Middle Age (9 page)

Roger had approached Adam’s desk, a massive old rolltop with numerous crammed pigeonholes and heavy drawers; with a grim expression he was pulling out manila envelopes and files, leafing through them. Going through a dead friend’s papers! There was something jackal-like about this, distasteful. “Real estate, I think. Investments. He was mysterious about his background, of course. I never asked him personal questions, I wouldn’t have seen that as practical. Some men live by boasting of their successes, but Adam seemed embarrassed by them; you had to infer that he’d had some success in business. At least, he had money. But he seems to have felt he was a man of such purity he shouldn’t have had money. He paid my fees in cash.” Roger’s small wounded mouth contracted further.

Cash!
In a prestigious Shaker Square law firm. Marina wanted to laugh at the vision.
Like handling shit, is it? Cash. But you took it
.

Marina, silent, carried away a vase of limp, browning zinnias from a windowsill. Zinnias from Adam’s garden. In which, shortly, his ashes would be scattered, and raked. Such a horror could not be, yet it was. She,



J C O

Marina Troy, would see that the ceremony was done properly. Everywhere she went in Adam’s deathly silent house she expected to see him. His look of astonishment, his slow baffled smile.
Marina? What are you doing here?

He would come forward quickly and take her hands, which were trembling.
Marina? Why are you crying?

Marina noted that Adam’s windowsills were grimy; the windowpanes rain-splotched and stained; yet sunshine blazed through the glass, idiotic and unmournful.

Why then should I mourn? Adam wouldn’t want it.

Within the hour, Roger discovered another of Adam’s secrets: he had credit and savings accounts under several names in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania banks. He owned $8, in municipal bonds issued by the City of Philadelphia, $, in municipal bonds issued by the City of New York, $, in bonds issued by the Long Island Power Authority, hundreds of thousands of dollars in miscellaneous securities.

The names were
Adam Berendt, Ezra Krane, T. W. Bailey, Samuel Myers
.

Perhaps there were others, in other files. Marina tried to study the documents Roger passed to her, but the names and figures blurred in her vision; she felt light-headed, and frightened. She said, “I don’t understand, Roger. Why?” Roger said quickly, “There’s nothing illegal about having accounts under other names. We mustn’t judge Adam without knowing more.” Marina said, “But—why? Why would he have used these names?

And where did so much money come from?” Roger said, with maddening evasiveness, “At a point, money begins to yield money.” Marina protested,

“But Adam was poor! He wasn’t rich. He made fun of the rich. He was—

you know how Adam was. You were his friend, too.” Roger said, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably, “Yes, I was Adam’s friend. But no, I don’t believe I knew him.”

Apart from financial and legal documents, Roger hadn’t located any personal papers of Adam’s, any letters or documents suggesting that

“Adam Berendt” had relatives, a background, a history. In one of the pigeonholes he found a half-dozen vouchers from Las Vegas casinos; in another, a crumpled document he passed over to Marina without comment, a bill of sale from a Manhattan art gallery? a receipt for $,6 for the purchase of a work of art by Raul Farco? This must have been the sculpture donated to the Salthill Arts Council by an “anonymous” donor.

Adam Berendt! Marina was stunned. She remembered how Adam had been persuaded to formally present the graceful columnar marble piece in
Middle Age: A Romance



the Arts Council hall; how, once Adam overcame his initial awkwardness, speaking in front of a gathering that contained so many friends, he’d seemed to soar, not eloquent exactly but warm and enthusiastic, explaining why the marble sculpture was an important work, speaking of the community’s gratitude to the “unknown” donor. For once, Adam said, artist and donor need not be conjoined, only the artist and his work would be celebrated. Everyone had clapped enthusiastically. It had seemed to them that Adam’s insight was profound.
But he was speaking of himself
.

Beneath scattered newspaper pages on a table, Marina found Adam’s filthy, much thumbed address book. Quickly she looked under “B”—but there were no Berendts listed. Many names in the little book were messily crossed out and entire pages were missing. There were numerous inser-tions, business cards and slips of paper, falling out of the dog-eared pages.

Marina couldn’t resist turning to “T”—and there was
Marina Troy
listed.

Her hand began to shake. How sordid it was, this business of recording the names of human beings, addresses, and telephone numbers as they intersect with our lives; when they no longer intersect, we cross them out, or

©

tear out their page. Adam had marked occasional names with

; she

©

seemed to know that indicated an individual no longer living. For some reason her heart was pounding quickly. What did it mean that
Marina
Troy,  North Pearl Street,
was included in Adam Berendt’s address book, with so many others? It meant nothing, of course. Marina said with sudden bitterness, “What do we want from one another, really? All this frantic ‘collecting’ of one another. Friends, social life. After death, it must all seem so futile.” Roger, seated at Adam’s swivel chair, made a snorting sound. “Maybe before death, too.” Marina tossed the address book down onto the desk in front of him, with sudden vehemence.

Quickly Roger leafed through the little book, as if its secrets might spill out at once. She knew he was seeking “C”—
Roger Cavanagh
. Marina felt a stab of dislike for the man. Why couldn’t he be Adam, why couldn’t he have died in Adam’s place? His forehead was oily and furrowed with fine cracks; his small, hurt, sullen mouth was offensive to her, as if she’d kissed it once, and tasted rot. Roger must have been fatigued by the morning’s effort but he sat drumming his fingers on the desk top and Marina had an impulse to lay a hand on his. But she’d never touch the man!
We’re
co-conspirators. Criminals together. But neither of us understands the extent of
the crime
. She felt shame, to have invaded her dead lover’s home; to have learned facts about him he had not wanted known, at least not by her; and



J C O

the shame was compounded by Roger Cavanagh’s presence, as if both were looking upon Adam naked, each having to know that the other knew. Marina tried for the right tone, saying, in an undertone, “The strangest thing is, Roger, that Adam was alive twenty-four hours ago, and now he is not. The rest of this, his private life, his secrecy—is not so strange.”

But was this true? Marina meant to be brave.

She understood that Roger both wanted to look at her, and did not want to look at her. Here was the true strangeness! Roger was acutely conscious, as a man, of being alone with Marina, a woman; his friend, and Adam’s friend, yet a woman; he was aware of Marina’s distraught state; her flushed, hurt face and angry eyes; unless her eyes were filled with sorrow, and threatened to infect his own with their emotion. He wasn’t a man who trusted emotion. Not his own, and certainly no one else’s. He was a lawyer not just by trade but by nature. That was why Marina instinctively disliked him: unlike Adam, he was a man who required control. A man with a short temper, with a reputation for taking offense. His divorce had badly shaken him and he disliked and distrusted all women on principle; even as he felt an aggressive, impersonal sexual desire for all women, a wish to seize, to maul, to pummel, to penetrate; yet, more powerfully, a wish not to touch, nor even come near. No, not near! His revulsion for women, Marina guessed, was both physical and moral. Shrewdly she saw that, if he could hurt you without touching, he would hurt you; but not at the price of touching. And there stood Marina Troy uncomfortably close, only a few feet away in this sunlit but deathly silent house above the river, Adam Berendt’s house where they’d never before been alone together, and perhaps had never been together at all, even in Adam’s company. And now Adam was gone. Marina was saying, faltering, not knowing what she said, wanting to dispel the tension between them, “I—don’t feel that I’m equal to Adam’s death. To death. I’m not worthy of—whatever it is. I resent it, I think, that he died the way he did, among strangers. For strangers. This hideous name ‘Thwaite’ is choking me.”

This rush of words caused Roger to regard Marina yet more keenly.

He lifted his eyes, that seemed to Marina eerie, reptilian eyes, heavy-lidded and yet quick-darting, curiously beautiful eyes, with a burnished-gold sheen, taking in Marina’s carelessly plaited red hair that was falling loose, in damp strands and tendrils; and her slender, angular girl’s body beneath her clothes, her skin that gave off the heat of despair. She was
Middle Age: A Romance



thinking that Roger Cavanagh had never seen Marina Troy so exposed; unprotected by the bright, brittle armor of her personality.

Roger stood, and made a movement toward Marina as if to comfort her, but Marina instinctively stepped back.

He asked, “What did Adam look like, last night?”

Marina stared at him, offended.

“Please, Marina. You were the only witness. I need to know.”

“You can’t know!”

“Tell me.”

Those reptilian eyes: Marina shuddered.

Yet saying, calmly, “Adam was—noble in death. Like a statue. A Rodin.” She touched her fingertips to her eyes. Seeing again the actual man, the body her lover had become. Stiffening of rigor mortis yet the jaw and mouth slack, losing their shape. Marina had a dread of this man, a rival of Adam’s, seeing Adam through her eyes, naked and exposed. Roger asked, “Was death—instantaneous? He didn’t suffer, did he?” and Marina said, “No. He didn’t suffer. The emergency room doctor told me.” Why was she saying this, why when this was a lie, simply to placate Roger Cavanagh who was behaving so strangely, wholly unlike himself; why, when she detested him. With a bizarre half-smile Roger said, “That’s good then, Marina, isn’t it?—that Adam didn’t suffer.” Marina was going to say yes, yes that’s good, but instead she laughed harshly, “No! There’s nothing

‘good’ about this. Don’t be ridiculous.”

She ran from him. Had he been going to touch her with his repulsive fingers? Comfort
her?
Blindly she ran into the long rectangular room that was Adam’s studio. The air was cooler here, the ceiling higher. Always in this room that smelled of clay, paint, turpentine there was a faint chill of the ancient cellar beneath, its earthen floor. Adam had joked (but was this funny?) that in the old days before Salthill had become civilized, in the time of the notorious tavern-brothel, that earthen cellar had surely been used for quick burials. (They asked Adam if he’d been digging down there, and Adam said certainly not, he hadn’t the slightest curiosity about finding, or not finding, two-hundred-year-old bones.) Of all the rooms in the stone house this was the one most associated with Adam. If you couldn’t find Adam anywhere else, you would find him here; and Apollo close by.

“Adam. Adam!
For God’s sake!
” It was possible to think that the man was hiding from her, willfully. A rivulet of perspiration ran down her face hot as a tear. What did Cavanagh want from her! She felt his sexual interest,



J C O

an impersonal interest, and his revulsion against it; perhaps she felt an identical sensation, she who would have described herself as stunned, un-sexed, by grief. She hadn’t spoken harshly, or spoken her heart, to anyone in the past ten years or more, as she’d just spoken to Roger Cavanagh; she’d never raised her voice.
Adam’s death opening in me. A black wound
.

Was Roger following? She wished the man would go home and leave her.
She
was Adam Berendt’s personal executor. She would oversee the house, arrange to have it cleaned, begin putting Adam’s mysterious life in order. Moving now through the studio touching Adam’s things that had taken on a new significance now, having outlived him. Artworks, furniture, massive stone fireplace; on a bench, a discarded shirt of his, an ordinary T-shirt, shamelessly she snatched it up and pressed it against her face, breathing in Adam’s briny, clayey odor. She wasn’t going to cry. Not here.

She’d cried enough. She stumbled against a crude, uncompleted clay figure on the floor. It was a wood floor covered in places by rug remnants and outspread newspapers, splattered with dried paint. In her haze of grief she imagined she saw—what?—Apollo?—a ghostly-gray shape dozing in his usual place by Adam’s work table, but no: don’t be ridiculous: it was a patch of sunshine maggoty with dust motes.

Why was she here, she couldn’t remember. If Adam wasn’t here to greet her, and he wasn’t. But if she was in Adam’s house it must be for a purpose, and Adam must be that purpose. She was searching for—what?

She knew she must not scream “Adam!” because someone, a man, a man she scarcely knew, was in the house with her, observing her, and would report back to others,
Marina Troy is deranged with grief
.

Here was Adam’s long, cluttered work table shoved against a window.

On the windowsill, desiccated husks of dead flies, wasps. And the window—all the windows—needed washing. And she would wash them.

There was Adam’s broken-backed easy chair, covered with a stained bedspread; and there was Adam’s garage-sale sofa with its worn, pumpkin-colored corduroy upholstery where sometimes he slept, working late in his studio and too lazy to undress and go properly to bed, even to remove his shoes.
How could such a man marry, obviously he could not. Nor live with any
woman
. Everywhere in Adam’s studio there were uncompleted works, clay figures Marina had been seeing for years, collage-sculptures made of scrap metal, driftwood, storm debris, pieces of lumber, mirror fragments, bits of crockery and ceramics. There were hulking humanoid forms made of wood and awaiting the magic of life, and now that Adam was gone they
Middle Age: A Romance