Loss of Innocence (25 page)

Ten

When she returned, Ben was leaning against the inside of the dinghy, still shirtless. He looked up at her, expectant. Whitney hesitated, then handed him the journal with two pages dog-eared. “You can read what I’ve marked,” she told him.

He nodded, opening the journal. She stepped away, willing herself to trust him, gazing in the opposite direction so that all she saw was the endless water.

The entry she had chosen contained her musings about Clarice, the distillation of elusive thoughts that, in some morning of intuitive disquiet, had anticipated her friend’s betrayal. She remembered its final passages almost perfectly.

She heard Ben climb up out of the boat, standing beside her on the mooring before he placed the journal in her hand. “You certainly nailed her,” he remarked. “Is that what you wanted me to see?”

Whitney did not look at him. “That’s not what mattered to me most.”

He fell silent until she faced him and, when she did, his eyes held a new intensity. “You can write, Whitney—and you can see things. That was the bet I’d made with myself. Whatever else you do, don’t let that go.”

Whitney felt a surge of relief, swiftly overwhelmed by self-doubt that washed away his words as though written in sand. “It feels like I have nothing left to say.”

Ben’s voice became sharp and almost angry. “Because of a rift with your parents and their presumptive Mr. Right? Give me a break, Whitney—or better yet, give yourself one. Your talent didn’t come from them, and it will surface on the page again, bet on it.
One of my professors once told me, ‘writers write. To them, its like breathing—what they’re meant to do.’”

He was speaking to himself, she realized—and about himself. But he was also speaking to her. Amidst his own frustration, his fear of what the future held, Ben was trying to give her something.

Her parents were due to arrive, Whitney thought again. But she did not go home.

That evening they sat by the mooring, snacking on cheese and crackers and drinking a bottle of Chianti. Afterwards she lay back in his arms, watching with him as the sunset spread orange-gold across the water.

“This is my favorite time of day,” he told her. “The sun casting a glow on the ocean and, on a perfect evening, backlighting a thin layer of clouds. This island gives us that rarest of things—a western exposure on the Atlantic, so you can see the sun rising from the water in the morning, and slipping into it at night. Since I was a kid, I’ve sat on the promontory behind the Barkleys, watching sunsets just like this.”

He spoke with reverence, so close to tenderness that it surprised her. She realized how little she knew about him yet, how fraught and fleeting the days would be until he left. She felt suspended in time, somewhere between a past that had evanesced and a future that lay beyond the horizon of her imaginings. Being with him felt at once ephemeral and intensely real; for a moment she wished, fancifully, that she could stop the setting of the sun and stay cocooned with him in this no longer finite moment. Feeling him kiss the nape of her neck, Whitney closed her eyes.

“Marry me,” she heard him say.

Whitney froze, wondering if her thoughts had drawn this from him, even as the reasoning part of her replayed his tone. In a muffled voice, she responded, “Did I hear you correctly?”

“Yes,” he answered calmly. “I asked you to marry me.”

She put down her wine glass, turning so that she could see him. Ben regarded her with a seriousness so deep that Whitney had trouble speaking. “The wine is lovely,” she said, “and so is the sunset.”

His face darkened. “Don’t condescend to me, Whitney. I can’t stand that.”

Quickly, she touched his cheek. “I didn’t mean to. I’m just so startled. Forty-eight hours ago, more or less, I was engaged to someone else.”

“Believe me, I’m well aware of that.”

She looked into his face, struggling to understand him. “When did you start thinking about this?”

He considered the question gravely. “When, deep in my subconscious, did I imagine being with you? Some moment when we were on the water, I guess—well before I kissed you, or even thought that we were possible. But marrying you? When I closed your journal, I knew that something had changed.” His voice filled with quiet urgency. “For the first time in your life, Whitney, you’re free. I’m the person you were born to be with.”

She felt a momentary frisson, as if someone had just read her palm and forecast the path of her life. “How can you know that?”

Taking both hands in his, he answered with the patience of a man forced to explain the obvious to a woman blinded by its seeming novelty. “Because you’ve broken with them. Would you have done that if we’d never met?”

Mind clouded, Whitney searched her heart for an honest answer. “Maybe not,” she managed to say amidst the chaos of her thoughts. But this only deepened her confusion between Ben as catalyst and as cause—how could she, the creation of her family, have become the creation of someone else she had met two months before? Desperately, she explained, “So many things have happened so quickly. I can’t tell you why they did, or where you and I fit in.”

“
I
can,” he said with certitude. “You’re Mrs. Me. You and I nourish each other. When I came here, I was dead inside. I’m not anymore.
I feel this fierce will to live, to seize the future I’ve always wanted. You’re part of that now.”

She felt the pressure of reality, a stab of guilt that rightly belonged to her father. “But you’re leaving. In three weeks you’ll be gone.”

“We know who caused that,” he replied with an edge in his voice. “So let him have what he deserves—a marriage to me, without his fingerprints all over it.” His tone evened out again. “Your parents will come around. What choice do they have—exiling their own daughter is too embarrassing. But if they do, to hell with them. I’ve done without my parents just fine. My only regret is not getting rid of them sooner.” He took her face in his hands, willing her to act. “We can make our own life, Whitney.”

“But how can we if you’re gone?”

“People do,” he said flatly. “If we’re married, maybe we could even get me back to Yale.”

From the sea of print in his induction papers she remembered the instruction: “If married, bring proof of your marriage.” Shaken, she asked, “What difference would that make?”

“It might lower my draft priority. All I need is to postpone my induction. From there I can put up a real fight.” His eyes bore into hers. “I get what you must be thinking, with Peter always looking for an out. But what’s been happening since the day we met has nothing to do with the draft—once you were free, it was only a matter of time until we decided on each other. But your father cut our time short, so I have to ask you now or risk losing you forever.” He clasped her hands again. “Whatever we do, I’ll probably have to go away. But if marriage gives us back what your father stole from me, call it poetic justice.”

There must be truth in this, Whitney thought. They had grown toward each other oblivious to her father’s maneuverings, both believing she would be married to Peter, rendering impossible the calculation that had dictated her wedding date. But knowing too late how callously her father had changed Ben’s life, what was her obligation, and to whom? She leaned her face against his chest, feeling
and hearing the strong, steady beat of his heat. “You’ve asked me to marry you,” she told him, “without ever having said you love me.”

Softly, Ben laughed. “When was I supposed to fit
that
in? When you were engaged to Peter? All it took was a kiss to send you screaming into the night. Long ago I learned not to love people who can only hurt you. But okay.” Cradling her chin, he said, “I love you, Whitney Dane. I guess that’s why I asked you to be my wife.”

Whitney could not help but smile at this, then saw that he was waiting for her answer. She tried to find the words that would please him, yet be true to the muddle of an honest mind. “I love what I know about you,” she said at last. “I feel things with you that I never felt with Peter, pieces of myself falling into place. But I can’t know what I’ll know in a year—about you, or me.”

Ben’s lips compressed. “You can guess. Okay, neither one of us would have chosen how things are. But look how far we’ve come, so quickly.” He stopped himself, smiling a little. “Anyhow, you don’t need to answer this minute. I count nineteen days before I disappear.”

Whether meant to be sad or simply ironic, she was grateful for this reprieve. In hours or days, it might all become clearer—perhaps then she could see a life with him. But there was so much to absorb, including things she could never tell him, that part of her felt leaden.

“My parents still exist,” she finally said. “I’m sure they’re home by now, and I have to see them.”

“Are you going to tell them I proposed?”

“No,” she responded firmly. “This decision belongs to us. But I can’t run away from them, either.”

For an instant she read the answer in his eyes—
You could.
But his only words were, “Then go, Whitney. Just remember what I’ve said.”

“How could I forget?” she asked him softly. Then she gathered herself for the walk back to her parents’ home, the remnant of the life she had always known.

Eleven

Her mother and father were in the living room, snifters of brandy in front of them—Anne haggard, Charles looking deflated. Sitting on the couch with their bodies slightly turned from each other, they reminded Whitney for a lacerating moment of mannequins someone had left there. Looking up, her father marshaled a semblance of command. “Where have you been?”

“With Ben.”

“Doing what?” her mother broke in.

“For the last hour or so? Talking.” The disdain Whitney heard in her own voice sounded like that of a stranger. “You know—that’s when one person speaks, the other listens, and they keep on taking turns. It works best when both of them are trying to tell the truth.” Seeing the hurt and confusion in her mother’s eyes, she said more evenly, “But never mind Ben and me. How was Janine when you left her?”

Anne stared at her as though Whitney were as alien as she felt. “Bereft,” she said, glancing at her husband. “It felt so cruel to leave her in such a place.”

Whitney heard the resistance in her mother’s voice, her need to recreate Janine pushing stubbornly to the surface. Turning to her father, Whitney said, “You’re keeping her there, right?”

Her imperative tone seemed to widen the fissure between her parents. Anne turned to Charles, her expression pleading. But she did not—could not—know the leverage Whitney had to compel her father’s decision. “Yes,” he told his daughter. “At least until the doctors have spent more time with her.”

The last phrase made her uneasy. “Can we talk, Dad?”

Anne shot her an angry look. “Are you dismissing me like some menial?”

“No, I’m not. But right now I need to speak with Dad.”

Without waiting for an answer, Whitney quickly walked to Charles’s den, leaving the door open behind her. Her father followed, closing the door before he sat across from her.

“Well?” he asked.

Whitney composed herself. “If you don’t make her stay there, Janine could fall apart—maybe even die. I’m not protecting your secret because you deserve it.”

“Maybe I don’t,” Charles said with barely repressed anger. “But your mother does.”

Oddly, his outrage increased Whitney’s sense, still astonishing to her, that she could force him to do what she wanted. “True. But Janine isn’t Mom’s consolation prize. Don’t let her ruin my sister to buy yourself some peace.”

“Yes, all right. But you’ve become quite the hanging judge, Whitney, for a twenty-one-year-old girl who’s throwing away her life.”

Once again, Whitney felt the hollowness of not knowing who she was. “Let’s talk about Clarice. Have you told her yet?”

“Yes.” Charles sounded both accusatory and aggrieved. “I’d like to have done the decent thing, tell her in person. But I no longer know what you’ll do. So I called her while your mother was with Janine, and explained what you’d seen and what you wanted.”

Whitney could imagine Clarice, hearing this on the phone in her bedroom, the place where they had shared so many sleepovers. “How did she take all that?”

“Except for a brief moment, with admirable self-control.” Charles’s voice lowered. “It will please you to know I found her poise more painful than anger, and that you’ll never hear from her again. So now that I’ve done my part, I expect the same from you.”

“What
is
my part, exactly?”

Standing, Charles began to pace, his voice firm. “You’ve stumbled on the fact that I have feet of clay, and you’re bristling with righteous indignation. But I’m still your father, with the right to expect that this family will pick up as before—
all
of us—and that you’ll recommence acting as my daughter, not my parole officer.” He paused for emphasis, speaking slowly but firmly. “And, more than that, as Peter’s fiancé—not his judge. I’ve spoken with him, and he’s willing to look past this infatuation with Ben if you’ll forgive his forced complicity in sins he never approved of. You’re getting the best of
that
bargain by a long shot.”

“Isn’t that up to me?”

“Three days ago, I’d have trusted your judgment about almost anything. Now I’m asking you to stop and think. There’s been enough disruption in this family, and in your life. It would be best for you to have the wedding, and to resume living as you were always meant to.” Gazing down at her, he continued with the confidence that once had brooked no argument. “This importunate young man you’re involved with will never give you the security you’ve always needed, far more than I think you know. Peter will.”

Angry, Whitney stood. “It’s you who’s assured my future. Including the security of knowing I may never see Ben again.”

“I shouldn’t have done that, Whitney. But Benjamin Blaine gives me a feeling so dire I can’t begin to describe it.” Her father’s manner became imploring. “When I sense something this strongly, I’m very seldom wrong. All Ben truly cares about is what he wants and
needs. Please understand I was trying to protect you from immeasurable heartache.”

“So now I should protect myself by marrying Peter.”

“You’re forgetting all his virtues,” her father protested, “including that he loves you and is devastated by what happened. But if you want to put it that way, yes. You’ve received a jolt for which I’ve asked forgiveness, more than once. But your judgment is impaired, and mine—about this—is not. If you have any doubts about what to do, please consider your mother’s feelings.”

Suddenly Whitney felt less anger than a deep and abiding sadness. It was a moment before she found the will and the words to answer. “I have considered her, Father. Not just how she feels, but who she’s become. Her example is one reason, among many, that I broke off my engagement.” Her tone softened. “Poor Peter. He must feel as lost as I do, still wanting to marry a girl who’s in love with someone else.”

Before he could respond, she walked past him, out of the room and through the rear door of the house, desperate to breathe the cool night air.

Walking toward the ocean, she sat on a ledge above the water. In search of calm, she gazed up at the stars glinting in the night sky, undimmed by city lights. Since her first glimmerings of comprehension, she had pondered them each summer. As a child, holding her father’s hand, she had marveled at how close they seemed; as a schoolgirl, she had struggled to grasp that they were light years away, their illumination far older than she was. Now she absorbed their permanence, an unchanging feature of a life that had changed so much.

She watched them for an hour, weighing her future, irresolute in the face of such confident men, so certain of who she was and what she needed. Whitney would have to face them, knowing all that she might lose or gain while understanding no more than she did now. It was terrible that what she felt for Ben, so immediate and so strong, could be freighted with such apprehension.

“Sleep which knits the raveled sleeve of care,” Shakespeare had written somewhere. She wished that she could fall into its spell and
awaken as a different woman, strong and calm and certain. But even if she managed to sleep, the most she could hope for was to feel less depleted, a little more able to sort through the men and choices tearing her apart, the fears of a young woman, still barely an adult, who seemed to know so much less about herself than she had three months before.

That she was somehow changed was all she knew, uncertainty her only certainty. With that scant consolation, she went back to the house and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, twisting the sheets in a fractured sleep interrupted by her dread of dawn.

It still brightened her window early, though the light came at an angle that augured the coming of fall. Before her parents could hear her, Whitney dressed and went to find the man who had asked her to marry him, wondering if he, like she, had been unable to find peace.

He was sitting at the end of the mooring, a cup of coffee in his hand, a metal thermos beside him. When he looked over his shoulder at the sound of her footsteps, his eyes were bleary, his hair disheveled. “Didn’t sleep much,” he said. “Did you?”

“No.”

She sat beside him, uncertain of what she would say. “Made any decisions?” he asked.

Perhaps her answer was spurred by the impatience she heard beneath his worry—an echo of her father, though softened by the fact that she might hold his future in her hands, creating a vulnerability that must torment him. She tried to smile but could not. “I can’t marry you, Ben.”

He searched her eyes so intently that she wanted to look away. “Now—or ever?”

“Now,” she answered softly. “Or ten days from now.” Fearful of losing him, she clutched his hand. “I’m not talking about the future. I love you as much as I can. But I can’t run from one man to another—from two men, actually, not knowing who I am or what I want from life.” She looked into his face, imploring him to understand. “Ever since I can remember, there was always someone to
take care of me—my mom and dad; our housekeeper, Billie; the teachers at my schools and counselors at summer camp. Even in college, I still came home to the parents who supported me.

“Peter would have been next. And after that I’d have a family of my own, emulating my mother, with our future underwritten by my father.” She grasped his hand tighter. “Maybe I want something more—to
be
something more than what other people think I should be. Even you.”

“Be whatever you like,” he retorted swiftly. “All I want is a life with you.”

Whitney felt a stab of fear—that by refusing Ben she was placing him on the dangerous path her father had ordained. “I so hate saying this,” she said fiercely. “I’d die inside if anything happened to you, and I value you so much. You make me think, and you make me feel. I need that, much more than I ever knew.” She paused, her throat tightening. “But I just can’t go from being the future Mrs. Peter Brooks to Mrs. Benjamin Blaine. If you weren’t the one who was asking, you’d say I was selling myself too short.”

Hurt caused him to look away, and then he tried to cover this with a smile. “It’s obvious I talk too much. But you worry too much. I don’t see you in an apron, unless that’s all you’re wearing.”

Heartsick, Whitney touched his face. “Whatever happens—even if you have to go away—I won’t be married when you come back. That’s one thing I’m sure of.” She paused again, trying to put words to feelings. “There’s so much I have to learn about myself, and about you. For all that’s happened, in so many ways I still don’t know you.”

A glint of anger surfaced in his eyes. “You know enough. Our minds meet, and we’re good in bed. Most people never have that.”

Whitney drew a breath, then spoke in a more level voice. “I thought I knew my father, and Peter. I didn’t. You’re a complicated person, Ben, and you take up a lot of space. Sometimes you scare me a little. But even without that, I have to find my way before I can imagine a life with you.”

Ben’s face hardened in a cast she had never seen, an obdurate mask. “I don’t think so,” he said harshly. “This feels like our moment,
Whitney. In a year or two, I may be dead. You know that, and you’ve chosen to treat what we have like a summer romance and nothing more. If I get through this, who can say you won’t be married? That’s an empty promise, a pathetic consolation prize.” He stood abruptly. “I’ll spare you the awkward days and nights of pretending we’re not finished by ignoring where I’m going, and why. Maybe I’ll get lucky. But if I wind up getting shot at in some stinking Vietnamese jungle, I’ll remember why I’m there—not just by your father’s choice, but yours. Even if I survive, I don’t think we could get past that.”

Shaken, Whitney rose to face him. “You’re forcing me to make an impossible choice . . .”

“Am I? Maybe so. But life is choices—at least for you. You’re still the daughter of privilege, free to walk away and seek whatever future you can find, no matter what mine turns out to be. So I’m walking away first.” He looked at her hard, then said firmly, “Goodbye, Whitney. It’s better for me this way.”

Gazing into his eyes, Whitney felt guilt, loss, resentment and, beyond that, all the wounds his life had dealt him, too deep for her to salve. He started down the catwalk, then turned to look at her again. “I’ll remember you,” he said. “You’re the one I couldn’t have.” He stood there for a moment, then finished, “Maybe you’ll even remember me. I’m the one who kept you from drowning.”

Before she could answer, he turned again, walking swiftly away without a backward glance. A stubborn pride of her own kept Whitney where she was.