Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

“And sober?”

“Definitely. His speech was clear, and so were his eyes. He seemed like a man taking a weight off his shoulders. Settling your affairs can do that for you. Especially if you’re dying-”

“And screwing your wife in the bargain,” Adam cut in. “Your obligation wasn’t just to him, but to draft a will that acknowledges her interests under the law. Sullivan suggests that you didn’t, and the postnup is shaky at best. Surely you told him that.”

A feral look flickered through Seeley’s eyes. “You’re questioning my integrity as well as my competence as a lawyer. That cuts pretty close to the bone, all right? You can think whatever you want-about him or about me. But there’s no way you’ll ever prove your father had lost it.

“I did what my client wished. Now it’s your turn. You’re the executor of his estate, not your mother’s lawyer. If you’re pissed off about this will, blame him; if you’re pissed she signed the postnup, blame her. Frankly, signing it was crazier than anything your father did. I don’t have a clue why she would have, or any obligation to find out. So ask her-better yet, let her lawyer ask her.” Abruptly, Seeley tempered his voice. “Sorry if I went off on you. I know this is emotional, okay? But you can’t stay as Ben’s executor and try to undermine his estate plan. When he signed that will three months ago, under the law he was as sane as you or me. Understand me?”

Adam stared at him. Should he try to waive the privilege to help his mother, Adam now knew, Seeley would make a formidable witness against her. “Well enough,” he answered. “Including the things you don’t yet understand.”

Adam got up and left, feeling Seeley’s look of doubt follow him out the door.

On the sidewalk, Adam paused to gaze at the waterfront-in high school, his point of embarkation for athletic contests on the mainland-taking in the sailboats at mooring as they bobbed in the water, the three-decker ferry from Woods Hole laboring toward the cement and steel pier. Then he drove the length of the island to a white frame house overlooking Menemsha Harbor.

Charlie Glazer sat on the porch. Standing, he greeted Adam warmly, his smile filled with pleasure and curiosity. An eminent psychiatrist who also taught at Harvard, Glazer had spent all sixty-nine summers of his life on Martha’s Vineyard. For fifty of those he had known Benjamin Blaine from the cycle of sailing, fly-fishing, and socializing in which both men partook. In Adam’s life between fifteen and twenty-three, Charlie had been an amiable presence, chiefly because of his dogged but fruitless efforts to best Ben Blaine in the summer races on Menemsha Pond. Glazer was a bright-eyed man with white hair and mustache: instead of the mandarin gravity common to his profession, he combined a certain restless energy with an air of sweet-natured good humor that at times concealed the tough-minded psychoanalyst beneath. Adam had always liked him.

As they renewed their acquaintance, Glazer recounted his last and most vivid memory of Adam. “The racing season of 2001,” he said. “You against your father-I’d never seen anything so intense as that last race. Then you just disappeared. All of us wondered why, and Ben would never discuss it.”

Once again, Adam felt the familiar stab of pain and loss. “Then I should honor his wishes.”

Glazer tilted his head. “Nonetheless, he seems to have brought you back.”

Adam nodded. “Ostensibly, to carry out a will that destroys my mother’s life. I’m trying to figure out if he had the mental capacity to do that, or to resist pressure from this actress. So far I’m not having much luck.”

Glazer gazed past him, seemingly absorbed in the waters of Menemsha Pond, sparkling with afternoon sun. At length, he said, “Armchair psychiatry is an iffy exercise. Ben was never a patient of mine or, I’d have to guess, anyone’s-the last thing he’d have wanted is to let anyone pierce that carapace of confidence and swagger.” He turned to Adam. “So I can’t say anything about his last six months. But whenever I looked at him, I imagined a deeply frightened man peering back. I’d guess fear was at the heart of everything Ben did.”

“‘Fear,’” Adam repeated. “Of what?”

“The black hole at his core.” Glazer gathered his thoughts. “At the risk of sounding portentous, I’d say that Ben suffered from a poverty of spirit. Only the admiration of others could slake his hunger. But there was never enough. So he kept reaching for the next achievement-a woman, a race, the accolades of fans or critics-and whoever stood in his way got hurt. Beginning with your uncle Jack.”

The summary was so concise, yet so devastating, that it left Adam speechless with surprise. At length, he said, “Sounds like you gave him a great deal of thought.”

“Oh, I did. Your father was an extremely interesting study, as well as a man to be wary of.” Glazer sat back in his rocking chair. “How much do you know about his childhood?”

“Only what he told me, plus a few scraps from Mom. The father he described was barely human-coarse, brutal, and drunk-and his mother seemed like a shadow.”

Glazer nodded. “That may be more accurate than you know. My understanding is that Nathaniel Blaine was a limited man who seethed with resentments, and was given to violent rages that reduced his wife to a timorous cipher. Both were alcoholics, so there was no safe place for either boy. Since then, I think, everyone else has paid for the damage they did Ben in childhood.”

Adam shook his head, less in demurral than confusion. “I was too close to him, Charlie. How did that boy become the father I knew?”

Glazer nodded. “A good question. No one on earth is Adam or Eve-our parents had parents, too. So here’s how Ben lays out for a psychiatrist. As a child, he had no love from either parent: his father beat him, and his mother couldn’t protect him. That led to a terrible narcissistic injury-Ben’s lifetime quest to heal the wounds to his own sense of manhood.” Smiling, Glazer stopped himself abruptly. “Am I making sense, or does this sound like total bullshit?”

Adam stared at the deck, not answering. “Hardly,” he said at length. “In fact, you just surfaced a memory. My father and me, just the two of us, standing on the promontory after his own dad’s funeral.”

Glazer eyed him curiously. “How old were you then, Adam?”

“Not yet ten, I think. But suddenly I remember it all too well.”

His father stared moodily at the water, falling into a silence that Adam feared to break.

“It’s so strange,” Ben said at last. “The death of a father is a profound thing, I’m finding, no matter how great a sonofabitch he was. I don’t know why I should feel like this. It’s pathetic to be the slave of archetypes.”

His father’s voice was low and soft, as though he were speaking to himself. Curious, Adam asked, “How come we never saw him?”

“Because I could never forget who he was.” For a moment, Ben studied him. “Be grateful I’m your father, Adam. Mine used to get drunk and slap us around, then beat up my mother for sport. The only way I survived was to make myself tougher than he was.”

“What did you do?”

“Read book after book on boxing. Then I hung up a heavy bag in a neighbor’s barn and tore into it every day after school. Not to let the anger out, but to train it.” Ben turned to his son again. “I punished that bag until the stuffing bled through the canvas. A sign from God, I thought.” Adam heard Ben’s reflective tone transmute to something harder. “That night, at dinner, my father slaps my mother-there’s something about the stew he doesn’t like. She is cowering in a corner with that same look of incomprehension, a small animal petrified of a big one.