Loss of Innocence

by Richard North Patterson

  Though Anne was trying to be good-humored, Whitney heard an undercurrent of anger. “Professor Claymore wasn’t like that, Mom. She has a husband, but she also has a career.”

  “And so do I, Whitney. But mine acknowledges that men and women are different.” She paused, her manner becoming patient and tutorial. “Early on, I set out to establish my own relationship with your father’s business associates. One way was to ferret out their interests, then ask questions that allowed them to reveal themselves.

  “The men were often quite different, and sometimes difficult, which required me to be a bit of a chameleon. So it was better if whoever the man was never asked a single question about me, but left knowing that he’d had a fascinating conversation with an intelligent and sympathetic woman.” Anne smiled reflectively. “If you know men at all, you’ll be wholly unsurprised by how well that works.”

  “But didn’t you ever want to tell them what you thought?”

  “Why would I?” Anne’s voice softened. “However I appear, I’m a very private person. I never really wanted people to know that much about me. If you’re a woman that’s easier to get by with.”

  “And men are different.”

  “Oh, yes. Your dad needed to be known, and to make a name in business. Not just because he wanted to build the firm, but because that was his essential nature. He arranges his surroundings as he wants them to be.” Anne’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “In his benign way, my father said that Charles was heaven-sent to keep our family’s blood from thinning out. Looking at our family tonight, he’s certainly done that. You girls were all the credentials I ever needed.”

  For an instant, Whitney chafed at the word “credentials.” But what followed was an intuitive sense of her mother’s loneliness, even her need for Janine as a surrogate. Without quite knowing why, she drew Anne to her, feeling her mother’s instinctive resistance to closeness, perhaps fear of vulnerability, before she yielded to her daughter’s embrace.

  “I love you, Mom,” Whitney told her.

  Seven

  As Whitney entered the living room, Janine turned to her, eyes alight, body tensile. “Let’s go out, Whitney.”

  From the couch, Clarice gave her friend a wry look. “Where?” Whitney asked in her most dubious tone.

  “Aren’t there clubs on this island? Here there’s nothing but the sound of crickets.”

  “Whitney likes the crickets,” Clarice advised her. “This is her engagement we’re celebrating, after all.”

  “So bring Peter,” Janine urged her sister. “I’m sure he’d like to hear some music, maybe dance a little.”

  “For Peter,” Whitney answered, “dancing means letting me circle him like a maypole. Anyhow, I think we’re headed for a quiet evening. While we’re listening to the crickets, maybe we can look up at the stars.”

  Janine frowned, tossing down her port before spinning on Clarice. “Come on, Clarice—let’s go to Edgartown.”

  Clarice favored Whitney with a martyr’s thin smile. With preemptive firmness, she told Janine, “Only if I drive.”

  Triumphant, Janine stood at once. “I’ll go freshen my makeup,” she said and hurried from the room.

  Watching this, Whitney murmured, “How can anyone be that restless.”

  “The real problem,” Clarice responded glumly, “is that she can’t be restless alone.”

  “You really don’t have to do this, you know.”

  “And leave her to badger you and Peter? Just don’t sit me next to her at the wedding. I haven’t the stamina.”

  “You have my blood oath,” Whitney pledged. “But if you really need a buffer, bring someone.”

  For an instant, Clarice looked oddly vulnerable, then gave a dismissive shake of her head. “At this particular moment, there’s no one I can imagine running the gantlet of our parents.”

  “Maybe not now. But for you, four months is a lifetime.”

  “For me, Whitney, the next four hours will be a lifetime.”

  Brighter-eyed than before, Janine marched into the room and headed for the front door, saying over her shoulder, “Let’s go, Clarice.”

  “Adventure calls,” Clarice said to no one in particular. “I can hardly curb my excitement.”

  She followed Janine, each weary step miming the resignation of a death row prisoner in a thirties movie, trudging toward the electric chair. Recalling with some guilt her uncharitable remarks to Charles, Whitney reflected that her best friend deserved a better friend.

  Alone with Peter in the guesthouse, Whitney described Clarice’s painful sacrifice. “Maybe Clarice will meet a guy,” he suggested helpfully. “To hear your mom, Janine draws them like flies.”

  “Does that include you?”

  He lay back, head propped on his pillow, as though considering the question. “Can’t see it, Whit. Your sister wears me out. There’s nothing peaceful about her.”

  “But to look at?” Whitney persisted.

  “Maybe for some other guy. But to me she looks unreal, like some girl in a perfume ad. Now if you asked me about Clarice . . .”

  “She’s not interested,” Whitney cut in tartly. “At least not yet. She’d want to be sure you’d ripen into a titan of Wall Street. Besides, I hear she’s a real taskmaster in bed.”

  Peter sat up, resting on his elbow. In feigned challenge, he said, “You don’t think I’m up to it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Whitney said, and felt champagne and wine overcome her reticence. “She might want you to use your tongue.”

  He looked up at her in surprise, intrigued and a bit embarrassed. “You guys actually talk about that?”

  It was too late to back off, Whitney realized. Sitting beside him, she said primly, “In a scholarly sort of way.”

  Peter took her hand. Hesitant, he offered, “You’d like that, I guess.”

  Whitney felt herself flush. “I think so. After all, you’re the only guy I’ve been with.”

  Peter’s face softened. “I know that. But I can’t do it while you’re dressed.”

  Squeezing his hand, Whitney stood to lower the blinds and close the curtain. A single lamp cast shadows across the brass bed. She sat beside him again, wordless.

  Kissing her gently, Peter reached for the zipper on the back of her dress. “I’ve never done this.”

  “I know.”

  Naked, they lay facing each other, Peter’s lips brushed her nipples, then her stomach. Lying back, Whitney opened her legs.

  Tentative, Peter moved his head. She felt his tongue flick once, withdraw, then flick again. Sensing his reluctance, Whitney tried to aid her own excitement by imagining a stranger who had no inhibitions. That she could summon no image but Peter frustrated yet comforted her.

  At last, eyes shut tight, she began to feel the pleasure she had hoped for, murmuring softly. Misunderstanding, Peter stopped. For a moment, Whitney tensed in frustration. Then she stretched her limbs and then reached out for him, concealing her disappointment. They had a lifetime, after all.

  Later, they lay holding hands as they gazed up into semidarkness. “Do you think I’m a coward?” he asked.

  Whitney tried to decipher this. “About the draft? It’s me who’s the coward, sweetheart. I can’t imagine losing you.”

  Peter rolled onto his side, looking into her face. “But what must your dad think? After all, he served in World War II.”

  Whitney chose not to mention how much the draft had haunted him, or that this had prompted their September wedding. “Dad loves you,” she assured him. “He did this for himself as much as you.” But nothing she said, Whitney knew, could change the uncertainty beneath his careless good looks and prep school air of confidence, or her unspoken reservations about Peter’s attempt to follow her father’s path.

  Quiet, she thought about what had drawn Peter to her. When she had finally dared to ask, months after they had first met, he had said, “To start, I thought you were cute and smart—and quiet, in a nice way, not trying to show off.
But pretty soon I realized how special you are.” He paused, trying to find words for feelings deeper than any words he had. “Ever since I met you my life is so much better. To me, no one else could ever be like you.”

  For a time, Whitney had wished that Peter could conjure some magic phrase to make her specialness seem real. But she came to understand that they completed each other. It was Peter who got Whitney out of her books and into nature; he was always up for an adventure—skiing or whitewater rafting, or a hike in the wooded hills of New Hampshire. Generous and open-hearted, he allowed Whitney to see herself not as the less-favored sister, but in the mirror of a lover’s eyes. In turn, Whitney helped him surface thoughts that had been hidden; coaxed him to deal with conflict rather than avoid it; showed him how to prioritize the scholastic demands that sometimes threatened to overwhelm him. Someday, Whitney had hoped, she could help Peter channel his cheerfully competitive nature into a career that was his own.

  Peter understood his lack of clarity. Before taking the job at Padgett Dane, he had mused on this aloud. “I’m not sure where I’m going,” he confessed. “Whenever I picture the future, I see a comfortable house, and kids and weekends on the Vineyard, golfing or walking the beach or sailing with other couples. What’s harder to come up with is what I do from nine to six on weekdays. When I’m on the lacrosse field, or with friends, I know what I’m about. But pretty soon I won’t.”

  For Whitney, this kindled a new thought. “Did you ever think about coaching?”

  Peter looked perplexed. “Not really. Growing up, everyone I saw was like my dad or yours. The only coaches I knew were the ones I had.”

  “But you liked them, right?”

  “The good ones, sure. They encouraged me in all sorts of ways.”

  Whitney felt the stray thought ripening. “It just feels like you, Peter. Maybe you should consider it.”

  But now, Whitney thought as she lay beside him, their future was resolved—free from the uncertainties against which Charles had protected them. For another wistful moment, she wished that the current of her life were not moving quite so swiftly.

  “When you imagine our life,” she asked him, “how do you imagine me?”

  The question seemed to puzzle him. “As my wife,” he answered. “As a mom. Helping me the way you always do. You’re in every picture I come up with.”

  “But not at work. The Dane in that picture is my dad. So what am I doing between nine and six?”

  Peter frowned. “I guess you’re reading, or with the kids, or girlfriends. What my mom did.”

  “That’s a role, Peter, not a person. And I’m certainly not your mom.”

  Peter scanned her body. “God, I hope not,” he said with a quiver of feigned horror. “I’ve never seen Mom naked. But seriously, what do you want to do?”

  Whitney hesitated. “A lot of the things you mentioned, I’m sure. But maybe I’ll try to write.”

  “Write what?”

  Uncertain, Whitney struggled to describe an image of herself so tenuous that it seemed beyond her gifts. “Stories,” she confessed. “Things I just make up out of what I know or see.”

  “Will you have time for that?”

  “Hard to imagine, isn’t it? But maybe I can give up bridge club.”

  Peter laughed out loud. “Touché, Miss Dane. Would you like me to make an oinking sound?”

  “I thought you just did.”

  “Nope. That was the whimper of a lapdog, saying, ‘whatever you do is fine with me.’”

  “Sorry I misheard,” Whitney said unrepentantly. “So where do we live once I’ve had our triplets? Still in the city?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far. But maybe in Greenwich, like your folks.” He hesitated, then added with youthful resolve, “At least if I do well enough. After all, look at how happy your parents are.”

  In her silence, Whitney recalled her father’s toast, the conversation with her mother. Kissing him, she said, “They are, aren’t they.”

  Eight

  Later that night, Peter and Whitney made love, the reward for his attempt to please her. In minutes, he was asleep.

  Gazing at his untroubled face, Whitney reflected on the Viking qualities of men attested to by suitemates: they could eat, drink, make love, and then fall into the deepest of sleeps in whatever bed was available—often followed by shuddering snores that disturbed their woman’s slumber but not their own. Among Peter’s virtues was that he seldom snored. But Whitney could not sleep here; sometime before dawn, she must steal back to the main house, observing the unspoken etiquette through which her parents pretended not to know she was having sex. As she lay besides Peter, fearing to close her eyes, she wondered if Robert Kennedy had won in California.

  At length she got up and dressed, bending to kiss Peter as she left. Outside, the night was cool, the moon an oval in a sky alight with stars. Crossing the dewy grass, she saw headlights entering their driveway.

  Suddenly, they dimmed, the car stopping some distance from the house. Clarice would not do this, Whitney thought. Apprehensive, she crept closer, pausing in the shadow of an oak tree.

  A soft moan came from the darkness. Skin tingling, Whitney let her eyes adjust to moonlight. The vehicle was a pickup truck, and then Whitney perceived a woman with long hair bending over the hood. The dark outline of a man stood behind her, motionless but for the thrust of his hips.

  “Fuck me,” the woman said in a slurry voice. “Harder.”

  Shaken, Whitney could not look away. What unsettled her most was the resignation in the woman’s primal urgings.

  In the moonlight, the woman rested her face against the hood, silent as the man took her from behind. All at once, Whitney regained the power of movement. Backing away until she felt safe to turn, she scurried toward the house.

  She paused at the drive, treading gingerly across the gravel before reaching the rear porch. Slipping through the screen door, she fell into a lounge chair, taking a deep swallow of cool night air. As a child, she had settled into this chair after dinner, nestled against her father as they talked or listened to the crickets chirring. Now she lay there, absorbing a fresh image she wished she could erase.

  The crunch of gravel forced her to sit up. The sound became the unsteady gait of someone approaching the house. As the screen door opened, Whitney reached for the lamp on the table beside her, flicking on the switch.

  Hands grasping the door frame, Janine stared at her with the dull surprise. Then she expelled a breath, body sagging. “It’s only you.”

  Whitney felt her heart race. “Are you all right?”

  Janine stood taller. “I’m fine,” she said, each syllable enunciated to emulate sobriety. “Clarice and I over-celebrated, that’s all.”

  Whitney stood. “Why don’t I make you coffee, Janine? Maybe we could sit up for awhile.”

  To Whitney’s surprise, Janine reached out to give her an awkward hug. “I’m happy for you,” she said tiredly. “I always knew you’d be okay.”

  Returning her sister’s embrace, Whitney smelled the liquor on her breath. Janine felt brittle in her arms. Abruptly, she pulled away, rushing inside the house. Whitney heard her taking the stairs with an unsteady tread, like a child learning to walk.

  Burdened by unsought knowledge, Whitney sat down again, struggling to understand this fleeting moment of sweetness and all that she had seen before. In her disorientation, she reprised the familiar—the dinner, her father’s toast, her interlude with Peter—touchstones of her evening before stepping through the looking glass. At last she remembered California and Robert Kennedy.

  Walking to the library, she switched on the television, hoping to banish an unwelcome sense of responsibility for her sister.

  The TV crackled on, its black-and-white image casting a glow in the darkened room. Kennedy stood at a podium, looking exhausted yet smiling at the cheers that must mean victory. In his soft Boston-Irish cadence, he said, “I think we can end the divisions within the United States . . .” />
  He looked so young, so passionate yet vulnerable, that only a country that still believed in its own possibilities would dare choose him. It was what she had felt at dinner, but could not quite articulate. And then the speech was over, and Bobby waved to the crowd, almost shyly, and was gone.

  Motionless, Whitney half-listened to the commentary that followed. Kennedy had won in California and South Dakota, eclipsing Eugene McCarthy as the primary challenger to Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, who still supported the Vietnam War. Buoyed by hope, Whitney decided to check on her sister, the least she could do.

  Removing her shoes, she climbed the stairs, tiptoeing past her parents’ bedroom before she cracked open Janine’s door. He sister’s bed was empty. A shaft of light from the bathroom caused Whitney to peer inside.

  Naked, Janine knelt over the toilet, vomiting into the bowl.

  To Whitney’s startled eyes, she looked much thinner than she remembered. She knelt, resting a hand on Janine’s frail shoulder as she fought off the smell of nausea and sex. With a final retching shudder, Janine sagged, hair touching the rim of the bowl. She stared at her own spewings, unable to look at Whitney.

  “It’s okay,” Whitney said softly.

  Janine shook her head. “You can’t tell them,” she said in a dispirited whisper. “I drank too much, that’s all.”

  That’s not all, Whitney wanted to say. But pleading in her sister’s eyes forced her to murmur, “I promise.”

  Mute, Janine tried to stand. Pulling her upright, Whitney walked her to the bed, arms around her sister’s waist. “I’m okay now,” Janine said wanly. “I just need to sleep.”

  She climbed in bed, pulling a sheet up to her chin. For a time, Whitney sat beside her as Janine stared at the ceiling. With a squeeze of her sister’s hand, Whitney said, “Sleep well.”

  Returning to the bathroom, she flushed the toilet, using tissue paper to dab away the last traces of her sister’s sickness. Then she walked softly through the bedroom, pausing to look back at Janine. Her sister lay in the same position, still staring into nothingness. Soundlessly, Whitney closed the door, heading downstairs to retrieve her shoes.