The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter Page B

bric-a-brac that the Judge would never have tolerated.
    “I don’t know,” Mariah mumbles, the lines of exhaustion plain on her stubborn face.
    “Well, if—”
    “I don’t know what to do.” She shakes her head slowly, her gaze onthe white table between us. And this tiny chink in Mariah’s emotional armor offers me a bright, sad insight into the life she leads all day as Howard rides off to far provinces to slay financial dragons for the clients, and the profits, of Goldman Sachs. The pictures on the refrigerator are the fruits of my sister’s frantic efforts yesterday to keep her children busy as she went about the debilitating business of planning, virtually alone, a funeral service for the father she spent four decades trying unsuccessfully to please.
    “I’m so tired,” Mariah declares, a rare admission of weakness. I look away for a moment, not wanting her to see how these three simple words have touched me, not even wanting to acknowledge the commonality. The truth is that Mariah and Addison and I always seem to be exhausted. The scandal that destroyed our father’s career somehow energized him for a new one but left his family debilitated. We children have never quite recovered.
    “You’ve been working hard.”
    “Don’t patronize me, Tal.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, but her eyes flash again, and I know she has been offended by a nuance that was not even there. “You’re not taking me seriously.”
    “I am, but . . .”
    “Take me seriously!”
    My sister is practicing her best glare. The weariness is gone. The confusion is gone. I remember reading in college that social psychologists believe anger is functional, that it builds self-confidence and even creativity. Well, I don’t know about the creative part, but Mariah, angry at me as usual, is suddenly as confident as ever.
    “Okay,” I offer, “okay, I’m sorry.” My sister waits, giving nothing. She wants me to make the move, saying something to show that I am taking her crazy idea seriously. So I formulate a serious question:
    “What can I do to help?” Leaving open the matter of what exactly I am offering to help with.
    Mariah shakes her head, starts to speak, then shrugs. To my surprise, tears begin a slow course down her cheeks.
    “Hey,” I say. I almost reach out to brush them away, then remember the foyer and decide to sit still. “Hey, kid, it’s okay. It is.”
    “No, it isn’t okay,” Mariah sobs, making a fist with her dainty hand and striking the table with considerable force. “I don’t think . . . I don’t think it will ever be okay.”
    “I miss him too,” I say, which is quite possibly a lie, but is also, I hope, the right thing to say.
    Crying openly now, Mariah buries her face in her hands, still shaking her head. And still I dare not touch her.
    “It’s okay,” I say again.
    My sister lifts her head. In her grief and despair, she has attained a truly haunting beauty, as though pain has freed her from mere mortal concerns.
    “Jack Ziegler is a monster,” she says shortly. Well, that at least is true, even if only a fraction of the wicked things the papers say about him ever happened. But it is also true that he has been tried and acquitted at least three times, including once for murder, and, as far as I know, continues to live up in Aspen, Colorado, fabulously wealthy and as safe from the world’s law-enforcement authorities as the Constitution of the United States can make him.
    “Mariah,” I say, still softly, “I don’t think anybody in the family has seen Uncle Jack in more than ten years. Not since . . . well, you know.”
    “That’s not true,” she says tonelessly. “Daddy saw him last week. They had dinner.”
    For a moment, I can think of nothing to say. I find myself wondering how she can know who the Judge saw and when. I almost embarrass myself by raising this question, but Mariah saves me:
    “Daddy told me. I talked to him. To Daddy. He called me two days . . . two days, uh,