Fall from grace, p.6
Fall from Grace, page 6
Adam felt a wrenching sadness-not for his father, but for those whom he had harmed and would continue to harm. “We’re taught to believe in archetypes,” he replied. “Families are warm, parents love their children, fathers cherish their sons. But that’s not how it was. Believe me, he did real damage to us both. I just resemble him too much for you to see that.”
Teddy regarded him with open curiosity. “Strange, isn’t it? The son he wanted was the one who cut him off.”
The unspoken question lingered between them. “It was instinctive,” Adam said. “Like the reflex that tells an animal when to run.”
Ted gave him a look of silent appraisal. “There’s something else that’s odd,” Adam ventured. “Carla Pacelli.”
“That’s odd?” An incredulous smile spread across Teddy’s face. “It’s classic Benjamin Blaine-a beautiful actress, thirty years younger. It would have been odd if he hadn’t gone for it.”
“Maybe so. But this attachment somehow feels deeper than his norm.”
“I couldn’t really say,” Teddy responded in his driest tone. “Our father didn’t confide in me about male-female relations.”
Nodding, Adam looked around the room. He saw now that it made a perfect studio for Teddy, containing the elements his brother had explained to him long ago. There was wall space for his finished work, ample room for a table on rollers, its surface covered with multicolored oils and cups filled with paintbrushes. The main window faced north, admitting a steady light, and during the day the skylight would illuminate Teddy’s easel. It was possible, Adam reflected, that the work Teddy could do here allowed him, at least for a time, to forget the man who owned it. And then a painting on the wall caught him up short. As stark as the others, it portrayed an image Adam had seen a hundred times before, the sun setting over the promontory from which their father had fallen to his death.
Teddy followed his brother’s gaze. “A memory painting,” he said evenly. “As I told the police, I haven’t gone there in years.”
Adam met his eyes. “Even though it’s literally in your own backyard.”
“Even so. Then and now, I hated that place.”
Remembering the truth of this, Adam fell silent. At length, he said, “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”
Teddy still stared at the painting. “With many more to come. Maybe we can rent our family home from the newly affluent Ms. Pacelli. Though I doubt we’ll have the money for even that.”
The cruelty of what his father had done struck Adam anew. Then Teddy said in a somber tone, “But it has been a long day. You look depleted, bro.”
He was exhausted by how far he had come, Adam realized, and not just in miles. When he stood, so did Teddy. As the brothers embraced, Teddy murmured, “I love you, Adam. Always did, always will.”
Adam hugged him for an extra moment. “Me too.”
Releasing his brother, Adam left. As he crossed the lawn, he saw that their mother had left the light on in his old room, a rectangle of yellow in the darkness.
Lugging his suitcase, Adam climbed the stairs, floorboards creaking under his weight.
His room was intact, a museum of the past, as though he had never left. High school trophies, a certificate acknowledging him as valedictorian of his class. A Yale coffee mug filled with pens. A family photo, four people smiling into the camera, Ben with his canine grin, Teddy standing a little separate from the others. A photograph of Ben and a marlin that the college-age Adam had labeled “Hemingway Lite.” A picture of Jenny Leigh.
The remnants of another life, Adam thought, everything but Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. Then he remembered that it was his father who, when Adam was not yet ten, had patiently read Great Expectations aloud to him from start to finish. There was something magical, he had discovered, about hearing Dickens’s words in his father’s rich baritone voice.
You broke my heart, you bastard.
For a moment Adam sat on his bed caught in the vortex of memory. Then he began to unpack, filling the old chest of drawers with the clothes of a much older man. When he took out the last shirt, all that remained in the suitcase was his handgun.
He did not know why he had packed the Luger. Habit, he supposed; the last six months had made him jumpy, no matter where he was, even more watchful and untrusting than before. One week ago, this gun had saved his life, or he would have died on the same day as his father. Now he concealed it under two pairs of slacks.
Turning out the light, he crawled between fresh-smelling sheets that his mother must have laundered for him. But his surroundings, at once familiar and strange, did not allow for sleep. Reviewing what his mother, uncle, and brother had told him, he wondered how much to believe.
At last, his mind weary, he drifted into the restless sleep that had become all that he could manage.
But the nightmare caught him, even here. He started awake, forehead damp, reaching for his gun before he realized where he was. Much of the dream was as before-though he could see himself, his body lay by the road, eviscerated by an IED. But this time his corpse had the graying hair of Benjamin Blaine the last time Adam had seen him.
Eight
The next morning, as was the family custom, Adam drove to Alley’s General Store to buy the New York Times. The headlines were grim-the Taliban had ambushed and killed seven American soldiers in Helmand Province, and the Afghan government had descended into factional squabbling that, to Adam’s jaundiced eye, reflected the corruption of all. It made the death of young Americans that much harder to accept.
Returning home, Adam passed the cemetery at Abel’s Hill. Inevitably, his gaze was drawn to his father’s grave, lit by shafts of morning sunlight, the grass around it a deepening green. Beside it, the solitary figure of a woman in a simple black dress bent to place flowers on his grave. Adam pulled over to the side of the road and got out, walking among the tombstones to reach the place where, only yesterday, his family had buried Benjamin Blaine.
The headstone was engraved BENJAMIN BLAINE, 1945–2011. HUSBAND OF CLARICE, FATHER OF EDWARD AND ADAM, Beneath this were the words Ben once had spoken in an interview: “I WROTE THE TRUTH AS I SAW IT.” Kneeling, the woman quietly recited a prayer; though she must have heard Adam behind her, she gave no sign of this. Finally, she crossed herself and, rising, turned to face him.
Tall and slender, she looked a touch older than her age, which he put at thirty-two. On television she had been striking and exotic, an Italian-American brunette with dark, intense eyes and a vitality that made her all the more memorable. Now she had the tempered beauty of a survivor. In the last photograph Adam remembered of her, taken after her arrest, her eyes were clouded by drugs and filled with shame and confusion. But the eyes that regarded him now were clear and flecked with sadness. The faint smile at one corner of her mouth did not change them.
“You could only be Adam.” Her voice was as he recalled it, smoky, with a trace of Mediterranean intensity. “Now I know how your father must have looked at your age.”
She took it for granted that he knew who she was. The strangeness of the moment left him briefly silent. Then he said, “And you’re Carla Pacelli. Or used to be.”
The veiled insult did not change her expression. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. But the only service I could hold for him is private.”
Instinctively, Adam looked toward the road. Near his car he saw a Jeep, then a woman he took to be Amanda Ferris with a photographer whose telescopic lens glinted in the sun. Facing Pacelli, Adam said, “Not too private. I think you and I just made the National Enquirer.”
Briefly, Pacelli shut her eyes. “I’m used to this,” she said wearily, “and it’s way too late to care. But I didn’t mean to inflict them on you or your family.”
Adam dismissed this. Perhaps she had staged her touching graveyard visit to cast herself as a woman in mourning. She was, after all, a performer, no doubt conscious that an image, if artfully created, could conceal avarice and calculation. Adam’s reality was this-she had been his father’s lover and the chief beneficiary of his will, heedless of the damage she inflicted on Clarice Blaine. At length, Adam said, “You were far from his only woman-just the one in the girlfriend chair when the music stopped. All I care about is what you’ve taken from my mother.”
A moment’s anger flashed in Pacelli’s eyes, then died there. In the same even tone, she said, “Then there are a few things I should say to you, as clearly as I can. Whatever you choose to think, I loved your father. Except for consideration and respect, I didn’t expect much in return. Nor did I ask for anything. I didn’t know about the will, or request him to change the one he had. From time to time, he helped me with expenses, but that was all. I’d far prefer that Ben were still alive.”
This was the defense that Adam expected, stated with the quiet command of an actress. In his estimation, Carla Pacelli had been a good one-whether feigned or real, grief was written on her face. “Nonetheless,” Adam said, “his demise has worked out nicely for you.”
She gave him a long, cool look. “Then I should be happy, shouldn’t I. Do I seem it to you?”
Adam met her eyes. “No,” he answered. “But your business is appearance, not reality, and good taste requires the appearance of sadness. I am curious, though, about the last time you saw him alive.”
Pacelli looked at him with the same directness. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this conversation. You buried him yesterday; I buried him just now. That’s hard for me. But if we’re going to talk, would you mind sitting down? I haven’t slept much lately.”
With mock gallantry, Adam gestured at a swatch of grass beside his father’s tombstone. After a moment, Pacelli sat, Adam beside her. When he looked toward the road again, the reporter and photographer were watching. Facing Pacelli, Adam asked, “Did you see him on the night he died?”
“No,” she answered. “The last time I saw him was that afternoon.”
“What did you talk about?”
She turned to him. “I’m sorry, but that’s personal to me. As is everything that happened that day.”
“But you told the police. I’m sure.”
“Only because I had to.” She hesitated, then added in a lower voice, “For obvious reasons, they were easier to talk to. Even looking at you is painful.”
Were she not who she was, Adam might almost have believed her sorrow-if not her claim to be ignorant of the will. Bluntly, he asked, “Did you know my father was failing?”
Studying him, she seemed to weigh her answer. “Do you mean physically or mentally?”
“Both.”
She turned away from him, regarding a patch of grass in front of them. Then she said, “It won’t surprise you to know that while you were burying your father, I was consulting a lawyer. Call that cold, if you like, but the requirements of ‘good taste’ left me with a free afternoon. Right now, for various reasons, I’m not prepared to take this any further.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t, in time. You’re free to try me later. We’ll see how things stand then.”
Carefully, Pacelli got to her feet, her face suddenly pale. She began to leave, then looked back at him again. “There are two more things I should say to you. Whatever happened between you and your father, he deeply regretted that. And whatever happened with Ben and your mother, I’m sorry for how she must feel.”
Left unspoken was whether Pacelli meant his father’s affair, his death, or the loss of his estate. The nerve of this expression of sympathy left Adam briefly silent, even as he rejected the notion of his father mired in regret. Then he asked, “Did he tell you why I left?”
Pacelli shook her head. “I asked him, several times. But he could never talk about it.”
“That much I believe.”
Pacelli looked into his face. Then he turned from her and walked away. The image of her last expression, curious and intent, lingered in his mind.
Walking toward the road, he saw the reporter waiting by his car. When he reached it, she stood in front of the door, her voice and manner so feral that Adam wanted to push her aside. “Mr. Blaine,” she said, “tell me what you and Carla were talking about.”
For an instant, Adam felt a reflexive sympathy for Carla Pacelli. Then he looked at the reporter so coldly that she seemed to recoil. “When I want to see you,” he told her, “I’ll let you know.”
He got in the car. The original reason for this trip, the newspaper, lay forgotten on the passenger seat. Looking back at the cemetery, Adam saw Pacelli, her head bowed, her hand resting on his father’s tombstone. No doubt she thought that the Enquirer could use another photograph.
When Adam came through the door, his mother was in the living room. “Where were you?” she asked.
“I decided to stop at his grave.”
Her mouth parted, as if to form a question, and then the telephone rang.
Clarice answered. “Hello, George,” she said, her tone pleasant but reserved. “Yes, I’m all right, thank you. Please, tell me.”
For a moment, she listened intently. Then her face froze, save for the bewilderment in her eyes. “I had no idea,” she managed to say. “Are you sure?”
As she listened, Adam saw, she placed a hand on the chair as if to retain her balance. With great civility, she said, “Thank you, George. It was kind of you to call.”
Putting down the phone, she gazed past Adam as if he were not there. “Was that the DA?” he asked.
She blinked, aware of him again. “Yes. He called about the cause of death.”
“Is there something more?”
Clarice drew a breath. “Yes. Your father had brain cancer. A massive tumor, apparently.”
The words hit Adam with a jolt. “Did he know?”
Clarice sat down. “If so, he chose not to tell me.”
Looking away, she held a hand to her face. Another betrayal, Adam sensed her thinking, another secret. Then a further thought struck him: that on the night he died, Benjamin Blaine was looking at the last summer solstice of his life and, perhaps, knew that. A host of implications started running through Adam’s mind, complicating or explaining his father’s last few months, the shocking suddenness of his death.
Who might have known? he wondered, and thought again of Carla Pacelli.
Nine
Dr. Philip Gertz, the Blaines’ family doctor, had gray hair, a thin face, and a judicious manner underscored by thoughtful blue eyes. In ten years, he had changed surprisingly little. But his office in the new Martha’s Vineyard Hospital was a considerable upgrade. Waving Adam inside, he said, “I saw you at Ben’s funeral. But I didn’t have a chance to give you my condolences.”
The remark came wrapped in a dubious tone. Evenly, Adam said, “That’s all right, Doctor. When someone dies, you have the funeral, and once it’s over the man is still dead. All that’s left is how he treated the living.”
Gertz regarded Adam closely. “And you’ve been all right?”
“Fine.”
“Good.” The doctor paused, glancing at his watch. “You said you wanted to ask me something.”
“About my father. We just learned that when he died, he had a very serious brain tumor.”
Gertz sat back, his face slack, then slowly shook his head. “Sweet Jesus Christ.”
“You didn’t know?”
The doctor shook his head. At length, he said, “Late last year he came to me complaining of headaches that disturbed his concentration. I referred him to a neurosurgeon in Boston.”
“And?”
“Ben called me later to say he was fine, and that the headaches were gone.”
“Did he ever see the neurosurgeon?”
Gertz’s brow furrowed. “If he had, I’d have expected a report-a reputable specialist, which this man is, would have performed tests. So maybe not.”
For a moment, Adam tried to enter his father’s mind. “Still, I’d like this doctor’s name.”
Gertz wrote it on a sheet of paper. Shaking hands, he said, “Tell me what you learn. When it comes to Ben, I guess nothing would surprise me.”
A redbrick Georgian structure, the Dukes County Courthouse was located next to the site of his father’s funeral. Since Adam had last been on the island, the county sheriff had installed a magnetometer at the entrance and a conveyor belt on which Adam placed his keys and wallet. Passing through security, he noticed cameras pointed at him from the ceiling, attached to the wires of a new alarm system. The shadow of 9/11 had reached the island.
George Hanley’s office was on the second floor, a cubbyhole jammed with file cabinets and a wooden desk covered with papers. The room was further dwarfed by the local DA himself, a burly man at least six feet four, with thick white hair, a mustache to match, and shrewd green eyes. As Hanley stood to shake hands, he gave Adam a warm Irishman’s smile that did not obscure his keen look of appraisal. On top of his desk, Adam noticed, was an accordion folder marked BENJAMIN BLAINE.
“Mind if we talk outside?” Hanley asked. “The older I get, the more I resent sitting here on a day like this. How many more of these do I get? I’ve started to wonder.”
The remark, though casual, carried a pensive undertone. Adam’s father and Hanley had been friends, at least of a kind, and he supposed that, for Hanley as for others, Ben’s death had left a psychic hole. “Sure,” Adam said. “I’d rather feel the sun on my face and watch the passing parade. I’ve been away for a while.”
“Which was duly noted,” Hanley said good-humoredly. “This island is a small place, you’ll remember.”
With that, Hanley led Adam down the stairs. As they left, Adam noticed a sheriff’s deputy in a room near the entrance, watching a TV monitor that showed a sequence of doors and hallways in the courthouse. As with the camera and alarm system, he filed this away.
The two men found a wooden bench between the courthouse and the Old Whaling Church. Hanley raised his face to the light, breathing in the clean fresh air. Then he cast a jaundiced eye on the tourists who jammed the redbrick sidewalks along Main Street, bobbing in and out of clothing stores, a bookshop, an ice cream dispensary. In his rumbling voice, he said, “God, I hate to see them. Then I hate to see them go. They bring the money that keeps this island afloat.”
