His mother seemed to fortify herself, then spoke in a reluctant voice. “Beneath the surface, Benjamin Blaine was a very frightened man. One night early in our marriage, he got terribly drunk. He came to bed and suddenly started rambling about Vietnam, this man in his platoon. He’d been exhausted and afraid, he said-that was why it happened. I realized without him saying so that ‘it’ involved another man. What tortured Ben was that it might be fundamental to his nature.” Pausing, Clarice inhaled. “The next day he carried on with false bravado, like he hadn’t told me anything. He never mentioned it again. But on a very few occasions, when he was drunk, Ben’s tastes in sexual intercourse didn’t require me to be a woman. A brutal instance of in vino veritas.”
When he rolled me on my stomach, Jenny had said, I flashed on us in the lighthouse. But it wasn’t like that at all. Not what he did or the way he hurt me.
Sickened, Adam said, “And the others?”
“Weren’t enough to banish his fears.” Turning from him, his mother continued her painful narrative. “That I was pregnant by Jack made him all the more insecure. But I couldn’t bear the thought of aborting Jack’s child, and Ben was afraid of anyone knowing he’d been cuckolded by his brother. By exacting the postnuptial agreement as the price for keeping you, he kept Jack and me apart. His ultimate victory.”
“Hardly,” Adam said. “After that, he tormented all of us for years. I’ll never fathom why Jack stayed.”
His mother faced him again. “Because he loved me. And you.”
“But not enough to claim me,” Adam retorted. “I should be relieved that Benjamin Blaine wasn’t my father. But now I’m the son of two masochists-for-life-”
“You don’t know what it was like for me,” his mother protested. “Or for Jack, waiting for whatever moments we could steal, the times he could watch your games-”
“I know what it was like for your sons,” Adam shot back. “I always wondered how a father could demean a boy as kind and talented as Teddy. Now I understand-Ben’s only son held up a mirror to his deepest fears.” He stood over her, speaking with barely repressed emotion. “I became the ‘son’ he wanted. I can imagine him trying to believe that my achievements came from him, not from Jack’s DNA. But he could never resist competing with me, just as he competed with my father.” He shook his head in wonder and disgust. “Even now you have no idea how much damage you inflicted, or on whom. But knowing what you did, how could you stand to watch it all unfold?”
Clarice stared at him. In a parched voice she said, “I watched Ben raise you to be the person he wanted to be. By accident or design, he made you enough like him to be strong. So strong that you can live with even this.”
“In a day or so,” Adam responded sharply, “I’ll work up the requisite gratitude. But not before we talk about the night Ben died. This time I want the truth.”
Clarice met his eyes. “As I told you, Ben locked himself in his study, brooding and drinking. When he came out, he was unsteady, almost stumbling. Alcohol had never done that to him before. But it was his words that cut me to the quick.”
She stopped abruptly, shame and humiliation graven on her face. Sitting beside her, Adam said more quietly, “Tell me about it, Mother.”
Ben’s face was ravaged, his once vigorous frame shambling and much too thin. He stared at his wife as though he had never truly seen her. “I’m done with this farce,” he told her bluntly. “Whatever time I have left, I’m planning to spend without you.”
Facing him in the living room, Clarice fought for calm. “You can’t mean that, Ben. We’ve had forty years of marriage.”
The light in his eyes dulled. “God help me,” he replied with bone-deep weariness. “God help us all.”
Clarice could find no words. In a tone of utter finality, her husband continued, “I’m going to be with Carla. If there’s a merciful God, or any God at all, I’ll live to see our son.”
Clarice felt bewilderment turn to shock. “Carla Pacelli is pregnant?”
Ben nodded. “Whatever you may think of her, she’ll be a fine mother.”
The implied insult pierced Clarice’s soul. “And I wasn’t?”
“You did the best you could, Clarice. When you weren’t sleeping with my brother. But please don’t claim you stayed with me for our son, or for yours. Your holy grail was money and prestige.” His voice was etched with disdain. “You’ll have to live on love now. The money goes with me, to support Carla and our son-”
Startled, Clarice stood. “You can’t do that,” she protested.
“You know very well that I can. That was the price of Adam, remember? For what little good that did any of us.” Ben slumped, as though weighed down by the past, then continued in a tone of indifference and fatigue. “I’m going to admire the sunset. When I return, I’ll pack up what I need. You can stick around to watch me, if you like. But I’d prefer you go to Jack’s place, your future home. Maybe you can start redecorating.”
Turning from her, he left.
Clarice stared at the Persian rug, unable to face her son. “I never saw him again.”
Adam wondered whether to believe her. “How did you react?”
Clarice swallowed. “I was frightened and humiliated. He’d never threatened me before, and this child made it real. To think I could lose everything was devastating.”
“But you didn’t just sit here, did you? You called Teddy and told him what Ben had said.”
“Yes,” Clarice admitted. “I’ve been lying to protect him.”
“But not just Teddy,” Adam continued. “First, you called Jack.”
Surprised, she glanced at him sideways, then turned away. “He didn’t answer,” she murmured. “So I left him a message, telling him what Ben had said and done.”
“And where he’d gone,” Adam said crisply. “Then you lied to the police about both calls. Do you realize what trouble that caused for Teddy?”
Clarice straightened. “What on earth do you mean?”
For the first time Adam was surprised. He gazed into her eyes, and saw nothing but confusion. “What do you suppose he did that night?”
“Nothing.” Clarice paused, eyes filling with doubt. “Isn’t that what he told the police?”
Adam weighed the possibilities: that she knew nothing of Teddy’s actions, or that she had caused Ben’s death-or both. “Maybe he thought he was protecting you. But here’s what I think, Mother. You couldn’t reach Jack, and felt certain that Teddy couldn’t help you. And you were ignorant of one crucial fact-that Ben had already changed his will.” Adam forced a new harshness into his tone. “In desperation, you went to the promontory. You found him weak and drunk and disoriented, like a man who’d suffered a stroke. So you pushed him off the cliff, hoping to preserve the prior will. The one that gave you everything.”
“No,” his mother cried out. “I never went there, I swear it. As far as I know, Ben fell.”
“True enough. But one of you helped him.” Abruptly, Adam stood. “Call Jack,” he finished. “Tell him to meet me where Ben went off the cliff.”
Ten
Adam stood alone in the darkness. The moon was full, and a fitful breeze came off the water. For a half hour he thought about his father.
From behind him he heard footsteps on the trail. Turning he saw the outline of a man for whom, Adam realized, he had been waiting all his life. Then Jack stepped into the pale light.
“Hello, Jack,” Adam said with tenuous calm. “Is there anything in particular you’d care to say?”
Jack’s face was worn, his eyes somber. “That I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I always loved you, Adam. For years my reason for staying was to watch you grow.”
Abruptly, Adam felt his self-control strip away. “As Benjamin Blaine’s son?” he asked with incredulity. “You and my mother trapped me in a love-hate relationship with a man who resented me for reasons I couldn’t know. Then you pitted me against him in that last racing season. Do you have a fucking clue what came from that? Or do you give a damn?”
Though shaken, Jack refused to look away. “I never thought you’d leave,” he said in a low voice. “I still don’t know why you did.”
