Fall from Grace (22 page)

She curled with her back to him, wordless for a time. “It’s not you,” she said in a muted voice. “I go somewhere else.”

“Tell me, Jen.”

“I can’t yet.” Her voice became broken, bereft. “We’ll be all right, I promise.”

Fourteen

Just after dawn, Adam and his uncle met at the trailhead to Sepiessa, walking in first light through the trees and brush along the Tisbury Great Pond.

This had always been Jack and Adam’s favorite hour, when the natural world of the Vineyard seemed as new as creation. The grass glistened with dew; the water shimmered with shards of light; birds called from the branches of oaks; the air, scented by foliage, cooled Adam’s face. But today his thoughts, and his conscience, were weighted by his pact with Amanda Ferris. At length, his uncle asked, “Feeling life’s burdens?”

“Burdens,” Adam said simply. “And confusions.”

He felt Jack’s gaze as they continued along a path dappled with light and shadow. In the same reticent tone, Jack said, “Your thoughts are your own, Adam. But if there’s some way I can help—”

He let the question hang there. All at once, Adam recalled how straightforward their relationship had always been—by comparison with Ben, to be sure, but also his mother and Teddy. As before, he felt the comfort of Jack’s company, redolent of the times when Adam had failed at something, and Jack had offered consolation and perspective instead of Ben’s razor-sharp critiques. Talking with Jack was safe.

“It’s about Dad’s death,” Adam said at length. “I’m pretty sure someone killed him.”

Face creased with thought, Jack gazed at the trail in front of them as it wound deeper into the woods. At last, he said, “Why does this have to be murder? Granted, it’s hard to imagine Ben tumbling off the cliff by accident, even sick as he was. But ever since I learned that he had brain cancer, I’ve thought he might have jumped.”

“That’s hard for me to accept.”

“Because you remember Ben as he was. It seems like this disease was stealing his identity, piece by piece—he couldn’t write, couldn’t sail, maybe could no longer make love to Carla Pacelli. He could have looked at what he was becoming and figured it was time.” Jack slowed his steps, turning to face his nephew. “No one saw him die. Even if you’re right, this may be a case where someone literally gets away with murder. I wonder if you can live with that.”

Suppose, Avram Gold had said, you find out your father was murdered by a member of your family. Is that something you really want to know? “Without knowing who did it,” Adam replied, “I can’t say.”

“But you do know the four people most impacted by the will. Two of whom are Teddy and your mother.”

Edgy, Adam wondered if Jack—like him—knew something about Teddy neither wanted to say. “And your point?”

“That both of us may never know, and the police may never solve this. What matters most is helping your mother gain back what Ben took.”

There was wisdom in this, Adam conceded. But he knew too much, including about Teddy, and Jack’s way was not his. “Anyway,” Jack concluded, “you’ve spent more time worrying about Ben’s death than being with your living mother.”

His comment was typical of Jack, Adam thought, and fair enough. “I’m still too much like him, aren’t I?”

“Maybe so,” Jack answered. “But life is long.”

Perhaps not mine, Adam thought, and continued walking with his uncle.

Wondering if this were the last time, Adam steered Ben’s powerboat from its mooring near their home, taking his mother for lunch along Edgartown Harbor.

It was a crystalline day from his youth, evoking again how deeply he had cherished Vineyard summers—a cloudless blue sky, temperate air, a cool breeze, spray thrown up into his face by the knife edge of the prow. Through some trick of the mind, Clarice looked as he remembered her—younger, her eyes brighter, a half smile on her face as she let activity dull her worries. Taking a course along the North Shore, Adam recalled similar outings with Teddy and his mother, their destination the street fair in Vineyard Haven; or Oak Bluffs with its crowded waterfront and gingerbread Victorians; or the Old Whaling Church to hear some local musician of their acquaintance. It brought back how spirited Clarice could be—always up for an adventure, with an energy and a spirit that lightened the burden of Ben’s imperious nature. The thought summoned a fleeting smile of his own.

Clarice seemed to understand this. “We had fun then, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, Mom. We did.”

Rounding Cedar Tree Neck, Adam saw the low hill above the beach where, that summer, Jenny and he had watched the sun die, turning the water a muted blue-gray. “A promontory of our own,” Adam had told her wryly. Perhaps his mother read this thought. “Have you seen Jenny yet?” she asked.

“No time,” Adam said, then decided to cut to the quick of this. “You keep mentioning Jenny, and I keep wondering why.”

As Clarice appraised him, he sensed her avoiding confrontation. “I love Jenny,” she said simply. “Whatever happens with this will, she’s been like a daughter to me. Wonderful as you two boys may be, I needed a young woman on whom to inflict my good intentions.”

Beneath its surface, Adam knew, the remark was laden with a significance he was meant to grasp. “When we were seeing each other, you barely knew her. What changed that?”

Struck by a wave, the powerboat jolted, knocking Adam off-balance as it threw up spumes of white. Righting himself, he saw Clarice grasping the arm of her deck chair, her lips compressed, her blue eyes reflecting her reluctance to answer and her need to do so. “In a way, Adam, it had to do with you. Even though you were gone.”

Adam felt his exasperation warring with the instinct that he wished to hear no more. “For godsakes,” he said at length, “are you going to be passive-aggressive all the way to Edgartown? Please put this verbal pas de deux out of its misery.”

Clarice’s countenance took on a determined air. “All right,” she said in her flattest tone. “Two days after you left, Jenny tried to kill herself.”

Adam felt the shock run through him. But all he could say was, “How?”

“She overdosed on Quaaludes. Your father found her on our beach and carried her up the stairs on his shoulders. She was limp, her face as white as china. But for Ben, she’d be dead.”

Half-conscious of doing so, Adam throttled back the motor, dreading the answer to the question he must ask. “Did Jenny ever say why?”

“Never. Nor did she scrawl a suicide note in the sand.” Clarice lowered her voice. “We were your parents, Adam. Perhaps she didn’t want us to know.”

“God damn you, Mother,” Adam burst out. “Hearing this is bad enough without you blaming me. No matter how much pleasure you’re taking from it.” Seeing her blanch, he muted his tone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How?” Clarice snapped. “You didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address. We didn’t even know where you were. So forgive me if I sound bitter.” She crossed her arms. “In any event, Jenny swore me to secrecy. Especially from you.”

Killing the motor, Adam let them bob in a cone of silence. At length, he said, “I take it you got her help.”

“A great deal of help. For two months she was hospitalized at Mass General. Your father paid for everything.” Clarice paused, then spoke in a different register. “Despite what he’s done to me, Ben saved her life. I expect that explains his bequest.”

Carla had proposed one theory, Adam thought, his mother another. And neither of them knew. “Other than my departure,” he inquired, “did you divine any reason why a twenty-year-old girl would decide to end her life?”

Reproach resurfaced in Clarice’s eyes. “Not to a certainty. Medically, her doctors at Mass General proposed bipolar disorder, or schizoaffective disorder—which is far more dangerous. Or even post-traumatic stress disorder—”

“The trauma being?”

“Nobody knows. And Jenny couldn’t—or wouldn’t—help.” Clarice’s tone became less harsh. “Bipolar disorder tends to surface between sixteen and twenty-two. Did you see any signs of it?”

Remembering Jenny as she was, Adam felt a deepening sadness. “Looking back, her moods would shift abruptly. The swings could be pretty wide.”

“That’s what the doctors said. At first they kept her in lockdown, then heavily medicated. Her mother was working, and not much help. So I stayed there for days at a time.”

Adam felt obscurely shamed—not just about Jenny, but that he had known nothing about such a central piece of his mother’s life. “Now I understand why Jenny is so important to you.”

“Do you?” A film of tears appeared in his mother’s eyes. “Ben dominated our lives. First he’d driven Teddy away, and then you simply vanished. But now I had Jenny. Every day I watched her coming back to life. Sometimes we’d talk, and sometimes she’d let me brush her hair.” Clarice’s voice thickened. “When at last she was better, Jenny’s mother drove her home. But by then we were bonded in a way more profound than blood. My husband was unfaithful, my sons missing. But Jenny helped fill my life.

“She still does. Sometimes we fly to New York, shopping or going to galleries or the theater. Every few days we’ll meet for lunch or dinner, or just go for a walk. The thing she rarely does is come to the house. She says it reminds her too much of you.”

Once more, Adam felt a wave of guilt and anger. “After all these years, why should I still matter?”

“My theory? To Jenny, you represent an ideal. When you left, she lost the one man she’d ever loved.” Clarice leaned forward, as if to reach him. “You’re not a woman, so you may not understand this. But I think that Jenny is capable of loving you, and hoping you’d return, for the entire decade you were gone. Some women are like that, no matter how little encouragement they get.”

In the crosscurrent of his emotions, Adam felt sadness prevail. “Tell me what her life is like.”

“She’s had some success getting her stories published. Day to day, she works mornings in an art gallery and spends time with women friends like me. Romantically, she’s had a series of unsatisfying relationships, often with older men.” Clarice paused. “Jenny has come to believe she’s been trying to replace her father, who abandoned them when she was eleven. She’s ready for something deeper.”

Adam gazed out at the water. For a while the boat drifted, rudderless, mother and son sharing long moments of silence. Then Adam started the motor again, remaining quiet until the boat rounded West Chop, the estates of WASP families as privileged as Clarice’s once had been. “I have an awkward subject of my own,” he said. “Last night I saw Carla Pacelli.”

His mother’s eyes widened in hurt and dismay, as though Adam, like Ben, had betrayed her. “For what earthly reason did you do that?”

“My duties as executor, an excuse for helping you sub rosa. But something strange came up.”

“Which was?”

“Apparently, my father suggested to her that your marriage was a ‘sham’—quote unquote. I took it to mean that you were no longer intimate. Or perhaps that you were unfaithful, too.”

Clarice’s jaw clenched in anger. “How pathetic,” she said scornfully. “That Carla believed it, or that you believed Carla. Even men like Ben make excuses for infidelity. It only surprises me that he bothered.”

“So it’s not true.”

“Hardly. Though at times I wished it were. Feeling alone in a marriage is worse than being alone.” She shook her head, as if at her wasted years. “On the subject of solitude, let’s get back to Jenny. No matter what you feel now, there’s no harm in being kind to her.”

Silent, Adam tried to imagine how it felt to prefer oblivion. Then another memory came to him, more telling now than then.

They had taken North Road to the entrance of a hiking trail, Alicia Keys on his CD player, then climbed through woods and fields until they reached Waskosims Rock.

They sat at the crest of the hill, looking out. Even at this elevation, they could not see the water; the scene before them, miles of woods and farmland and stone walls, was rolling and pastoral, a portrait of New England. “At moments like this,” Adam said, “I want to live here all my life.”

Jenny kept watching the horizon. “How long will that be? I wonder.”

Adam smiled. “I’m planning on forever. I’m too afraid of dying. Like Dad, I guess.”

Jenny considered him. “Not me,” she answered softly. “From what I’ve read, it’s just as well. Often people like me don’t live past thirty.”

Troubled, Adam grasped her hand. “What ‘people like you’?”

Jenny gazed down and then, quite suddenly, conjured her brightest smile. “Brilliant, of course. It’s such a burden being me. So much talent, so little understood.”

But Adam was not mollified. He kissed her gently, then looked into her face. Impulsively, he said, “I won’t let anything happen to you, Jen. I promise.”

Closing her eyes, Jenny rested her head on his shoulder.

Ten years later, Adam remembered the catch in his throat. “I’ll go see her,” he told his mother. “I promise.”

Fifteen

Late that afternoon, Adam climbed into his father’s truck and took South Road to the intersection crossing over to Menemsha. The lawn of one of several great houses overlooking the pond was covered with tables beneath umbrellas, the scene of a wedding or fund-raiser or dinner party, reminding Adam that he was moving through this summer season without taking any note of it. His family’s past and present had consumed him; the summer most vivid to him had happened years ago.

Reaching Menemsha, Adam walked along the dock. Charlie Glazer was tending to his Herreshoff, Folie á Un, the boat he had raced against Ben for many seasons. The psychiatrist waved Adam on board, fixing him with a bright, inquisitive expression as his visitor sat across from him. “Sorry to trouble you,” Adam said, “and so soon at that. But things have started crashing down on me.”

Glazer’s eyes became graver. “Concerning Ben’s death? Or your relationship when he was still alive?”

“Both.”

Glazer nodded slowly. “Yesterday I felt this coming. It seems we have a lot to cover, much of it painful. So you can start this any way you like.”

Adam bent forward. Closing his eyes, he was barely conscious of the cries of gulls, the great pond flecked with boats, the gentle rocking of the Herreshoff in its slip. “Let’s begin with that summer,” he said.