Gods of Deception

By David Adams Cleveland

At age ninety-five, Judge Edward Dimock, patriarch of his family and the man who defended accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss in the famous 1950 Cold War “trial of the century,” is writing his memoir at his fabled Catskill retreat, Hermitage, with its glorious Italian Renaissance ceiling. Judge Dimock is consumed with doubts about the troubling secrets he’s kept to himself for over fifty years—secrets that might change both American history and the lives of his entire family. Was his client guilty of spying for Stalin or not? And if guilty, did Hiss’s crimes go far beyond his perjury conviction—a verdict that divided the country for a generation?

​Dimock enlists his grandson, George Altmann, a brilliant Princeton astrophysicist, in the quest for truth. Reluctantly, George finds himself drawn into the web of deceit that has ravaged his family, his curiosity sparked by a string of clues found in the Judge’s unpublished memoir and in nine pencil sketches of accused Soviet agents pinned to an old corkboard in his grandfather’s abandoned office. Even more dismaying, the drawings are by George’s paternal grandfather and namesake, a once-famous painter who covered the Hiss trial as a courtroom artist for the Herald Tribune, only to die in uncertain circumstances in a fall from Woodstock’s Fishkill Bridge on Christmas Eve 1949. Many of the suspected spies also died from ambiguous falls (a KGB specialty) or disappeared behind the Iron Curtain—and were conveniently unable to testify in the Hiss trial.

George begins to realize the immensity of what is at stake: deceptive entanglements that will indeed alter the accepted history of the Cold War—and how he understands his own unhappy Woodstock childhood, growing up in the shadow of a rumored suicide and the infidelities of an alcoholic father, a roadie with The Band.

In Gods of Deception, acclaimed novelist David Adams Cleveland has created a multiverse all its own: a thrilling tale of espionage, a family saga, a stirring love story, and a meditation on time and memory, astrophysics and art, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey into the troubled human heart as well as the past—a past that is ever present, where the gods of deception await our distant call.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781626349193

David Adams Cleveland

David Adams Cleveland is a novelist and art historian. His latest novel, Time's Betrayal, is just out from Fomite Press. A Starred Booklist Review noted that Time's Betrayal, "raises the bar for multi-generational epics . . . the writing is gripping throughout . . . this unforgettable tour de force is well worth the time." Pulitzer prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler called Time's Betrayal, "a vast, rich,endlessly absorbing novel engaging with the great and enduring theme of literary art, the quest for identity." Bruce Olds, two-time Pulitzer nominated author, described Time's Betrayal as a "monumental work . . . in a league of its own and class by itself . . . a large-hearted American epic that deserves the widest possible, most discriminating of readerships." In summer, 2014, his second novel, Love's Attraction, became the top-selling hardback fiction for Barnes & Noble in New England. Fictionalcities.uk included Love's Attraction on its list of top novels for 2013. His first novel, With a Gemlike Flame, drew wide praise for its evocation of Venice and the hunt for a lost masterpiece by Raphael. His most recent art history book, A History of American Tonalism, won the Silver Medal in Art History in the Book of the Year Awards, 2010; and Outstanding Academic Title 2011 from the American Library Association; it was the best selling American art history book in 2011 and 2012. David was a regular reviewer for Artnews, and has written for The Magazine Antiques, the American Art Review, and Dance Magazine. For almost a decade, he was the Arts Editor at Voice of America. He and his wife live in New York where he works as an art adviser with his son, Carter Cleveland, founder of Artsy.net, the new internet site making all the world's art accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

Book preview

1

Perjury

We are caught in a tragedy of history.

—Whittaker Chambers

JANUARY 21, 1950

ASSOCIATE COUNSEL FOR the defense Edward Dimock, summer tan attractively faded beneath his chestnut hair, sat forward at the defense table as he inspected the twelve jury members filing back into the federal courtroom templed above Foley Square. He cocked his head, squinting, like the expert birder he was, off-blue eyes attentive to any telltale clues in the rapt faces of the eight women jurors, finding himself relieved at the serious, if not severe, freshly lipsticked frowns telegraphing from the oak-paneled jury box. He checked his watch and then the brass wall clock above the jury room entrance: 2:46—twenty minutes since lunch break. (A configuration of hands, an angle of 165 degrees, to be exact, that would forever become annealed in his mind’s eye.) He nodded mechanically, as if a switch in a finely tuned mechanism had been tripped. Forty-three years old, now at the height of his powers, a few gray strands in the upturned flourish of his eyebrows for gravitas, he pensively rested his jaw on his fist.

No, certainly not much in the way of indecision on display, and even less in the forthright stare of jury forewoman Mrs. Ada Condell, who waited grimly in her seat for the judge to inquire as to their verdict. These and other portents of disaster caused Edward to glance down the defense table to where his client, Alger Hiss, sat with stoic determination next to his wife, Priscilla. Her familiar upturned nose and quivering, compressed lips caused Edward’s pulse to quicken, and he ground his fist against the sharp angle of his chin, repressing the urge to gasp out a warning, while bracing himself for the worst. Below, the vague tremor of traffic or the rattle of a subway train vibrating the floor. On the mocha plane of his half-drunk coffee, a ripple moved. Yet another avatar of cosmic cataclysm, which Judge Henry W. Goddard seemed to savor: what the newspapers already heralded as the trial of the century, even a century only half done. Goddard paused again, absorbed in his own little drama of shuffling papers on his bench, perhaps girding himself for the sure-to-come uproar in the aftermath of this four-week ordeal, a thing anticipated by the hundreds of reporters stacked to the coffered ceiling of his courtroom, peering forward as one with pens raised, breath suspended … while grave Fortuna, coiled catlike, ready to spring in the left front corner of the jury box, awaited her moment on history’s stage.

Given a moment’s respite (shuffle, shuffle), Edward lifted his gaze to the dull liquid January light flooding the fantail window above the jury box, thirteen stories above Foley Square and the teeming metropolis where he and his father before him had mightily prospered. Yet there was nothing in that cloudy gray to give him pleasure, except thoughts of escape on ardent wings to Hermitage, his Catskill retreat— now, today, in an hour or less, with Annie and the girls and Teddy (all still on Christmas break, the girls from Chapin and Teddy from Yale). Closing his eyes for an extended tattoo of heartbeats, he sought to rally the moral gravitas and professional competency that Groton, Yale, Harvard Law, a treasured clerkship with Oliver Wendell Holmes, his position as top gun at Beekman-Morris, and three years on the War Production Board in Washington had long instilled, the experience and finely honed instincts that now prompted him to abandon his longing gaze for the sullen emptiness of the witness box. He sighed as he contemplated one final time that stage setting, where, only days before, he’d deployed the unctuous theories of psychopathic personality disorder and unconscious motivation against the prosecution’s star witness, onetime ex-Communist and Time magazine editor Whittaker Chambers, with the ghastly results to be confirmed momentarily.

That afterimage still pressed on his guilty soul: Chambers seated in his unpressed trousers, dirty shirt collar curled over his seedy jacket, scuffed shoes. Those deep-set sleepless eyes, sad and tortured yet brimming with the wisdom of the solid earth … a man of sorrows, a prophet of doom, who now invisibly inquired of his persecutor about the sad fate of the artist, one George Altmann, on Christmas Eve, a short four weeks before. Chambers’s testimony had craned the necks of jurors and judge alike: hushed, reticent, searching, laconic; a voice that would haunt Edward Dimock all his days, living on to captivate him in years to come from the pages of Chambers’s best-selling autobiography, Witness.

Edward Dimock’s beleaguered inspection of the witness box deepened with regret as he recalled yet again the ineptitude and inquisitorial overreach he’d foolishly undertaken at Alger Hiss’s promptings and assurances—if not vague threats, something his mentor Justice Holmes would have severely chastised him for. Son, once a man’s reputation is besmirched, threats or no … Edward winced with the pain of one who had disregarded his betters, if not his better instincts, thereby trashing what little remained of his, much less his profession’s, pretension to a moral code.

He reached to the heavy briefcase by his leg, if not for assurance, possibly in prayer that he might be spared the full implications, if not deployment, of what lay concealed within.

A cough, a clearing of the throat, and Edward, starting from reverie, looked to the acanthus-carved bench where, papers finally shuffled, the experienced and respected Honorable Henry Goddard prepared to proceed, arraying his silver-bespectacled aquiline profile to full effect, only to begin a quick inventory of the rapt congregants crowding his oak-paneled courtroom.

A wave of relief washed over Edward that the thing was now out of his hands: that twelve ordinary Americans would do their duty and pronounce a verdict that might contradict the expectations of some of the finest legal minds and savvy commentators of his generation— august public servants and gilded pundits all—and, in turn, repudiate the most astute lawyering money and reputation could buy (the like of which he’d never dreamed possible), thus shifting or at least sharing the blame for his egregious and smarmy psychiatric hucksterism employed at Chambers’s expense. Hadn’t all the Harvard boys on the defense team signed off, in the end? Hadn’t their outrageous ploy been indulged by Judge Goddard? Even if only to even the score by allowing the prosecution to call ex-NKVD agent Hede Massing as a witness, and so fingering Alger dead to rights.

Petite, doe-eyed, redheaded Hede, so Edward assured himself, with her warm and melodic Viennese cadences, had surely sunk them anyway, along with the Hisses’ black maid, Claudia Catlett, and the irrevocable evidence of the purloined secret State Department papers copied on the Hisses’ Woodstock typewriter. Surely the facts, as facts always do, would, in the fullness of time, extract the barbed hook of infamy from a career now in dire jeopardy.

Edward concentrated once again on Alger and Priscilla Hiss, as if for a final reckoning—and for Alger it would be the last time—before history weighed fully, if ambiguously, in the scales of justice. That agile kitelike face (yellow-billed), rigid with righteous indignation, with an air of detached concentration—expensive winter suit, starched shirt with French cuffs always discreetly hidden, soft, becoming tie, and shiny black shoes—swept Edward back to the day only two months before when Alger strode into his Beekman-Morris office to make the case for accepting the role of associate defense counsel (slated for one singular task) in his second perjury trial, equally cajoling and flattering and so, so subtly threatening. Even pressing Priscilla into the act—and it had always been a paired-horse marriage—at their rendezvous in Riverside Park. The still lovely though desperately anxious Pross on her lunch break from Dalton, taking his hand tenderly and pleading the good cause with tear-verging blue eyes, those same strong and so agile fingers—touching his for quick moments—that had clandestinely cantered across the keys of the green Woodstock typewriter, which, even now, stared back like some bleak totemic object of the industrial age from the evidence table next to the jury box.

The thought of all those top-secret State Department documents made for another moment of serenity, a half-smile as Edward loosened his tie: damning evidence produced like a conjurer’s trick by Whittaker Chambers and thus, truth be told, dooming their case from the get-go. With the testimony of that mysterious Red pixie Hede just the icing on the cake, along with the Hisses’ Negro maid. Edward sighed as he again scrutinized the rapt face of the jury forewoman: a final confirmation that, professionally speaking, he’d done the necessary—defending his family—and canny thing in face of insuperable obstacles, even as those damned Altmann sketches had blindsided him. And with this bit of self-assurance, he reached under the defense table to his leather attaché case once again and gave it a reassuring pat that his insurance (nine portrait sketches by the recently deceased artist George Altmann) would not now, not ever— thank God!—require deploying.

So, let history be his judge and jury. Even if the brass clock over the door to the jury room seemed to have barely moved. Even if his wife, Annie, had barely spoken to him in a month, after dutifully sitting in on the first day of the trial. Even if his beloved son, Teddy, had avoided him all Christmas, preferring to spend his time with his Yale roommates in the city. Time and sunlight were the final disinfectant of one’s integrity.

Lengthening his focus just above Alger’s cleanly parted hair, he caught a glimpse of his opponent at the prosecution table, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas F. Murphy, formidably tall even when seated, his dark mustache flexing optimistically as he stared down at the number-two pencil in his hand with the unshakable confidence of one who’d already caught the glint of the executioner’s raised ax.

The rest of the defense team, Cross and McLean, remained rigid, perspiring, having read those twelve faces as well as he had.

Judge Goddard nodded at the court clerk, who leaped to his feet as if from a jack-in-the-box and demanded the verdict.

How find you?

Ada Condell didn’t wait a beat, thus heralding in the chaotic world that would become the Red-baiting McCarthyite decade of the 1950s. In a choked, then clearing high-pitched voice, she declared, We find the defendant guilty on the first count and guilty on the second count.

Oddly, Edward wanted to reach out a steadying hand to Alger, his onetime Harvard Law confrere and fellow birder, but found him rigid, with arms folded, stiffened brows and clenched lips impervious to time as well as to history, as one hundred-plus pens in the press gallery swept across acres of spiral notepads. Priscilla barely blinked, her traumatized gaze flashing to the wintery space of light from the fantail window, her prim shoulders bent, hands crossed limply in the silk folds of her lap. If he could have spoken to her, this was the query that hovered on his lips like an incantation out of time itself: Oh, my dear Pross, how far from Handytown now?

And with that, he gave his attaché case yet another relieved pat.

Of the following fifteen minutes of instructions to the jurors not to blab about their deliberations, and a quick to-and-fro over the five-thousand-dollar bail, Edward found in later years that he remembered almost nothing. Only a final image of Alger grabbing Priscilla’s hand, whispering in her ear, Keep your chin up, and leading her quickly out past the horde of snarling reporters.

With that verdict of dishonor and ruin, Alger exited Edward Dimock’s life, as if he’d never been, which, upon deeper reflection, might indeed have been the case.

For as Edward would remember until his dying day, his thoughts at that moment flowed along these lines: A man who lies so expertly, so convincingly, who threatens with the merest inflection of voice, rarely treads the boards of this life, and then only in pursuit of his spectral shadow. Or as his grandson would put it to him some fifty years later: Judge, it was as if you inhabited two different stages, two parallel universes; and I’m not entirely sure, even now, if you know the difference.

2

Landscapes Transcendent

SEPTEMBER 13, 2002

GEORGE DIMOCK ALTMANN swiveled on his heels to make a last check of the hanging in Dark Matter, his four-year-old Chelsea gallery. Last dance, last chance for a profitable show to keep his gallerist gig above water after a disastrous post-9/11 year. Against all advice, against the odds in a contemporary art world more and more obsessed with the next wunderkind out of a prestige art school, he’d bet on a dead white male artist—George Altmann, no less, his grandfather and namesake. George surveyed his arrangement of Altmann’s late abstract landscapes from his Woodstock years, 1939 to 1949. Landscapes Transcendent. The title was emblazoned in hemlock green on the wall opposite the entrance, where a crowd of well-dressed and grunge-chic fashionistas was just filtering in. The living, breathing reality check—even worse, he thought, sighing, than a peer-reviewed paper.

After long months of planning—selecting, cleaning, framing— George would have to introduce himself to and glad-hand potential collectors, and elevator-pitch his grandfather’s artworks. (How could one even feign the pretense of objectivity?) To intercept a panic attack that had lain in ambush all day, he fixed his eyes on the showcase canvas facing the entrance: a shear-faced rocky escarpment, seething horizontals of milky-quartz tones, strips of jittery pigment describing a 430-million-year-old sedimentary conglomerate only recently revealed by the last ice age. This, the stunning cover image of his scholarly catalog, cropped to dramatize the masterful paint handling. But instead of experiencing pride, even ecstatic joy, he might as well have been dangling from that rock face by his fingernails as the knot in his gut expanded upward to compress his windpipe. And so he beat a hasty retreat into his office, holding up his cell phone and signaling to his assistant, JJ, standing at the entrance handing out catalogs, that he had an important call to take.

Clozapine, 1 mg. Take one every twelve hours for generalized anxiety.

He stared at the prescription bottle neatly tucked into the side of his desk drawer for emergencies, his heart doing a spiky tango, a bloom of sweat turning his blond hair dirty brown, chewed fingernails hovering. He grabbed two Listerine tabs instead and crammed them into his mouth, then rushed over to the single tall window of his book-crammed office, there to savor a vertical slice of teeming Eleventh Avenue from eight stories up. Where, in the distance beyond the careening buzz of evening traffic, interspersed with a nervous blur of Juicy Fruit light bars from phalanxes of parked police cars, two huge beams of diaphanous white sliced majestically into the night sky. He leaned into the plate glass, drawn to those ghostly beams, even as his thirty-two-year-old pathetic paunch and the click of his too-tight belt buckle thwarted a closer inspection—along with a bizarre yearning to merge with such a potent photon stream, and so scattered to the solar winds, his soul released in some quantum approximation of his essential self, minus the constant hassles and crippling uncertainty that had plagued him in recent years.

Like Einstein, he preferred a universe that played by the rules, where the twin towers still stood tall and proud and regal, perhaps where infinite inflation found them still aglow in some faraway morning’s early light, and Joe Santiago, still on his client list, waiting, even now, in his gallery for a tour of Altmann’s exhibition.

Fat chance, he thought, sighing. Anyway, what could alien eyes possibly make of those twin points of light coming from some random exoplanet in a backwater of an undistinguished galaxy: a desperate stab at contact; a cry of distress from a civilization embarked on wanton self-destruction; a celebration of endurance against all the odds? A hope, if even that, rendered meaningless by a faster-than-the-speed-of-light expansion of the visible universe, so that by the time such a feeble signal might be registered by some extraterrestrial intelligence, the culture that produced it would have long succumbed to suicide or been blown to smithereens by a meteor strike, with an exhausted sun for a sucker-punch finale—the Trade Center attack a firefly flicker in the cosmic void. Seven years analyzing luminosity and spectrum analysis of Cepheid variable stars in distant galaxies in the Princeton Astrophysics Department had more than convinced him of the pointlessness of such pitiful conjectures, given such vast soul-crushing distances. Just another pathetic thought experiment—past anxieties only fueling present anxieties—that he tried to put out of his mind. Even as he pressed his flattened palms against the glass in solidarity, full of guilt and anger that he hadn’t even had the guts to attend the memorial service of a few days before. Much less watch Bush at the U.N. yesterday demand that the world do something to stop Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction, or the United States would.

—

Just a year ago, like yesterday, with the bubble-wrapped painting tucked safely under his arm, he’d ascended the subway steps into that perfectly blue sky above the plaza, delighted to be personally delivering the artwork as promised to Joe Santiago, partner at Cantor Fitzgerald. Joe had spent a precious half hour in Dark Matter, away from the trading desk, picking out the perfect gift for his wife’s birthday.

She—Jean—loves the kids, of course; her garden, especially the azaleas and hollyhocks; our black Lab, Chewbacca—kids, you know— get it … yeah, chews the shit out of the furniture. Mykonos she picked out for our honeymoon—lots of gay guys, you know; they have their own nude beach. And Danielle Steel is her favorite author. Did I mention she studied art history at Bard? A woman, don’t you agree, Mr. Altmann, always knows what she loves; they always have an opinion— always. Trust me, it’s part of my job to know such things.

Joe had finally settled on a still life of yellow roses and tiger lilies in a crystal vase, eggplants on a blue platter, against a backdrop of a red-checkered tablecloth.

Like you say, George—can I call you George?—a hint of Cézanne—for sure. The warm sunlight and those purples will make her happy—absolutely guaranteed. She’s big into moussaka—see, her Greek mom, but hey … George, it’s all about happiness with the small things in a marriage—trust me. Love comes and goes; endearments, like memories of happy times, last forever.

The crystalline blue of the sky at the top of the concrete stairs, the sweetness of Joe’s Brooklyn accent, the nasal vowels and his excitement at the perfect gift of happiness—now cradled in his arm—all conspired against the scene of mayhem that greeted George in the plaza. Stink of jet fuel, the inferno belching fiery smoke and swirling paper geysers from the gaping wound in the vertical skin of glass and steel—so impossibly high above the churning chaos below. Mesmerized onlookers in gesticulating groups of two or three, some lingering, some running, on cell phones or snapping photos. He simply refused to believe his eyes. He had the floor number, the suite number, the telephone number—on a Post-it note affixed to the bubble wrap, the gift: all he needed to conclude an act of goodness. He’d promised Joe the painting for his wife’s surprise birthday party at a Greek restaurant in Nutley, New Jersey, that evening. He called on his cell phone. No answer. One hundred and first floor. Idiotically, he began counting the floors below the smoke-bellowing wound of the north tower, clutching the wrapped canvas to his chest like a scared child. Somehow his absolute belief in Joe’s gift, the deliberations of a busy man that had gone into this act of loving consecration, of solidarity with a kinder universe—much less that agreed upon delivery date, September 11, Jean’s birthday—belied what his eyes were witnessing. He remained rooted, willing time to retreat, the belching flames and acrid smoke to retreat and order reassert itself and so cancel out such hellish confusion.

Then the falling bodies began to hit the pavement, the first a hundred yards away … a dull thud thrown up from a pink mist. Then closer. People screamed. Then a shadow, followed by a splash of brilliant fiery red against the blue as the second 767 sliced into the south tower, followed by the roar of jet engines. He began to move off, disoriented, unsure whether he should retreat to the subway or head north on the West Side Highway. Then he caught sight of a black-suited figure on the concrete of the plaza. Perhaps he had tripped and needed help; perhaps it was Joe, who had rushed out to find him, to grab his offering of sanity and hope in the nick of time and find his way home. But as he approached, he found only the flattened shadow of a man’s suit, his innards, a pink mush, sprayed ten feet in all directions.

—

Six months later, he’d finally summoned the nerve to track down Joe’s widow. It was spring then in Nutley. Blooming azaleas dotted the cul-de-sac of modest faux half-timbered Tudor-style homes. Dogs barked. Scent of newly mown grass. Through her tears and dark bagged eyes, Jean Santiago, her two children hovering behind in the foyer, embraced him on her doorstep, embracing the canvas as well, holding him tight for over a minute, as if some part of her missing husband—his body was never recovered or identified—had returned home. She was still young, but her long brown hair was streaked with mourning gray, her gray-green eyes, red-veined and dark-circled, sunken. The children had been kept home from school. They shook hands when introduced but remained speechless. Chewbacca came and sniffed his shoes, then his hand, and then the wrapped painting. The dog began whining and wagging its tail. The children broke into tears that almost did him in.

When she unwrapped the painting, she, too, broke down in tears, rushing it to the living room, where Joe’s favorite La-Z-Boy remained extended full length, holding the painting up to the window, where the sunlight made the colors dance. Her kids, a girl eight and a boy six, stood on either side and reached to the canvas, first to the swelling swirls of pigments that formed flowers, then to the purples and blues of the eggplants. The three of them walked from room to room to room, trying to decide where to hang Daddy’s painting. When George left, it was still undecided. Even now, Jean Santiago texted at least once a week, with questions about exactly what Joe had said at the exhibition, about the artist, about her—why he’d chosen this particular painting for her, which she’d rehung a dozen times, as if some different configuration might yet reveal something she’d missed.

He found himself caught up by her constant inquiries, feeling compelled to fill in details about their honeymoon in Mykonos as told him by Joe: about eggplants he’d admired in the marketplace, sold by an old Greek woman; about the nude beach where Joe liked to proudly show off his new bride; how the morning light in her auburn hair against the pillow in their hotel room had made him fall in love all over again … same light as in the painting. He’d even read Danielle Steel, to indulge some parallel universe, so as to savor something of her longing.

He’d never cashed Joe’s check.

—

Your mother just called, said JJ, sticking her head in the door of his office. She found a parking spot on Nineteenth Street and will be here with your aunts in ten minutes. JJ held up her clipboard in a victory salute. And we just sold seven paintings, including the one on the catalog cover and the one inside the cover—that’s almost half the show.

No fucking way—seriously?

Like, how do you say—pancakes?

Hotcakes.

Yes—she tapped the clipboard—very hot.

Who bought the cover one and the one inside the cover, someone on our client list or mailing list?

New, never heard of him, said JJ. JJ was a tall, striking Chinese woman whose exquisitely made-up face accented her green eyes. She spoke near-perfect English and perfect Mandarin, and was a canny saleswoman of prodigious conviction when moving the merch. Just sailed in, Armani suit, black silk turtleneck, spent five minutes walking around with the checklist, picked out the two most expensive pieces and didn’t even negotiate on price.

The review, he intoned.

Yes, he had folded page in his pocket.

Thanks, JJ, I’ll be out in a moment.

—

George, digesting the sales report, felt as if a pall of disaster had lifted, replaced by a surge of confidence. He grabbed the rave New York Times review of that morning off his desk and let his pale blue-gray eyes luxuriate one more time: a rediscovered genius … Rothko before Rothko … avatar of abstraction from nature in the line of Inness, Marsden Hartley, and Avery …

Committing pithy excerpts to memory, George adjusted his silver-gray suit jacket, and the thin moiré stain of a tie that barely showed against his black shirt—hipster uniform for the contemporary art scene, acquired on JJ’s advice—and drifted out into the gallery. A huge crowd jammed his tiny three white cubes of exhibition space. The din was low and respectful. Instead of standing around, oblivious, in chatting clusters, consuming his cheap chardonnay, singletons and couples, catalogs in hand, were actually looking at Altmann’s abstract landscapes as if ardently absorbing their hypnotic splendor. Even the usual suspects, artists and their groupie hangers-on in deftly torn jeans and paintstained plaid shirts, were exchanging heated opinions. He smiled. The good artists were always intent on stealing anything worth stealing. George immediately began sorting the crowd, spotting the admixture of potential well-heeled upscale buyers, as if a long year in the doldrums of panic and grief was quite enough, thank you. For an instant, he indulged the corollary fantasy that his George Altmann revival was the catalyst to celebrate the end of a city’s and a nation’s mourning and a return to normalcy—that beauty, like the spectacle of a supernova (the end of a world), could trump tragedy. And with that delicious notion, the prospect of sales, of commerce, eased up a smile of pride and relief on George’s pudgy but not entirely unhandsome face as he began convincing himself that his harebrained plan to give up astrophysics for the art world was finally paying off; that he’d had the aesthetic moxie to look under his nose and take a risk on his grandfather’s forgotten work; that judicious restoration and cleaning would make all the difference, not to mention the simple yet sumptuous and expensive—slightly distressed—oak frames he’d chosen.

Yes!

Altmann’s genius was so blindingly clear: how his grandfather had taken the bone and gristle of Woodstock’s hills, and the conglomerate Palisades along the Shawangunk Ridge, and transposed their underlying patterns and color tonalities into masses of scintillating paint marks—brushed and scumbled and scraped and flattened and translated with bravura handling to reveal the metamorphic qualities of rock and foliage—the essence of the land. For the first time in his young life, he felt his grandfather’s awe (a man dead decades before he was born) as his own: nature’s timeless recrudescence.

My God … the love …

With an airy spring in his step, George began to mingle, luxuriating in his anonymity for just another moment as he listened in on the chatter. How he relished seeing his own words from the catalog imprinted boldly on the gallery walls: Moments of rapture in the act of creation … a one-man battle against the drift into chaos. An artist taking the raw chaotic data of the universe and ordering it on a more human scale. Soul’s antidote to a new age of fanaticism and murderous hatred.

George winced at the hyperbole. And yet … and yet some irrepressible yearning in him sought to make convincing that causal connection between tragedies past and present—now buttressed by the proof— like a perfect algorithm that dismissed all competing conjectures. He nodded to himself. A man with such a magnificent talent could not have killed himself, somehow slipped or fallen onto the ice from the Sawkill Bridge, Christmas Eve, 1949. Everything—the sheer creative energy on the surrounding walls gave the lie to that oft-rumored suicide that had plagued the family for three generations. The burden of fifty years lifted by the simple glory of paint applied to canvas … and so cauterizing that even more terrible impact of human breakage at terminal velocity.

—

Well, baby love … Cordelia Dimock Altmann embraced her son with an amused smile, brushing her hand along the side of his head, as if approving the tidy haircut, the shimmer of mousse that gave his dirtyblond hair a fifties look and feel. My baby love, my Kookie, my one and only. Her once-fashionable Indian batik dress was accessorized with silver moonstone jewelry, dripping from wrists, neck, and earlobes, marketing tool for the handcrafted trinkets she sold to tourists coming through Woodstock in search of some authentic 1960s karma.

Kookie?

Before your time, dear. She patted his cheek. I can’t believe you really and truly pulled this off! Not just did it but actually succeeded in doing it. Cordelia looked around with genuine incredulity, tears sparking her sea blue eyes beneath hay-colored bangs as her earrings of lapis lazuli jingled like temple bells. I can’t believe these dumb old paintings have been kicking around in our damn barn for over fifty years and … well, presto—here they are, big as life, as if by magic.

George nodded judiciously at his mom’s loopiness. A lot of elbow grease. Amy, my restorer, performed her magic on the craquelure. And I think I got the lighting right and the frames—do you like the frames?

She touched her son’s arm and bent to kiss his cheek. You’re the magic—my magic, Georgie.

Not here, Mom. It’s George.

It’s like they’ve been transformed—she laughed, and resisted doing a little jig (something of her sadly shortened career with New York City Ballet still embedded in muscle memory)—washed in the Redeemer’s blood and cleansed of sin—hallelujah! George grimaced at heads turned in their direction. I guess having them underfoot and all the bad vibes from Jim about his childhood … well. And, God knows, I did try to sell a few of ’em after Jim walked out. Couldn’t give them away.

We’ve already sold half the show. That means we’re profitable. George glanced over at JJ, who was standing, checklist in hand, expectantly fingering a sheet of red stickum dots, before another power couple, by the looks of the shoulder pad–assisted wingspan of the two-button pinstripe jacket and the slinky obsidian sable dress.

Cordelia followed his gaze with a wry smile.

It’s like, well … the Trade Center never happened.

I know, I know—a little spooky, isn’t it?

Life must go on, up or down, inside out, or just twisted into granny knots. Cordelia, at fifty, the youngest daughter of Edward Dimock, the afterthought in family lore, smiled gamely, swiping fingers at her face as if in hopes of dispersing age lines, and so recapturing something of the flower-child glamour that had once graced the New York State Theater and then Life’s Woodstock coverage in 1969. First time I’ve been back in the city since the attack. She shook off a hint of anxiety and smoothed down the wrinkles in the reticulated blue-green pattern of her dress. I mean, I don’t really own a somber dress, and nothing in black, which seems de rigueur these days for evening events. She gripped her son’s shoulder. Not to put a damper on things, but Felicity called this morning. The Judge has stopped eating. She says he’s decided it’s time; seems he doesn’t want to go on anymore.

The Judge isn’t eating?

"Not for two days. ‘Starve himself out of life,’ as Felicity put it."

He can’t do that! said George indignantly. Not when I’m finally getting things going here.

"Oh, George, you know him better than anyone. He doesn’t care about you or this or the family or anything anymore—if he ever did. The only thing that mattered was his career and legacy. He’s so out of touch. He’s ninety-five. And I think the Trade Center bombing really shook him up, as well."

Did I ever tell you he called me that day to see if I was all right?

Well, that’s a lot more than he bothered to do for Martha, much less for Erich or Karen or their kids.

But his mind’s all there; at least it was this summer when I was up at Hermitage.

I was going to drive over to Hermitage tomorrow, but I’ve got to open the bookstore, and I can’t find anybody to replace me for the day.

I can drive up. And anyway, I’ve got to stop by Woodstock this week-end and get some more works out of the barn—while the show’s hot.

Who’s hot? George’s aunt Alice barreled through the crowd to give him a peck on the cheek, sloping a glass of wine in an outstretched hand.

Aunt Alice! he exclaimed, a little giddy. Thank you for coming. And Stan, he added, shaking hands with her elderly screenwriter husband, who seemed more than a little amused with the goings-on. Oh my God, you’re all here. He turned and kissed his aunt Martha and her grown children, his first cousins, older by ten years, Erich and Karen, as they made their way over to him.

"A mini Dimock reunion—how could we miss your opening? said Alice, the eldest at sixty-eight, the tallest and certainly the thinnest of the three Dimock sisters. The onetime radical Bay Area lawyer, now teaching politics and law at SUNY New Paltz, had instantly taken the measure of the gilded gathering. And where did you find all these fat cats? She swiveled her once-handsome face, a thin compact bone structure neatly expressing her piercing gray-green eyes, auburn hair gone to gray in places and cut short for convenience, as she always insisted. The place reeks with nouveau riche real estate money."

Look at the paintings, for heaven’s sake, Alice, scolded Cordelia with a hint of pride as she glared at her sister (older by almost twenty years) and her stylish four-button black jacket over matching trim trousers, the flaring lace collar of her white blouse setting off the thicket of tendons in her long neck and a discreet layering of pearls.

Is this the real you? asked his aunt Martha, a little spacey, now drawing into the circle around George, plucking at the sleeve of his jacket. Of the three, Martha, second eldest, doyen of the Upper West Side psychiatric profession, seemed the worst for wear: overweight, her face fleshy, dyed brown hair falling in ringlets to her shoulders. I can’t remember the last time I saw you out of jeans and a Princeton Astrophysics Department T-shirt.

Such sartorial splendor, offered cousin Erich. You’ve put on weight, cuz.

So salesmanly, Georgie, said Martha’s daughter, Karen, who was closely examining any unattached men under forty.

Martha whispered in his ear. You know, my appointment calendar is quite open these days.

Whatever happened to Good Will Hunting, the brainiac kid? said Erich, tall, angular, a little sheepish now that he found himself dressed only in worn corduroys and a plaid button-down.

Or Luke Skywalker. Karen laughed, as if diligently shuffling back in time for the earliest, most steadfast image of her younger cousin. "Curious George." She had her mother’s compact build and earnest humor, an instinct to probe for weakness.

These people, said Alice. Seriously, what smarmy depths did you stir them up from? Look how they flaunt their chic duds, as if they’re more on display than the pictures. And my God, just a year ago this town was in shock and mourning.

George smiled sheepishly under the onslaught, always the baby, always the butt of some complaint or snarky observation. Hey—he waved a hand as if easily dispersing a bad stink—"the Times reviewed the show."

A fabulous review, said Cordelia, nudging Alice protectively. And nice pearls. She fingered her sister’s velvet jacket. And you’re hardly out of place, Alice.

Just as long as their checks don’t bounce, said George.

But do they really buy art? asked Martha. Or do they just display with the art—art as fashion accessory? There can’t be much left after the Prada bill.

Oh Martha, said Cordelia, defending her son, we can’t all be sophisticated Upper West Siders with Zabar’s charge accounts.

Zabar’s long ago gave up charge accounts, and their bagels—I have to go across the street to H&H now—are just dreadful. I just find it fascinating, the flaunting of wealth, as if the Trade Center never happened—goodness.

The art, reminded Cordelia. What do you all think about George’s grandfather’s paintings? I think they’re really super.

Well, you would, said Alice. Maybe you’ll finally extract some loot out of the estate of your no-good two-timing ex-husband.

Cordelia frowned at her sister. "You mean my ‘blue-collar alcoholic bum,’ as you and Daddy always called him. And I guess all these crappy paintings are just … well, so much blue-collar trash, handmade to boot, nothing so exalted as the fabled Dimock exaltation of the law."

You do jingle, dear, said Alice, eyeing Cordelia’s left earring.

I think it’s rather brilliant of George, said Martha with a dreamy smile, upstaging his own deadbeat dad, the man who neglected him, and so cannily appropriating his grandfather’s legacy for his own. She molded the air for emphasis. Editing out the father and so becoming his own man.

Bravo, Mom, said her daughter, Karen, in her tight pencil dress, neatly displaying a bulge of décolletage. Freud could turn that into a theory, or, even better, a how-to book on solving one’s oedipal conflicts by airbrushing the problematic generation.

Speaking of the working class, piped up Alice while grabbing a refill of chardonnay off a passing tray, I always thought George Altmann did murals for the WPA, figurative stuff celebrating the exploited factory workers and so on.

That was in the thirties, said George, when he was famous for his American scene painting.

You mean social realism, replied Alice, "all that pinko ‘workers of the world unite’ crap. And wasn’t he a court sketch artist at some point? I seem to remember he covered the Alger Hiss trial for the Herald Tribune—no? In fact—she held up a long, crooked finger with a perfectly manicured pink nail and wagged it—he gave me a sketch of our famous papa as a souvenir when I attended the opening day of the Hiss trial—that travesty of a judicial circus!"

Who’s Alger Hiss, again? asked Erich.

Oh my God! exclaimed Alice. Not another one of the walking brain-dead; I have enough of those in my constitutional law class.

For goodness’ sake, Alice, said Martha, not all of us like to chew over ancient history—lost causes—every day in seminar.

I thought chewed-over memories were your stock-in-trade, dear sister. Or the unconscious, the dark recesses of the mind, the pathologies of everyday life, those so delicious recovered memories and whatnot.

Sketches? asked Cordelia vaguely. That’s how I met Jimmy in the first place; Daddy insisted I drive his red Merc to Woodstock to return a bunch of George Altmann’s sketches to Jim.

George cocked his head at his mother, as if something had slipped past him.

Karen broke in: Freud is, as they say, so-o-o yesterday—even for Mom.

Martha looked uneasily at her daughter, as if she’d lost the sense of the conversation.

"Your grandfather, said Alice to Erich, including George and Karen in her fierce glance, our illustrious Judge, failed to defend Alger Hiss in the trial of the century. He let Nixon and the fascist FBI run roughshod over his client, an innocent man, a progressive champion of the New Deal, who ended up in jail because of his complete fuckup. Right, little sister? Especially his spouting all that psychobabble—right, Martha?— about that lying right-wing stooge, Chambers. She tugged on the tweedy sleeve of her husband, who was admiring a nearby gaggle of young women in stiletto heels. Stan got it in the neck, too, a year in Danbury for contempt of HUAC. You kids have no idea."

Oh, his poor wife, Priscilla, clucked Martha. Alger treated her so badly; for years she came to me for help—

Mom, warned Karen, really, you know you shouldn’t be talking about clients.

George bent to his mother’s ear and asked sotto voce, What sketches, Mom?

Speaking of the Judge, said Cordelia, I just heard from Felicity this morning that he is refusing to eat, that he’s made up his mind he wants to die.

Well, snorted Alice, that sounds like the best idea he’s had in a long time.

Don’t be so cruel, scolded Cordelia.

Oh, how sporting of you, Cordelia, considering you were his first victim. That is, until Karen was old enough to get the full lecher treatment.

Oh, that, said Karen with a distracted wave, squinting as she continued to seek out any hopes of male company. We were just kids messing around. In fact, I sort of miss him—well, you know, Hermitage.

Listen, said George, I’ve got to drive up to Woodstock tomorrow anyway, so why don’t I stop by Hermitage on the way and get the lay of the land. He probably just needs a little company to cheer him up now that all the summer people have left.

Good for you, George, Alice laughed. I’m sure the old buzzard will be delighted to hear how his latest investment in the art world is going. Which is hell of a lot more than he’s done for my offspring. Cecily, by the way, may be heading east for medical school.

Okay, that’s settled, said Cordelia. If Dad will listen to anyone, it will be George.

Darth Vader, said Erich, laughing.

And don’t forget your lightsaber. Karen smirked, edging off on her own hunt.

—

George continued to circulate as the crowd thinned, taking over the sales clipboard from JJ, making a few last pitches to latecomers, totaling up the numbers, visualizing the gaps on the walls where replacement works would be needed for those sold. For a brief moment, he pondered the ethics of breaking up the exhibition ensemble before the end of the show with new works … but commerce was commerce. And the extra cash would get Dark Matter through the year.

About to hand over closing duties to JJ and the cleanup crew and join his family for dinner, he noticed a young woman still lingering in the main gallery. She intently eyed an unsold canvas. He realized he’d seen her earlier. Tall, athletic, long reddish blond hair gathered in a blue barrette. Something about her face was vaguely familiar, perhaps the long nose with its slight upward tilt, which revealed more cartilage than classic beauty demanded, an elegant structure that read ambiguously, if strongly, in various lights. She wore a tight-fitting sleeveless gray dress that came to just above the knee, with pleats down the center bracketed by a strip of white on either side, a band of brilliant red as a collar. As he drew closer, he realized that the vertical pleats weren’t pleats, but a kind of smocking, subtle variations of light and darker gray, with similarly patterned panels on the sides from hip to hem.

Hi, can I help you with anything about the artist or the work?

She turned a beaming smile his way. Oh, no need to sell me. I bought that one over there—she pointed to a landscape of horizontal cliffs—half an hour ago.

Good choice. He could not help admiring the elegant tailoring of her dress, how the two white verticals over the bust narrowed at the waist, squeezing the gray verticals into tapering ends—an understated design that showed off her tensile figure and small breasts.

I was just wondering if I can still afford another before they’re all gone.

He glanced at his checklist and smiled in the affirmative. I’m glad you like the work. I’m George Altmann, by the way, director of the gallery. And, I probably shouldn’t tell you, but no rush; there are plenty more where these came from.

As good as these?

Hard to tell. I tried to pick out the best, but the canvases were so dirty that it was impossible to see the real colors until they were cleaned.

She shot out a hand and looked at him forthrightly in the eye. Hers were slate blue and her handshake strong, the palm roughened with blisters.

Wendy, Wendy Bradley. I’m delighted to meet you. And congrats on the exhibition and the catalog. She held up the catalog with an admiring sideways tilt of her head, an aspect that showed off her long, delicate nose and expressive lips touched with perfectly applied copper-rose lipstick. I’ve been reading your essay; it’s got me hugely pumped.

"Did you see the Times review?" He noticed the ropy muscles in her arms, Band-Aids on both elbows, not an ounce of fat anywhere, midto-late twenties: How could she afford to be buying art?

That’s what caught my eye, the Shawangunk.

Yeah, well, I worked pretty hard at identifying his painting grounds in the essay.

I don’t need to tell you: He—your grandfather, right?—was so ahead of his time. She walked him over to the long horizontal painting of cliffs and sky she’d bought, caressing the red dot on the exhibition label. This in 1943, with only the barest hints of the tree line, or clouds; even the rock face is only a blurred suggestion, and not a single paint mark depicting a form—but it’s all there, embedded in the pigment just the same, in the shape and energy—the gesture of the stroke. The fingers of her right hand, prancing, twirling, mimicking the movement of the brush, a kind of digital duet across fifty years of time and space. Her nails were raw, broken, cuticles stained, her palms rough and dusty pale, as if she just stepped away from a dough board. Rothko wasn’t even close to this kind of abstraction in 1943.

He brought his face close to the canvas. Can I hire you? He indicated the area of pigment she had mentioned. The sense of energy flux in the paint, as if seeking to replicate itself, building a stable structure … order and permanence out of nature’s chaos.

She looked at him intently, as if intrigued by his words, her eyes seeming to hold him prisoner with their fascination. Her nose, again, familiar, maybe less for its forthright bone structure than the way it projected the passionate liquid blues of her eyes, something of an aura of unswerving confidence, demanding as a warning shot across his bow.

Yes, she replied, sighing, "and I know exactly where this is."

Exactly?

It’s the Shawangunk, a section known as the Trapps. I’ve climbed it more times than I can count.

I’ll be damned, the Shawangunk. I don’t know it well enough to pinpoint the exact location, even though I grew up in Woodstock. His gaze lowered to her knotted calves and a purple bruise on her right shin. You’re a climber? Strappy black high-heeled sandals. He sucked in his gut.

You see—she pondered for a moment, ignoring his question—it’s not the place so much as the fact he’s caught the spirit, the mood, the very atmosphere—damn spooky. I can feel it in the hairs on the back of my neck.

So … he murmured, repeating, not a little enchanted, you’re a climber?

Among other things. She shrugged.

Then I’m really glad you bought this painting. That it will bring you joy, happiness.

I could mate with this painting. She looked him straight in the eye with a half-smile that in no way diminished the seriousness of her remark. But I’m curious—the name of your gallery, Dark Matter: It strikes me as a little cold, even a little uninviting.

You’re not the first to have asked. It’s a term we use in astrophysics; it refers to the invisible substance that actually controls the formation of galaxies and stars, the ordinary matter that we see in the night sky, the stuff under our feet.

But it’s invisible?

Undetectable, and yet it forms a much larger part of our universe than ordinary matter. It kind of reinforces the gravitational attraction that keeps everything from flying away. It’s critical to star formation, galaxies, like the sun—light. We wouldn’t be here without it … just utter chaos.

So it’s invisible and undetectable, but it’s essential—to what, the structure of the universe—paint on canvas?

To life itself—order, if you like.

So … the name of the gallery.

Art is essential.

Oh, I love it, that’s so, so, so hot.

"Well, in that case, why don’t you have dinner with me—and my mother and aunts and cousins. They’ve got a table waiting at Franico’s, across the street."

She seemed slightly taken aback, hesitant. Your family?

I know, believe me, it’s asking a lot … to be saved.

Ah, to be saved … but who do I come as, exactly?

Why, Mondrian, of course.

Mondrian?

He looked her up and down admiringly, emboldened by the sudden buzz of renewed self-assurance, of appreciation for his work, his bloodline, and cash in the coffers … a new client! For a moment their eyes locked, and in the frozen instant of her amused stare he felt as if he caught sight of something more, something depthless and invisible, if not terrifying, a fiery quantum essence that knew no bounds and took no prisoners.

As if reading his mind, she raised her honey-blush eyebrows and smiled graciously and laughed like a girl.

You like it—so, Mondrian it is.

3

De l’Infinito, Universo E Mondo

My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father—dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes.

—Whittaker Chambers

GEORGE EASED HIS blue Tahoe along the narrow gravel drive behind the sprawling Shingle Style cottage overlooking the lake, sidling up to a massive woodpile across from the kitchen’s back door and the wing that had once been the servants’ quarters. (In Dr. Dimock’s day, the Irish maids got a dollar a week and were glad of it.) He unloaded his bags of groceries, including a ten-pound standing rib roast picked up at Citarella, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a vintage Medoc to celebrate a nearly sold-out exhibition and, more spectacularly, the successful revival of George Altmann’s reputation, something George thought the Judge might appreciate, since he and the artist were nearly the same generation. Indeed, as even Aunt Martha had suggested, wouldn’t the revival of such a stellar career do much to perhaps amend—airbrush out—the embarrassing existence of Jimmy Altmann, George’s father, the ex-son-in-law the Judge detested so unreservedly? Breathing deeply of the damp, loamy scent of rotting leaves and newly split oak logs, George found his mood brightening as he left his bags by the kitchen stairs in his eagerness to indulge his return to the Dimock homestead, in the Judge’s nostalgic usage.

He was halted in his tracks by the now rarely driven red 1965 Mercedes 280 SL coupe tucked into the old carriage house. Something about its squared-off headlights and sleek-starred grille struck a discomforting note, like a slightly sinister, if debonair, smile. The Judgemobile, so dubbed by his cousins as youngsters. The sleek contours drew his curious touch (something in the tone of his mother’s story from the night before), and he gently ran a palm over the sensuous curve of the hood, this sporty, near-mythic presence out of his childhood, with its cute yet chic pagoda roof and sumptuous burgundy leather interior, bone white steering wheel, powered by a 2.5-liter engine, which, on the few occasions the Judge had let him drive it in recent years, still went like the wind. Lovingly maintained by a team of mechanics down the Delaware River in Matamoras. Still a dazzling ruby luster, as if this foxy lady had only just stepped off the showroom floor. How many Friday nights in July had the cousins waited, hungry with anticipation, for the lusty purr of the red Merc along the winding dirt road by the lake, each downshift a predatory growl of pleasure, signaling the return of their lord and master from his court on Foley Square, just in time for their delayed dinner and jockeying for attention. But not before that tall, imposing figure—his shock of hair gone mostly gray and off-white—had parked the Merc in the carriage house, then made his way with a huge black attaché case in hand and dark suit jacket over one arm to the veranda steps, where, depositing his worldly cares with a deep breath, he was off to the boathouse, disappearing for a few agonizing minutes more. What’s he doing down there? a nine-year-old George had once asked his older cousins. Peeing off the dock, said Karen, snickers all around. A ritual blessing, added Aunt Alice’s daughter, Cecily, laughing. Once a boy always a boy, retorted Karen as they now moved to the great room in preparation for the Judge’s grand entrance.

My one extravagance, my one vanity, the Judge had acknowledged some years before when George would take his grandfather for a spin in the red Merc along the back roads as far as Monticello, or down to Glen Spey and the Hawk’s Nest along the Delaware, with the Judge eagerly pointing out where the Delaware and Hudson Canal had once hugged the rocky shore of the great river before turning east at Port Jervis and heading up the Rondout Valley for the Hudson River.

But now, something else nagged at George, that offhand comment of his mother’s the night before at the gallery and then again at dinner, something about being conscripted to return a bunch of Altmann portrait sketches to the artist’s son and heir, bribed with a chance to drive the red Merc—scene of the crime, as she’d put it laughingly at dinner. Presumably, the circumstances of her first meeting, at the tender age of seventeen, with Jimmy Altmann, in Woodstock.

No Merc, Georgie, no you—ha-ha!

The kind of inanity a parent drops in a moment of careless inebriated candor, which turns out to be a depth charge—as indeed it would—into her son’s muddled, unhappy past.

As he turned now to the glittering lakefront, he couldn’t quash a sense of foreboding—or was it paradox?—at the rumored imminent demise of one grandfather while another had, literally overnight, seemingly risen from obscurity to incipient fame. This convergence, this entanglement through time and space had him spooked. Every twitter and rustle out of the dappled tree shadows whispered ominously. He found himself stalking the gray-green clapboard wings of Hermitage overhung with beetling gables and panels of green pebbledash, glancing up at the eavesdropping bays of leaded-glass windows. As he approached the threshold of the sprawling front veranda overlooking the lake, he rattled the bottle of Xanax in his pocket for luck. He paused, listening—the silence after the city, eerie—hoping the scents of summer’s end might settle his nerves. To better get his bearings, he began an inventory of any threatening signs of change: the spiky ferns turned a yellow-dun, uncollected chanterelles hiding in rooted nooks—a nasty brain-shaped false morel sulking in the roots of an ancient stump near the boathouse path, spindly maples shot through with mottled scarlets, the acorns, crunching underfoot, gathered by swirling gray gusts of near-crazed squirrels, incredulous at the sudden bounty. His brows furrowed at the complex geometries of the boathouse roof, silhouetted by the placid stillness of the lake, disquieting spectral glints of lilac-green in the boathouse windows, translating the fathomless pale blue of the sky into luminous portals under the sloping eaves.

Maybe that was all, just the overnight change in the weather. Most of September had been damp and dreary, until this morning, when the leading edge of a Canadian high came barreling through, bringing sunny, crisp skies and lower humidity, the first real hint of fall. Too much like those splendid cloudless days surrounding 9/11 of a year before. The very thought of which somehow dampened his carefully formulated game plan to humor the Judge and so cajole him out of any catastrophic ideas of ending his life.

He slapped his bejeaned knee impatiently. You’ve got to be fucking upbeat for the old guy, George.

With this injunction, he turned to fully absorb the faltering history at his elbow and find ways to turn it to his advantage in talking around the Judge. The inviting, even homey Shingle Style cottage had been built by his great-grandfather, Dr. Clement A. Dimock, obstetrician, gynecological surgeon, and cancer specialist to New York society’s 400. For decades around 1900, Dr. Dimock delivered the million-dollar babies—so touted in the press—of the Astors, Fishes, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, Goulds, and Strongs. The famous Dr. D., as he was called by the upper reaches of Fifth Avenue society and Newport’s Bellevue crowd of the superwealthy, made a very handsome living, enhanced by insider advice on stocks to buy and hold, which had fabulously paid off when, in 1895, he’d employed the foremost architectural firm of the day, McKim, Mead & White, to build his Catskill retreat: It shall be called Hermitage, a functional and understated woodland abode for my family and friends. He’d insisted on employing local materials and workmen, and eschewing the ostentation of Lenox and the hideously overwrought European extravagances of Newport for an American vernacular cottage that serenely made itself at home with the outdoors. Yes, but a bitch to heat in cold weather, the Judge had commented when others gasped in admiration at the great room with its famous ship’s keel ceiling.

The two-story façade of gray cedar shingle with generous green trim was located on a gentle rise above the lakeshore, a view made readily accessible from the indoors by plentiful bay windows; high pocket doors let one space glide unimpeded into the next, while skylights with plate and blown glass in decorative configurations invited pine-filtered sunlight—tinctured, toned, and transmuted—to play freely across polished fruitwood surfaces, an effect both dazzling and restful to the eye—meditative, according to Stanford White, who’d handpicked many of the decorative artifacts for the interior on his European buying trips—an ensemble of simmering chiaroscuro that gave the whole an otherworldly weightless charm. As the Judge liked to laconically put it, Hermitage was my father’s escape from the disasters of the operating theater, which, in the days before penicillin and chemotherapy, were many and disheartening. And not being a religious man, he believed in getting one’s taste of heaven in the here and now.

The generous piazza, wrapped from fore to aft around the sprawling lakeside façade, offered the less intrepid bird-watching from the comfort of high-backed wicker chairs and porch swings. George smiled to himself, fingering the two granite snubbing posts, rope-scarred relics of the Delaware and Hudson Canal (which had once passed eight miles to the south), presiding like archaic totems on either side of the piazza stairs. Placing two hands on the weathered brow of the tallest, he vaulted himself onto the creaking pine flooring as he had as a kid. Happily locating his favorite chair, a huge pea green fan-shaped wicker monstrosity with battered cushions, he lowered himself, pulled up his feet, and curled down into its enveloping arms, only lacking some good