Fall from Grace (20 page)

“You could have stopped,” Adam said evenly. “Or at least taken a summer off.”

For a moment, Carla closed her eyes. “That seems so obvious, doesn’t it?” she said, then looked him in the face again. “Later, when I talked to Ben, I understood it better. He was always running scared, he admitted, afraid the past he was trying to escape would grab him by the collar—”

“He said that?” Adam inquired.

“He said many things, some of which I know were hard to admit. This one struck me. Like Ben, I’d had two uneducated and inattentive parents—not as cruel, I’m sure, but hardly nourishing. I left home without having any concrete sense of who I was. Seeing myself in the eyes of others was the only way I felt real.” Carla paused, her voice dispassionate, as though pronouncing judgment on the woman she had discovered. “Having drive and talent is different from having character. When the pressures of celebrity and constant work started to overwhelm me, I had no self to fall back on. Just a shell.”

“Hence cocaine.”

“And bourbon.” Her voice became raw. “Throw in cigarettes to keep me way too skinny and help accelerate the aging process. At first all that propped me up. Other people had done it, I told myself—Dick Van Dyke and Robert Young went through their hit shows drunk from noon to night. But it became the same old tired story—the more cocaine I snorted, the more ragged and paranoid I got. I started showing up late and blowing lines. But I was the one on whom everyone else’s jobs depended, so the producers covered for me. You know the rest,” she finished. “Another haggard actress in a mug shot, tossing her career in the trash with both hands. ‘The End.’”

She said this wearily, Adam thought, but without self-pity. “There was a little more to it, I thought.”

Carla raised her eyebrows. “Which part? Where my show was canceled? Or where it turned out my financial manager had embezzled all my money?”

Their waitress interrupted them, taking their dinner orders—a green salad and seared ahi for Carla; calamari, swordfish, and a glass of chardonnay for Adam. Looking at her across the table, he said, “Maybe the part where you triumphed over drugs, moved to the Vineyard, and discovered my father.”

She ignored the sarcasm in his tone. “A long journey,” she said. “It began when I woke up at Betty Ford. It came to me that I might have filmed my last scene as an actress and couldn’t even remember what it was. When I told your father that, I could read it in his face: I’d become what he feared most—a failure, an object of pity. But instead of despising me, all that mattered to him was that it never happen again.”

Adam struggled to imagine this. “That’s more compassion than he ever showed my mother about anything.”

“Maybe so. But Ben was closer to the end of his life than the beginning—too late for failure, but with time to reflect. Maybe I got the best Benjamin Blaine there was.”

Adam wondered if any part of this was true. But with her story of ruin and redemption, and her claim to be innocent of Ben’s intentions, Carla might well make a compelling witness on her own behalf. Probing this, he asked, “What was treatment like?”

“I had to take what they call a ‘fearless moral inventory,’” Carla answered dryly, “and found out how much I had to fear. It’s no fun to discover you’ve lived a wholly self-centered life without developing any sense of self. Or to find out you’ve got no money to fall back on, and no career that would be healthy to resume. So I threw myself into therapy and exercise with the same single-mindedness I’d put into acting. That’s what addictive personalities do.”

The waitress brought their appetizers. As the rhythm of their conversation slowed, Adam felt acutely conscious of how strange it was to be with this woman—his father’s lover, the cause of his mother’s humiliation. Over coffee, she finished quietly, “Coming to the Vineyard was a fluke—a fateful one, I know. I needed a place to get stronger, and my actor friends Ted and Mary knew someone with a guesthouse. The last thing I imagined was meeting Ben.”

The phrase contained the hint of an apology. “But you did,” Adam said, “and quickly, too.”

“Not for months, actually. My life was the daily AA meeting in Vineyard Haven, the yoga studio in West Tisbury, a little painting, and reading more books than I had in years—many on psychology. I began to wonder if counseling was a possible career. I’d learned what genuine therapy can do.”

Once more, Adam felt skeptical—a Hollywood ending, he thought, contrived by a woman who had Hollywood in her bones. “Not acting?” he prodded.

Carla sipped her coffee, seeming to weigh her response. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m getting used to being a private person, not depending on celebrity to fill the void inside me. One challenge is letting go of who people expect me to be. That’s why I began avoiding the social scene, especially in Chilmark. Too many of those people are insecure, self-referential, and reflexively unkind. Ferreting out intimate facts about others becomes their coin of exchange.”

“You sound like my father,” Adam said. “I remember him saying ‘a more secure bunch would have bored each other to death. Only gossip keeps them going, and gossips make lousy friends.’”

Carla smiled at this. “Ben and I were attracted for a reason, after all. Several, in fact. But celebrity wasn’t one of them.” Her smile vanished. “The last thing I wanted was a return engagement with the National Enquirer. Not that I didn’t know better. But our time together will stay with me, money or no money.”

For a moment, Adam remembered Carla in the light of her kitchen, washing dishes alone. No doubt she was trying to persuade him of her story. But sometimes even calculation could feed a larger need. Perhaps this woman, however beautiful, was lonely; perhaps, whatever her reasons, she mourned the loss of Adam’s father.

At once, he shrank from the thought of their intimacy. Carla studied him across the table, as though reading his thoughts. Then a middle-aged woman stopped by the table until Carla looked up. “Excuse me,” she said, “but could you autograph a menu for our daughter? She idolized you.”

The look Carla gave her was pleasant without being welcoming. “Then I’m sure you also know what happened to me,” she said politely. “Everyone does, and that’s fine. But I’m just not that person anymore.”

Confused, the woman stared at her. “I hope you have a good vacation,” Carla finished, and allowed her a moment to withdraw. Adam gave her points for quiet grace.

“We’re through with dinner,” he said. “But I think you have more to say, and so do I.”

Outside dusk had fallen. For a long moment, Carla gazed out the window. “That swing chair seems to be empty,” she said. “Why don’t we sit there.”

Twelve

They sat at the opposite ends of the swing, sheltered from view by the branches of the willow, Carla with one hand on the rope as she watched Adam’s face. Even here, her posture was straight, that of a dancer. In a low voice, she said, “I want to tell you about your father. Not the one you’ve hated for ten years, but the Ben I knew in the last months of his life.”

Adam felt bitterness seep into his speech. “There’s nothing different about cheating on my mother. What’s novel is the damage he inflicted on your behalf.”

Carla gave him a level look, her eyes somber in a slice of moonlight. “If you don’t want to listen, I can leave. We don’t need to torment each other.”

Either she meant it or, as Adam suspected, knew that he needed to hear her story for reasons of his own. “Go ahead,” he said evenly. “I’ve got a strong stomach.”

Carla ignored this. Instead, she seemed to gather herself, gazing at the grass. “We met when I was walking on the beach, alone,” she finally said. “I knew who he was, of course. I’d met men like Ben before—all that charm, all that self-involvement, though usually with much less talent. But I was lonely, and your father never lacked for interest—”

“I’ll give him that.”

Carla smiled faintly. “For several days running, we just talked. No harm in that, I told myself. So I learned a little about the history of the island, his family, his life here. But he seemed more intent on getting me to open up—”

“Of course,” Adam interrupted. “You were the only person in the world, a woman of unique value.”

Carla stared at him. “Do you think I hadn’t seen that one before? But I’d been alone for a long time, in some ways all my life. He had a gift for making me feel that I did have value, that I could get better, that I had the resources to redefine my life in whatever way I chose.

“Because of all he’d done, I believed him. This man had taken a life that was going nowhere—his own—and turned it into one of richness and accomplishment. And he had an energy and conviction that moved me more—or at least in a different way—than a year of speeches at AA.” Her tone assumed a smoky intensity. “You’ll never know what that meant to me.”

Adam paused a moment, listening to the crickets, remembering those quiet summer nights on their porch when, still a boy, he sat beside his father as Ben wove a future in which Adam would achieve great things. Pushing this away, he said, “So somewhere amid this uplift, you stumbled into an affair.”

Carla brushed back a tendril of hair from her forehead, a distracted gesture that, to Adam, was nonetheless strangely sensual. “I didn’t stumble,” she said. “The first night he wanted to make love to me he’d been drinking. I told him that was not just insensitive but insulting, and pushed him away.” Her tone softened. “I expected that would be it. Instead, he apologized and asked if I would stay with him while he sobered up in the night air. We sat on my porch for an hour, saying very little, gazing at the stars and the moon. At the end he said he had a problem with alcohol—that he’d always used it to chase away the demons, and it had led to one of the worst moments in his life.”

For a moment, Adam felt a shudder go through him. Then he saw that Carla was watching him closely. “What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing. Go on.”

Carla turned from him, staring down. “I said that I’d keep seeing him, with all that implied. But never when he was drunk, and only on certain conditions. Before he came over, he was to call—if I felt like being with him, I’d say so. But not if he wanted to show up for an hour, sleep with me, and leave. And no talk to anyone else about our relationship.” Carla paused, adding tartly, “For whatever devalued male coinage that might be worth. But when you’ve hit rock bottom, I told him, you don’t ever want to be there again. And you don’t want anyone to act as if you are.

“He just listened. At the end, he said, ‘You’re not that person anymore, and neither am I.’ Then he left. Two nights later, he returned.” She turned to Adam again. “I don’t expect my sense of ethics to impress you. I entered an affair with a married man, which I’d never done before. The rules I imposed on Ben didn’t change that. They just helped me live with myself.”

They were also clever, Adam thought. Ben would admire her core of strength—real or feigned—and the dignity she had salvaged from the ashes of her life. “What about my mother?” Adam asked. “How did you rationalize that part?”

“Not well. Although that was less about your mother than who I wanted to become. Adultery wasn’t on my checklist. And my psychoanalyst asked whether my personal stations of the cross should include stealing someone else’s husband. An excellent question.” Carla exhaled. “So I decided to break it off. The night I planned on doing that, Ben told me he had cancer.”

Adam felt the jolt of real surprise. “When?”

“The day he came back from the neurosurgeon.” She paused, her voice thickening. “He sat there, tears streaming down his face. For a long time I listened and held his hand. Then I made him walk me through his options. After he was done, I begged him to have surgery.”

Reviewing his conversation with Dr. Zell, Adam knew that this part of Carla’s story must be true. Nor was this account to Carla’s advantage—with exclusive knowledge of his fears, and of his inevitable deterioration, she was uniquely positioned to influence Ben’s decisions. Adam tried to imagine this woman occupying the role of helpmate that by rights belonged to Ben’s wife of forty years.

“How did my father respond?” he finally asked.

In the silver light, Adam saw a brief pulsing in Carla’s throat—remembered sadness, or grief mimed perfectly. “Ben was too frightened of the consequences—physical or mental incapacity. He asked me to help him live a few good months, then to have the best death he could.” Carla bowed her head, folding her hands in her lap. “I promised I would. After all, I was used to loss. And I knew now that our affair would end without me ending it. But I never imagined how he’d die.”

Unless you pushed him, Adam thought. With a slight edge in his voice, he said, “When did you last see him?”

Carla turned to him, her tone suddenly resistant. “That afternoon—as I told you at his grave. I also told you that what we said and did is personal to me.” Her voice changed again. “He was dying, and knew it. In weeks, or even days.”

“And you were helping him make a graceful exit.”

“Actually,” Carla rejoined with a trace of anger, “I felt cheated. But I also thought I’d become strong enough to face whatever came once he was gone. Thanks in part to him.” She paused, then spoke with calm and directness. “You may think he’d lost it, but that’s not true. To the end he was a source of strength, tenderness, and advice. And painfully lucid. Ben admitted that he’d lived a careless life, not caring about the broken china he’d left behind—”

“Broken people,” Adam corrected sharply.

“He knew that. However it happened, he had deep regrets about losing you.”

“A little late. As for his so-called lucidity, you never saw any symptoms of the disease?”

This was a critical point, Adam knew—Clarice, Teddy, and the neurologist could offer a persuasive catalog. “Some,” Carla answered. “Ben would stumble, or slur his speech, or grope for the word he wanted. He said that he was butchering his novel, that the language wouldn’t come to him—”

“Did he tell you it was about hatred between a father and son?”

Carla lowered her eyes. “I’m not surprised,” she said at last. “It would have been kinder if his mind was going. Instead, Ben saw himself with merciless clarity—his present and his past.” She smoothed her dress, an absent, nervous gesture. “I hadn’t planned on telling you this. But that last afternoon he asked if he could live with me. Even though he was dying, I knew it was a lot for Ben to leave his home and marriage. But I said that he could come to me. Instead, I never saw him again.”