Fall from Grace (23 page)

For over an hour, Adam talked, gazing at the shoreline he barely saw. He felt Glazer watch him fixedly. But except to clarify a point, the psychiatrist said nothing. Only at the end did he permit himself an audible intake of breath. “That’s a lot to carry around, Adam. And to conceal. I suppose your work helps you compartmentalize.”

“More than that. I have an existence no one in my family can imagine. I’ve developed this distance—physical and emotional.” Adam paused, trying to explain a sensation foreign to almost everyone he encountered. “I’ve learned to split off from the past, or even what’s happening to me in the moment. In effect I’ve become a different person, who can stuff even the worst experience until it’s time to face it.”

Glazer regarded him closely. “And now your father’s dead, and you’re ten years harder. And coming back has forced you to confront the reasons that you left.”

“So it seems. I’d like to exhume the past, then bury it for good. At least to the extent I can.”

Glazer hunched in his chair, blue eyes fixed on Adam. “And that racing season was the catalyst, you believe.”

“For both of us. Without that, I’m certain, I’d have gone back to school and become a lawyer.”

“And married Jenny?”

Adam closed his eyes again, his voice lower and quieter. “I’ll never know, will I? All I’m sure of is that one summer on this pond changed everything.”

In Adam’s understanding now, the annual competition for the Herreshoff Cup caught the primal essence of his father: a ruthless competitive drive, an ineradicable class envy, the lust to subordinate other men. The novels, the accolades, the women—none of that was enough. There was also the battered silver trophy with a half century of victors engraved on its side. By 2001, Benjamin Blaine had stamped his name on it seven times; this summer, as before, the cup sat on their dining room table like a prize of war.

From his father’s earliest memory, Adam knew, he had been captivated by the sight of these gaff-rigged boats, so perfect in design, racing one another on the pond from which his drunken father had extracted lobster—at once a wondrous spectacle, a privilege of wealth, and a contest between competitors stripped of all excuses. As a youth, Ben had begged his way onto the boat of a wealthy man, Clarice’s father; as a man, he had bought her father’s house, then his Herreshoff—the boat he had always craved, a wooden-hulled classic from the early 1900s, as beautiful as it was balanced. With what seemed an act of fraternal generosity, but which Adam now perceived as malignant perversity, his father had purchased a companion boat for Jack. So that every summer, on these same waters, Ben could remind his older brother of which man had transcended Nathaniel Blaine.

The occasion was the summer races sponsored by the Menemsha Pond Racing Club, a preserve of skilled sailors who, quite often, were also celebrated as actors, writers, musicians, and lions of industry or Wall Street—or, for several seasons, a scientist and a doctor who had both won the Nobel Prize. As a teenager, Ben had crewed for affluent Brahmins; in adulthood, he had recruited Adam to race with him against Jack and Teddy. The stated reason was to give Jack the oldest and most experienced son. But, again and again, Ben and Adam prevailed. Against his deepest inclinations, Teddy sailed on with great determination, unwilling to beg off. Perceiving his brother’s silent humiliation, Adam understood Ben’s real purpose—to show Teddy that, like Jack, he did not measure up to his younger brother. So it was Adam who, at twelve, had refused to extend the fraternal rivalry.

After this Ben had sailed alone. It became his pride that, without Adam, he could outrace men who had devoted their lives to sailing. Not until 2001 did Adam sail again—this time against his father.

On the surface, this had come about by accident. Adam had gone on one of his uncle’s practice sails, two weeks before the racing season began and a day after he had played mind games with his father on the eighteenth hole at Farm Neck. The story had reduced his uncle to laughter, eyes bright with merriment and a rare touch of malice. “Wish I’d been there,” Jack remarked. “His face must have been a study.”

Adam grinned. “In granite. I’m afraid I didn’t let the moment pass without remarking on the aging process. All he could do is express the pointless wish that I’d race him in a boat that I don’t have.”

Glancing at the mainsail, Jack adjusted the tiller. At length, he said, “There’s always this one, Adam. Maybe you should take my place.”

“Why?” Adam asked in surprise. “You’ve been racing this forever.”

“And losing. It’s pretty clear that I can’t beat him. Now it’s your turn to try.”

Adam felt a stab of doubt. “I’m not sure, Jack. You know how he always needs to be top dog—even within this family. Won’t that create another problem for you both?”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe for him. But what can Ben say? That he’s afraid you’ll beat him for the Cup?”

“I can’t beat him,” Adam said flatly.

“You can, though.” Facing him, Jack said with quiet conviction, “I’ve watched you sail, summer after summer. You’ve learned more from him than either of you know—and a bit from me as well. Now you can teach him how to lose.”

Listening, Glazer touched a finger to his lips. “Did you understand how provocative that was? Your father buys Jack a boat so that Ben could keep on beating him. And instead your uncle enables Ben’s own son to compete with him as Jack’s surrogate.”

“I understood. Not as well as I did later, but well enough.”

“But still you competed,” Glazer probed.

“Yes,” Adam responded. “I wanted to beat him. Jack knew that as well.”

In the first race in July, Adam climbed into Jack’s boat.

Since Jack had recruited him, Adam had sailed Sisyphus for days. To his surprise, piloting the boat felt like second nature. The Herreshoff sailed easily, rudder instantly responsive to the tiller in Adam’s grasp as his free hand gripped the mainsheet, pulling or releasing the rope to control the sail. The real challenge was presented by the pond itself—the currents were tricky and the winds capricious, often shifting at ten-second intervals to blow Sisyphus off course. And Adam’s practice runs, however disciplined, were nothing compared to the races as he remembered them: forty-five minutes so intense they felt like hours—an unremitting war of nerves and concentration and the iron will to win, competitors fighting to stay closest to the wind, to divine its shifts in seconds, to seize the right-of-way from boats a few feet distant. His father was the master.

Cruising toward the starting line, Adam saw Ben to his left, narrowed gaze focused on the course before them. The thirteen boats around his made a stunning armada, their sails swelling in a stiff breeze. By tradition, the commodore of the club, Paul Taylor, had the power to design the race course for each challenge, altering the location and sequence of the six numbered markers as he saw fit, his sole guide the weather conditions and the velocity and current direction of the wind. That afternoon a hazy sun filtered through a fog creeping in from the south; the prevailing winds blew twelve knots from the southwest: the tide, rushing in, created enough chop to wet the sailors before they started. Not the worst of days, Adam thought, but test enough for his maiden race.

Ignoring each other, father and son forged on toward the starting line.

The commodore had laid it east of the channel from the Vineyard Sound at a 90-degree angle to the wind, one end marked by a bright orange buoy, the other by the committee boat. Sailing by the committee boat, Adam saw the commodore holding up the course he’d crayoned on a waxed whiteboard. Taut, he heard five blasts of the air horn that announced the minutes left until the race began.

As he edged toward the line, Adam’s stomach felt empty. Four blasts, then three, then two. Fourteen boats converged in the mist, jockeying for the ideal spot to start, the air filled with skippers shouting at one another—“Come up—don’t try to fit in there, you’ve got no rights.” Adam angled for a starboard tack without fouling Charlie Glazer. Noting this, the psychiatrist smiled, waving in acknowledgment.

The pace of the air horn quickened. At one minute and thirty seconds, Adam heard one long and three short blasts; a single blast marked one minute. Ben’s boat, the Icarus, sliced in near Adam on the starboard side.

Thirty seconds—three short blasts. Ben was beside him now. Two short blasts at twenty seconds, a single sharp blast at ten. A chill spray dampened Adam’s face. Five quick blasts marked the last few seconds.

In unison, Ben and Adam crossed the starting line.

Adam grasped the tiller and mainsheet, straining to catch the wind. With mixed tension and exhilaration, he felt the two boats beginning to clear the fleet. Already their contest felt visceral—they raced in parallel, a mere twenty feet apart, Ben barely ahead of his son.

For an instant, Ben glanced at Adam, then bent all his efforts to seizing each shift of wind. The fog kept lowering, obscuring the water ahead. At the first marker, then the second, Ben maintained his lead. Looking back, Adam saw that this race belonged to the two of them. For the first time, he sensed that he could match his father.

Another marker, then another, the two men battling the wind and each other. Gusts of air buffeted Adam’s face. He bent at the knees for balance, muscles aching, his palm chafed by the mainsail he gripped too tight.

At mark five, the wind shifted abruptly.

Ben saw this first. Sailing into the wind, he began switching his mainsail, first to starboard, then to port, then back to starboard as he beat toward the finish line. Sinews burning, Adam fought to catch him, but Ben sailed closer to the wind, gaining precious feet on Adam. Then Adam caught a wind shift before Ben did and surged within a half-length of his father.

Just ahead, Ben peered at the misty surface of the pond. Abruptly, he changed course, his bow cutting across Adam’s. At the last minute, Ben veered away. Suddenly, Adam saw the lobster pots ahead concealed by his father’s ploy. As Ben cleared them, Adam fought to change course—five feet, then four, his mainsail luffing. Then Adam felt the sickening, unmistakable sensation of the pot’s warp scratching along his wooden hull, Sisyphus lurching as the pot’s line snagged between her rudder and keel.

Squelching his fury, Adam leaped into the pond, diving under Sisyphus’s stern to free the rudder. Deftly, he untangled the line, then clambered back into the boat soaking wet. No more than a minute lost, but enough. Helpless, Adam watched his father’s back as Icarus tacked toward the finish. Ben had stolen his victory.

Teeth gritted, Adam felt his father’s hatred of quitting swell within him. In some crevice of his mind he knew that in the total of points for a season, he must stay within striking distance of the only rival that now mattered. For bitter moments, he battled the elements and Charlie Glazer for second place. With a last shift in the wind, he reached the finish a boat’s length ahead.

Easing toward the dock, Ben circled. The two men passed in opposite directions, Ben smiling slightly without acknowledging his son.

A wise man knows the grace of silence, his father had told him. Suffused with anger, Adam silently promised that the race would go on.

Listening, Charlie Glazer looked somber. “I remember that day very well,” he told Adam. “But until today I never knew what it meant.”

Adam felt drained. “How many times, I wonder, have I wished that I’d never stepped back inside that boat. But I did, and everything followed.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Glazer consoled him. “In a few days let’s talk more.”

Sixteen

Jenny Leigh lived off a rutted dirt road hacked through the woods in the middle of the island. The rough-hewn cabin she rented sat on a glade surrounded by trees, its deck sheltered by a grove of pines. It was a place of quiet and seclusion and, to Adam, isolation—though reachable by all-terrain vehicles in the summer, the cabin could be sealed in for days by a winter snowstorm. As he took the gravel driveway rising to the cabin, a deer skittered across his path. This time, preoccupied with Jenny, Adam did not flinch.

He parked, walking across the grass to her cabin in the soft light of early evening. He paused there, conflicted, then rapped softly on the door.

Through the screened windows he heard a stirring, then footsteps. He felt a tightness in his chest. The door cracked open; in the space she peered through, Jenny’s expression changed from wariness to surprise, and then she managed a smile that did not erase the caution in her eyes. “I’d hoped you’d come,” she said. “Then I was afraid you would. Or wouldn’t.”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

Inside was a small living room with a table and two chairs, a single place mat marking where Jenny ate alone. The décor was simple—a couch, two wooden chairs, pieces of driftwood in one corner, and bright abstract paintings offset by one of Teddy’s stark winter landscapes. There were dishes in the sink, an open book on an end table, and a jacket on a hook beside the front door. It was neater than he had expected from a woman who, when younger, could within hours turn any space she occupied into something that, Adam had told her, evoked the contents of a madwoman’s brain.

“Would you like to see the rest?” she inquired awkwardly. “It won’t take long.”

Adam followed her, surprised further by the neatly turned bed, the papers carefully arranged on a blond wooden table larger than the one at which she ate. Even her clothes seemed to be in drawers and closets instead of strewn on chairs. Looking about him, Adam inquired, “What on earth did they do to you?”

At once, she grasped the reference. “I guess you were expecting chaos?”

“At the least.” He turned to her, adding softly, “My mother told me, Jenny.”

She glanced at the floor, then looked directly at him. “That I tried to kill myself, you mean.”

“And nearly succeeded. She rebuked me for my lack of grace.”

Her eyelids lowered. “Is that why you’re here?”

“I might have come without that.” Unsure what else to do with them, he put his hands in his pockets. “I wish I’d known.”

She looked up at him with new directness. “About my pitiful attempt at suicide? I didn’t want you to, Adam. That was all I had left.”