Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

“I’ll take the right. The wind seems stiffer.”

Nodding, Jack turned back to running wind shots. By two thirty, twelve other boats had joined them, headed for two orange buoys placed by the commodore near the creek flowing out to the Vineyard Sound. From his observation boat, the commodore, Paul Taylor, hoisted the order of the markers that defined the course, calculated to accent sudden changes in the wind.

Glancing over his shoulder, Adam saw his father in Icarus, tacking back and forth behind the starting line, angling to seize the best position when the final horn blasted. When he saw Jack at the helm of Charlie’s boat, Ben’s face hardened. But today his goal was brutally simple. It did not matter if he won; all that counted was beating Adam. If Ben could cover his son throughout the race, blocking his path, the cup would remain his; Adam’s only chance was to break free of his father and never look back. His temples still throbbed, and his stomach felt raw and empty. He was grateful for the wind and water in his face.

Five blasts of the horn marked the last five minutes. Fourteen boats kept tacking; with a minute left, Ben knifed in beside Adam, catching the wind his son needed. As Jack found his place just behind Ben, Adam felt the tightening of his neck and jaw.

With a final blast of the horn, the race started.

The boats headed downwind, taking a 30-degree angle into a southwest wind. Looking from Adam to Jack, Ben crossed the line on a starboard tack seconds ahead of his son, forcing Adam to give way. Tacking into the wind, they fought for advantage, muscles straining, Ben leading by seconds as they reached the first marker. The one boat ahead was Folie a Un.

In the distance, Adam saw his mother and Jenny in Ben’s powerboat, watching what was becoming a three-man duel. But for the next thirty frustrating minutes, Ben ignored Jack, intent solely on staying between Adam and the next mark. Taut, Adam calculated their shifts, fighting to catch a gust that would erase the narrow lead his father had seized at the outset.

For one leg, then another, Ben blocked Adam’s path.

They reached the final leg with Ben two boat lengths behind Jack, both tacking upwind, forced to adopt zigzag courses as they struggled to catch the next shift. The only choice left to Adam was whether to follow his father on the right side of the pond, fighting to pass him at last, or to break to the left behind Jack, hoping that a wind shift would allow him to beat Icarus and Folie a Un to the finish line. But with the tide swifter on the right, Adam decided to stay where he was, still locked in a tacking duel with Ben. Muscles aching, he sailed furiously, salt spray in his eyes and mouth.

But his father would not give up his lead. Suddenly, Adam felt as if he could watch the race from above. With the finish line in sight, and Ben seconds ahead of him, Adam saw that there was no way for him to edge Jack, leaving Ben in third-his only hope of taking the cup.

Suddenly, Jack tacked toward the right.

Glancing over, Ben saw Folie a Un slicing toward his bow. “Starboard,” he cried out-a demand that his brother yield the right-of-way. The three boats converged, seemingly headed for a collision.

“Starboard,” Ben yelled again.

In a sudden, perfect maneuver, Jack tacked again, cutting off Ben from the wind and causing him to abruptly lose speed. Suddenly, Jack had reversed the dynamic of the race, blocking his brother as Ben had blocked Adam. At this moment, Adam saw his chance.

Marshaling speed, he tacked to the left, catching a lift that brought him surging closer to Jack. Fifteen feet, then ten. A hundred feet to go.

Jack was still in the lead, tacking to block Ben’s way, Adam to the left. Five feet behind Jack, Adam passed his father.

He was alongside Jack’s stern now, running with the wind. Angrily, Ben strained to pass his brother. Alongside one another, the two brothers and Adam fought for position, the commodore waiting at the line to call out the order of finish.

Thirty feet from the line, Adam was three feet behind his uncle, the wind still at his back.

Two feet from Jack, then one.

Adam had no time to see if Ben was catching up. One foot closer to Jack, and then the uncle and father and son were bunched so tightly that no one seemed to lead.

Ten feet to go, vanishing in seconds.

As the three boats crossed the finish line, three blasts sounded in succession, though for which boat Adam could not tell. Then the commodore called out, “Sisyphus first, Folie a Un second, Icarus third.”

Adam Blaine had won the Herreshoff Cup.

In unison, he and his uncle turned, smiling and waving at Ben. But his father did not catch the spirit of the race, or the irony of its final moments. Expressionless, he sailed on toward his mooring, acknowledging neither his brother nor his son.

For an instant, Adam felt deflated, uneasy at his triumph and Jack’s help. Then his uncle called out, “I guess we made up for those lobster pots,” and Adam began laughing, the shadow on his victory passing from his mind.

This season was his now. For as long as the cup existed, ADAM BLAINE-2001 would be engraved on its side. Like his father, he would bring it home and place it in the center of the dining room table. He thought of John F. Kennedy, one of Ben’s heroes, and imagined raising his glass to his father, uncle, mother, and brother. “The cup has been passed,” he would intone, “to a new generation of Blaines.”

He never did. Before the engraver had finished, Adam had left the island and his family. Now, ten years later, he moored a dead man’s sailboat and went to surprise Jenny Leigh.

When Adam knocked on her door, Jenny did not answer.

He glanced at his watch. It was two fifteen; by now her shift at the gallery should be over. He tried the doorknob.

Like many people on the Vineyard, Jenny did not lock her house. Stepping inside, Adam glanced around, acting on an instinctive fear that she might have harmed herself once more. Instead, he found himself alone.

For an instant, remembering the night he had broken into the courthouse, Adam felt like an intruder. But now, as then, he had good reason to be alone here. He considered where to start, then walked into her office and began opening drawers.

He found little-no legal documents, nor anything suggesting that she had expected her bequest. The calendar on her wall, on which she had penciled in doctors’ appointments or lunches and dinners with friends, contained no mention of his father. Nothing seemed to mar the innocent surface of Jenny’s life.

All that was left was her stories.

Drafts of several were arranged neatly on her desk. The thickest stack of papers, Adam discovered, was her novel-in-progress. Like his father’s last, aborted work, Jenny’s had a title page: “No One’s Daughter.”

She had a series of unsatisfying relationships, his mother had told him, often with older men. Jenny has come to believe she’s been trying to replace her father.

Uneasy, Adam flipped the page.

“To Adam,” the dedication said.

He felt his skin tingle. Then he sat at her desk and began to read.

As with his father’s manuscript, each page increased a sense of dread that nonetheless impelled him to continue. Shortly after the hundredth page, he stopped abruptly, feeling his face go white.

“Oh, Jenny.” He said this softly, aloud. “Why did you never tell me.”

He sat back, eyes closing, beset by images he could no longer push aside.

In early September, the contest with his father won, Adam drove to New York.

His second year of law school started in two weeks. In the spring he had found a new apartment in Greenwich Village with two friends from his class; he moved his stuff-PC, television, CD player, winter coats and jackets-looking forward to another year in the city on the way to his career. His mission completed, he met up with Teddy and took in Village life.