“That’s how they met, right?”
Jack nodded. “For years, he watched your mother, the beautiful daughter of a family who took their lives for granted. No one knew that later on her father’s investment firm, his inheritance, would collapse under claims of mismanagement.” Jack’s smile was brief and mirthless. “‘Inbreeding,’ Ben told me once. ‘The Barkleys’ blood got thin, until everything her father had he owed to ancestors with more brains and balls.’”
The echo of his father’s scorn re-ignited Adam’s anger. “It didn’t keep the sonofabitch from marrying the old man’s daughter.”
“Clarice was a prize to be won,” Jack replied, “a symbol of all he wanted and never had. For a passing moment, I thought he was after your mother’s best friend, Whitney Dane. But once Ben left Yale, it was his time to go after her. She never had a chance-the triumph of capturing her was too great for Ben to fail.” Jack’s tone grew hard. “So he pursued her, married her, and cheated on her. The ultimate proof of his superiority was that he made her parents’ home his own. And now he’s taken that piece of her life and given it to this actress.”
Feeling the chill of this story and its coda, Adam shut his eyes. Another moment with his father came to him, again from their final summer. Jenny was off-island, and Adam had asked Ben to go fly-fishing off Dogfish Bar. With a rueful smile, Ben shook his head. “Believe me, son, I’d vastly prefer your company to the living death I’ll experience tonight. But your mother insists on going to some idiot’s Fourth of July party. For reasons that are obscure to me, she actually cares about what these people think.” Ben sat back in his chair, his tone confiding. “I call it high school for the rich. They go from party to party, dying for acceptance, never wondering whether it’s worthwhile being accepted by whatever moron they encounter. The only amusement they hold for me is wondering who’ll flatter me in the most unctuous and transparent way. Knowing full well that none of them would give a damn except for who I am.
“Time is too fleeting for that. I could spend tonight fishing with my son, or making love, or talking with a man or woman who actually has something to say, or rereading War and Peace, the greatest novel ever written. By midnight, both of us will be six hours closer to being dead, and only you will have anything to show for it. Just thinking about it curdles me with envy.”
Adam laughed. “Have I told you Jenny’s theory on summer social life?”
“These minnows justify an entire theory?”
“A small one. Jen caters parties, like you used to do, honing her skills of observation. She says that the summer social circuit is actually a game called Celebrity Pac-Man, with a scoring system based on how many famous people you can hang out with between the Fourth of July and Labor Day-”
“Celebrity Pac-Man?” Ben repeated with a grin. “As in I got ‘Tom and Rita’ or ‘Ted and Mary’ or ‘Alan and Carolyn’?”
“Or ‘Ben and Clarice,’” Adam responded. “‘Tom and Rita’ are a ten. Whereas, I’m sorry to say, Mom and you are more like a seven-”
“I’m heartbroken.”
“You should be. Anyhow, the season starts tonight, so you absolutely have to be there. I’ll be thinking about you.”
With a faint smile, Ben regarded his youngest son. “Your friend Jenny has some insight. I don’t know whether you’ll ever be a famous trial lawyer, Adam. But if you become one, let me give you some advice. I like fame, quite a lot. But you have to know how to use it.” His eyes became serious, his voice penetrant. “I use it to gain things of value-access to people I respect, or whose lives or achievements interest me. I use it to gain experiences I haven’t had, and learn things I didn’t know. Fame is hard to win, all too easy to lose, and way too precious to squander on tonight’s group of nattering hangers-on.”
“So why don’t you just let Mom go without you?”
“If only I could. But I’m the draw-in a marriage, sacrifices must be made.” Ben paused. “This Jenny of yours sounds smart enough. Is this a serious thing?”
Adam weighed his answer. “She’s still pretty young, only twenty. But it’s serious enough that we’re only seeing each other.”
Ben gave him a speculative look. “Then I hope she’s good, my boy.”
Abruptly, Adam felt a flash of anger-this was a line his father could not cross. “Good at what, Dad? You make her sound like an athlete.”
Watching Adam’s face, Ben shrugged, his way of backing off. Adam would never give him an answer, let alone the truth: Sometimes Jenny just goes away. Like she doesn’t know where she is, or that I’m the man inside her.
And now Jenny Leigh had become his father’s heir.
Adam looked at his uncle, ashamed of his own judgment of Jack’s life. This man was everything his father was not-loving, humane, and protective of Adam’s mother and brother. “At the end,” Adam asked, “did you think my father was crazy?”
In the failing light of dusk, he saw Jack frown. “Crazy? I don’t know. I just know that he was different.”
“In what way?”
“The ones your mother saw. Especially this thing with Carla Pacelli.” Jack shifted his weight, seemingly uncomfortable. “I mean, you know what he was like. When it came to women, as with a lot of things, Ben had a complete indifference to other people’s pain and a fierce desire to compete. Nothing was better than sticking his penis where some other man’s had been-”
“I know that,” Adam cut in. “But for whatever reason he always stayed with my mother. He didn’t start putting girlfriends in his will, for godsakes.”
“So maybe he was crazy,” Jack said in measured tones. “Or maybe, in his way, he fell in love with Carla Pacelli.”
“That’s a complete oxymoron. Ben Blaine wasn’t capable of love.”
Jack met his gaze. “I think he loved your mother once. At least as much as he was capable of love.”
“When?” Adam asked with real scorn. “Before I was born?”
“Yes,” Jack answered. “Before you were born.”
Adam folded his arms. At last, he said, “I may have left here, and he may be dead. But it’s not over between us, after all. It won’t be until I undo everything that bastard has done.”
Jack’s expression was tinged with melancholy. “How, exactly?”
Adam felt the same steel enter his soul he had felt ten years before. “I haven’t worked that out yet. But trust me, Jack, I will.”
Five
Adam found his mother in the den, his father’s sanctuary. It was filled with photographs of Benjamin Blaine with world leaders, politicians, missionaries, mercenaries, and soldiers in half-forgotten wars. There was nothing of his family in it. Yet Clarice had gravitated there, sitting on the leather couch in the dim light of Ben’s desk lamp, as if to search for meaning in her life with this man. Adam sensed the desperation beneath her composure-she had lost not only her inheritance but her identity as a woman. In the end, Ben had taken everything.
“What are you doing, Mom?”
“Remembering.” Her voice was quiet and bitter. “Taking stock of my accomplishments. Except for this last manuscript, I took part in every one he wrote-proofreading, researching, or just telling him what I thought. And no one knew but me.”
Adam sat beside her, absorbing the weight of her loss. For as long as he could remember, he had felt for her, all the more so when, still young, he had learned to decode the meaning of his father’s nocturnal disappearances, the jaunty look he took on in the wake of some new conquest. The boy Adam had loved her, worried for her, and wished that he could protect her from hurt. But he did not want to be like her-despite everything, the person he admired was his father.