Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

Teddy twitched his shoulders. “As far as I know. Except for discovering that living with him wasn’t the worst part.”

The quiet bitterness in Teddy echoed their mother’s. “How did you get along with him?” Adam wondered aloud.

“Mostly by avoidance. Though it seemed to amuse him to keep me here on life support, and our mother dangling on yet another string.”

The psychology of Teddy’s return, with its cycle of debasement for both son and mother, was painful for Adam to contemplate. But whatever the cost, he knew what Teddy had salvaged. Since boyhood, his brother had burned with the love of painting, the one thing-beyond the sexuality their father had scorned-that defined him. His partner had died; to lose the freedom to paint would have felt like another death, his own.

Turning, Adam studied Teddy’s canvas. The landscape was both unsettling and unsurprising, reflecting Teddy’s originality and the seeds of his defeat. Though it portrayed Martha’s Vineyard, it lacked the soothing elements prized by the purchasers of popular art: the beaches of summer, bordered by sea grass; a sailboat breaching whitecapped waves; verdant farmland and trees at the height of their foliage. Instead, Teddy’s landscape captured winter-not the snowy landscape of a greeting card, but the bleak, pitiless gray of February, when short days and long nights led to drunkenness and domestic violence, families turning on one another. This was the Vineyard seen through a glass darkly, harsh and barren, its shadows distorted, its trees so stripped of life that they seemed the remnant of some terrible disaster, a nightmare terrain that would haunt anyone who saw it. Adam found it startling and unforgettable, evoking hidden truths perceived by a unique vision-and likely unsalable.

As if reading Adam’s thoughts, Teddy remarked dryly, “Seems like I’ve got this corner of the market to myself.”

Adam kept staring at the painting. “It’s astonishing, Ted-surreal yet all too real. When I was a kid, I wondered how you could do this. I still do.”

Teddy smiled a little. “So do I, sometimes. It can be hard to live with.”

Adam looked up at him. “And the Vineyard? Other than the obvious, how has living here been for you?”

“Solitary.” His brother paused, stressing the word. “For a while I had a boyfriend-or thought I did. But then he got strange, in ways I won’t bother to describe. Except to say that I didn’t absorb enough of our mother’s masochism.” Teddy flashed a smile, interrupting himself. “Enough of that. Tell me when you’re escaping Afghanistan, so I’ll know when to quit worrying you’ll get yourself beheaded.”

The jaunty air Adam tried to conjure sat on him uncomfortably, both because it was false and because he was certain that, for Teddy, it evoked Benjamin Blaine. “There’s nothing much to worry about,” he said easily. “I’m doing a tiny bit of nation-building in a nation that will never get built. Given that the place is crawling with our soldiers, the Taliban couldn’t care less about me.”

Teddy gave him a penetrant look. “Cut the bullshit, Adam. Maybe this agrarian project you’re on is as pointless as you suggest. But they still deliver the New York Times here. Helmand Province is the most dangerous place on earth, filled with Taliban and laden with IEDs. You could get yourself killed by accident.”

Adam shook his head. “Long ago, I stopped emulating Benjamin Blaine. Assuming that his death was, in fact, an accident.”

Something flickered in Teddy’s eyes. “Meaning?”

“I want to know what happened the night he died.”

A veil seemed to fall across Teddy’s features, leaving him expressionless. “Damned if I can tell you. The bastard took his curtain call without inviting me to share the moment. Typical.”

“Did you see him at all that night?”

From behind the mask Teddy watched his brother’s face. “I barely saw him, period. It seemed to suit us both.”

“Did you talk to anyone? In the family or outside it?”

Teddy sighed. “The police asked me all this, Adam. Truth to tell, I really can’t remember. If I’d known it was his final sunset, I’d have taken better notes.”

“Do you agree that he was acting strangely?”

Teddy shifted on the stool so that one side of his face was in shadow. For the first time his voice, though level, was faintly accusatory. “As I keep reminding you, we didn’t hang out together. Maybe I lived a hundred feet away, but you were the one he wanted here. For him, looking at you was like gazing in the mirror. How could he not love you? But I grew up without a father. Why do you think that changed?”

Adam became pensive. “It’s just odd,” he finally said. “The way he died.”

“Falling off his favorite cliff? Actually, the image gives me a certain pleasure.” Abruptly, Teddy turned away, speaking in a different voice, rough and low. “Listen to me. Our father dies, and all that’s left to me is hollow jokes. God knows how much I wanted to love him, and him to love me. Even though I knew it was impossible.”

Adam felt a wrenching sadness-not for his father, but for those whom he had harmed and would continue to harm. “We’re taught to believe in archetypes,” he replied. “Families are warm, parents love their children, fathers cherish their sons. But that’s not how it was. Believe me, he did real damage to us both. I just resemble him too much for you to see that.”

Teddy regarded him with open curiosity. “Strange, isn’t it? The son he wanted was the one who cut him off.”

The unspoken question lingered between them. “It was instinctive,” Adam said. “Like the reflex that tells an animal when to run.”

Ted gave him a look of silent appraisal. “There’s something else that’s odd,” Adam ventured. “Carla Pacelli.”

“That’s odd?” An incredulous smile spread across Teddy’s face. “It’s classic Benjamin Blaine-a beautiful actress, thirty years younger. It would have been odd if he hadn’t gone for it.”

“Maybe so. But this attachment somehow feels deeper than his norm.”

“I couldn’t really say,” Teddy responded in his driest tone. “Our father didn’t confide in me about male-female relations.”

Nodding, Adam looked around the room. He saw now that it made a perfect studio for Teddy, containing the elements his brother had explained to him long ago. There was wall space for his finished work, ample room for a table on rollers, its surface covered with multicolored oils and cups filled with paintbrushes. The main window faced north, admitting a steady light, and during the day the skylight would illuminate Teddy’s easel. It was possible, Adam reflected, that the work Teddy could do here allowed him, at least for a time, to forget the man who owned it. And then a painting on the wall caught him up short. As stark as the others, it portrayed an image Adam had seen a hundred times before, the sun setting over the promontory from which their father had fallen to his death.

Teddy followed his brother’s gaze. “A memory painting,” he said evenly. “As I told the police, I haven’t gone there in years.”

Adam met his eyes. “Even though it’s literally in your own backyard.”

“Even so. Then and now, I hated that place.”

Remembering the truth of this, Adam fell silent. At length, he said, “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”

Teddy still stared at the painting. “With many more to come. Maybe we can rent our family home from the newly affluent Ms. Pacelli. Though I doubt we’ll have the money for even that.”

The cruelty of what his father had done struck Adam anew. Then Teddy said in a somber tone, “But it has been a long day. You look depleted, bro.”