Eden in Winter (39 page)

Some of it
, he thought.
But not all
.

*

As Adam slept, dreamless, Carla’s fingers grazed the wound on his back, the skin puckered by the bullet that had nearly killed him. Gently, she kissed it, achingly grateful that he had lived. Like the child in the next room, the man did not stir.

Better this way
, she thought. He had wanted to know about Ben, but could not ask. Nor did she know how to answer.

Still, Carla understood in the depths of her soul how much she was at risk. This night had told them some things, but not others. There were questions no lovemaking could answer, fears it could not quell.

From the living room, a thin squall came, the first announcement of Liam’s hunger – a reminder, should she need one, of who was now at the centre of her life, Carla’s to protect from her own mistakes.

Next morning, the sun lingered, filtered through a thinning fog, which signalled a warmer day. Weary of winter, Adam and Charlie decided to walk along the rocky beach near the mouth of Menemsha harbour. As the therapist surveyed the choppy waters with a sailor’s anticipation of spring, Adam thought of Benjamin Blaine, his father then, eager to get his sailboat back on the waters, his enthusiasm sparking Adam’s own. Hands thrust in the pockets of his down vest, Charlie turned to Adam. ‘So what’s new? I can always count on something.’

Adam scanned the ground in front of them, picking his way through boulders and jagged rocks. ‘Carla.’

Charlie glanced at him sideways, and then comprehension stole through his eyes. ‘Oh, I see.’

‘I’m not sure you do. This was different.’

‘How so?’

The words felt hard to come by. ‘In every way. Afterwards, I felt close to her, and wanted to be closer. Ever since Jenny, with other women I’d just go somewhere else – even though
we’d just made love, I felt empty.’ Acknowledging this, Adam was struck by a solitude so profound that he could barely speak. ‘But not last night …’

The muffled phrase made Charlie stop, facing Adam with a look of compassion.

Head bowed, Adam murmured, ‘I’ve just felt so fucking alone.’ This was all he could manage to say, but it captured the last decade of his life.

Charlie waited in companionable silence until Adam got his bearings. ‘Little wonder,’ the therapist told him. ‘Long ago, you learned to protect yourself, and take care of everyone else. If you can finally resolve that, you may be free to care for a woman who also cares for you. But somewhere you’ve lost the ability to ask for what you need. You don’t know how, and it scares you.’ He paused, then asked simply, ‘Do you still feel like running away?’

Unable to look at Charlie, Adam felt the sadness of his answer. ‘Not this time. But I don’t know if I can make this work. Or even if it can.’

‘How does Carla feel?’

‘I’m not sure. But I think she’s as scared as I am.’ Adam shook his head, a gesture of confusion. ‘In many ways, she’s the most startlingly honest woman I’ve ever known. There are times it feels like I can trust her absolutely. But I don’t think she can trust me, and she needs that as much as I do.’ Restless, he began to walk again. ‘And then there’s Ben,’ he finished softly. ‘Always Ben.’

Charlie scrutinized him closely. ‘Last night, did you think about Carla with Ben?’

‘Only later. When we were together, all I could think of was her. Funny to become so lost.’

‘Funny for you, maybe. And maybe wonderful. But then Ben crawls into bed with you.’ Charlie’s tone grew pointed. ‘Are you still competing with him, or is the thought of him with Carla just too repugnant to live with?’

The question stopped Adam where he was. ‘You certainly get to the heart of things, Charlie.’ Fighting his discomfort, he finished harshly, ‘Competing with Benjamin Blaine is a hard habit to break, and so is hating him. You don’t forget seeing your father sodomize your girlfriend.’

‘Have you mentioned that to Carla?’

‘No. I still have this odd reluctance to nauseate her. And, even though the son of a bitch is dead, he’s still the father of her child. For whatever strange reason, she loved him – however much that sticks in my throat.’

‘I think it’s worse than that,’ Charlie said bluntly. ‘It sounds like you have contempt for those feelings and, to that extent, for her.’

Adam flinched inside. ‘That’s an ugly way of putting it.’

‘Is it? By your own account you despise him. Yet you’re deathly afraid you’re like him: the restlessness, the risk taking, the emotional unavailability – especially with women. How can you respect Carla for loving a man like that?’ Charlie’s speech slowed. ‘Although I’m left to wonder
which
man – Ben, or you?’

Mute, Adam stared at him.

Unfazed, the therapist continued, ‘Time for a refresher course, all right? Ben was a narcissist; you’re not. You’re so different in fundamental ways that I can’t list them all. But the biggest difference is that Benjamin Blaine would never be standing here – willing to look at himself, trying to find a different life. He could never escape his own past. I think
you still can. The question is whether you can do that with Carla Pacelli.’

Adam exhaled. ‘Not so easy, I’m finding. Perhaps for both of us.’

Charlie picked up a sand dollar, and flung it into the lapping aqua waves, producing three skips before the tan disk vanished. ‘Maybe you can start by accepting the good things Ben helped to give you – at one time or another, you’ve acknowledged them all. A love of sailing and the outdoors. A venturesome nature and great personal courage. The resolve and resilience to master challenges, and make things turn out the way you want. Not to mention the strength it took to protect your family after his death – despite learning some very hard truths, and at considerable risk to yourself.’

The risk was still there, Adam thought – a prosecution that could land him in prison, erasing any chance for a life with Carla.

‘Those are incredible attributes,’ the psychiatrist went on. ‘Exemplified by a man who – as brutally as he betrayed you – loved his brother’s son as much as his own nature and the circumstances allowed. Surely you must remember feeling that?’

Gazing out at a lone fishing boat that plied the waters between the Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands, Adam recalled Ben’s stories of lobstering with his father, their curious mix of bitterness and nostalgia. ‘When I was away, Carla asked me about memories. So I wrote her about the better ones – too painful to remember, after Jenny. But I knew she wanted to hear them, and now they keep on surfacing.’

‘For instance?’

‘The other day, Liam reached out to grab my finger, and I
imagined for a moment that he knew me. Then I remembered being very small – touching the whiskers on Ben’s face before he shaved, and thinking someday I’d be a man like him. Ironic.’

‘Perhaps not. When you hoped that Liam would know you, what were you to him?’

Adam studied the rocks in their path. ‘A father, I guess. Someone like that.’

Charlie gave him a faint smile. ‘That’s worth discussing further. But let’s consider how Liam managed to get here. Whatever Carla’s obvious appeal for a man like Ben – and given his history, you can choose to be cynical as you like – by fighting for recovery, she presented him with one last chance to be a decent human being, at least for as long as he was able. When she became pregnant, maybe he imagined leaving behind a son less scarred than you or Teddy. And so, for that time, he may have become more like the man you’d wanted him to be.’

Adam shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘That’s a hard place for me to get.’

‘Perhaps. But there’s no interpretation of this triangle too deep for me.’ Pausing, Charlie cocked his head. ‘This may sound strange, but perhaps Carla presents you with a chance to absorb the good things about Ben – at least with respect to her – and to accept that you once loved him as she did. A complicated task, but a necessary one, certainly for your own sake, and perhaps for Carla’s – at least if there’s to be any hope of a relationship.’

Feeling the wind in his face, Adam put on aviator sunglasses, caught in the jumble of his thoughts. ‘As you say, it’s complicated.’

‘And germane to many things. How goes the writing?’

‘Hard to know, in the long run. But I just placed an article in
Vanity Fair
. Where Ben used to publish.’

Charlie considered him. ‘A real breakthrough, don’t you think? But I take it you’re wondering who that’s about.’

‘Of course. When I expressed my doubts to Carla, she suggested I become an astronaut instead.’

To Adam’s surprise, Charlie laughed aloud. ‘I’m beginning to like her. So why
did
you choose writing instead of space travel?’

‘It just feels natural to me. I’ve seen a lot in Iraq and Lebanon and Afghanistan – around the world, really. There’s nothing more compelling than human beings faced with challenges and hardships – war, famine, repression from dictators or kleptocrats or religious fanatics. In too many places it’s that much worse for women.’ Adam’s voice quickened. ‘Americans need to know about this, instead of worrying about their iPhones and paying less in taxes. I look at this country after ten years away, and see the decline of Rome with that special touch of Paraguay: conspicuous consumption; financial predators who don’t make anything; people divided into gated communities of the mind; political campaigns financed by legalized bribery; armchair warriors piously mouthing patriotic slogans while they send other people’s kids to fight their wars. Maybe nothing I say will matter at all, but you have to live like it does. Or what’s the point of any of this?’

Though smiling a little, Charlie gave him a penetrant look. ‘Not a speech you’d have given six months ago, when we were pondering whether you had a death wish. I’d count that as progress. It’s also interesting that I heard nothing about Ben.’

‘Oh, he’s in there,’ Adam retorted. ‘Growing up, I never wanted to compete with him at writing – he was all too ready to assure me that I could never be as good. But he helped make me curious about the world, and he never lacked for enterprise or ambition. Which he realized by forcing himself to be the most disciplined son of a bitch I’ve ever seen. Now I am, too – writing by seven, revising each day’s work until it’s as good as I can make it. That much is thanks to him.’

‘No doubt the man was a professional,’ Charlie observed in his driest tone. ‘How
is
your writing, by the way? Or is
Vanity Fair
just indulging a mediocrity because of your last name? Though perhaps it’s hard to tell.’

Despite himself, Adam was forced to smile. ‘I grew up reading his novels, so I know what’s good. Push me to the wall, and I’d say I’m good enough.’

‘Then it all adds up for me. Like Ben, you need to be active and engaged in the world. Without that, I think you’re adrift and depressed. But what does Carla say?’

Adam parsed the implications of the question. ‘So far she’s been encouraging; I need to do something that has meaning to me, and after the life I’ve led I can’t change myself into an office worker. But longer term? She’s a single mother who needs stability in her own life, and she’s wary of commitments that might be bad for her or Liam. I’m not sure she appreciates how much I’d be travelling if this works out, or the occasional risk involved in going to the places I’d be writing about. If I understand her at all, she wouldn’t love that. She’s dealt with too much loss.’

‘You’ll never know unless you ask.’

‘It’s way too soon, Charlie. There are other things that may keep us from ever getting there.’

Charlie sat on a large boulder, inviting Adam to do the same. ‘So maybe we should talk about the boy. It must be a relief to know for sure that he’s okay.’

‘It is. For both of us.’

‘You don’t hold his father against him?’

‘How could I?’ Adam responded softly. ‘Ben did, and look where it got us both.’

‘So it’s different with Liam than Carla.’

Adam nodded. ‘Like my mother, she chose Ben. Liam had no choice to make.’

‘But you may,’ Charlie answered. ‘So perhaps you should consider if you’re capable of fathering this boy. What do you want for him?’

‘Some of what I had, and all of what I didn’t have. A father who loves him flat out – no competition or ambivalence or secret resentments. A father who’s able to see him as a separate person – not like Ben was with Teddy, curdled with disappointment that his “real” son wasn’t more like him. A father Liam can do things with, but also learn from, and who’s determined to bring out his son’s best self.’ Adam hesitated, then finished softly, ‘A father who Liam knows loves and respects his mother.’

Charlie raised his eyebrows. ‘A fairly comprehensive list. I see you’ve thought about it.’

‘I’ve had a lifetime to think about it, Charlie.’

‘So can you do all that? Not just to be superior to Ben, but because that’s what Liam deserves.’

Pensive, Adam faced the water. ‘Ben was the only father I had, and that’s where you learn – for good or ill. But I have the will to be different, and Carla would insist on it.’

The wind stirred Charlie’s grey-white hair. Distractedly, he
brushed it from his forehead, still intent on Adam. ‘You’ve got some real work ahead. But it seems you’re getting started, and maybe Carla can help.’ He paused, speaking quietly and reflectively. ‘I think you know that, when this first came up, the mere suggestion of a relationship between you and Ben’s pregnant girlfriend gave me whiplash. But despite her messy life – from childhood, it seems – she’s clearly a survivor with impressively sturdy protoplasm.

‘Like you, she’s come back from some pretty dark places. The question is what risks she’s willing to take with you, and you with her. But she may turn out to be different than Clarice, Jenny, or even, perhaps, Rachel – more stable and consistent, able to be present for you and honest about herself. Still alluring, to be sure, but not a mystery.’ Briefly, Charlie laughed in wonder. ‘Imagine all this actually making sense.’

‘Yes,’ Adam said softly. ‘Imagine that.’ But there were other things he could imagine, and all of them would put Carla and her son beyond his reach.