of—Oliver supposes—local celebrities hung above the chrome-backed work area behind the counter. Marian reads the menu. When the waitress stops expectantly at their place, Marian asks for coffee and an omelet. Oliver just asks for coffee.

“I thought you were hungry,” Marian reminds him.

“Hamburger, please,” he says automatically, though he isn't really hungry; he's too sad to be hungry. Just desperate, thinks Oliver, avoiding Marian's eyes. But for what, exactly? “Tell me about your job candidates,” he says. “Do you have any favorites?”

She sighs. “No. To tell you the truth, I haven't given it much thought. I went through the applications once, but nothing's jumped out at me.”

“Why do you have to go to the meeting, then?”

“Because of Carter Hawes. My department head?” She prompts.

“Oh. Yes,” Oliver says, briefly shamed that he hadn't known the name of her boss.

“Carter takes these things very seriously.”

“Choosing which applicants to interview?”

“No,” says Marian with a brief smile. “Who attends the meeting and who skips out.”

“Ah.”

Their coffees land with a little slosh before them. Oliver pours the overflow from his saucer back into the cup, and passes Marian the sugar.

“So I really need to be there. I'm sorry I forgot to mention it.”

He looks up. She does not seem to realize what she has just said, how she has just contradicted herself. A wave of sadness comes over Oliver so swiftly that he is nearly unbalanced on his octagonal stool. It has ended. It is ending, right now, right here. But Marian cares for him too much to say so.

“Marian,” he tries.

“You know,” she rushes on, “it's a circus, the AHA. Everyone wants something—a job or a book contract or a recommendation. What happens to history in the midst of it all? And you'd be amazed how much plagiarism there is. Not the kind you can prove, necessarily—not text, but research. People help themselves to the work of other people, then rewrite the conclusions. They appointed a committee a few years back to look into it, and all they came up with was a statement about paying closer attention. Like we should all stop doing our own research in order to research other people's research?”

Oliver shakes his head. “I'm sorry,” he says.

“On the other hand, everybody's desperate for jobs. The pressure to get hired is astounding. Fifty serious contenders—fifty
serious
contenders, that's not counting the people who merely have Ivy League degrees and three or four years teaching at the post-doc level—how are we supposed to pick a shortlist, let alone a single applicant? It's humbling, you know. If I were coming through now, I'd probably be thrilled with an adjunct position at a South Dakota community college. I'm not saying it's an excuse for plagiarism, though.”

Marian stops. She looks, thinks Oliver, as if she has no idea what to say next. Then the arrival of her omelet saves her.

“This looks good,” Marian says weakly, and begins to eat it with unconvincing enthusiasm.

Oliver watches her. She will not turn to him. He can't see her eyes. What color are her eyes? he thinks. In the future, how will he remember them?

The door of the diner opens, then closes. He imagines the miasma of grease disturbed by the puff of cold air. He removes the bun from his rapidly cooling hamburger and looks around for ketchup, though he cannot be said to truly want that, either. The ketchup is inches from Marian's right hand, and he is about to ask her for it when he sees that she is at last looking at him—eyes
brown
, he thinks fiercely. She's looking past him, really, but close enough. Oliver smiles in vague relief.

Then, quite abruptly, she is on her feet beside her stool. “Oliver,” Marian says, “I need to leave. I don't feel well.” She opens her purse. She takes her wallet out. She puts money on the table, a twenty-dollar bill, far too much, and moves away toward the door. Helpless, Oliver goes after her.

“Are you going to be sick?” he asks. “Don't you want to go to the bathroom?”

“No, no,” Marian says, pulling her coat off the hanger by the door. In her haste it falls to the floor and he reaches down for it, fumbling against her own hand, which is also fumbling.

“What's happened?” he says. He holds the coat for her and she throws an arm into a sleeve and dives against the door.

“I'm fine, I just have to go. Can we go?”

“Well—” he starts to follow. She has her hand on the door, holding it open. She has her other hand on his sleeve. She is, Oliver realizes, actually pulling him outside.

“Wait, Marian,” he says. “I need my coat.”

She lets go with visible reluctance and stands on the top step, her eyes on him, waiting. Dimly, Oliver goes back and reaches up for his coat, and defiantly puts it on right where he stands. At the counter, the waitress is holding the twenty and looking at him. She seems reluctant to question the tip, in case he might change his mind, but he is too confused to explain himself to her. “Sorry!” he says. “Just remembered we were supposed to be somewhere else.”

The waitress nods, relieved, and sticks the bill in her apron, then heads down the counter, away from him. Oliver watches her go to a booth in the back. And then he sees something.

“Oliver, come
on
,” Marian says from the open door, but he does not come on. He moves back into the diner. His coat is on. There is a fine cord of amazing strength drawing him closer and closer to the booth at the end of the diner, which is in a town he has never visited before, where he knows no one, and this is why he cannot understand why he is approaching the person he is approaching, who is a person Oliver has always despised, in spite of the person's being married to Oliver's mother.

Perhaps Henry Rosenthal takes him for a waiter. Perhaps he is as impervious to the notion of running into someone who might know him in the Riverhead Diner as Oliver himself was, only moments ago. Perhaps that is why Henry is here, with a woman clearly not Oliver's mother, just as Oliver himself is here with a woman he should not be seen with. So why is Oliver so stunned by his stepfather's audacity?

He is very close before Henry Rosenthal looks up, and the shock on his stepfather's face is gratifying, but not gratifying enough. No wound Oliver can inflict, nothing he can say will be gratifying enough. Words race through his head and depart. The woman detaches her hand from Henry's and puts it demurely in her lap, but she does not otherwise move.

“Well,” Henry says, and Oliver hates, afresh, the nasal buzz of his stepfather's voice.

“Does she know?” Oliver hears himself say. He means his mother, but regrets the pronoun instantly. Without knowing the first thing about the woman seated before him, he does not want Henry to think he cares in the slightest about her.

“I think so,” says Henry. “If I had to bet, I'd say yes.”

“If you had to
bet
,” Oliver says in sickened wonder.

“Your mother's very smart,” Henry offers, as if in explanation.

The woman in the booth ducks out, swinging long, exquisite blond hair behind her. Even without looking at her directly, Oliver senses her extreme beauty. But his mother is beautiful, too, he thinks frantically. Henry should not be allowed to simply exchange one beautiful woman for a younger one. Henry should not be allowed access to oxygen.

“Were you going to tell her?” Oliver manages to say.

“Of course,” Henry shrugs. “I care for your mother.”

“Oh,
fuck you
,” he says, for the second time in a handful of hours, and for the second time it comes out much louder than expected. In the next booth, hands freeze on the way to mouths. “If you cared for her, you wouldn't be here,” Oliver hisses.

“The situation is complex,” Henry says, offhandedly. “And I don't owe you an explanation, Oliver. Caroline, arguably, but not you.”

“She's your
client
,” Oliver observes. This fact has occurred to him and flown from his mouth in a single, fluid instant, propelled by outrage.

“True. It's not what anyone wanted.”

“My God, you're such a hypocrite! You're whining to the press about how she deserves more money from her husband, and meanwhile you're screwing her.”

“Hey!” Henry says sharply. He rises, as best he can from the cramped booth. Oliver, amazed, understands that he has insulted the honor of his stepfather's mistress. “I am in love with this woman,” Henry pronounces. “I am going to marry this woman.”