Loss of Innocence (7 page)

Part Two

The Stranger

Martha’s Vineyard–Manhattan

June–July 1968

One

For the next three weeks, Whitney endured the pressures of a society wedding bearing down on her. The worst of this involved sparring with Anne over each detail of her nuptial weekend. Whitney prevailed in her choice of bridal gown, as well as bridesmaids dresses, selecting pink, as her mother wished, but without the puffy sleeves Anne favored. But though Whitney chose the crystal and silverware, her preferred china—bright yellow with a modern design—was effectively vetoed by her mother, who opined that a traditional bone china with gold leaf would better withstand the vagaries of taste and fashion. The guest list was marbled with her parents’ friends, often chosen less from affection than statecraft, and the Byzantine calculations through which Anne planned their seating left Whitney exasperated and amused. She came to understand too well the admonitions of older schoolmates: the wedding would not be her own. After all, it was universally acknowledged, their fathers were footing the bill.

To escape these vexations—but also to ensure that she fit into a wedding dress that left no margin for error—Whitney resolved to
start each day with exercise and reflection. Every morning at dawn she took her journal to Dogfish Bar, crossing the sea grass in blue jeans so that deer ticks bearing some enervating disease did not make her a listless, sallow bride. On a bright early morning in late June, she reached the rise overlooking the ocean, and saw it glistening with sun. This was her favorite part of the day—full of promise, unsullied by whatever might follow.

Peeling off her clothes to uncover the swimsuit, she headed for the gentle, lapping waters. Though chill, after a moment they felt bearable, even bracing. Wading out to the sandbar, she plunged from there into the ocean, swimming parallel to the beach with strong determined strokes.

Pleasantly tired, she clambered back onto the sandbar. The sun was higher now; as she looked toward the beach, she saw a man gazing out at her from beside her pile of belongings. Though she could not make out his face, the leanness of his frame and an unruly thatch of jet-black hair suggested that he was roughly Whitney’s age.

She hesitated, annoyed that a stranger was disrupting her special time, then headed back to where he stood. As she emerged from the water, he regarded her with his head slightly tilted, his manner suggesting he need not explain his scrutiny or his presence. Instinctively, Whitney felt self-conscious—though she had long told herself she was full-figured but not overweight, for even longer she had lived with her mother and sister. While she disliked herself for caring about a man she did not know, she could not help wondering how he would judge her.

“How’s the water?” he called out.

At closer range he had a nose like a prow, a bronzed face all surfaces and angles, as though hammered out from copper. His angular frame, taller than Peter’s, suggested litheness and grace even when still. The uncomfortable impact of his presence was sealed by dark eyes and an unabashed appraisal so unmannerly and direct that she wanted to look away. All in all, Whitney concluded with instinctive wariness, he resembled no one she had ever met.

“Tolerable,” she answered sparely. Deciding that a trace of courtesy might make her feel less awkward, she added perfunctorily, “I’m Whitney Dane, by the way.”

He extended his hand, a formal gesture which she could have sworn contained a deliberate hint of mockery. “Benjamin Blaine—Ben.”

His hand was strong and rough and callused. “Here for the summer?” she asked.

“So it seems,” he said tersely. “And you? I don’t recall seeing anyone here this early in the day. Except fishermen, of course.”

“I like this beach in the morning,” Whitney replied in a cooler tone. “It’s a good place to be alone.”

Though a corner of his mouth twitched, his eyes contained a hint of challenge. “And now I’ve spoiled it.”

“Not really. It’s big enough to share. How do you know it?”

“I grew up here. I used to come here at night, to fish, then camp out ’til morning.”

“But not for awhile.”

“No,” he answered. “I left.”

Though the curt response seemed intended to discourage her, it had the perverse effect of provoking her curiosity. “Have you been in college?”

“Mostly.” He gave her the same unsettling scrutiny. “And you’re a summer person, I’d guess. Vacationers and day-trippers never find this place, and I’d know you’re not an islander even if I hadn’t lived here all my life.”

There was nothing soft about his face, Whitney thought, and little that suggested hesitance or self-doubt. Refusing to ask how he had pegged her, she said with a touch of pride, “I’ve been coming to the Vineyard since I was born.”

“Of course you have,” he said with sardonic amusement. “Three months in Eden every year. A hiatus from the rigors of life.”

Annoyed at his tone, Whitney found that it pleased her to mention her engagement. “I’m getting married this summer, so there’s planning to do. What brought
you
back here?”

“I dropped out of college.”

Sixties fallout, she thought, feeling suddenly superior. “To do what?”

He crossed his arms, face closing, though the quick flash of his eyes suggested that her question evoked something painful. At length, he said, “I worked for Bobby Kennedy.”

“You’re kidding,” she blurted without thinking, then realized that he was not. “What did you do in the campaign?”

“I traveled with him.” He looked away, adding dismissively, “Nothing impressive. Just doing whatever he needed.”

You actually knew him,
she thought in real surprise, stifling the questions she was suddenly desperate to pose. Instead, she asked, “So what will you do now?”

“I don’t know,” he responded in an affectless tone that somehow suggested anger. “Dropping out blew my student deferment. I’m just hoping to slip by the draft board until fall, so I can finish up at Yale.” His voice took on a muted bitterness. “By then maybe ‘President Nixon’ will unveil his secret plan to end the war. But I’m not counting on that.”

Beneath his stoic veneer, Whitney detected a deep woundedness and dislocation, as though Robert Kennedy’s death was like a fishhook snagged inside him Whatever the cause, she could feel his presence on her nerve ends. “If you can get by the draft,” she thought to ask, “what’s next?”

“My ambition
was
to go to journalism school, and then become a foreign correspondent. A chance to redefine my life.” The strain of irony returned. “I’m sure you go to Europe all the time, but I’ve never been outside the country. I’m hoping my first trip isn’t to Vietnam.”

But for her father’s intervention, Whitney thought, Peter might share his fears. Awkwardly, she said, “At least you have friends and family here. People to spend time with.”

He fixed her with the same appraising look. “Are you always this curious?”

“Not always,” she answered tartly. “But you’re standing right in front of me, and there’s no one else to talk to.”

To her surprise, he emitted a bark of laughter. “Okay, then. Yes, I have friends and family, just no one I’d care to see. Right now all I want is to sail. To answer your next question, I’m caretaking someone’s house for the summer, and a sailboat comes with it. And yes, I’m acting like a jerk. I’m allowing recent events to spoil my usual sunny disposition. Not your fault.”

Disconcerted once again, Whitney felt her defenses slipping. “And I really
am
sorry,” she told him. “I’d say I know how you feel, but I can’t.”

“Maybe not.” He turned toward the horizon. “After he died, there was nothing left to do. Except being on the water, and these are the waters I know. So I came home.”

“
Has
it helped?”

“As much as it can. It’s just me and the wind and ocean, the nearest thing to peace that I can find.” His eyes narrowed, as though scouring the ocean for something he could not see. “There’s nothing much good on land. The draft, this screwed up country, this heartless joke of a campaign. It hurts to watch it.”

This was how she had felt, Whitney realized—at least for a time. “I liked Bobby, too,” she offered, and then felt more foolish than before.

Mercifully, he did not seem to hear. She waited a moment, then began to pick up her things. “You don’t need to leave,” he told her. “I saw you brought a journal.”

“It’s nothing, really. I just keep it for myself.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it. Nice to meet you, Whitney Dane.”

He turned abruptly, taking a few steps, then faced her again. “I don’t suppose you’d like to go sailing sometime.”

Startled, Whitney heard the inner voice of caution. “It sounds like sailing is better for you alone.”

He shrugged this away. “At least you can swim. If you spoil it for me, I can always throw you overboard.”

Whitney felt him challenging her in some indefinable way. “Maybe,” she allowed. “Where are you staying?”

“Chilmark.”

“That’s where I am.”

The hint of amusement resurfaced in his eyes. “I know. The big white house on the bluff.”

With that he turned again, giving a careless wave of his hand without looking back. She watched him go, a forward tilt to his walk, moving with swift, decisive strides as though to clear a space for himself, somehow evoking her father.

I know. The big white house on the bluff.

Two

Later that week, Charles returned and, as he often did, sipped scotch while he watched Huntley and Brinkley on the evening news. Sitting with him, Whitney riffled the latest
Time
until a film clip of Resurrection City caught her attention.

A makeshift encampment on the Washington Mall, it was an attempt by the poor to dramatize their plight. “How will this change their lives,” Charles inquired aloud, “and what are they teaching their children? That government has all the answers?”

But the scruffy campsite spoke to Whitney’s sympathies. “If they didn’t do this, maybe we wouldn’t think of them at all.”

Her father shook his head. “Maybe not. But if they don’t want to improve themselves, what can anyone else do to help? This is just a sideshow, an excuse for the radical young to pursue their own destructive purposes.”

Instinctively, Whitney thought again of Bobby Kennedy and the wounded young man she had encountered on the beach. Had her father always been this conservative? she wondered. Or had he acquired his beliefs from the moneyed classes he had joined
upon marrying Anne, applying his keen intelligence until he could articulate them more clearly than his mentors? Whatever the case, it seemed that her father was passing his own views on to Peter. She wouldn’t have minded if, now and then, her fiancé gently disagreed with Charles. But it was not in his nature, and she was lucky they were as fond of each other as she was of seeing them together.

“I don’t think we can ignore them,” she told Charles, and let the subject die.

After dinner, Whitney retreated to her bedroom, her sanctuary since childhood, listening to a rock station from the Cape, the earthy growl of Janis Joplin followed by Aretha Franklin’s bluesy urgency:

Whitney found the lyrics both stimulating and unsettling—was that all the black woman of the song had to look forward to? But the propulsive drive Aretha gave the lyrics pulled her in. Then her mother peeked through the door.

“What is all this gutter yowling?” she inquired dryly. “Does someone have appendicitis?”

Whitney summoned her best deadpan look. “Aretha just wants her propers when she gets home. Didn’t you ever sing that to Dad?”

Her mother looked faintly amused. “I really didn’t have to,” she said with a certain maternal reserve. “On a tangent of that, and somewhat more pressing, I’ve been thinking about your wedding.”

“Really, Mom? When did you start?”

Anne’s perfunctory smile, a signal that she got the joke, also suggested her inability to change. “I was merely wondering if all the bridesmaids have been fitted for their dresses. As I recall, Julie hadn’t.”

“She has now, I’m pretty sure. That leaves only Janine.”

Anne’s expression became slightly more remote. “I do hope Julie doesn’t gain more weight,” she went on. “Sometimes I think she needs someone to take a greater interest in such things.”

The remark touched a psychic nerve, causing Whitney to wonder if this were her mother’s intent. “I don’t think Julie’s up for adoption, Mom, and she and her mother seem to be just fine. So you’ll have to make do with Janine and me. Do you happen to know if
she’s
been fitted yet?”

“You know how busy she is,” her mother said dismissively. “I’m sure she’ll get to it soon. I just hope she’s not too hurt about not being your Maid of Honor.”

It was a reflex of her mother’s, Whitney thought, to deflect unwelcome subjects with a witch’s shaft of guilt. “Clarice is my closest friend, and Janine’s had eighteen years to get used to it. What with the vibrancy of her own life, I’m sure this is merely a leaf scar.”

The veiled sarcasm was delivered so blandly that Anne hesitated before saying, “As your mother, I thought it would be nice, that’s all.”

“Well,” Whitney rejoined philosophically, “at least Clarice isn’t fat. I just worry she’ll look so stunning that I’ll be overshadowed.”

“Clarice is lovely,” her mother said stiffly. “But she’s hardly Janine.”

Lost in their sparring was any assurance from Anne that Whitney would not be overshadowed. It was as though her mother saw Clarice as her oldest daughter’s competition and, by extension, her own. But it was childish for Whitney to fault her, she chided herself: Anne had appeared at every school event, and was unfailing in her praise of Whitney’s attributes and achievements. It was not her mother’s fault she took such pride in Janine that her attention to Whitney felt, by comparison, like an expression of her unstinting sense of duty.

Perhaps reading her misstep in Whitney’s eyes, Anne sat on the edge of her bed. “It means so much to me that you chose to marry here. It’s where I spent the happiest years of my life—at least before
I met your father, and had you girls. I was an innocent, of course, but life seemed perfect.” Her voice filled with nostalgia and regret. “My mother was alive then. I remember getting up with her each morning, just the two of us. It was her favorite time—dew still on the grass, the greenness around us fresh with newborn sun. It was a time, she often told me, when anything was possible.” Perhaps, Whitney thought, this was where she had gotten her own love of morning. With genuine feeling, she said, “I wish I could have known her.”

For a moment her mother’s eyes welled. “Oh, so do I. It was terrible watching her simply melt away.” Her eyes briefly shut. “No, ‘melt’ is too benign a word. She shriveled into herself, until I had the horrifying image of her as a mummy in a museum. I can usually manage not to think of things that are so unpleasant. But not my mother’s death.”

Whitney wondered why this subject, so seldom touched on, had arisen once again. As she took her mother’s hand, Anne told her, “You have a good heart, Whitney. Fortunately, whenever I feel like this, I can always look at her photograph—the one in the bedroom. It reminds me of how lucky I was to have her.”

The photograph was so formal that Whitney could not see the warmth so vivid in Anne’s memory, or have any real vision of her grandmother other than a faint resemblance to Janine. With a stab of resentment, Whitney thought again once more that she was last in her mother’s affection—behind Charles, Janine, and Anne’s own mother—then recoiled from her own pettiness. “I suppose,” Anne continued musing, “that’s why I feel such kinship with Peter. Some grief never ends, no matter how much you wish that. All I ever wanted was for you girls to feel secure. The way I felt before I knew that my mother was going to leave me, and there was nothing I could do.”

It was haunting, Whitney thought, how swiftly this memory could transform Anne into the heartsick girl she had been. “But you feel secure now,” Whitney said.

“Yes,” Anne responded quietly. “Thanks to your father.”

A new thought struck Whitney, a connection she had not made before. “Sometimes I worry about Peter,” she confessed. “He depends on Dad, as well.”

“Don’t worry,” Anne said firmly. “Your father will look out for Peter. And if anything ever happened to him or Peter, he’ll make sure you’re more than comfortable.”

She sounded like Clarice, Whitney thought—certain of Charles’s capacities and foresight. “I know,” she answered. But what she chose not to say was how vulnerable Peter seemed, and how uneasy this sense made her. For a strange moment, she envied her mother’s confidence in her husband’s strength of will.

They had known each other several months before Whitney fully divined the core of Peter’s doubts. It was a fresh June day of the summer before; they were walking in Central Park, carefree and at ease. Then Peter stopped abruptly, gazing at the outline of a hockey rink drained since early spring, and his face took on an unwonted cast of sadness and reflection. “What is it?” Whitney asked.

Peter shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I was thinking about my dad.”

“What was he like? You’ve never said that much.”

“That hockey rink reminded me of him. He never cared for sports—like your dad, his childhood was hard, and he worked pretty much all the time. But I loved all the New York teams, especially the Rangers. Anyhow, I was maybe ten, and dying to see the Rangers play the Blackhawks. Dad was in the middle of a trial, and wouldn’t have been interested even if he weren’t. I got so desperate I finally said, ‘But Dad—the Blackhawks have
Stan Mikita
.’

“‘Don’t worry, son,’ he answered. ‘If the Blackhawks take penicillin I bet it’ll go away.’ Even I knew it was funny, and I could see the humor in his eyes. I also knew that was it—no hockey game.

“He won the trial, I recall. And the night before the Rangers next game with the Blackhawks he came home with two tickets—first-row seats, right behind the Rangers bench. I don’t know
where he got them, or how he even remembered. But he did.” Peter smiled at the memory. “He watched the game intently, asking questions about all the players, and who I thought was good. Mikita scored a goal, and the Rangers won in overtime. It was the best night I’d ever had.”

It struck Whitney that, however painful, these memories would make Peter a devoted father. “He sounds like a really nice dad.”

“He was a really good
man
,” Peter affirmed. “I remember being fourteen and coming back from Taft at Christmas with mediocre grades. He was sitting in the library reading the
Sunday Times
, and I slunk in with this kind of half apology—that I knew he’d had to work while he was in school, and still nearly got straight A’s, and here I was at this expensive place not doing half as well.

“My dad put down the
Times
and looked at me in this level way he had. ‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘I worked all the way through college until I got the scholarship to Columbia Law. People told me I’d developed character—I heard that quite a lot, actually. But I never had time to go to a single football game, and a lot fewer movies than I’d have liked. I came to think I’d developed more character than I could stand, and maybe more than I needed.’

“‘I don’t want to spoil you, Peter, and it’s true I’d like to see a little more effort. But I had too much care, too soon. It does me good to see you enjoying sports and having fun. You’ll do better next time.’ So I did. He died of a heart attack four months later.”

The story touched Whitney, all the more because it explained Peter’s affinity for Charles. Even now, she wondered if Peter should have decided to work with kids. But this was not the course he had chosen, the one taken by his surrogate father.

The next morning, Whitney took her diary to Dogfish Bar. Instead of swimming, she mused for awhile, then began to write.

She paused, watching a mist hanging over the sandbar. It was some moments before she began to write again.

This new thought, commingling warmth and humiliation, caused Whitney to put down her pen. Only then did she sense someone standing behind her.

With seeming nonchalance, Benjamin Blaine said, “Hope I’m not interrupting.”

Startled, she answered, “Didn’t you kind of expect to?”

His eyes glinted at this. “Which means ‘yes, you are, and it’s annoying.’”

She put down her journal. “I’ve had my great thoughts for the day. So it’s really not that annoying.”

“Good to know. I just wanted to ask if you feel like sailing, and then I’ll be on my way.”

Whitney felt torn. She wouldn’t mind sailing, and could not find a graceful reason to refuse. “When?” she asked, buying another moment to calculate how to avoid this stranger who kept throwing her off balance.

Perhaps he looked amused because he understood this. “Anytime,” he said easily. “Ever sail to Tarpaulin Cove?”