Middle Age by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

“Knew what, exactly? There’s no proof that these books are from your store.” Marina wasn’t going to argue.
    This man was humoring her, too. She shut the closet door hard and turned away.
    In Adam’s office at the rear of the house, with its dusty latticed windows and stained flagstone floor that opened into Adam’s studio, Marina felt his presence keenly. And the tension between Roger Cavanagh and herself, tense as the electrical charge before a storm. She couldn’t bear it that this man might pity her as Adam Berendt had done.
    “Where did Adam get his money, Roger, do you know?” Marina meant to sound indifferent, detached; as if money were the crucial issue, and not a man’s deception. As if Adam Berendt’s worldly identity had nothing to do with her . But the question sounded anxious, pleading.
    Roger had approached Adam’s desk, a massive old rolltop with numerous crammed pigeonholes and heavy drawers; with a grim expression he was pulling out manila envelopes and files, leafing through them. Going through a dead friend’s papers! There was something jackal-like about this, distasteful. “Real estate, I think. Investments. He was mysterious about his background, of course. I never asked him personal questions, I wouldn’t have seen that as practical. Some men live by boasting of their successes, but Adam seemed embarrassed by them; you had to infer that he’d had some success in business. At least, he had money. But he seems to have felt he was a man of such purity he shouldn’t have had money. He paid my fees in cash.” Roger’s small wounded mouth contracted further.
    Cash! In a prestigious Shaker Square law firm. Marina wanted to laugh at the vision. Like handling shit, is it? Cash. But you took it .
    Marina, silent, carried away a vase of limp, browning zinnias from a windowsill. Zinnias from Adam’s garden. In which, shortly, his ashes would be scattered, and raked. Such a horror could not be, yet it was. She,
    
    J C O
    Marina Troy, would see that the ceremony was done properly. Everywhere she went in Adam’s deathly silent house she expected to see him. His look of astonishment, his slow baffled smile. Marina? What are you doing here?
    He would come forward quickly and take her hands, which were trembling. Marina? Why are you crying?
    Marina noted that Adam’s windowsills were grimy; the windowpanes rain-splotched and stained; yet sunshine blazed through the glass, idiotic and unmournful.
    Why then should I mourn? Adam wouldn’t want it.
    Within the hour, Roger discovered another of Adam’s secrets: he had credit and savings accounts under several names in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania banks. He owned $8, in municipal bonds issued by the City of Philadelphia, $, in municipal bonds issued by the City of New York, $, in bonds issued by the Long Island Power Authority, hundreds of thousands of dollars in miscellaneous securities.
    The names were Adam Berendt, Ezra Krane, T. W. Bailey, Samuel Myers .
    Perhaps there were others, in other files. Marina tried to study the documents Roger passed to her, but the names and figures blurred in her vision; she felt light-headed, and frightened. She said, “I don’t understand, Roger. Why?” Roger said quickly, “There’s nothing illegal about having accounts under other names. We mustn’t judge Adam without knowing more.” Marina said, “But—why? Why would he have used these names?
    And where did so much money come from?” Roger said, with maddening evasiveness, “At a point, money begins to yield money.” Marina protested,
    “But Adam was poor! He wasn’t rich. He made fun of the rich. He was—
    you know how Adam was. You were his friend, too.” Roger said, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably, “Yes, I was Adam’s friend. But no, I don’t believe I knew him.”
    Apart from financial and legal documents, Roger hadn’t located any