Loss of Innocence (16 page)

Seven

On the way to the dining room, Clarice touched Ben’s arm, murmuring words of consolation. Her gesture made Whitney feel chastened yet strangely proprietary; she alone was aware of how furious Ben must be at the waste of his friend’s life. But whether from good manners, or because his feelings went too deep, he seemed to have willed himself past anger. When Anne seated them, Whitney found herself facing Ben and Clarice, with her parents at opposite ends of the table. As though to compensate for the pall he had cast, Ben told Anne, “This is a beautiful place, Mrs. Dane. When I was a kid, I used to look up at it from the water, and wonder who lived here.”

He had chosen not to mention catering parties at the house, Whitney noted. “We’re very lucky,” her mother replied. “My father bought it years ago, before people from New York realized how wonderful the Vineyard is.” Smiling, she corrected herself. “At least in the summer.”

Turning to Clarice, Ben asked, “So this is where you and Whitney met?”

Clarice glanced at her friend fondly. “When we were four, and my parents brought me over to play with the shy but precocious girl next door. Since that day, we’ve been best friends, one of the few parental fix-ups that ever worked.”

“If we could have stolen Clarice from her family,” Charles put in comfortably, “we would have. One of my specialties is mergers and acquisitions.”

Ben gave Whitney a quick, ironic glance; at once, she knew he was thinking about her father’s role in Peter’s life. In an interested tone, he asked Charles, “How
is
your business, Mr. Dane? I really don’t know much about it.”

As the housekeeper served the first course—a fish stew accompanied by a chilled Meursault—Charles answered, “No reason why you should, Ben—most people don’t. Actually, it’s a little bumpy right now. With all this unrest and political uncertainty, investors are somewhat skittish.”

Ben took a sip of wine. “Do you mean about the election?”

“At the risk of boring you, politics is part of it,” Charles replied. “But if our country settles down, investors will settle down as well. Where else will people put their money but America? We certainly need them to—they’re the people who create jobs for everyone else.” His voice became animated, “Take your father, for example. He makes his living because other people with decent jobs can afford to order lobster tails at restaurants. Why? Because capital creates business, which creates employment. So there’s a direct correlation between my clients’ investments and your father’s livelihood.”

Ben gave him an inscrutable look. “I don’t think Dad has thought about it that much.”

Charles smiled indulgently. “He would if Americans stopped eating lobsters. The economy is a seamless web, the pattern of which can’t be rent without damaging many millions of people outside the so-called investor class. No doubt your father has more immediate concerns. But I’d argue that he has a direct interest in policies that encourage capital formation and leave free enterprise to work its will.”

Ben gave him a wry look in return. “I’ll mention that to him, sir. Before he becomes a Keynesian.”

Whitney found herself smiling—whatever his private thoughts, and however much alcohol he’d consumed, Ben retained enough self-control not to set off conversational landmines. “Speaking of politics,” Charles went on, “and given the tragedy that befell Senator Kennedy, who is your alternative choice for president?”

Ben’s face clouded. “No one.”

Watching him, Whitney hoped her father would leave it there. Instead, Charles asked with the same politeness, “At this point, isn’t Hubert Humphrey your party’s best hope of winning?”

Ben took a deeper swallow of wine. “Winning what?” he inquired softly. “When he signed on with LBJ, Humphrey put his manhood in a blind trust. Now he’s using hair dye and rouge to play at being young, which makes him look like he belongs in a coffin. The only sign of life is that he can’t stop talking.” Contempt seeped into his voice. “If there are two sides to every question, Humphrey will find three. Assuming you can locate a thought in that army of words searching vainly for an idea.”

At the end of the table, Anne’s eyebrows raised, a signal that the conversation was stretching the bounds of politesse. But Whitney perceived that Ben no longer cared; instead of impairing his power of speech, liquor appeared to unleash it. “A fairly scathing dismissal,” Charles said pointedly.

Quickly, Whitney interposed, “Ben was very committed to Bobby.”

“That must have been terribly hard,” her father acknowledged. “I’m sure it’s still painful. But the world keeps on spinning, and you young people have more at stake than anyone. I gather you oppose the war, Ben.”

“Yes,” Ben answered tersely.

“Then what about Eugene McCarthy? Like you and Robert Kennedy, he favors withdrawal from Vietnam.”

Stop
, Whitney silently implored her father. Across the table, Ben drew a breath. “McCarthy,” he said with a cool precision, “is the
candidate of draft dodgers—the comfortable white kids who discovered their idealism the day LBJ abolished draft deferments, and they suddenly imagined getting blown to pieces like Johnny did. Their reasons for caring aren’t mine.”

As Charles stiffened, Whitney felt herself cringe—intentionally or not, Ben’s statement implicated Peter. Clarice watched Ben fixedly now, less with approval or disapproval than in seeming fascination with observing a new and unusual species of male. With the same incisive swiftness, Ben continued, “McCarthy was too lazy and self-satisfied. When did he ever stand up for minorities or the poor?” Glancing at Clarice and Whitney, he asked, “Can either of you think of any black kids or Latinos for McCarthy?”

Assuming that you know any
, he did not have to add. When Clarice hesitated, Whitney softly answered, “No.”

“To play devil’s advocate,” Charles said to Ben, “maybe your man knew where the voters are. Hispanics helped him win California . . .”

“Bobby also visited illiterate blacks in the South, migrant workers in California, and Indians on reservations. Where are the votes in that, Mr. Dane? McCarthy’s so-called crusade was to keep white kids from showering in some cruddy barracks with the people Kennedy fought for. If the war keeps going, half those patriots will be showering in Canada, or weaseling out some other way.”

Charles fixed him with a gelid stare. “I grant you your idealism, Ben, if not your opinion of others. But was Kennedy really such an idealist? For all your scorn of McCarthy, he’s the one who chose to take on Lyndon Johnson. Bobby didn’t jump in the race until McCarthy showed him it was safe.”

Ben met his eyes. With a terrible quiet, he said, “Wasn’t all that safe, was it?”

Anne seemed to flinch. “Perhaps . . .”

“I should answer your husband’s question, Mrs. Dane.” Ben paused, reining in his emotions with visible effort. “For an egotist like McCarthy, piggybacking on the antiwar movement was his only chance to become a national figure. But it was Kennedy who drove Johnson from the race . . .”

“So you don’t think he was ruthless?” Charles persisted. “Even though in the 1950s he kept company with the other McCarthy, Joe, whom liberals despised as a red-baiter?”

“Not for long,” Ben shot back. “And Joe McCarthy had company. Richard Nixon for example, who made his career by smearing liberals as communists.”

Clammy with tension, Whitney regretted withholding from Ben her father’s relationship with Nixon. But neither she nor Clarice had seen anyone—much less a young person—challenge Charles Dane in such a sustained and relentless way. Leaning forward, Charles said in a louder voice, “You don’t think Nixon grew? To many, he’s a seasoned man who’ll restore sound judgment to the White House.”

Ben took a last swallow of wine. “To many others,” he countered succinctly, “he’s a morally bankrupt striver . . .”

“Then why,” Charles cut in, “has he risen from the political dead to attract such broad support?”

“Because he’s a tool of the rich. If he didn’t exist, our ruling class would have to invent him, just like they have with Ronald Reagan.”

Biting off his words, Charles retorted, “The rich, as you call them, are a tiny minority of Americans. Someone else has to vote for him.”

“True enough. That’s why Nixon is pandering to racists who hate the civil rights laws and people like my father who blame ‘welfare queens’ for how their life has gone. The rich who back Nixon don’t care.” Ben paused, then seemed unable to stop himself. “After all, what’s a poor black woman to someone who spends more on one dinner at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan than she has to feed and clothe her kids for a month? Nothing. Because to those people it isn’t about what they owe the country, but what the country owes them. The privilege to be even more like themselves.”

Even in her dismay, this struck a chord in Whitney. Desperate to divert her father, she said, “Ben has a point, Dad. The only way I learned how people in Roxbury lived was to go there. A lot of my friends still don’t have a clue.”

Charles hesitated, plainly nettled, yet given pause by Whitney’s intrusion. “Well,” he said to Ben, “at least we both can hope that if
Nixon wins, he’ll find a way to conclude the war. Better than nothing, yes?”

“Yes,” Ben said simply. “But Nixon won’t end the war until affluent kids can’t find enough safe havens to keep them from getting shot at. Then maybe Nixon will start paying the underclass to fight our wars, and the better-off can resume their life as armchair warriors, supporting the troops over cocktails.”

Charles’s face darkened. “The soup is getting cold,” Anne said pleasantly but firmly, “and the main course is on its way. So the political discussion will have to end.” Glancing at Ben, she added, “Though I must say the commentary has been interesting.”

Ben smiled at her. “I hope so,” he said with equal politeness. “Isn’t that what you invited me for?”

The rest of the evening was strained but uneventful, with Anne and Clarice drawing the others into clever and mildly diverting conversation about the wedding, memories of other summers, and a favorite subject of Charles’s—the fortunes of the New York Yankees—in which Clarice feigned a credible interest. Perhaps Whitney only imagined that her friend was playing to Ben as well as her father.

At the dinner’s conclusion, Ben thanked Whitney’s parents graciously enough, leaving without Charles’s usual offer of a postprandial snifter of Armagnac. Whitney walked him to the door, hoping for a quiet word. “Well,” he said with sardonic resignation, “I certainly helped your father make his point, didn’t I?”

Whitney looked at him intently. “Not the way he wanted. He never should have mentioned Bobby.”

Ben shrugged. “Again, not your fault. I could have avoided it by keeping my mouth shut. But maybe he knew I wouldn’t.” He paused. “You’re also apologizing for another man in private, yet again. Someday, Whitney, you’ll have to figure out who you are.”

Turning, Ben left her there.

Eight

Whitney stood there, absorbing the sting of Ben’s last words. Then Clarice emerged from the house. “It was time for a tasteful good-bye,” she told Whitney.

Whitney nodded. “That was awful, wasn’t it?”

Clarice smiled a little. “But interesting to watch, don’t you think? When the fallout disperses, call me.”

With a squeeze of Whitney’s arm, Clarice headed for her car.

Alone, Whitney struggled to sort through her emotions. When she went back inside, her mother had vanished, and Charles was sitting in a wing chair with his snifter of brandy. For an instant, they regarded each other in silence.

“Well?” Charles said.

Whitney felt a constriction in her throat. “You set out to bait him. With his friend’s death, it didn’t take that much.”

“No, it didn’t,” Charles agreed calmly. “But not just because of his friend.”

Whitney remained standing. “You’re the one who brought up Bobby Kennedy. Ben’s twenty-two, not forty—once you got him started, he was going to say his piece. What was the point?”

“You tell me, Whitney.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t you? I saw you watching him—as was Clarice. What did you see?”

“Someone with ideals.”

“And I, of course, have none.” Charles gestured toward a chair. “Sit down, please. Can I get you something?”

Whitney sat in the opposite chair. “No,” she answered coldly. “Thank you.”

“All right, then,” Charles commenced. “To start, Ben Blaine is no idealist. Beneath the class rhetoric—and not far beneath, at that—he’s a very angry young man who knows whom he dislikes most: ‘the privileged.’ But his supposed sympathy for blacks or Hispanics or Indians? They’re just convenient weapons to throw in our face, the better to rationalize his hatred as something more noble . . .”

“You don’t even know him . . .”

“Don’t I?” Her father’s eyes bored into hers. “When Clarice compared us, she got one thing right. I
do
know him, far better than anyone at that table. I remember all too well how it feels to want things you may never have—to believe you may never get the chance other people were born with. But I turned that into ambition, not pointless rage.”

“Whatever Ben feels, he’ll make something of it, too.”

“As a journalist? You may be right. It’s an outsider’s profession, he’s a born outsider. He’s more than self-possessed—he’s arrogant and self-absorbed. He’ll chew up everyone around him.”

“He’s not self-absorbed,” Whitney protested. “Of all the people I know, Ben’s the one who’s most curious about who I am and what I think.”

Charles managed to look both skeptical and astonished. “More than your mother and me?” he inquired.

“Much more,” Whitney found herself saying. “You’ve known me for so long you think there’s nothing left to know.”

“For God’s sakes, you’re our daughter. Of course we know you . . .”

“Just like you know Janine?”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Her father’s voice hardened. “You’re younger than I thought, Whitney. Why do you think Benjamin Blaine has taken such an interest in you?”

Stung, Whitney replied, “Maybe because we can talk.”

Charles eyed his daughter with a knowingness that made her bridle. “It’s because he wants something from you. That’s how he’s made, and that’s what concerns me most. I think Peter has the instinctive good judgment to be bothered by it, too. But he doesn’t have this young man’s weapons—he can’t play the romantic rebel, and he lacks Ben’s insolence and guile. One problem with goodness and predictability is that they have a certain sameness.”

Whitney felt the sting of tears in her eyes. “Are you saying I don’t appreciate Peter?”

“No. I’m asking you to stop and think—including about why Ben is such a presence in your life that he’s become a subject within our family.”

“Because
you
can’t stand him,” Whitney burst out. “You say he’s arrogant. But you took over grandfather’s firm as soon as you were able, and since then you’ve dominated every room you’ve ever been in. Except for tonight.
That’s
why Ben made the hair stand up on the back of your neck.”

“So which of us doesn’t know the other?” Charles said tightly. “Do you really think this boy is that important to me personally? What do you take me for?”

All at once, Whitney felt sick inside—guilty about Peter, devastated at quarrelling with the man she had always loved most. But a last spurt of honesty made her say, “I don’t think this is about politics, or me, or even about Ben. It’s about you.” She stood, voice tremulous. “I can’t do this anymore, Dad. I love you, and I don’t want to fight with you. I just need to be alone.”

She turned and walked quickly to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

For hours Whitney thrashed in bed until she fell into a broken slumber. When she awoke, exhausted, she lingered there, reluctant to face anyone. Upbraiding herself for cowardice, she put on her robe and went looking for her father.

Her mother was in the sunroom with her coffee, riffling a copy of the
New Yorker
. Seeing her, Anne said gravely, “Good morning, Whitney.”

“Is Dad up?”

“Yes. And gone back to New York.”

“Why?” Whitney asked in surprise. “He didn’t tell me he was leaving.”

Anne set side her magazine. “I gather you fought last night. It seems some memorable things were said.”

“There were,” Whitney admitted. “Most of them by me.”

“I gathered as much,” her mother said, not unkindly. “Nevertheless, your father regrets it, too. This morning, for once in his life, he didn’t quite know what to do.”

Whitney sat in the chair beside her. “I’m sorry, Mom. But he’s making way too much of my relationship with Ben.”

For a moment, Anne studied the greenery outside, dappled with new sunlight. “Is he?” she inquired. “Speaking for myself, I’m mystified by whatever appeal this boy holds for you. He’s from an entirely different background—a family of alcoholics, according to Clarice’s mother. I don’t mean to sound Victorian. But class still matters, if only because it creates a common understanding.”

“You understood Dad well enough.”

“Your father was different,” Anne insisted. “He found where he belonged. So what
did
you say to him, exactly?”

Whitney hesitated. “That he didn’t like being challenged.”

Anne shook her head in dismay. “Oh, Whitney—what man does? Not your father, not Peter, and certainly not Ben. It’s been that
way since they were chasing dinosaurs and fighting over women with clubs.”

“But why should Dad always be the voice of authority? We arrange our life around him.”

“Of course we do—to all of our benefit. Your father takes care of us. Please don’t make our family a cauldron of unpleasantness.”

Whitney drew a breath. “Is he really that fragile?”

“He’s the strongest male I know. But even cavemen must have had their vulnerabilities.” Anne paused, then added softly, “Because he loves you, last night hurt him more than he’ll ever admit.”

Whitney felt her sense of guilt resurfacing. “I know how much you love him, Mom. But do you really need to protect him like this?”

“I do,” her mother replied. “He’s under pressure at work, and doing a lot for Richard Nixon—far more than you know, and with high hopes for a cabinet appointment, making Ben’s comments last night all the more unfortunate. Your father has enough on his mind already.” Anne’s brow knit, an expression Whitney knew as doubt and worry, “Usually he spends whole weeks here. But this summer he’s been running back and forth. After twenty-seven years of marriage, I still miss him when he’s gone. I want this to be a refuge for him, not a scene of familial strife.”

“You’re putting a lot on me, aren’t you?”

Anne considered her. “Perhaps I am,” she said with a trace of humor. “A serene summer, culminating in a lovely wedding. Far too much for a mother to expect.”

Suddenly Whitney thought of Janine, her mother’s favorite. “Is anything else bothering you?”

Anne shook her head, as though to banish the suggestion. “No, nothing. Just do me a favor, and call your dad this afternoon. You don’t have to apologize. Just say that you miss him, and hope he’ll be back soon.”

It was little enough to ask, Whitney thought. “All right.”

Anne’s face softened with relief. “As to Peter, when he comes back, give him the attention he deserves. That should end any lingering worries he may have about Benjamin Blaine.”

Once again, Whitney thought of Peter’s kindness and good humor, the boyish sweetness she loved, the way her heart leapt when her handsome fiancé had first whispered,
I love you
. “Of course I will,” she assured her mother. “At the end of the summer, I’ll be married. Like you love Dad, I’ll love Peter all my life.”

Gently, Anne touched her daughter’s wrist. “Then perhaps it’s also time to end your friendship with Ben. That would put all this to rest.”

After a moment, Whitney nodded.

Instead of calling Clarice, Whitney took her journal to Dogfish Bar.

As she expected, no one was there. At first she felt the tug of disappointment—without seeking Ben out, she could have explained how things must be. But what followed was relief; she did not feel ready to do this, or know what she might say.

Opening her journal, she found her thoughts drifting to her mother. Did some deeper anxiety remain unspoken, perhaps about Janine? But when she began writing, it was about a morning spent on the golf course with Peter and Charles.

Putting down her pen, Whitney felt a nagging worry she could not label. Not for Peter, whom her father loved, but for Ben.