Linda Fairstein - Entombed

Mike stood in frigid water up to his ankles and threw another couple of rocks far out into the waves. "That's what consumes me sometimes. All of these shitbirds who don't deserve to live, they're gonna be here long after we're gone. And that sweet, smart, strong kid I fell in love with didn't stand a fucking chance from the get-go."

"You can't-"

"If you're gonna give me 'life isn't fair,' Coop, don't even open your mouth," he said, reversing his trail. "They're giving heart transplants to prison inmates now, you know that? Did you ever hear of anything more fucking stupid than that? You need a liver or a kidney or a new pair of eyeballs, you could be up for sainthood alongside Mother Teresa but you still gotta get in line behind some serial killer in San Quentin or a pedophile up in Attica."

He leaned over to pick up a piece of driftwood and began to trace something in the sand. It was a building, a childlike imitation of a skyscraper. "Can you imagine what it is to leave a legacy like that, something that you've built from nothing but your imagination and raw talent? I'd stand in front of these-these magnificent structures-things that Val had conceived from a drawing on a piece of paper and then seen through to the final construction. Do you know how much joy it gave her to create things like that, things that people will look at and live in and enjoy for generations?

"Me? I run around locking up bad guys like it makes a difference to anybody. Like there isn't gonna be another son of a bitch to come along to fill the vacuum before I even have the cuffs on tight. Then one of your cowardly colleagues gives 'em cheap pleas and they're back on the sidewalk a few years later, sticking needles in their arms and killing anybody that looks at ' em cross-eyed. Why do we bother? Why do we keep on doing it?"

He knew the answers as well as I did. There was no reason for me to speak.

Mike turned and climbed up to the top of the dune, sitting down in the middle of the path that led down the other side. He stared out at the distant horizon, the seamless line between the ocean and the sky. "I understand why you come back to this place."

I slowly moved up toward him, trying to get a foothold in the shifting sand.

"I used to look at you, back when we first started working together," Mike said. "I'd heard about-about what happened to Adam from the guy you shared an office with. I used to look at you and wonder how you handled the grief at that young age, when you seemed to have everything else going for you. I used to try to figure out how you got up in the morning and got on with your life. I didn't know why you gave a damn about all the needy derelicts who showed up on your doorstep, why you cared about helping any of them when you could have slammed the door behind you and walked away from it all."

"You think I didn't wallow in my own self-pity for months? You think the thoughts I had were any different than what you're going through this very minute?"

I reached out my hand and Mike extended his, to pull me up next to him.

"You didn't want to close your eyes in the hospital because you were afraid of your dreams, your nightmares," he said. "Me? I wouldn't mind dreaming. The dreaming's gonna be all I have left. It's knowing that every time I wake up and open my eyes, my first thought will be Val, my first image will be that broken little body that fought so hard to make it."

I stood behind him, my hands on his shoulders. He didn't brush them away, so I squatted and began to gently knead them.

"How long, Coop? You got a smart answer for everything. You got an answer for that, for how long it takes?"

"Longer than you can even begin to imagine," I said. I talked to him about emptiness and unfairness and profound unhappiness. I told him about the darkest thoughts I had confronted and the hardest things I ever had to do in the face of my despair.

"And it stops? You're gonna tell me that someday this pain just stops?"

"It's going to be with you forever, Mike. Just like you said. Before your eyes open in the morning-every single morning- you'll be stabbed in the heart by some memory of Val the second you're even conscious. The first moment you have a thought, it's going to be Val," I said, pausing and backing away a bit. "And then one day-maybe eight months, maybe a year from now-you'll wake up one day and you'll think of something you forgot to do the night before, someone you have to call about a case, some problem you promised to take care of for your mother. Some really trivial thing."

I stood up, ready to turn and go. The sun had almost disappeared and the temperature was dropping.

"That's the day you're going to hate yourself most-the first time something sneaks into your consciousness before Val does. You'll be angrier at the world than you are right now. Mad at yourself, too, for letting it creep in there. But then it will happen again, more and more often. And each time it does you'll despise yourself for betraying Val's memory with such insignificant thoughts. Until some very distant day, inconceivable now, when the memories assume a balance of some kind, when they bring pleasure with them almost as often as they cause pain."

"That doesn't seem possible to me," Mike said, standing and brushing the sand off the seat of his jeans. "I don't think I can deal with it."

"Nobody does. Nobody wants to."

"You come out here to be near him, don't you? You feel closer to Adam when you're here."

I didn't answer.

"The heavens, the ocean, sand for as far as the eye can see-and not another person around," he said. "Makes you pretty conscious of your own mortality."

He reached into his pocket, removed a black velvet pouch, and handed it to me.

"Open it. Go ahead."

I untied the drawstring and turned it upside down in my hand. Out slipped a diamond ring-a slim gold band with a small brilliant stone in a classic round setting.

"It's very beautiful," I said, holding it up and watching the gem sparkle, reflecting against the shimmering surface of the water. "Did Val-?"

"Nope. A surprise," Mike said. "Valentine's Day. I had it up on a shelf in her bedroom closet that she couldn't reach."

No wonder he'd been so short of money these past two months.

He took the ring from me and loped down the dune toward the edge of the water. I called out after him but I knew there was no way to stop him. I watched as Mike waded into the frigid surf, drew back his arm, and hurled Val's ring into the riptide that was sucking the waves out to sea.

None of us felt much like eating dinner.

More than the landscape and the foliage change when winter comes to Chilmark. Not only the general store closes, but so does every up-island restaurant and inn. No fried clams at The Bite, no lobster rolls at The Galley, no shore dinners at The Homeport, no conch fritters at Cornerway, and no harpooned sword from Larsen's. There was always some clam chowder in the freezer, and I defrosted it for the three of us. Mike barely played with it while we tried to distract him with memories of weekends and evenings that all of us had spent together.

Mike stood up from the table, walked to the bar, and opened the liquor cabinet. He closed it and turned to Mercer. "I'm not gonna drink. It's too easy to get through it that way. Feel like a walk?"

They let themselves out the back door and went off in the dark. I took a book into the living room, added some logs to the fire, and poured myself the drink that Mike had rejected. It was almost ten o'clock by the time they returned.

Mike warmed himself in front of the fireplace for a few minutes before telling us he was going to try to get some rest. He and Mercer clasped each other in an embrace and then Mike grabbed the banister and pulled himself up the stairs.