Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

“I get up from the table and grab him by the wrist. ‘You’re a pussy,’ I tell him. ‘Good only for drinking and beating up women and small boys. You’re just smart enough to know I’ve gotten way too big for that. But too stupid to know what that means.’”

Listening, Adam felt his heart race. “The bastard’s eyes get big,” his father continued. “Suddenly, he takes a swing at me. I duck, like I’ve taught myself, and Jack tries to step between us. ‘Get out of my way,’ I bark at him, ‘or you’ll come next.’” Ben’s speech quickened. “Jack backs up a step. Before my father can move I pivot sideways and hit him in the gut with everything I’ve got. He doubles over, groaning. As he struggles to look up at me, I break his nose with a right cross.” Ben’s voice was shaking now. “His blood spurts on the floor. I’m breathing hard, years of hatred welling up. ‘Remember hitting me?’ I manage to say, and send a left to his mouth that knocks out most of his front teeth.

“My father starts blubbering, and he looks like Halloween. I pull him up by the throat and press my thumbs on his larynx till his eyes bulge. ‘I run this house now,’ I tell him. ‘You just live here. Hit her again, and I’ll cut your balls off with a butter knife.’”

As Adam watched him, frightened, Ben’s barrel chest shuddered like a bellows. Tears began running down his face. “He’s dead now,” he said in a choked voice. “Thank God it won’t be like that for us.”

Not knowing what to do, Adam took his father’s hand and felt Ben squeeze his in return.

Finishing, Adam felt the dampness in his eyes, a grief too deep and complex to express. For a time, Glazer let him be, scanning the horizon. “Do you remember what you felt, Adam?”

“Terrified,” Adam murmured. “Of both men in the story, the father and the son. And of being like either one.”

Glazer nodded. “That makes sense, and not just because they fought. The forgotten person in that scene is the mother-whose passivity helped make Ben who he became. Among other things, a serial pursuer of women, scarred by neglect from the first woman in his life.”

“Too many parallels,” Adam told Glazer. “My father never beat us-or, to my knowledge, her. But all of us lived in his shadow. My mother deferred to him, and couldn’t protect us from the psychic damage he inflicted. Like Jack, my brother stood aside. And, like Ben, I broke with my own father.”

The look in Glazer’s eyes combined compassion and deep interest. “You think you’re too much like him, is that it?”

“That’s all I ever heard,” Adam said in a low voice. “Not just to look at, but to be with.”

“Then bear with me for another moment. Because the father you knew was his own singular invention. No doubt you’ve heard of narcissistic personality disorder.”

Adam searched his memory. “As I recall, it involves an insatiable need for attention and admiration. Plus a tendency to see others in terms of those needs.”

Richard North Patterson

Fall from Grace

Glazer nodded. “At the positive end, you find someone like John F. Kennedy, a high-functioning leader who’s rewarded for his gifts. Or you get someone more malignant, seeking dominance by subjugating or destroying others-taking their jobs, stealing their women. Does that sound much like you to you?”

“Not as I imagine myself. Though I’d be the last to know, wouldn’t I?”

“You’re very much like him, it’s true. But the person you’re most likely to damage is yourself. Your father’s efforts were far more comprehensive. Regrettably for Clarice, however, narcissistic personality disorder does not disqualify someone from executing a valid will.” Glazer paused, reflecting. “What I can’t know is how the course of his disease, and the fear of imminent death, affected your father’s mental state. Or how Carla Pacelli fits into the puzzle.”

“Really?” Adam said tartly. “Everyone else tells me it’s obvious. My mother is sixty-five. Carla Pacelli is half that age, and known for her remarkable face and figure. Seems like enough for Dad, they tell me.”

Glazer’s face was skeptical. “But why leave her all his money? Ben was far too conscious of how the world saw him to play the besotted old fool.” Glazer looked at Adam intently. “Granted, sleeping with Carla Pacelli fit Ben’s need to prove his own superiority. But psychologically, his hunger for transcendence involved concealing his ‘true self’-the wounded son-behind a ‘fake self’ who was omnipotent, omniscient, and invulnerable. He needed to risk death because he feared it so much. But the last thing he’d do is risk appearing to be controlled by a younger woman-even this one. That’s why I find Ben’s relationship with Carla so completely enigmatic. As, I sense, do you.”

“True enough,” Adam conceded.

“I don’t know this woman at all,” Glazer cautioned. “But you don’t either. So don’t respond to stereotypes, no matter how tempting. She may be more complicated than you think.”

Adam gave him a dubious look. “I’ll hold the thought.”

Glazer read his expression. “Sorry I can’t be more help. But while I’ve got you here-for the first time in a decade, at that-there’s one more subject worth discussing further.”

“Which is?”

“Your own family, Adam. Starting with you and Ben.”

The two men leaned on the railing, the blue panorama of Menemsha Pond before them, the images of a long-ago racing season ghosts in Adam’s mind. “To escape his inner self,” Glazer observed, “Ben needed to write bestsellers, face down danger, and eviscerate anyone he saw as a rival. That came to include you, didn’t it?”

Adam did not answer. “And women?” he asked. “What were they to him?”

“Mirrors in which he saw himself-or the man he wished to see. Until Pacelli, and with the partial exception of your mother, I read him as the classic sexual narcissist: insatiable, emotionally cool, and incapable of love.” He glanced at Adam. “I remember a cocktail party one summer, watching him charm my college-age daughter-hopefully just for sport. I wasn’t amused: it was one thing to enjoy Ben as the compelling and often generous figure I’d known well since we were young, and another to want him near the daughter I loved dearly. So I took her aside, told her Ben was the most dangerous man on the island, and spelled out why. I don’t think she ever spoke to him again.”

There was no humor in Glazer’s eyes or voice. Quietly, Adam asked, “Was he capable of sexual violence?”

Glazer gave him a dubious look. “I never heard that he was, and it runs contrary to his self-image. But if some woman challenged his vanity? Wrong time, too much to drink, and who knows. Do you have something in mind?”

“No.” Adam paused. “I keep thinking of my mother. What kept that going? I wonder-at least until Carla Pacelli.”

Glazer’s gaze at him was ruminating. “Growing up, it must have seemed mysterious to you. But in certain ways they were a match-for reasons functional and dysfunctional. Your mother was lovely, aristocratic, socially skilled, and, beneath the surface, deeply dependent. From what I could grasp, her parents raised her to be an asset, rather than an independent being. Damaging to her; perfect for Ben. She became a badge of honor for a young man who started with nothing but ego.” Glazer paused, amending his remarks. “They did have things in common. Both were articulate, smart, and charming. Your mother was made for the outdoors, as was he. She could ride or swim or play tennis with the best of them.”

Adam nodded. “Sometimes they seemed most compatible in motion. When they were still, they had to face each other. Or, in my mother’s case, work overtime to avoid facing unpleasant truths: the latest woman, the indifference with which he sometimes treated her. I always wondered what she got from being with him.”