Eden in Winter

by Richard North Patterson

  Doubt clouded Teddy’s eyes. ‘You think they believed Jack’s testimony?’

  ‘Not really. Their problem is that they can’t disprove it.’

  Teddy looked at him more closely. ‘Do you believe it?’

  ‘I know you didn’t kill him.’ Adam paused, steeling himself to follow this simple truth with yet another lie. ‘And why would Jack volunteer this story if it weren’t true? Easier to say he was home in bed.’

  Slowly, his brother nodded. ‘I owe Uncle Jack a lot.’

  ‘You do.’ Briefly, Adam smiled. ‘But then what is family for? Even this one.’

  *

  Pausing outside, Adam took fresh stock of the house he had salvaged for his mother despite Ben’s malice. It had been built in the 1850s; in the 1940s, a then-wealthy couple from Boston, Clarice’s parents, bought it as their summer home. Long before Adam and Teddy had played hide-and-seek in the woods and swum off the rocky beach below, Clarice had spent the best summers of her childhood in this house. As with many homes of this vintage, the porch that looked out at woods and ocean had been more generous than the rooms, a reminder that what was most compelling about the Vineyard lay outdoors. Adam could still remember the summer evenings when his mother and Benjamin Blaine would sit on the porch at night in moments of marital peace, talking or listening to the crickets.

  But, like their lives as a whole, the space inside bore the mark of a dead man. Ben had knocked down walls to suit himself, and now the living room was large and open, filled with the comfortable furniture he liked and mementos of his travels – Asian vases, African masks, scrolls in Arabic and Hebrew. Amidst this sat the other remnants of Ben’s life – his wife and brother, Adam’s father. Sitting across from them, Adam could only wonder how it felt for Jack to be there.

  It was to Jack’s credit, Adam supposed, that his sensitive eyes – though resolutely fixed on Adam – betrayed his shame at the concealment of his guilt, as well as the deeper truth that Adam’s mother also did not know: that Adam had protected him. But Clarice’s innocence allowed her to regard her younger son with a look of hurt and anger. Coolly, Adam said, ‘Go ahead, Mom. I hate to see you feeling repressed.’

  ‘You know what it is. How can you humiliate me in public by being friendly with that woman?’

  ‘Actually,’ Adam corrected, ‘it’s worse than that. We’re having dinner tonight.’

  His mother bridled. ‘Dinner with your father’s whore.’

  Adam felt the familiar whipsaw of hurt and anger. ‘He wasn’t my father, and Carla’s not a whore. If it weren’t for her willingness to settle the estate, there’s a good chance you’d be out in the street, with nothing I could do for you. So you might save a bit of the gratitude you lavish on me for her.’

  At this, Jack turned to Clarice, silently imploring her to stop. But Clarice did not see him. ‘Forgive me,’ she told Adam stiffly, ‘but giving her three million dollars feels like gratitude enough. Beyond that, I expect more loyalty from a son.’

  Though stung, Adam answered softly. ‘And I might’ve expected more candour from a mother. So let’s be candid now. For years, you put up with my quasi-father’s affairs. You hate Carla because she’s the woman Benjamin Blaine took seriously. For you, the real tragedy is that he died too late for you to maintain the illusion of your marriage.’

  At this, Adam saw his mother summon the willed self-control that had governed her life. ‘To be wholly fair,’ she responded in a more even tone, ‘the core of my difficulties preceded Carla Pacelli’s arrival here by roughly thirty-four years: the post-nuptial agreement, through which I gave up my right to my husband’s assets – including the house he had bought from my father – the reason you were born in comfort instead of scandal.’ She paused, concluding softly, ‘Or born at all. Everything else came from that.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Adam could not help but ask.

  Though Jack placed a hand on her wrist, Clarice kept looking at their son, speaking with quiet vehemence. ‘If I’d terminated the pregnancy, Adam, my husband never would’ve known. Instead, on returning after four months away, Ben knew to a certainty that the child I was bearing wasn’t his. But I insisted on having you. Not for any religious reasons, but because you’re my son, and Jack’s son, and I wanted you to live, more fiercely than you can ever understand. As a purely practical matter, you were the last thing I needed in my life. But this wasn’t a practical decision, unlike so many that I’ve made. I loved you before you were born, and I love you now.

  ‘So, please, spare me the moral outrage about how Jack and I misled you. I could have ended your life before it began, and saved you all this disappointment. Little did I imagine that you’d end up blackmailing me, more or less, to help his mistress and the unborn child he favoured over you and Teddy.’

  It was a mercy, Adam supposed, that the last decade of his life had, so often, required that he feel nothing. ‘Then you made the wrong choice, didn’t you? It seems that I’ve been the agent of your problems from before I was even born, right to this moment. No doubt it’s rich with irony how poorly I’ve repaid you.’ Seeing Jack wince, he paused to choose his next words with care. ‘I appreciate what you did, Mother – or at least tried to do. But my whole life was distorted by Ben’s ambivalence about me, and the rivalry between my supposed father and my real one. I can’t inflict our family pathology on another unborn child.

  ‘Like you, Carla is choosing to have a child who is the result of an affair. Her son may be nothing to you, but he’s Teddy’s brother and my cousin. So I’m going to make a place for him in my life. That requires me to have a relationship with his mother. As much as you want me to hate her, I can’t – and don’t. If you resent me for that, try to remember that this boy will outlive us all. And outrun us, if he’s lucky.’

  For an instant, Clarice looked wounded, and then her face closed. ‘Surely you don’t expect me to forget who this woman is. Let alone to accept her.’

  Before Adam could answer, Jack turned to her. ‘None of us can forget any of this, Clarice. But we’re asking Adam to accept quite a lot, too. So he’s entitled to some forbearance on our part, including on the subject of Carla Pacelli. There’s enough for the three of us to sort out as it is.’

  Watching his mother absorb this, Adam felt a deep ambivalence. Only Jack and he knew why his father was free to sit here. But Adam also remembered all the kindness Jack had lavished on the boy who had thought himself lucky to have such a caring uncle. Deeply, pointlessly, Adam wished never to have learned all that he had, and to love Jack still.

  ‘Thanks,’ he told Jack with a casual air he did not feel. ‘It’s not like I’m marrying her, after all.’ He sat back, looking from his father to his mother. ‘Anyhow, we’ve got the present to worry about. As I’ve already told Teddy, there is a National Enquirer reporter lurking about, a particularly feral specimen named Amanda Ferris.

  ‘Ferris will stir up all the problems she can, including with Carla Pacelli. You don’t want that, believe me. So there may come a time when you’re grateful that I’m in touch with Carla. After all, I’m the only member of this family who she’s certain didn’t shove the father of her child off a cliff – if only because I was in Afghanistan.’

  Quite deliberately, Adam looked at his mother, not Jack. But he did not truly see either one; he was suddenly, unspeakably, soul weary, and the spacious room felt claustrophobic. Without saying more, he got up and went to see Carla Pacelli.

  TWO

  Carla Pacelli was living near the Blaines, in a guesthouse behind the summer home of the novelist Whitney Dane. That Whitney and Ben, her contemporary and fellow writer, had routinely avoided each other had always been a puzzlement to Adam, all the more so because of his understanding that, in their childhood and youth, his mother and Whitney had been the closest of friends. But this estrangement, whatever its cause, had made it possible for Whitney to continue giving Carla a refuge from all that had beset her – alcohol and drug abuse, the collapse of her career – whi
le she tried to build the foundation for a new and different life.

  At seven o’clock, it would still be light for another hour, and Carla had set the table on the deck outside, affording them a sweeping view of the Vineyard Sound that glistened with the falling sun. Wearing a loose, flowing dress, Carla was placing napkins when Adam arrived. Glancing up at the sound of his footsteps, she gave him a wry smile, as though to acknowledge the incongruity of the occasion. ‘What excuse did you give them at home?’ she asked. ‘A poetry reading?’

  ‘I said we were going to Lamaze class.’

  To his surprise, Carla laughed lightly, the first time he had ever heard this. The effect was charming, lending a human touch to a woman whose appearance was so stunning that, even now, Adam experienced the involuntary jolt of attraction he had felt when seeing her on the screen. But there was something else, he realized: even with the weight of all he was concealing from Carla Pacelli, after the strain of dealing with his family he was simply glad to see her. ‘Men will do anything to appear useful,’ she replied. ‘How are things among the Blaines?’

  ‘Trying.’ Adam paused, then decided on the novelty – at least for this day – of speaking an unvarnished truth. ‘He left a lot of wreckage, Carla, ending with the will. All the more so because it set you and my mother at each other’s throats. All in all, it’s been a long day, and I’m very, very hungry.’

  Carla pulled out a wooden chair, inviting him to sit. ‘Then I hope you like chicken cacciatore,’ she replied. ‘One of my few specialities. My mother’s family was Irish; my father’s, Italian. So there was only one direction my cooking could take.’

  Adam realized that he had rarely heard Carla mention her parents, and then only in passing. ‘You know all about my family,’ he said, then recalled at once how untrue that was. ‘What was yours like?’

  Her smile faded. ‘Another time, perhaps. While I’m up, what would you like to drink that contains no alcohol at all?’

  *

  In the event, the chicken was succulent, its sauce tangy but not too rich. When Adam said as much, Carla answered, ‘You can thank my grandmother, who taught it to my mother. Mom was desperate to please my father in any way she could. You’re the incidental beneficiary.’

  There was more behind this comment, Adam was quite certain, just as he knew that, at least for tonight, he should not probe this. Instead, he asked, ‘Are you staying here until the baby’s born? It’s nice right now, but Martha’s Vineyard in the winter is like the world’s longest Bergman film.’

  The sun had fallen into the ocean, its red disk bathing the water in a last painterly orange-grey glow as night began enveloping them. Lighting a candle, Carla observed, ‘I’m not looking for excitement – I’ve had too much already. This is a better place for me to stay sober.’

  Adam could still remember the photographs of Carla that were splashed across Cable News, taken after a one-car crash caused by her cross-addiction to alcohol and cocaine. Though he had not imagined knowing her then, her eyes were filled with shame, drawing from him a sympathetic wonder that a woman with so much could fall so far, so fast. In a tone that he hoped was encouraging, Adam replied, ‘You look like you’re doing fine.’

  Carla gave a fractional shrug. ‘It helps to be away from there. When I was running on the hamster wheel, I thought substance abuse was my friend – alcohol helped me relax, and coke jacked me up to learn my lines and keep the weight off. So I started doing more coke so I could drink more, which accentuated all of my less than desirable traits: impatience, fear of failure, and a tendency to wall off feelings.’ She looked at Adam more intently. ‘I’m a born loner, it seems. Maybe you know what that’s like.’

  ‘Let’s say I’m familiar with the species.’

  ‘Anyhow, alcoholism was another part of my birthright – my dad had it, and my grandfather before him. It was always waiting in ambush, until the right combination of pressure and stuff I’d never resolved brought it out of hiding. God knows what would’ve happened if I hadn’t cracked up that Porsche.’

  For a moment, Adam watched the candle, flickering in a fitful breeze that caused its light to shimmer on the table. ‘How did you pull out of it?’

  ‘By accident, at first. As a matter of self-preservation, I had to show how contrite I was. So I figured a respite, drinking vegetable juice at Betty Ford, might retrieve my career.’ Carla’s tone became sardonic. ‘Naturally, I showed up drunk in the back seat of a limousine. I vaguely remember a sense of disbelief as I entered a driveway lined with palm trees, ending up in a reception area that was so serene I thought I was in one of those movies where you imagine the afterlife. My keepers took one look, gave me something to keep me from crashing, and led me to a room with a single bed. God knows how long I slept, and how little I wanted to wake up.’

  ‘What happened when you did?’

  Carla rolled her eyes, a surprisingly droll expression. ‘Do you really want to hear all this? You don’t seem like the type who goes to A.A. meetings for fun.’

  ‘You have no idea of the things I consider fun. If I weren’t interested, I wouldn’t ask.’

  She fell quiet, considering him with renewed gravity. In that moment, he wondered if he reminded her of Ben, perhaps of the evenings before he died when she must have explained her life. Then Carla collected herself to answer. ‘Actually, I felt horrified. I’d gone to sleep in the afterlife, and awakened in a summer camp for junkies. Not only was I jumpy and strung out, but my new counsellor was explaining the routine: daily sessions for fitness, spiritual care, diet and nutrition, counselling, and – worst of all – group therapy. If I’d had the strength, I’d have run screaming into the night.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘How could I?’ Carla responded wryly. ‘Before, I had a crew of employees who depended on my career. Now I had all these lovely people dedicated to my recovery – a doctor, nurse, psychologist, spiritual counsellor, dietitian, fitness trainer, chemical-dependency technician, and, God help us, an alumni services representative for when I got out, just like at U.C.L.A. And they had a schedule for me that ran from six in the morning to ten at night, with wonderful new friends to meet in what was essentially a women’s dorm.

  ‘I wanted to crawl under my bed. But what made it even harder was group therapy.’ Her tone softened. ‘I wasn’t a very trusting person then. I’m not sure I really am now. But I’m better.’

  ‘Group therapy,’ Adam remarked, ‘is not something I can imagine doing.’

  ‘Neither could I. But it turned out to be what I needed. I learned my problems weren’t special – they were just mine. The more these women were honest around me, the more honest I became. Ironically enough, there’s something addictive about candour when you need it to save your life.’ Carla took a sip of her coffee. ‘It’s hard to delve into your deepest secrets, especially in a business where predators publicize your every slip. But the day I found myself weeping without being able to stop, I realized how much pain I’d been in, and for how long. And I knew that nothing about my life – the money, the celebrity, all the people who needed me enough to suspend the rules – could protect me from what I’d been carrying around.’

  To Adam, the memory lent a raw note to her smoky voice. ‘Hence, Martha’s Vineyard.’

  Carla nodded. ‘The cliché in recovery is, “Change your playground and your playmates.” But I also realized that escaping wasn’t enough – that, wherever you go, you take your demons with you. My first ninety days on the island, I went to ninety A.A. meetings. The other part, which I still can’t quite believe, is that I’ve renewed diplomatic relations with Catholicism. If you’re going to seek help from a “higher power”, as A.A. says you should, better the version you already know.’

  Adam smiled. ‘God and I have never been formerly introduced. But it seems like it’s worked for you. I saw that mug shot, and you’re not the same person.’

  ‘She wasn’t the girl I wanted to be,’ Carla answered ruefully. ‘Not when
I was young, and certainly not now. But celebrity makes it that much harder. Another reason that I came here.’

  Adam found himself thinking of Amanda Ferris and then, with piercing quickness, of the scandal Carla had evoked by becoming involved with Benjamin Blaine. Imagining them together, he felt a sudden resentment, then stifled it. ‘I guess becoming a mother changes things, too.’

  In this moment, she looked vulnerable. ‘Everything,’ she said softly. ‘For a bunch of reasons, I thought I could never have children. You can’t imagine how fiercely I want this child, and to be the mother he deserves. A psychologist might say that I want to give him the parenting I didn’t have.’ She met his eyes. ‘For better or worse, family really is the gift that keeps on giving. All we can do is try to understand it, and do better for whoever follows us.’

  Once more, Adam felt an unspoken kinship. But his own family had trapped him in a web of secrets he was forced to hide from her. ‘In my family,’ he responded, ‘whoever follows us comes down to your son. As matters stand, he’s the last of the Blaines.’

  Carla regarded him curiously. ‘Did you ever want kids?’

  ‘I thought so, once. But my job gets in the way.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she retorted with a trace of irony. ‘It can’t be easy persuading Afghan farmers to grow other crops than opium poppies. As a former addict, I can say first hand that you’re performing a service.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Adam said solemnly. ‘Not everyone appreciates my self-sacrifice.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ she rejoined. ‘Too bad Ben didn’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘I find that odd, Carla – seeing how we hadn’t spoken in ten years. He must’ve been reading the entrails of goats.’

  His dismissive tone did not seem to faze her. ‘Actually, Ben was reading maps and talking to your mother. Believe it or not, the trajectory of your career worried him – Pakistan, Iraq, and then Afghanistan. Everywhere jihadists seemed to be. He even made me wonder about you a little.’