He studied her, angling his head. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“Not really.” Caught in her own trap, Whitney forged on. “He feels awkward about the other night, and grateful you bothered to pull me out of the ocean. I also told him that if you two were civil about politics, you might even like each other. He didn’t grow up with a trust fund, either.”
For once, Ben’s expression was devoid of irony or humor. “I’m not sure this is a good idea, Whitney.”
She had said as much to her father. But, whether from hope or incaution, she had gone too far. “Not if you’re determined to see him as the great class enemy, and my mother as the lady of the manor. But if you keep an open mind, you might find each other interesting.”
The glint reappeared in his eyes. “Are some black kids from Roxbury coming too?”
“We asked them, of course,” Whitney said tartly. “But they’re tied up playing basketball.”
Silent, Ben studied her face. More quietly, he asked, “So what do you want me to do, Whitney?”
Despite herself, Whitney realized that she wanted her parents to like him. “To show up for dinner. More or less on time.”
“Not fashionably late?” Ben said in an ironic tone tinged with resignation. “That’s what my parents always taught me.”
Six
When she heard Ben knock on the door, Whitney hurried to open it.
To her surprise, he looked different—his hair was damp from the shower, and combed into a semblance of discipline; he wore a blue sport coat and khakis that seemed slightly worn; and, most incongruous to her, carried a vase of freshly cut flowers. Despite his insouciant smile, Whitney could feel his discomfort—entering the Dane’s home ground, he seemed less self-assured.
“Here goes the neighborhood,” he murmured, and followed her inside.
Charles waited in the living room with Anne, a scotch already in his hand. He put the tumbler down on a mahogany drink coaster, and stood to meet their guest. “Hello, Ben,” he said, extending a firm handshake and a smile that perhaps only Whitney saw as short of fully welcoming. “I’m Charles Dane.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Dane,” Ben responded a trifle stiffly. He turned to Anne, holding out the vase of flowers. “I brought these for you, Mrs. Dane.”
“How lovely,” Anne said with a smile of her own. “Where did you find them?”
Ben shifted his weight. “I picked these while I was weeding the Dunmores’ garden. Seeing how they’re in Europe this summer, I thought you might enjoy them.”
Anne’s smile diminished. “The Dunmores’ loss is our gain,” she responded, and put the vase on the coffee table, sliding a magazine beneath it so that nothing got on the wood. A brief but awkward silence was interrupted by a sharp rap on the rear door.
“It’s Clarice,” Whitney told Ben. “I invited her to join us.”
The glint in his eye suggested he fully grasped her reason—Clarice could serve as a social buffer, helping to make this a dinner for young people rather than a simulacrum of parents meeting a new boyfriend in front of their captive daughter. When Whitney answered the door, Clarice whispered, “Is he already here?”
Nodding, Whitney said under her breath. “I can’t believe I did this.”
“So let’s make the best of it,” Clarice said with a mischievous smile. “Charlotte Brontë meets Edith Wharton. Personally, I see Ben as Heathcliff.”
Briskly, Clarice entered the living room with a minuet of courtesy, embracing Anne without smudging her makeup, giving Charles a bright smile followed by an decorous daughterly kiss on the cheek, and according Ben a casual, “Hi, Ben,” suited to his age and standing. Charles offered the women white wine, then turned to his guest. “What’s your pleasure, Ben? We have everything.”
“Whiskey, thanks. No ice.”
Reaching into the liquor cabinet, Charles poured him a generous measure of Maker’s Mark. Then everyone sat, Whitney’s parents in two wing chairs, Ben and Whitney on the couch with their duenna, Clarice, between them. Charles raised a glass to Ben. “This is my first chance to thank you for saving Whitney from drowning.”
“My pleasure, sir. As I told Mrs. Dane, it was sheer luck—Whitney swims off my favorite place on the island.”
“Tell us about yourself,” Anne requested pleasantly. “The four of us know everything about each other. But none of us knows what it’s like to really live here.”
Ben took a hasty sip of whisky. “I don’t have much to compare it to. My family came here a long time ago. Whaling, to start, then fishing, then lobstering.”
“The whaling industry must have been interesting. Were they sea captains?”
“I doubt it,” Ben answered with a smile. “I expect they went along for the ride and whatever they could make from a year at sea. But nobody thought to keep track of it. All I can know is that the headstones on Abel’s Hill go back to the early 1800’s.”
“That is a long time,” Anne agreed, “Where on the island do your parents live now?”
“In Menemsha, near the harbor.”
“Is that the family home?”
Ben smiled fractionally. “In the sense that my family lives there. It’s not new, but I couldn’t say when it was built—nothing about it would tell you, and neither of my parents is big on family history. For them history begins every morning when my father gets up before dawn, and ends with him falling asleep in his chair.”
Ben said this courteously enough, and Whitney was grateful that he had airbrushed the violence that had distorted his youth. But the laconic words underscored the chasm between his life and that of the Danes, leaving Whitney to wonder whether her mother had intended to adduce this, or simply had always been too affluent to imagine a much harsher existence. From beneath lowered eyelids, Clarice seemed to be watching Ben intently. “So you grew up on the island,” Charles said. “Seems like a nice place to do that.”
“In some ways,” Ben allowed. “I guess you’ve never been here in February.”
“I haven’t. We close down the house every fall.”
“Good idea. We don’t get the picture-postcard winter people associate with New England. The Vineyard is cold and gray and barren, and the days end so quickly that darkness feels like it’s closing in around you. By February it’s so raw and bleak it seeps into your bones. That’s when you know you’re on a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. It changes people, and not for the better.”
Ben’s tone was not complaining; instead, it had the reportorial neutrality of someone describing an experience to others who have never had it. “When you say it changes people . . .” Charles inquired.
“They start to look hunched, like they’re cooped up in a cage. I’ve come to think there’s a kind of cruelty in having summers so beautiful and yet so short, followed by this claustrophobic winter you’d swear will never end. It makes for too much drinking, too many fathers beating their wives and kids. Sometimes worse.”
“What could be worse?” Anne asked with muted horror.
Ben took a sip of whisky, considering his answer. “Lines get crossed. Ever notice how many deaf people there are on the island?”
Anne’s brow knit. “I suppose so. There are a couple of businesses that employ them, aren’t there?”
Nodding, Ben continued in the same dispassionate tone. “In the last century, when the menfolk got shut in for months, some of them got tired of turning to their wives. After a few decades of pregnant daughters, some of the babies started getting born deaf. But that’s not the kind of family history people put in books.”
Discomfited, Whitney saw Anne’s expression of shock, and Charles shaking his head before saying, “That’s a terrible story.”
“It is,” Ben agreed. “Fortunately for me, everyone in my family can hear just fine. At least when they’re listening.” As though feeling Whitney’s unease, he continued, “You’re right, though—there’s a lot about growing up here I wouldn’t change. In the summer, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, especia
lly when I was on the water.” He glanced briefly at Clarice. “In fact, I used to crew for Clarice’s dad.”
“So George tells me,” Charles responded. “He says you’re quite the seaman.”
“It’s in the blood, I guess. If I’d had some other life, I’d never have set foot on Mr. Barkley’s boat. I’ve learned to appreciate when I’m lucky.”
Charles nodded his approval. But to Whitney, even this pleasant exchange carried an unspoken subtext: that Charles had called George Barkley to inquire about Ben; that Ben felt the Danes took their good fortune for granted. “And the schools here must be excellent,” Anne was saying. “Whitney says you’re going to Yale.”
“I was. College is where I got lucky in a couple of respects. Yale had started looking for more public school kids. Then some teachers helped me get a scholarship, so I could actually go.”
Charles smiled to indicate that this aspect of Ben’s story was familiar. “I was a scholarship boy, too, at Columbia. Every day I told myself to make the most of it.”
Ben glanced at their surroundings with a respectfully appreciative gaze. “Seems like you have, Mr. Dane. I hope that I can, too.”
It was good, Whitney supposed, that Ben did not know that the house had belonged to Anne’s father—or that Charles, like Peter, had married into the firm. Aware of her silence, she told her parents, “Ben’s interested in writing.”
“Really?” Charles said to Ben. “What kind?”
“Journalism, to start.”
“Then I imagine you plan on journalism school.”
Ben grimaced. “I was. But I dropped out of Yale to campaign for Robert Kennedy. One of the unfortunate by-products is that I lost my draft deferment.”
Her father must have forgotten this, Whitney thought. His expression somber, Charles said, “That was a shame, Ben—all around. So what will you do now?”
“As I told Whitney, I hope to get back to Yale at the end of summer, finish up before the draft board snags me. Right now they’re looking for bodies, anyone without a deferment. Until September, that’s me.”
Feeling Clarice’s glance, Whitney wished that her father had not steered the conversation so close to the escape he had obtained for Peter. “I’m sure you’re worried,” Charles said. “But I’d think there’d be enough candidates so that you could get by for another month or so.”
Ben’s face turned blank. “Hope so. But that particular kind of luck may depend on where you’re from.”
“How do you mean?”
Ben finished his drink. “Seems like the local draft board has fewer prospects than some do. About a year ago, a friend from high school ran short of money and had to drop out of UMass. Within two months, they’d reclassified Johnny 1-A and called him in for a physical. The way he told the story, he stripped down to his underwear and tramped around with a bunch of other guys, while Army doctors in white coats certified they were still alive. Johnny thought that breathing was pretty much the baseline qualification—unless you’d found your own doctor to say you had some debilitating disease.”
Having finished a substantial glass of whiskey, Ben was sounding more like himself. Whitney did not find this reassuring; nor was she happy, when her father poured another inch or two in his tumbler, reminding her that Charles’s overgenerosity with liquor had led to Peter’s gracelessness. “I do know some guys who got out,” Clarice offered encouragingly. “Quite a few, actually.”
“No doubt,” Ben said in a slightly ironic tone. “At the end of the physical, Johnny told me, they asked the next fifteen guys in line if they had a disability that would exempt them. Thirteen of them were white, like Johnny—except they were graduate students from the mainland who’d already slipped into a reserve unit.” Ben took another swallow of whisky. “Strangely, all thirteen had doctor’s letters explaining why they couldn’t serve. Even though all they had to do was show up for drill a few weeks every year, and their only chance of dying would be to fall on their own bayonets.”
To Whitney, the parallel to Peter had become far too exact. From the cool look in his eyes, Charles saw it, too. But Ben went on in the pleasant manner of anyone narrating a story. “Most of the white guys got out. Without a letter, Johnny was doomed. But you know what he thought even funnier? The black guy turned out to have one leg an inch shorter than the other. When they rejected him, he was actually let down. Turned out he couldn’t find a job, and was hoping to make the Army a career.”
“I think that’s admirable,” Anne said firmly. “Someone using military service to better himself.”
Ben nodded, an indecipherable expression on his face. “Hopefully he’s found a job by now. A safer one.”
Whitney saw Clarice watching him with renewed attentiveness. Quietly, she asked, “What happened to your friend?”
For a moment, Ben started into the bottom of his empty glass. “Oh,” he said softly, “Johnny’s dead. He stepped on a landmine in Vietnam, less than a week ago. At least that’s what his mom told me when I dropped by this morning.”
A deep silence descended, no one looking at anyone else. “A terrible thing,” Charles said gravely, and then the housekeeper announced dinner.
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 i
nvestor 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.”
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