Fall from Grace (29 page)

“Too late for that now—or for modesty.” She got up, walking over to retrieve her robe. Adam could not make himself turn away. Then she covered herself, facing him with a cool, angry look. “What is it you want from me, Adam? Though maybe now I can guess.”

Adam could not respond to this. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Carla crossed her arms. “Would it have made any difference? Or would you have thought I was playing another card?”

Adam still felt the dullness of surprise. “I can’t answer that,” he said, then glanced at the swelling beneath the robe. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“A boy. Benjamin Blaine’s last son.”

Once again, Adam was jarred; for better or worse, he had always been the younger of Ben’s sons. Then he realized how much this new child might explain, and remembered what his father had said to Matthew Thomson: Carla has promised to make me immortal.

“Did he know?” Adam finally asked.

“Of course.” Carla sat in the chair, her tone still cool but quieter. “I found out shortly after Ben got his diagnosis. He begged me to keep the baby. And, yes, he promised to support us. Though not by cutting off your mother.”

I’ve only lied to you once, she had said, for reasons of my own, and not about Jenny or the will. Adam glanced at her stomach again. “How far along are you?”

“Four and a half months.” Carla paused, then added tonelessly, “If you’re hoping for a miscarriage, I’m sorry. My doctor in Boston says that we’re both fine.”

Adam flushed. “I’m not quite that cold-blooded. Whatever you and I feel about each other, I wish your son well. I wouldn’t have wished my father on him, or anyone. Nor would I wish a child to be without a father.”

He could read the doubt in her eyes. “I’m sure you think I tricked him,” she said in the same flat voice. “The surprise was mine—I thought I was infertile. So did my doctor in L.A.; you can call him if you like. But I don’t know when, if ever, I can have another child.”

He should have guessed, Adam thought. He recalled her asking to sit at the grave site, the loose-fitting dress she had worn to dinner, her expression as she watched the boy and girl on the swing chair. But sooner or later the will contest would have surfaced her pregnancy. Then it hit him that Carla had made every effort not to seek his sympathy, perhaps from some stubborn perversity of character, perhaps for fear of provoking his cynicism or contempt. At length, he asked, “Mind if I sit?”

Carla shrugged. “You’ve just seen me naked. I minded that a good deal more.”

Adam sat on the edge of the chaise longue. After a moment, he said, “I can only imagine what this baby meant to him. A last chance to replace two disappointing sons.”

Carla met his gaze, unflinching. “Perhaps he felt something like that,” she responded evenly. “After I learned about his will, I wondered if he were trying to redeem himself in some skewed way—through Jenny, through me, and through this child. A literary heir, and a son who would idealize his imagined father.”

Adam felt his anger return. “It’s a narcissist’s fantasy—living on in the hearts of his grateful beneficiaries while taking his revenge on those who didn’t worship him in life. A last protest against the dying of his light.”

Carla shrugged. “Have it your way. At least you understand why I’m not willing to sign away this inheritance. Though I’d have been happier if Ben hadn’t tried to make us into adversaries.” She paused, giving Adam a thin, ironic smile. “Of course, he knew you. So he must have known you’d try to dismantle all his plans.”

Studying her, Adam tried to sort through the kaleidoscope of inferences derived from Carla’s pregnancy, their patterns and relationships shifting by the moment, complicated by what surely was Ben’s certainty that Clarice would challenge the will. But Carla’s pregnancy provided a rational basis for Ben to revise his estate plan, refuting the idea that he was his lover’s docile tool. And it argued against Carla as a murderer, at least if she understood the law—even if Clarice invalidated the will, Adam guessed, a child born after Ben’s death was entitled to some share of his estate. Watching him, Carla asked, “What’s bothering you?”

“There’s something you’re still not telling me. Something important.”

Carla shrugged again. “If so, don’t expect to hear it. I’ve told you the truth about Ben’s will, and that’s all you need to know.”

“Not quite. What happened between the two of you that day?”

Adam imagined a trace of sadness in her eyes. “Why is that any business of yours?” she demanded. “Or do you have some prurient interest in the details?”

Adam tried to imagine his father at the promontory as Teddy had described him—barely able to stand, susceptible to changes of heart and mind, fearing death and yet fatalistic in the face of Teddy’s threat to kill him. Calmly, Adam said, “Whatever our relationship, he was my father. I’m trying to imagine the last hours of his life.”

Carla looked past him, then down, her face shadowed in the late morning sun. Finally, she said, “I told you Ben was dying. In one way, he already had.”

“Meaning?”

Still Carla did not face him. “He was very afraid of knowing, yet not knowing, that any moment could be his last. Including his moments with me.” Her voice became low, almost inaudible. “That afternoon Ben wanted to make love, perhaps for the last time. But he discovered he no longer could. So I just held him, and stroked his hair, and told him it was okay.” Looking up at Adam, she added, “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for him, or to be anything but disgusted. But to watch Ben feel the life force drain from him was unspeakably sad to me.”

“Did he say anything about it?”

Carla closed her eyes. “Only that he wanted to die here, with me.”

Again, Adam felt the stab of resentment—not because he thought she was lying, but because this sounded like truth, all the more toxic because it was so dismissive of his mother. Detaching himself, he compared this account to Teddy’s unsettling description of his father on the promontory, a chastened man indifferent to his fate. “Then why are you so sure he didn’t jump? Given how he saw himself, impotence must have been devastating.”

Carla sat straighter, pride showing in her eyes. “We were more than that,” she insisted. “He wouldn’t have done that to me, and he didn’t. Someone murdered him.”

There was no place left to go with her, Adam perceived, and he had no heart to try. “So now you’re alone, and about to become a mother.”

Her look of pride became resolve. “As I knew would happen. But this child is more than a surprise—he’s a gift. I mean to put everything I’ve learned into making my son as strong and secure as he deserves.”

After a moment, Adam nodded. “So what will you do?”

“As I told you at dinner, I’m done with acting. I keep thinking about getting an advanced degree in psychology. If I’m a decent mom, and do something useful with my life, I’ll have Ben to thank.”

Adam could not restrain himself. “Not to mention ten million dollars.”

She stood abruptly. “Damn you,” she snapped, her voice filled with an anger that startled him. “I don’t need that much money, and I didn’t ask for it. This is the last time I’ll bother telling you that. You’re obviously set on believing what you want, and I don’t know why I even care.”

Adam stood, facing her. In that wordless moment, he grasped how alike they were. She was an actress, he told himself yet again. But he had never been dispassionate about her, he realized, and was not now. Except that this time he wanted to believe her.

Still no one spoke. Carla’s smile, fleeting and enigmatic, did not change the intensity of her gaze, as though she, like he, was at last perceiving in the other something neither could say. “I know,” she said simply. A world of possible meanings in the words.

Unable to answer, Adam walked away.

Sitting back in his chair, Matthew Thomson emitted a bark of incredulous laughter. “That’s certainly a rude surprise.”

“I thought so,” Adam said. “I assume this changes things a little.”

“More than a little,” Thomson answered briskly. “This child will become what the law calls a pretermitted heir, born after execution of the will. Even if Clarice reinstitutes the prior will in her favor, your little brother-to-be is entitled to what he’d receive if there was no will: an equal share with Teddy and you in one half of Ben’s estate. Close to two million dollars, give or take.”

“To be managed by Carla Pacelli.”

“Of course. If Pacelli didn’t know that before Ben died, she certainly does now. Two million is her starting point, and she can only go up from there.”

Adam thought of Carla again, gazing back at him in a silence neither could break. “Then why conceal her pregnancy?”

“Who knows? Maybe to ward off the Enquirer, or as a tactic. Or maybe, for whatever reason, she didn’t want to further humiliate your mother. From what you say, Carla’s not an easy woman to read.”

You’re obviously set on believing what you want, Carla had said, and I don’t know why I even care. “Unless she’s extremely easy to read,” Adam replied, “and I’ve complicated her by assuming everything but the obvious—that she’s essentially honest.”

Thomson smiled. “Maybe you should have finished law school, Adam. What you’re describing is a lawyer’s syndrome.”

No, Adam thought, it’s my syndrome. Compared to me, lawyers are the kind of people who cry in movies.

Five

Driving away from the lawyer’s office, Adam wrestled with an image he could not shake—Teddy pushing their father off the cliff; Nathan Wright hearing Ben scream as he fell, then seeing his attacker vanish in the darkness. Whoever the shadow had been, Adam now believed, it was not Carla Pacelli.

He headed up-island, without a destination, testing assumptions based on stories he did not wholly accept. Though he doubted his mother’s claim to have seen a woman on the promontory, he had thought that—were this true—Clarice had seen Ben with Carla. Now he considered that both his mother and Carla might have told the truth. Given what Carla had said, Adam doubted that Ben had pursued other women on the eve of his death. But there was another woman on the island who knew his father well.

So long ago, Adam thought, yet like yesterday. Inexorably, he headed toward the dock on Menemsha Pond where Ben had kept his sailboat. Within an hour, he was sailing in the sunlight of early afternoon as though into another such afternoon, its twin, and a son’s final race against his father.

The night before, against his better judgment, Adam had allowed Ben to buy him dinner at the Beach Plum Inn.

They sat at an outside table overlooking the pond, the site of their climactic contest. After fifteen races, Ben led Adam by a single point; to win the cup, Adam had to beat him by two spots. Given his father’s skills, he could not imagine Ben coming in worse than third. This meant that Adam must finish first: even at that, he was hard-pressed to name another sailor—including Charlie Glazer—who could surpass Ben on a day so central to his need for mastery.

The summer season was at its height, the restaurant packed. Though Menemsha was dry by law, diners could bring their own liquor, and Ben had supplied a full bar—a fifth of single malt scotch, a bottle of excellent Meursault, and several snifters’ worth of Calvados. Content, he filled two tumblers of scotch on ice, and settled back to survey the gentle evening sunlight on the lawn, the grassy hillside, the softening blue of the pond. “The best of all possible worlds,” he remarked, “for the most worthy of competitions—men pitted against one another and the caprice of wind and water. I pity anyone who’ll never know the feeling.”

“Can I quote you?” Adam inquired. “I’m thinking about an article for the National Geographic. Something about primitive folkways among the residents of provincial flyspecks.”

Ben laughed aloud, eyes glinting. “Already discounting its significance, are you, so that losing won’t matter quite so much? Then why bother borrowing Jack’s boat, instead of letting my brother fail on his own?” He took a deep swallow of scotch, adopting a tone of mock nostalgia. “It takes me back thirteen years—Jack and me, the last race, his one great chance to wrest the cup from my grasp. Two boat lengths ahead, the final leg, and then he judged the wind wrong. It was over before he knew it. Guess that still must fester.”

Adam grinned across the table. “You know, Dad, you really are a prick.”

Ben gave another whoop of laughter. “Takes one to know one, Adam. But you’re still on a journey of self-discovery.” His tone became consoling. “It’s no disgrace to finish second, son. Jack did it his whole life. You can draw on his experience.”

“Not my plan,” Adam countered evenly. “You’re out of lobster pots.”

His father’s smile was tighter. “Live and learn,” he replied, and filled their tumblers again. Raising his glass, he said, “To fathers and sons.”

“And mothers and brothers and uncles,” Adam parried. “The kinder, gentler Blaines.” But he had already begun matching his father drink for drink.

By the end of a rich dinner—with the fifth half-gone, the Meursault consumed—Adam vaguely perceived that Ben might have preempted their competition with a contest he could not win. “Have some Calvados,” Ben prompted. “It’ll cut through all this food.”

His voice seemed to come from some great distance. Rashly, defiantly, Adam said, “Pour away.”

He could not remember the ride home. As he climbed the stairs, he heard his father say, “Good night, son,” the trace of a chuckle in his voice. Adam’s first stark moment of clarity was spent vomiting into the toilet. He imagined his father laughing in the darkness.

The next morning, Adam’s temples throbbed. He rose unsteadily, dressed with clumsy fingers, and sat drinking black coffee at the dining room table, transfixed by the Herreshoff Cup. Ambling in from breakfast on the porch, Ben gave him a small, appraising smile. “Ready for our race?”

Unable to look at him, Adam shrugged. Then he forced himself to put on shorts and tennis shoes, and ran ten miles along South Road to sweat the poisons out. Returning home, he took a cold shower and dressed for the race, refusing Ben’s offer of a ride.

Driving to Menemsha, Adam smiled grimly to himself. He had let Ben seize the advantage, a costly and stupid error. But there was one thing about their final contest his father did not yet know.