Eden in Winter (33 page)

How did I get here?
he had thought.
How did all of us get here?
Now the link that bound the three of them – Ferris, Bobby, and Adam – was all Hanley needed to convict him. And all that protected him was that this connection was equally damning to the others.

After securing his own place – a secluded house across the road from Quitsa Pond – Adam decided to drop in on Carla.

As he passed the main dwelling, he saw Rachel’s car in front, increasing his ambivalence at this sudden impulse. He was not cheating on anyone, he reminded himself: this was not a triangle, and his chief concern was Carla and her baby. But as he knocked on her door he felt restive and uneasy.

Opening it, she appraised him in silence before asking, ‘What is it, Adam?’

For an instant, he wondered if she knew about Rachel. ‘I’m just checking to see if Teddy’s doing his job.’

‘Very nicely, thanks – I’m flush with vegetables, yogurt, and all the nutrients an expectant mom could have. Your brother is extremely reliable.’

Something in her tone suggested that her answer was as pro forma as she believed his enquiry to be. Hands thrust in
his pockets, he asked, ‘So when do you go to Boston to have the baby?’

Adam thought he saw impatience flicker in her eyes, though perhaps it was worry. ‘I thought I told you. Two weeks from now, when I reach seven and a half months.’

‘Will you need a ride?’

‘Teddy’s already volunteered. Anyhow, I might fly – quicker may be safer.’

There was a distinct coolness in her voice and manner. After a moment, he asked, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Should there be?’ Watching his face, she said more evenly, ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’

Adam hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t mind spending a few moments. If you’ve got time.’

Carla considered this, then stood aside to let him in. She took a place on the couch, an open book face down beside her. Sitting across from her, he said, ‘You seem to be in a mood.’

‘Not for passive–aggressive fencing. If you’ve got anything in particular to say, then say it.’

Though the impulse came to Adam suddenly, the subject was always close to the surface, and speaking it aloud made him feel less defensive. ‘There’s something going on with us, Carla – enough that we’ve trusted each other with a fair amount. But there’s a very dead elephant in the room, and we keep pretending it isn’t there. So let me ask a direct question. How could you have learned so much about yourself, and still choose Ben?’

Her look of surprise was followed by a smile with little humour. ‘Men continue to amaze me. I could’ve sworn there was something else on your mind. But why should there be,
after all?’ She paused, then seemed to reach a decision followed by a shrug. ‘No harm in discussing something with so little emotional baggage. I’ve certainly given it enough thought.’

‘So have I. But I knew him too well to understand it.’

‘Try to let go of how much you hate him,’ Carla retorted, ‘assuming that’s even possible. Then maybe it won’t be so hard for you to grasp. Like me, Ben knew what it was like to be famous, so we could see past that in each other. We both had abusive fathers and passive mothers; both of us were driven to break out. He learned to write, and I found out that I could act. To succeed, both of us became as tough as we needed to be. People like Ben and me don’t stumble across each other every day.’

To Adam, this had a rote quality, pasteurized from a few rounds of psychotherapy. ‘That’s biography, Carla. You see other people; he never could. Selfishness and cruelty are not your most obvious characteristics.’

Her frown conveyed both understanding and irritation. ‘I’ve heard the stories, all right? Even Ben had deep regrets about his performance as a father – though neither of you would ever tell me the reason for your break. But you assume he was such an irredeemable bastard that there was nothing he could give me other than a roll in bed.

‘Let’s leave
that
one alone, for both our sakes. But, just as l could only face myself after I hit rock bottom, he saw himself more clearly once he saw death coming for him.’ Her tone became ironic. ‘In that sense, cancer was good for Ben’s character. At least he had the grace to choose reflection over self-pity. And, given my own limitations, the exit sign hanging over his head was also good for me. There’s no one safer than a dying man.’

For a moment, her candour startled him. ‘That’s a novel way of looking at it.’

‘Why? I saw him plainly enough to know that he could never completely change – all that charm, all that self-involvement and, yes, all the hurt and insecurity he tried so hard to conceal. But he came to me knowing that he’d destroyed his relationship with both you and Teddy, and filled with regrets about staying with Clarice and all the damage it caused. He wanted to be good for someone – me, as it happened – and he understood better than most people why I’d self-destructed.

‘Still, he was married – no matter how tattered the marriage was, he wasn’t a healthy choice for me, and I knew that I had to end it.’ Her voice softened. ‘Two things changed that – my pregnancy, and his illness. By some miracle, he’d given me the child I’d always wanted. And I was strong enough – at last – to take care of a man who truly needed that from me.’ To Adam’s surprise, her eyes briefly moistened. ‘Watching him try to accept death without flinching was unspeakably sad. I didn’t have to worry about his flaws, or whether this made any sense in the long-term. By dying, Ben became safe.

‘That allowed me to help him face the end, knowing that someone cared. When the tabloids began feasting on our relationship, I refused to run away.’ She paused, and then her tone became strong and level. ‘If you can’t accept that about me, it really doesn’t matter. Because I’ve accepted it, and I wouldn’t change it if I could.’

Once more, her honesty silenced him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he offered. ‘But it’s hard to put myself in your place.’

‘I can feel that.’ She looked off in the distance, quiet for a
moment. ‘You know what’s strange to me? You both had nightmares. Like you, Ben woke up screaming from his. I’m not making excuses for him, and I’m certainly no expert in P.T.S.D. But, after growing up in an abusive home and going through combat in Vietnam, he seemed to fit the profile.’ She faced him again, her voice even and dispassionate. ‘That’s what caused his nightmares. Maybe also the drinking, and his legendary absence of impulse control, including around women. Though Ben always claimed he was turning the tables on Jack and Clarice for their affair – of which you, regrettably, were a constant reminder. Tragic for both of you, really.’

For an unnerving moment, Adam recalled Charlie Glazer asking if wanting Carla was Adam’s psychic revenge for Jenny Leigh. Feeling his discomfort become sarcasm, he said, ‘I guess I should I should feel more sympathy.’

‘That’s hardly my point,’ Carla retorted with renewed impatience. ‘Doesn’t what I’m telling you make any sense at all?’

Abruptly, Adam recalled the only time that Ben had confessed to weakness. ‘At least in one way,’ he acknowledged.

*

Adam had been twenty-one then; Ben still in his prime. They were fishing off Dogfish Bar on a pitch-dark night, so chill that the stiff wind from the waters cut through their flannel shirts and down vests. But it was a point of pride between father and son that they fished under conditions which drove others home. Now and then they passed a bottle of whiskey back and forth, its warmth inside them thawing the ice in their bones.

Suddenly, Ben started and looked swiftly around. Seeing and hearing nothing, Adam asked, ‘Expecting anyone?’

Ben gave him a long look, and then laughed, a sound soft yet curiously harsh. ‘Only the Viet Cong.’

Surprised, Adam enquired, ‘Bad memories?’

‘More like reflexes. We spent a lot of time in the dark or in the bushes, not knowing where they were. Sometimes, when it’s night and a bit too quiet, I go back there.’ He faced the water. ‘I know it sounds crazy. But for a moment in this nothingness, you and I were waiting for something bad to happen. Except that only I knew that.’

Adam tried to find words to console a man who had never needed this. ‘You were a hero, Dad. I’ve seen the medals.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I got them for surviving a war as meaningless as it was murderous. My platoon lived in its own world – there were no rules, nothing made sense, death was random and pointless, and too many damned officers were set on climbing the ladder by getting our heads blown off. We spent our time taking and giving up the same hill, hoping to survive, with blacks and whites not trusting each other.’ His voice grew quieter. ‘I was sure I’d die there, for nothing. Instead, I got a best-selling memoir out of it, and wound up famous instead of dead.’

Adam stood closer to him. ‘You also know that you’re not a coward. In a strange way, I envy you that.’

‘Maybe so,’ his father answered with muted bitterness. ‘You might ask your uncle, who managed to wriggle out of serving. But my “manhood” came at a price. I’m jumpier, more impulsive and prone to anger, and I drink too goddam much. Sometimes it feels like I’m going to explode.

‘I’m not a complete mystery to myself. There’s a reason I still go to war zones. I hate it, and I need it – to prove myself, again and again.’ Turning, he gazed closely at Adam, then
put a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘If there’s another war, it’ll be in the Middle East, and a fucking nightmare. Don’t be in any hurry to chase after it. There are other ways to prove that you’re a man.’

*

Recounting this to Carla, Adam found that his mood had subtly altered.

‘I’d almost forgotten that,’ he finished. ‘It was that rare time he forced himself to be introspective, which he absolutely hated – except, it seems, with you. It was the clearest sign that he actually gave a damn.’

‘He loved you,’ she insisted. ‘At least, as much as he could. Maybe he found it easier to care about people who weren’t embedded in his own torment.’ She gazed down, reflective. ‘Whatever the reason, he did care. When I was on top, I paid the usual Hollywood lip service to the usual causes. But Ben campaigned against the death penalty, wrote about famine in places no one knew about, funded scholarships to Yale and the writing programme at U.Mass. By the time he wrote that will, he’d given a lot of his money away.’

Adam had heard this speech, so often that he could almost quote it. ‘I like money as much as anyone,’ he recalled Ben saying at the dinner table. ‘But no one in this country got rich by themselves.
No one
. I became wealthy because a publisher believed in me, reviewers praised me, and the economy was good enough that people could afford to buy my books in hardcover.

‘They shipped those books on highways built with other people’s tax money; sold them in stores other people started, to customers who’d learned to read in public schools. Half the old people who read me – and too damn many of my
readers are old – pay with precious dollars from Social Security, or go to libraries built and maintained with public money.’ His father took another swallow of wine, then added fiercely, ‘Those greedy sons of bitches who make millions and then whine about their taxes make me puke. Class warfare isn’t making the rich pay taxes; it’s letting these bastards pull the ladder up behind them. I went to Yale on someone else’s dime, supplemented by other people’s tax money. As far as I’m concerned, I’m worth every goddam penny, and so is anyone this country helps to realize their potential. The point is that I’m not just my own creation – I’m the sum of what a person with talent and ambition can do when society gives them a chance. So now I’m going to be one of those people who gives a damn, simple as that …’

‘What I could never figure out,’ Adam said now, ‘was whether he remembered being poor, or remembered hating rich people like Whitney Dane’s father.’

‘No doubt both,’ Carla answered. ‘But what does it matter? He gave away his own money, and his politics cost him readers. As for Whitney’s father, from what he told me, Ben loved Whitney before he married your mother. But Charles Dane did everything in his power to drive them apart – including getting Ben drafted into the army. That would certainly explain Ben’s dislike, and cast a different light on his history with women. Particularly after Whitney slipped away from him.’ Carla paused, then added mildly, ‘Whitney says she’s not a beauty like her daughter. But I’ve gotten to know her well enough to see she’s that smart and strong and grounded. So maybe Ben lost what he most needed, long ago.’

Studying Carla, Adam wondered about her passing reference to Rachel. ‘Till there was you,’ he said.

‘I certainly don’t compare myself to Whitney,’ Carla responded coolly. ‘I’m merely suggesting that marrying your mother damaged Ben as much as her.’ She gave him a long, pensive look. ‘No doubt you suffered the consequences. Perhaps someday, if it matters, you can tell me why you ended up bolting the island. But it probably won’t matter at all.’

Adam found himself without words. ‘Back to the baby,’ he finally said. ‘When he’s born, I’d like to be there.’

Carla raised her eyebrows. ‘To do what, exactly?’

‘I just don’t want you to be alone.’

A shadow crossed her face. ‘I’d prefer not to share the delivery,’ she said tartly. ‘You skipped all the birthing classes, where they teach men to say “Push!” while the women lie spread-eagled in unspeakable agony. A little too intimate for us, don’t you think?’ Her voice became smokier, yet softer. ‘What are we to each other? I have to wonder. And I don’t know what will happen to my son, or how I will be when it does. Best for me to do this by myself.’

Awkwardly, Adam stood. ‘Until then, mind if I keep looking in on you?’

Carla smiled faintly. ‘You don’t have to make a special trip. Just whenever you find yourself nearby.’

Something had changed, Adam knew, but she was leaving him to guess. ‘I’ll do that,’ he told her. ‘What goes on with you and your son matters to me. It also matters that you know that.’

After a moment, she nodded, almost imperceptibly, and he imagined a trace of doubt and sadness in her eyes. Touching her shoulder, he said, ‘I appreciate the conversation,’ and left.