Fall from Grace (2 page)

Ben’s face closed, his pleasure in the day vanishing. “We’re not the same person, for sure. But we’re alike in ways that seem important. Think of me what you will, but I desire women. I’ve seen almost everything the world contains—wars, poverty, cruelty, heroism, grace, children starving to death, and women treated like cattle or sold into sexual slavery. There’s almost nothing I can’t imagine. But one thing I can’t imagine is you looking at a man the way you look at Jenny. Teddy sees a man and imagines him naked, lying on his stomach. Assuming,” Ben finished, “that Teddy is even the protagonist of that particular act.”

In his anger, Adam resolved to say the rest. “I’ve always loved Teddy,” he replied coldly, “and always will. But given how you feel about him, it’s a good thing that he’s in New York. And given how I feel about that, it might be good for you to remember that I’m the son you’ve got left.”

Ben gave him a level look, deflecting the challenge. “He’s in New York for now,” he said at length. “It’s where artists go to fail. Inside him, Teddy carries the seed of his own defeat. My guess is that he’ll slink back here, like Jack did. The larger world was a little too large for him.”

Listening, Adam marveled at the casual ease with which Ben had slipped in his disdain for his older brother. “Just who is it that you do respect, Dad?”

“Many people,” Ben answered. “But in this family?” He paused, regarding Adam intently. “You, Adam. At least to a point.”

Staring at his father’s coffin, Adam wished that he had never learned what that point was. In kinship, he placed his hand on Teddy’s shoulder.

Two

Amid the hush that follows prayer, the priest began to speak.

In the Episcopal Church, Adam knew, by tradition there was no eulogy. But it seemed that his father could not be buried without one. Even dead, he was not a man for observing rules.

Briefly, Adam glanced at his mother, hands folded in her lap, attentive and almost watchful. What piqued Adam’s curiosity was that she had assigned the eulogy to this cleric, a man far too young to have known Ben well. Clarice understood, of course, that neither his sons nor his brother cared to express public sentiments about the deceased. But that she had not enlisted one of the visiting celebrities suggested to Adam that she wished to maintain the public image of this family and this marriage. He settled in to endure a web of fictions and evasions.

A serious-looking young man with thinning hair, the priest began with the rise of Benjamin Blaine. The son of a Vineyard family whose males, for more than a century, had scraped by as lobstermen. The first Blaine to attend college, on a scholarship to Yale—an act of will, Adam knew, reflecting his father’s iron resolve to be nothing like his father. A draftee who became a decorated veteran of bitter fighting in Vietnam. Author of the first great memoir for that war, Body Count, a searing depiction of combat that became a bestseller. A foreign correspondent who went to the hardest places on the globe. Then, not yet thirty, the novelist who, in the clergyman’s words, “sought out the impoverished, the embattled, the victims of war or oppression, capturing their lives in indelible prose—”

And taking due credit for it, Adam thought. The travels not only fed his books but his legend—that there was nowhere Ben Blaine would not go, no danger he feared to face. He could have written the priest’s next words: “He was handsome and charismatic, a great adventurer who was friend to some of the world’s most famous people, and some of its most forgotten.” All of whom, Adam would have said, his father saw as bit players in the drama of his life. Glancing at Teddy as he suffered this account in silence, he mentally added Ben’s family to the list.

“He never blinked at the cruelty of the world,” the priest went on. “Instead, he recorded it with brutal honesty. That was the obligation he took on: to become our eyes and illuminate what he saw so that we could see.” Give Ben Blaine his due, Adam conceded—he had breathed humanity into forgotten lives, touching the conscience of millions. For Adam, one of the mysteries of writing was that it could ennoble the most selfish of men, infusing their words with a compassion missing from their intimate life. For those who never knew him, Ben Blaine was his books.

In one sense this was true. Either because of his father’s acute self-awareness, or, Adam suspected, complete obliviousness, Ben’s fictional protagonists occupied the psychic space of their creator: aggressive men who failed or succeeded in pursuit of great aspirations. If they fell short, it was never for timidity, but because what they wanted was bigger than they were—whatever their strengths, and however deep their flaws, they were not prone to introspection. What they wanted lay outside them.

Involuntarily, Adam felt these thoughts drift into a countereulogy. A demeaning husband. A soul-searing father. A man whose appetite for attention and admiration could never be slaked. A compulsive womanizer for whom women were only mirrors in which he saw himself. Without looking at her, he grasped his mother’s hand, and felt her fingers curl around his.

As he did, he became conscious of those who listened with them. Everyone knew about the women, of course. But in the niceties which attended death, the young priest no doubt would erase them. Glancing up at him, Adam composed his features into the expression of courteous attention he owed this man for his efforts. “Benjamin Blaine,” the priest continued, “was not simply a world figure. He was also a husband, and a father. Together, Ben and Clarice raised two accomplished sons. And had Ben lived to see it, today would have been their fortieth anniversary.”

Adam had forgotten this. Glancing at his mother, he saw tears glistening on her face, a look of grief and torment that surprised him. He clasped her hand tighter.

Seeing Ben’s widow, the priest paused, then resumed in a thinner voice. “Those forty years are a tribute to the love between Ben and Clarice. But they are also a testament to her resilience and restraint, her commitment to fulfill the vows she pledged to her husband, and her resolve to raise Edward and Adam in the family to which they were born—”

A complex gift, Adam thought. But what puzzled him was the priest’s reference—oblique but clear enough—to his father’s infidelity. After all, mourners had buried Nelson Rockefeller, who had died making love to his mistress, without a whisper of what had New Yorkers snickering for weeks. Rockefeller’s widow had wanted it that way and so, Adam had thought until this moment, must Clarice Blaine.

But the priest forged on. “All of us fail in some way. All of us are subject to temptation. All of us fall short of the glory of God—”

“Some more than others,” Teddy whispered.

For Adam, this moment was another surprise—from his expression, Teddy had expected this reference to uncomfortable truths. “Ben Blaine,” the priest elaborated, “was no exception. But in this last difficult and complex year, as in all the years of their marriage, Clarice stood by him—”

Filled with questions, Adam glanced at his mother. But she was staring straight ahead now, her face suddenly haggard. “It is not for us,” the priest said firmly, “to know what was in Ben Blaine’s heart during his final months of life, or at the moment of his death. We can only look, as did Clarice, at a life enriched by family and filled with accomplishment, great courage, loyal friends, and countless acts of generosity and grace. The rich, unquiet, and triumphant life of Benjamin Blaine.”

Adam absorbed this statement in bewildered silence. Knowing his mother, he was certain that the minister said no more than she permitted. But what qualified this last year as more difficult than any other? And why, when his mother had ignored the truth for years, would she allow it to be spoken now? Except, perhaps, to have this priest publicly ennoble her victimhood.

Mired in troubled thoughts, he half listened to the ritual commendation. “Receive Benjamin Blaine into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light.

“Let us go forth in the name of Christ—”

Leaning close again, Teddy murmured, “Follow me, bro. You and I are pallbearers.”

As the priest removed the cloth from the casket, six pallbearers took their places. Besides Jack and Teddy, Adam saw Ben’s longtime publisher; the senior senator from Massachusetts, a classmate at Yale and a frequent sailing companion; and a wrongly convicted death row inmate, a Mexican immigrant whose cause Ben had championed. All wore the sober looks of men who had lost a touchstone of their lives and, in mourning him, had glimpsed their own mortality. But this first clear look at his uncle surprised Adam. He had not seen Jack for three years, and he looked much older and more than a little weary: his thick dark hair was shot through with gray, the lines in his face were now seams, and the hollows beneath his eyes looked like bruises. No doubt this occasion, like his relationship to his younger brother, was fraught. But Jack regarded Adam across the casket with an affectionate gaze, his warm brown eyes conveying deep pleasure in seeing him.

Lifting the casket, Teddy nodded at his brother, as if to say Feels like he’s in there. As the pallbearers started from the church, Adam felt his mother behind them, a silent figure in black. Then he saw Jenny Leigh.

She sat at the end of a pew, watching Adam’s face. For an instant he almost stopped, just before she looked away.

So she was still on the island, Adam thought, and had come here. She was much as he remembered her, slender and blond. Ten years ago she had possessed a smile that could fill his heart. But then, as now, there was something watchful in her eyes—as though she heard a distant, perhaps troubling, sound audible to no one else. Even at twenty, part of her had seemed forever out of reach; the last time he had seen her, they did not speak at all. Adam wondered how the years had changed her, and what she would say to him now.

Passing her, he stared straight ahead.

They bore his father through the entrance and into a bright sunlight that, to Adam, now felt incongruous. As they slid the casket into the hearse, the reporter from the Enquirer watched with a photographer who snapped pictures of the pallbearers. The key to all this interest, Adam surmised, had been hinted at in the eulogy.

Adam shook hands with his father’s friends, expressing his muted thanks. Then he followed Jack and Teddy to a black stretch limousine in which his mother waited.

Once Adam stepped inside, the driver closed the door behind him. At last he was alone with his family.

Leaning forward, he hugged his mother, discovering that she felt smaller. She gave him a wan look. “I’m so glad you’re here. I know this is hard—” Her voice trailed off.

“It’s not, Mom,” Adam replied. “I came for you.”

Her face softened in appreciation. “We’re all glad,” Jack affirmed.

Adam nodded. “How are you, Jack? Holding up okay?”

With his thoughtful air, so typical of Jack, he pondered the question. “For as long as I can remember,” he said at length, “Ben was part of my life.” He let the words stand for themselves, the enormity of their meaning left unspoken.

The limousine started toward the cemetery at Abel’s Hill. “What’s after this?” Adam inquired.

“A family meeting,” Teddy said. “We took care of the mourners last night—a wake of sorts without the body, another ritual to get through. Be happy that you missed it.”

In profile, his mother seemed to wince.

Silent, Adam looked out the window as memories of his youth flashed by—the dirt road to Long Point Beach, the turnoff for the Tisbury Great Pond. A life spent outdoors, cherished once, his memories curdled by his final summer. On the porch of Alley’s General Store, where Adam had worked summers, islanders had gathered to watch the funeral procession. “A last obeisance,” Teddy murmured. “How he would have loved it.” For a moment, Adam wanted to ask about the eulogy, then considered his mother’s feelings. He would talk with Teddy alone.

“A decade,” Jack said to him. “Does it feel that long to you?”

“Longer.”

His uncle nodded. “It’s great to see you on the island. Whatever the reason.” As if to say, Adam sensed, Now you can come back.

Teddy gave him the crooked smile Adam had loved since boyhood. “It is good, actually. Hope one of us doesn’t have to follow Dad’s lead to get you here again.”

Adam took his mother’s hand. Softly, he said, “I won’t require that now.”

The limousine reached Abel’s Hill, the hearse ahead of it. In the gentler sun of late afternoon, the green sloping hills of the cemetery looked inviting, a good place to rest. Set among the pines were tombstones dating back to the early eighteenth century. Five generations of Blaines were buried here, some who died as children, as well as Lillian Hellman, until today its most famous occupant, whom Ben had memorably described as “an unspeakable harridan, as ugly as she was dishonest.” When moved to scorn, which was often, his father had minced no words.

They parked near a grave site shaded by trees and bordered by freshly dug earth, where the priest awaited them. This time Adam, Jack, and Teddy carried the casket with two cemetery workers, placing it on the platform the men would use to lower it into the ground. As Adam introduced himself to the priest, Robin Merritt, another car appeared. To his utter confusion, Jenny Leigh emerged.

He glanced at Teddy. But his brother’s face registered no surprise. When Clarice saw Jenny, her expression warmed as it had for Adam. Tall and graceful, Jenny seemed to carry a separateness, as though creating her own space. But then she reached his mother and took Clarice in her arms.

Clarice hugged her fiercely. Ten years ago, Adam’s mother had barely known her. And yet, by some alchemy of time, Jenny Leigh was here.

She kissed Jack on the cheek, then Teddy. Approaching Adam, her blue-gray eyes were grave and searching. She hesitated and then, as though conscious of the others watching, brushed his cheek with her lips. Drawing back, she said, “You look different. But then it’s been quite a while.”

Adam’s mouth felt dry. “So it has. How are you, Jenny?”

“Fine.” She glanced toward the grave. “Is this hard for you?”