Fall from Grace (30 page)

When Adam sailed out onto the pond, Jack was already in the boat he had borrowed from Charlie Glazer.

Together, uncle and nephew ran wind shots in Folie à Un and Sisyphus, repeatedly turning their bows to gauge patterns of gusts and breezes. Today the wind was tricky, shifting as much as 25 degrees from south to southeast and back again. To seize the advantage from Ben, Adam must anticipate the timing of each shift, tacking into a wind that propelled him toward the next marker. Gliding across his stern, Jack called out, “Which side of the course?”

“I’ll take the right. The wind seems stiffer.”

Nodding, Jack turned back to running wind shots. By two thirty, twelve other boats had joined them, headed for two orange buoys placed by the commodore near the creek flowing out to the Vineyard Sound. From his observation boat, the commodore, Paul Taylor, hoisted the order of the markers that defined the course, calculated to accent sudden changes in the wind.

Glancing over his shoulder, Adam saw his father in Icarus, tacking back and forth behind the starting line, angling to seize the best position when the final horn blasted. When he saw Jack at the helm of Charlie’s boat, Ben’s face hardened. But today his goal was brutally simple. It did not matter if he won; all that counted was beating Adam. If Ben could cover his son throughout the race, blocking his path, the cup would remain his; Adam’s only chance was to break free of his father and never look back. His temples still throbbed, and his stomach felt raw and empty. He was grateful for the wind and water in his face.

Five blasts of the horn marked the last five minutes. Fourteen boats kept tacking; with a minute left, Ben knifed in beside Adam, catching the wind his son needed. As Jack found his place just behind Ben, Adam felt the tightening of his neck and jaw.

With a final blast of the horn, the race started.

The boats headed downwind, taking a 30-degree angle into a southwest wind. Looking from Adam to Jack, Ben crossed the line on a starboard tack seconds ahead of his son, forcing Adam to give way. Tacking into the wind, they fought for advantage, muscles straining, Ben leading by seconds as they reached the first marker. The one boat ahead was Folie à Un.

In the distance, Adam saw his mother and Jenny in Ben’s powerboat, watching what was becoming a three-man duel. But for the next thirty frustrating minutes, Ben ignored Jack, intent solely on staying between Adam and the next mark. Taut, Adam calculated their shifts, fighting to catch a gust that would erase the narrow lead his father had seized at the outset.

For one leg, then another, Ben blocked Adam’s path.

They reached the final leg with Ben two boat lengths behind Jack, both tacking upwind, forced to adopt zigzag courses as they struggled to catch the next shift. The only choice left to Adam was whether to follow his father on the right side of the pond, fighting to pass him at last, or to break to the left behind Jack, hoping that a wind shift would allow him to beat Icarus and Folie à Un to the finish line. But with the tide swifter on the right, Adam decided to stay where he was, still locked in a tacking duel with Ben. Muscles aching, he sailed furiously, salt spray in his eyes and mouth.

But his father would not give up his lead. Suddenly, Adam felt as if he could watch the race from above. With the finish line in sight, and Ben seconds ahead of him, Adam saw that there was no way for him to edge Jack, leaving Ben in third—his only hope of taking the cup.

Suddenly, Jack tacked toward the right.

Glancing over, Ben saw Folie à Un slicing toward his bow. “Starboard,” he cried out—a demand that his brother yield the right-of-way. The three boats converged, seemingly headed for a collision.

“Starboard,” Ben yelled again.

In a sudden, perfect maneuver, Jack tacked again, cutting off Ben from the wind and causing him to abruptly lose speed. Suddenly, Jack had reversed the dynamic of the race, blocking his brother as Ben had blocked Adam. At this moment, Adam saw his chance.

Marshaling speed, he tacked to the left, catching a lift that brought him surging closer to Jack. Fifteen feet, then ten. A hundred feet to go.

Jack was still in the lead, tacking to block Ben’s way, Adam to the left. Five feet behind Jack, Adam passed his father.

He was alongside Jack’s stern now, running with the wind. Angrily, Ben strained to pass his brother. Alongside one another, the two brothers and Adam fought for position, the commodore waiting at the line to call out the order of finish.

Thirty feet from the line, Adam was three feet behind his uncle, the wind still at his back.

Two feet from Jack, then one.

Adam had no time to see if Ben was catching up. One foot closer to Jack, and then the uncle and father and son were bunched so tightly that no one seemed to lead.

Ten feet to go, vanishing in seconds.

As the three boats crossed the finish line, three blasts sounded in succession, though for which boat Adam could not tell. Then the commodore called out, “Sisyphus first, Folie à Un second, Icarus third.”

Adam Blaine had won the Herreshoff Cup.

In unison, he and his uncle turned, smiling and waving at Ben. But his father did not catch the spirit of the race, or the irony of its final moments. Expressionless, he sailed on toward his mooring, acknowledging neither his brother nor his son.

For an instant, Adam felt deflated, uneasy at his triumph and Jack’s help. Then his uncle called out, “I guess we made up for those lobster pots,” and Adam began laughing, the shadow on his victory passing from his mind.

This season was his now. For as long as the cup existed, ADAM BLAINE—2001 would be engraved on its side. Like his father, he would bring it home and place it in the center of the dining room table. He thought of John F. Kennedy, one of Ben’s heroes, and imagined raising his glass to his father, uncle, mother, and brother. “The cup has been passed,” he would intone, “to a new generation of Blaines.”

He never did. Before the engraver had finished, Adam had left the island and his family. Now, ten years later, he moored a dead man’s sailboat and went to surprise Jenny Leigh.

Six

When Adam knocked on her door, Jenny did not answer.

He glanced at his watch. It was two fifteen; by now her shift at the gallery should be over. He tried the doorknob.

Like many people on the Vineyard, Jenny did not lock her house. Stepping inside, Adam glanced around, acting on an instinctive fear that she might have harmed herself once more. Instead, he found himself alone.

For an instant, remembering the night he had broken into the courthouse, Adam felt like an intruder. But now, as then, he had good reason to be alone here. He considered where to start, then walked into her office and began opening drawers.

He found little—no legal documents, nor anything suggesting that she had expected her bequest. The calendar on her wall, on which she had penciled in doctors’ appointments or lunches and dinners with friends, contained no mention of his father. Nothing seemed to mar the innocent surface of Jenny’s life.

All that was left was her stories.

Drafts of several were arranged neatly on her desk. The thickest stack of papers, Adam discovered, was her novel-in-progress. Like his father’s last, aborted work, Jenny’s had a title page: “No One’s Daughter.”

She had a series of unsatisfying relationships, his mother had told him, often with older men. Jenny has come to believe she’s been trying to replace her father.

Uneasy, Adam flipped the page.

“To Adam,” the dedication said.

He felt his skin tingle. Then he sat at her desk and began to read.

As with his father’s manuscript, each page increased a sense of dread that nonetheless impelled him to continue. Shortly after the hundredth page, he stopped abruptly, feeling his face go white.

“Oh, Jenny.” He said this softly, aloud. “Why did you never tell me.”

He sat back, eyes closing, beset by images he could no longer push aside.

In early September, the contest with his father won, Adam drove to New York.

His second year of law school started in two weeks. In the spring he had found a new apartment in Greenwich Village with two friends from his class; he moved his stuff—PC, television, CD player, winter coats and jackets—looking forward to another year in the city on the way to his career. His mission completed, he met up with Teddy and took in Village life.

Teddy was living with a guy, and seemed to be pretty good—Adam had missed him, and was glad they could spend time outside Ben’s shadow. But after a couple of days, he found himself looking forward to Jenny’s first visit, and then thinking about her pretty much all the time. On impulse, he decided to return to the Vineyard, intent on spending his last free days with her. His life in the law would resume soon enough.

He drove back in five unbroken hours, high on images of the time ahead. He loved the Vineyard and, he decided, loved Jenny Leigh. Whatever she struggled with, they would be okay.

This is my favorite sunset ever, he recalled her saying. Smiling to himself, Adam knew he would remember this moment for the very long life he imagined sharing with her.

Driving fast, he caught the noontime ferry from Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven, then sped down State Road toward his parents’ place. His mother was gone, visiting a cousin. But if his father were not writing, he would share with him some stories of the Village, renewing a bond frayed by competitive tension and Ben’s hatred of defeat. Then he would shower and go find Jenny.

The house was empty, including his father’s study. But Ben’s truck and car were there. Perhaps he was on the promontory, or walking the beach below. Eagerly, Adam went to look for him.

His path took him past the guesthouse. Through its open window he heard a male voice. Though he could not make out the words, they carried a rough sexual urgency that stopped Adam in his tracks.

For a moment he stayed there, torn between anger and revulsion. The man could only be his father, once again slaking his restless, relentless desire for other women. But this was a terrible violation—a betrayal of his mother committed within sight of the house she had loved since childhood, the home they now shared as husband and wife. Inexorably, Adam found himself drawn to the window, his footsteps silent on the grass.

There was a bottle of Montrachet on the bedside table, Ben’s signature. Adam turned his gaze to the bed and saw his father’s naked back, the woman beneath him lying on her stomach, moaning as he thrust into her with brutal force. Then Adam took in her long blond-brown hair and long slender legs and felt himself begin to tremble.

Harder, she had implored him.

An animal cry erupted from his throat. Wrenching open the door, he saw blood on the sheets. Not even her period would stop them.

His father turned his neck, eyes widening at the sight of him. As Adam grabbed his hips and wrested him from inside her, Jenny Leigh cried out in anguish.

With a strength born of adrenaline and primal hatred, Adam threw his father on the stone floor, the back of Ben’s skull hitting with a dull thud. Gripping the wine bottle by the neck, Adam mounted his father’s torso, knees pinning the older man’s shoulders as Ben’s eyes rolled, unfocused by shock and blinding pain. Then Adam clutched his throat with his left hand and shattered the wine bottle on stone. Holding its broken shards over Ben’s eyes, Adam saw the wine dribbling across his face like rivulets of blood.

Shuddering with each convulsive breath, Adam lowered the jagged points of glass closer to Ben’s face. His stunned eyes widened, the look of a trapped animal. Adam could smell the alcohol on his breath.

He raised his weapon in a savage jerk, prepared to blind this man for whom no punishment was enough.

“No,” Jenny cried out.

His hand froze. Beneath him, Ben began writhing in a frenzied effort to escape.

Adam dropped the bottle, glass shattering on the floor. Then he took his father’s head by the hair and smashed it savagely against the stone. The groan that escaped Ben’s lips made Adam slam his head again, the other hand pressing his Adam’s apple back into his throat.

“Please,” his father managed to whisper.

Adam forced his own breathing to slow. In his own near whisper he spat, “I could kill you now. Instead I’ll spend my life regretting that I didn’t. And you’ll spend yours remembering that I know exactly what you are.”

Legs unsteady, Adam stood. He stared at his naked father, then faced his girlfriend as she knelt on the bed, tears running down her face, hands covering her breasts as if he were a stranger.

Turning his back on both of them, Adam walked blindly from the guesthouse. By the time he heard its door closing behind him, he knew that he would never speak to his father as long as they both lived, or disclose his reasons to anyone. Only the three of them would know.

Without leaving a note for his mother, Adam left the island the way he had come—Vineyard Haven, the ferry, the long drive back to New York. But he did not go to law school; never again would he take money from Benjamin Blaine. Adam Blaine, no longer his son, would find another life.

Ten years later, Adam forced himself to keep reading until he discovered the deeper meaning of what he was never meant to see. Then he heard another door open and close, and knew that Jenny had come home.

Seven

Starting at the sounds of his footsteps, Jenny whirled to see Adam emerging from her den. “What are you doing here?” she blurted.

He paused in the doorway. “I read your manuscript.”

It took Jenny a moment to grasp this, and then Adam saw her blanch. “All of it?”

“Every word,” he answered softly. “Is that what happened to you?”

Drawing a breath, Jenny briefly closed her eyes. “Yes.”

He crossed the room, standing in front of her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“When?” she demanded. “Even if I could have faced you, I couldn’t find you. And why make excuses?”

“What about the part when she was a child? If it’s true, that’s much more than an excuse.”

Without looking at him, Jenny walked over to the couch and sat, staring into space. “That girl is me,” she said in a lifeless voice. “From when I was nine until he left, my dad molested me.”