Loss of Innocence (12 page)

Eleven

Mid-morning sun cast a glow on the ocean, warmer in early July. Whitney waded out until the lapping waters reached her waist, then dove in, swimming with strong, sure strokes toward the sandbar. Then something struck her leg with a sudden stinging lash.

A searing pain shot through her. With animal incomprehension, she flailed ahead in panic, desperate to escape her attacker. With the next thrashing stroke, her head struck a rock, jolting her neck and spine. Darkness surrounded her; stunned, she was conscious only of salt water flooding her lungs. As the darkness thickened to a surreal black, her consciousness began slipping away.

Something grasped her waist. In a feeble reflex, her legs kicked. But she could not escape. Then she was pulled from the water and thrown down, rough hands pushing on her chest, an insistent mouth forcing hers to open.

“Breathe out, dammit.”

His palms pressed harder into her thorax. Whitney coughed, body wracking, water spewing from her mouth. Her eyes half opened. In mute recognition she saw Ben’s face inches from hers,
eyes intent, his breathing ragged. Words escaped her raw throat in a croak. “What happened?”

Relief flashed in his eyes. “I saw you thrashing around and realized you weren’t doing the butterfly.” His gaze ran down her body. “From the welt on your leg, I’d guess a Portuguese man-of-war whipped you pretty hard. But you’ll live. This shouldn’t spoil your wedding.”

Whitney felt a wave of nausea. They were on the sandbar, she realized, the sun warming her clammy face. Then she was drifting away. Closing her eyes, she murmured, “I need to lie here.”

“No one to stop you,” she heard him say, and then heard nothing at all.

When her eyes fluttered open, she had lost all sense of time. Ben watched her intently. “Was I asleep?”

“More like shock. You barely snored at all.”

She hoped this was a joke. “I never thanked you, did I?

“No manners, I guess. Try to sit up.”

Using her elbows, Whitney looked around her. The world was as before, only brighter. “I could have died.”

Sitting back on his knees, Ben smiled a little. “It’s hard to drown in five feet of water. Though it did look like you were trying.”

His T-shirt and shorts were damp, she thought in foolish surprise. “I didn’t see you.”

“When I got here, you were headed out for a swim. I decided to wait.”

She did not ask him why. Taking another deep breath, she examined the raised red welt that felt like it had poisoned her. “I still don’t feel so great.”

“You won’t for awhile. The first thing is to get you home. Think you can stand?”

Using her hands, Whitney tried to push herself up on her good leg. Ben clasped her hips, helping. “Better lean on me.”

She did that, feeling her imbalance. “How do we get to shore?”

“I’ll prop you up so you can hobble on one leg. Let’s try.”

Together, she and Ben started laboring through the waist deep water, Ben’s arms around her waist. The salt water stung her leg.

Stoic, Whitney bit back cries of pain. They forged on together, silent, until they reached the sand. She stopped there, inhaling the fresh salty air. “Terra firma,” Ben said. “Kind of. One good hurricane and this beach ends up at your place.”

With Ben at her elbow, Whitney hobbled back to her blanket. Kneeling, he picked up her clothes and journal. “I’ll drive you home.”

“My car’s here.”

“No kidding? I thought you flew.” He glanced at her impatiently. “Only a moron would let you drive. Someone can pick up the car.”

Whitney hobbled with him to his beat-up truck, leg throbbing. In the truck bed was a fly rod, tackle box, spools of test line, and a half-finished bottle of whisky she supposed he sipped while fishing on a cool, windy night. Ben opened the door to help her, then began driving down the bumpy dirt road. “I’d play music to distract you,” he said, “but the radio’s busted.”

“How long have you had this truck?”

“Since sophomore year in high school. Those catering jobs paid for it.”

Whitney thought again about how little he had, how much she took for granted. She wondered if he thought her a spoiled rich girl, like Clarice, then was certain that he did. She sat back, closing her eyes until they entered her driveway.

Parking, Ben got out and opened her door. “I’ll walk you to the house,” he informed her brusquely. “I don’t want you passing out on your parents’ doorstep or throwing up on their lawn. Just lean against me, okay?”

Without awaiting her answer, he put his arm around her waist and began helping her to the porch.

Sitting in a chaise longue, Anne put down her magazine, giving her daughter a look of puzzlement and alarm. Then she hurried to open the screen door. “What happened to you?” she asked quickly.

Still propped against Ben, Whitney stood straighter. “I’m okay now. But a stingray swiped me while I was swimming, and I guess my head hit a rock. If it weren’t for Ben, I might have drowned.”

Anne glanced at him, taking Whitney’s hand. “Please come in,” she told Ben.

He followed them in, standing to the side of the chaise. Whitney saw him peer into the living room, taking in the Persian rugs and antique furnishings, the decorative vases Anne had added with such care. Settling Whitney onto a chair, her mother looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said with quiet politeness. “I can’t express how grateful I am.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “A freak accident, Mrs. Dane. One in a million.”

“That’s how I feel about my daughter.” Anne hesitated, then added, “May I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks,” Ben responded with a smile. “I’m too wet to sit on the furniture. Anyhow, I need to get going. Work to do, and all that.” Turning to Whitney, he told her, “Your leg’s going to hurt for a couple of days. Keep off of it, and try to keep from drowning in the bathtub.”

Both nettled and amused, Whitney retorted, “That was pretty condescending.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Facing her mother, Ben inquired, “Have any meat tenderizer around?”

“I’m sure not. We never use it.”

A corner of Ben’s mouth twitched. “They sell it at the Chilmark Store. It also acts as an antidote to this kind of sting. Put it on her, and it’ll cut down the pain and swelling.”

“What about sailing,” Whitney said to him. “You don’t have to stand on a sailboat.”

Ben gave her a long, dubious look. “Study those drawings?”

“No,” Whitney admitted. “Not yet.”

“Maybe you’ll have time now. You certainly won’t be playing tennis.”

At the corner of her eye, Whitney saw her mother watching their exchange. As though sensing this, Ben said, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Dane,” and turned to leave, stepping off the porch with a careless wave over his shoulder.

“So that’s the boy,” Anne said. “Or the man, I suppose.” Pausing to gaze after his retreating figure, she added, “What was he doing on the beach, one wonders.”

“Minding his own business, I expect. At least until I started drowning.”

Anne regarded her closely. In her most careful voice, she said, “I don’t suppose you arranged to meet him.”

The not-so-subtle insinuation reminded Whitney of her father’s quiet inquiry to George Barkley. “Why would I?” she answered sharply.

Anne kept studying her face. “Yes,” she said at length. “Why should you. Let’s get you out of that swimsuit and into bed.”

Part Three

Adversaries

Martha’s Vineyard

July–August 1968

One

Two mornings later, limping slightly, Whitney went to find Ben.

He was at the mooring behind the house he tended, ripping away rotted boards and hammering new ones into place. Standing at the end of the catwalk, Whitney waited for him to notice her.

At last he did, turning as he rested on his knees. “How you doing?”

“Much better. I just came over to thank you.”

Ben wiped the sweat from his eyes. “No need. You already did.”

Whitney paused, weighing whether to express her feelings. “I guess so. But I wasn’t sure we were adequately effusive.”

Ben shot her a sideways grin. “Your mom wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me, was she? At least I didn’t track seaweed on the Persian rugs.”

“She was just startled.” There was no point in saying more about her mother, Whitney realized. “Speaking for myself, I’m happy to be alive.”

Ben put down his hammer, regarding her with an indecipherable expression. “Speaking for yourself, want to cook some lobster on the beach tonight? I haven’t done that in years.”

Stuck between gratitude and ambivalence, Whitney hesitated. “Where should I meet you?”

He gave her a knowing smile. “Here’s fine. Bring some wine, if you have it.”

When she left the house that night, she told Anne she was going out with Clarice, chagrined that Ben had read daughter and mother so well.

They drove to Menemsha a little before seven. The fishing village felt quaint and peaceful—the trawlers were in, the last soft putter of an outboard motor echoed in the harbor, and the sun slipped toward the ocean in a pastel sky. All that was open was the fish market. Ben and Whitney ordered two lobsters and drove to Dogfish Bar.

In the bed of Ben’s truck was a lobster pot and a cooler containing ice, shrimp, and a container of green salad, to which Whitney contributed a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet from her parents’ spare refrigerator. As they reached the rise sheltering the beach, the half disk of a setting sun cast a shimmering glow on the water, backlighting the line of clouds bright orange. “It’s what I love about this place,” Ben told her.

Gathering driftwood and dried seaweed, they dug a pit with their hands. Within minutes Ben had a fire crackling beneath the pot, and they were sipping wine from paper cups. Then Whitney heard the still-living crustaceans rattling around in their cardboard container. “It feels weird to boil them alive.”

“That’s why I didn’t name them,” Ben said laconically. “That way you don’t become attached.” He took another sip of wine. “Do you folks always drink nectar like this?”

“Always.”

The last traces of sunlight faded in a cobalt sky. As Ben tossed the wriggling lobsters into the pot, Whitney reflected on her meager cooking skills. All her life, various people had provided her meals: Billie or her mother at home; her father at restaurants; cooks at
summer camps, boarding school, and college. There was a metaphor here, she supposed—others had always taken care of her needs. Now it would be Peter and, she admitted, her father. Little wonder that Clarice worried about her own father, or that Whitney had been more grateful than rebellious. Little wonder Ben felt so much older.

“How did you get into Yale?” she asked.

Ben started stirring butter into a skillet. “I was always smart enough. But I didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, I had an English teacher and a coach who helped me win a scholarship.” His voice softened. “When I got in, I damn near wept. Neither of my parents had gotten past eighth grade. Now I was going somewhere I’d never dreamed of, all because two other people cared enough to tell me I could.”

Whitney could feel Ben’s wonder at his own deliverance. “You must have felt really grateful to them.”

“Not felt—feel, and not just to them. A lot of my classmates were the sons of rich alumni. For them, going to Yale was as natural as breathing. But I’d never have gotten there without people who funded scholarships like mine.” Taking lobster tongs from a grocery bag, Ben continued in the same quiet tone. “Same for Yale’s president—even though some alumni hated it, he pushed to admit more Jews and blacks and public school kids. Without Kingman Brewster, I don’t get to Yale.”

Though Whitney did not say so, her family knew the Brewsters. They had a summer place on West Chop; the Brewsters and the Danes interacted socially, and Janine and Whitney knew their kids. That the Brewster children might be viewed as somewhat aimless served, in her father’s view, to confirm what befalls the offspring of wealthy liberals. But Whitney admired Kingman Brewster for his principles. “What was Yale like for you?” she asked.

“A mixed bag.” Ben deposited the lobsters on paper plates. “It opened me up to a larger world—not just ideas, but possibilities. It also stripped the varnish off our pretenses about equality. My closest friends were like me—without connections to the clubby world of
the East Coast establishment, the network of influence that protects each new generation of the lucky sperm club. Some of our smugger classmates called us ‘blips’—accidents in the life of Yale. They’re the ones who have jobs waiting for them, and will never see Vietnam except on television.”

This last sentence, clearly referring to Peter, was delivered so casually that it took a moment for Whitney to react. “Up to this moment,” she said sharply, “I was enjoying myself. But you just can’t stifle your resentments, can you?”

The look he gave her contained a glimmer of regret. “No,” he acknowledged. “I can’t. But can you say I’m wrong?”

Whitney weighed her answer. “Yes, if you’re calling Peter smug. He’s one of the kindest people I know.”

Ben poured them both more wine. “And generous enough to let somebody else get drafted in his place. But Peter aside, I don’t hear a rousing defense of privilege.”

“I won’t defend Peter or myself,” Whitney said evenly, “or a world we didn’t make. All I can do is try to become a halfway decent human being. But whatever I am, I’m not accountable to you.”

To her surprise, Ben smiled at this. “Fair enough, Whitney. I don’t want to spoil your lobster.”

Using a nutcracker and small fork, he separated the tail and meat from shell, placing them on her plate. Then he served her salad and put a cup of drawn butter between them. They ate in the glow of the fire, its warmth cutting the chill of descending night. Content, Whitney watched the stars appear in the darkness over the water, listened to the faint susurrus of waves splashing on the sand.

After a while, Ben told her, “What I should have said is that I won’t turn into one more guy who pulls the ladder up after me, forgetting who lent me a hand. Too many people still don’t get the chance that I had.”

“I agree, Ben. That’s what you should have said.”

He held up his hand. “That was a semi-apology, okay? So let me ask a simple question—how many blacks and Jews came to your
parents’ home? Except for those favorite mealtime companions, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima.”

Whitney gave him an arid smile. “Are you trying to prove that you’re incorrigible? As I’m sure you know, blacks don’t live in Greenwich, and there weren’t many at Rosemary Hall or Wheaton. I did have a Jewish friend in college, if you’re still keeping score.”

Whitney paused there, remembering a classmate saying indulgently about her friend, “Lisa doesn’t seem that Jewish to me.” Lisa had later confessed to Whitney that she worried about being stereotyped. Though Whitney had reassured her, Lisa had been right to worry; her subsequent engagement to a guy from Brown raised a stink within his family, culminating in their stiffly worded request that any children be raised as Episcopalians. Whitney had been dismayed; though there were no Jews among their closer family friends, she had never heard a trace of anti-Semitism from either of her parents. “Actually,” she continued, “Lisa encouraged me to tutor in Roxbury. Maybe that seems like naïve do-gooding to you, two white girls spending a couple of hours in the ghetto before returning to the cloistered halls. But at least we did something.”

Ben’s expression changed, becoming thoughtful and even conciliatory. “You’re right, Whitney. No one’s responsible for where they’re born, only for what they do. For myself, I’d have happily traded places with you or your fiancé. Feel free to call me on it.”

The surprising concession softened Whitney’s defenses. “And vice-versa, Ben. But without taking shots at a guy I love, who you don’t even know.”

Ben batted away a stray cinder. “A last question, then. Did Peter applaud your forays into Roxbury?”

Once again, Whitney considered her answer. “If it matters to you, Peter respects me enough to support anything I do.”

From the glint in his eyes, Ben caught her syntactical evasion. “But has he ever asked what
you
want, or taken an interest in your writing? Or does he assume that all you need from life is to be married?”

Whitney did not know what stung her more—Ben’s assumption that he knew the answers, or the questions themselves. “I don’t want to talk about Peter,” she said stiffly. “I don’t know why you do.”

“How quickly I’ve fallen from grace,” Ben said in mock dismay. “All I’m really wondering is what you want for yourself.”

At first Whitney did not answer. The final stanza of the Wheaton Hymn sounded in her mind:

The future was open, the hopeful words had said to her, Whitney’s to write for herself. But perhaps her future was already written. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted.

In the light of the fire, Ben studied her. “You’ve still got time,” he said, and left it there.

That night, unable to sleep, Whitney took
Couples
to the library, and began reading in the light of a standing lamp. To her surprise, Charles emerged from the bedroom in robe and slippers, headed for the kitchen before he spotted Whitney.

“Hi, Dad. When did you get home?”

“A few hours ago. I decided to start the weekend early.”

He did not say why, and Whitney recognized the abstracted look he wore when there was something on his mind. Instead, he asked, “What do you think of the book?”

“Too soon to tell, except that Updike’s a wonderful stylist. I stop to reread a sentence, and wonder if I could ever write anything that perfect.”

Charles gave her a veiled look. “The language is fine, I’m sure. But I understand that the story is elegant smut—one act of adultery after another. You might have chosen something a little bit more uplifting.”

What was this about, Whitney wondered. “It’s just a novel, Dad.”

“No doubt I’m a bit musty in my tastes. This is a free country, after all, where adults can read what they like.” Her father sat across from her. “Still, I’ve often thought that people’s lives are defined by the thoughts they choose to entertain. But I wonder if books like this cause people to consider doing things they otherwise wouldn’t.”

Watching his face, Whitney sensed a second, wordless conversation lurking beneath the first. Mildly, she said, “I hope you’re not including me.”

Solemn, Charles appraised her. “Of course not, Whitney. You’ve always had a sturdy character, as well as a fine mind. It’s just that a society is defined by what the more educated deem acceptable, whether in art or film or—in this case—a novel that elevates infidelity.”

Whitney gave him a deflective smile. “I won’t know if I’ve become wanton until I finish the book. Then I’ll tell you how I turned out.”

His smile in return was measured. “Please don’t, Whitney. I like you too much as you are.”

Without saying more, Charles proceeded to the kitchen.

Whitney put down the book, pondering the recesses of her father’s mind. Did his core philosophy, focused on predictability and order, exist to suppress something in human nature that he deeply feared—whether personified by demonstrators, leftists, or a novelist who dared to write so explicitly about adultery and despair? But there was no one to whom she could express those thoughts. Except, perhaps, for Benjamin Blaine, and that would feel like a betrayal of her family and, even worse, of Peter.