Eden in Winter (11 page)

Adam shrugged. ‘If you’re suggesting I have “issues with intimacy”, I suppose you could make that argument.’

‘What do you get from these relationships?’

Adam paused, and then forced himself to be honest. ‘I like the pursuit, as Ben did. But then I find myself pulling back.’

Charlie cocked his head. ‘When you have sex, how do you feel?’

Adam looked down. ‘Detached,’ he responded tonelessly. ‘I’m sure that makes me technically proficient. That’s the virtue of not getting caught up in the moment. I never stop being aware of myself, and what I’m doing.’

‘Sounds lonely,’ Charlie observed. ‘For both of you. It also suggests an anomaly. You can have protective feelings toward women – as with your mother and, perhaps, Carla Pacelli – but you can’t let them in. Ever wonder if your cover story as a spy isn’t a cover for something deeper?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Your career requires you to conceal who you are. That doesn’t lend itself to enduring relationships, and any slip-up carries the distinct possibility you’ll be killed.’ Charlie paused for emphasis. ‘To survive, you’re always changing identities and cover stories, keeping people at a distance. And you can abandon a woman before she abandons you.’

Adam mustered a derisive smile. ‘Is that really what you think?’

Charlie stared at him, letting their silence build. At length, he said, ‘I wonder if you realize how defensive you sound. And look.’

Adam felt his own stillness. More quietly, he said, ‘Do I?’

‘What do you think?’ When Adam said nothing, Charlie added, evenly, ‘I’m not a Taliban interrogator, Adam, or trying to be some sort of demeaning authority figure. I’m on your side, and you and I are in this one together. Can you try to remember that?’

‘All right.’

‘Then bear with me. What I just said about abandonment has a certain logic. Even as a boy, you must have been longing for someone you could trust. But you don’t trust a soul, do
you?’ Charlie looked at him intently. ‘Tell me why you called Jenny “fragile”.’

Adam crossed his arms. ‘What I knew about her then? Or learned later on?’

‘Let’s start with when you were together.’

Adam tried to remember how he had felt. ‘She was very poetic and sensitive, I thought. But she had mood swings, was afraid of alcohol, and had to take medication. Her drunk of a father had bailed out on her, and her mother was weak and erratic. Even then, I sensed she was afraid of falling through a trapdoor.’

‘What did you think would become of her?’

Adam felt his chest constrict. ‘That I’d love her, and take care of her. That someday we’d have a family. A better one than mine.’

Charlie gave him a grave look. ‘So you thought you could rescue her? That she’d be devoted to you, and you to her?’

‘Something like that. I was young.’

‘When you left the island, you were twenty-three. I think something terrible happened that summer. Not just with Ben, but with Jenny.’

Mute, Adam nodded.

*

Late that summer, Adam had driven to New York.

His second year of law school would start in two weeks. In the spring, Adam had found a new apartment in Greenwich Village with two friends from his class; now he moved his stuff – P.C., television, C.D. player, winter coats and jackets – looking forward to another year in the city, on the way to his chosen 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 beyond Ben’s shadow. But after a couple of days, he found himself looking forward to Jenny’s first visit to New York, 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.

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 the racing season and Ben’s hatred of defeat. Then he would 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 relentless desire for other women. But this time 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.

An animal cry erupted from his throat. Wrenching open the door, he saw blood on the sheets. His father turned his head, 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 adrenalin and primal hatred, Adam threw his father on the stone floor, the back of Ben’s skull hitting it 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 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 gasp.

Adam forced his own breathing to slow. In a 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.

*

Until Adam finished, Charlie watched him fixedly, his face expressionless. For a moment, he regarded the polished floor of his boat. Then he said, ‘No wonder you wished Ben dead. But damaged or not, Jenny betrayed you, too.’

Adam expelled a breath. ‘I understand her much better now. When I first came back, I saw her several times. She’d always wanted to be a writer, and idolized the man she thought was my father. What no one knew was that her own father had molested her, making her the perfect victim.’ His voice softened. ‘After I found them, Jenny tried to kill herself. Perhaps that’s why Ben left her a million dollars, one of the few good things he ever did. So she’s entered the creative writing programme at the University of Iowa, something she always wanted. I hope it helps her. I know now that I can’t.’

Charlie nodded. ‘Nor could she help you. So you went undercover, both literally and emotionally. Does that sound right to you?’

Adam looked away. ‘I guess it does. I’m with a woman, and suddenly I feel myself split off.’

‘A form of self-protection, perhaps, which metastasized when you found your “father” sodomizing the young woman you loved. But is there even more going on than that?’

‘Such as?’

‘One possibility is that you feel repressed anger against all three parents: Jack, who never claimed you; Ben, who betrayed you; and Clarice, who deceived you and failed as a mother. Then throw in Jenny …’ Charlie gave him a look of compassion. ‘I
do
think you’re still grieving over all you’ve lost. Which, for me, raises why you’re drawn to Carla Pacelli.’

‘I wouldn’t think that’s a hard one. I don’t require a seeing eye dog, Charlie.’

‘That,’ Charlie said pointedly, ‘is hardly an adequate response. Your mother is damaged. So was Jenny. Carla is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who’s pregnant by a man you
loathed. And her choice of Benjamin Blaine begs the question of whether the attraction you both feel is equally unhealthy.’

‘I get
that
much,’ Adam retorted. ‘But every instinct I have tells me that Carla is better than that.’

‘Quite possibly she is. But you know all too well what your mother, Jenny and Carla have in common – Ben Blaine.’ Charlie’s voice softened. ‘When you make love to another woman, do you flash back to Ben with Jenny Leigh?’

‘Of course not,’ Adam snapped. ‘This isn’t like P.T.S.D.’

‘But when you look at Carla, do you imagine her with Benjamin Blaine?’

‘I can’t help that. And there’s always the pregnancy to remind me.’

Charlie steepled his fingers. After a time, he said, ‘Do you still want to get back at Ben, Adam? By doing to Carla what he did with Jenny?’

All at once, Adam felt sick. ‘If that’s what I’m feeling, God help me. And Carla.’

‘I’m not saying that it is,’ Charlie responded gently. ‘But you need to figure it out, don’t you? For Carla’s sake, and for yours.’

Two days before Adam was to leave, a violent hurricane swept past the mid-Atlantic states, headed toward Martha’s Vineyard.

Getting up at first light, Adam found Jack fitting the boards Ben had designed into the windows of the house, a precaution to prevent the projected hundred-mile-an-hour winds from shattering the glass. Silent, Adam picked up a board and placed it in the window he recalled Ben expanding to brighten his writing den. Further down the deck, Jack spoke without turning from his task. ‘Are you ready to go back?’

Adam forced a hinge into place, locking in the board. ‘It’s not like I have a choice.’

Jack glanced at him, the worry surfacing in his eyes. ‘Then I hope you’ll watch out for yourself. It sounds like things over there are getting worse.’

Glancing around to make sure his mother or Teddy were not within earshot, Adam faced his father. ‘I’m more concerned about keeping things buttoned up here. George Hanley
is still taking an unwholesome interest in our family – including a highly imaginative sense of my activities for the last few weeks. If you hear anything about him or our friend from the
Enquirer
, go straight to Avi Gold.’

Jack put down his hammer. Quietly, he said, ‘Do you have any idea how miserable this feels?’

‘That depends on what “this” is.’

‘The distance between us. Watching you try to take care of us despite everything you’ve learned, feeling your anger and resentment.’ Jack paused, lowering his voice. ‘Sharing this secret, knowing the burden you carry for what I did.’

In the confusion of his feelings, Adam could find no words. At length, he answered, ‘As John F. Kennedy once said, “Life is unfair.” Anyhow, killing him was the least of it. In your place, I might have done it myself.’

The cool response made Jack wince. ‘You really do despise us, don’t you?’

Adam faced him. ‘I can’t sort out everything I feel, so don’t expect me to. All I know is that this family makes me tired, and unspeakably sad. Maybe I’m tired, period. But that’s nothing you can fix.’

Turning, Adam picked up another board and walked to the next window.

Finishing his work, he entered the house, and saw his mother in the kitchen, taking stock of what they could eat once the power blew out and plunged the island into darkness. He passed her without speaking, went to his bedroom, and called Carla Pacelli.

Without preface, he asked, ‘What do you know about preparing for hurricanes?’

Carla laughed. ‘Nothing – I never made that movie. So what should I do?’

‘Wait for me. I’ll be over in an hour to give you a short course.’

*

The grocery store was jammed with islanders buying food and candles and flashlights and extra batteries. Adam did the same, adding bottled water and first-aid provisions. Even in their hurry, other shoppers stopped to glance at him; he was, after all, a Blaine – the lookalike son of a famous father who had died in murky circumstances.

When he emerged, the gusts of wind had stiffened noticeably, rattling the trees at the edge of the parking lot and lending the air an eerie crispness that was the harbinger of destruction. Glancing at his watch, Adam saw that it was four o’clock. In one hour, a curfew would bar all traffic from the roads. If he went to Carla’s, he would be with her until the storm passed.

Amanda Ferris was standing by his truck.