Loss of Innocence

by Richard North Patterson

  Quietly, Whitney said, “I’m glad you didn’t go.”

  “I couldn’t. I didn’t have the heart for it.”

  On the screen the Kennedy delegates were singing, chanting, stomping on the floor, their caged energy building. Trying to drown them out, the mayor’s forces began shouting from the gallery, “We love Daley, we love Daley, we love Daley . . .”

  As if on signal, their shouting stopped. A black man appeared on the podium, asking for a moment of silence in memory of Martin Luther King. There was a murmur of confusion until, from respect for another murdered leader, the demonstration of love for Robert Kennedy dwindled like the slow leak of a tire.

  “I guess King still has his uses,” Ben said bitterly, then continued in a softer voice, “From the day he was shot, I started watching the crowds, wondering who’d come for Bobby. A few days later we entered a one-story town in Indiana, and saw police snipers on the rooftops overlooking the square where Bobby spoke. When I asked a cop if there’d been some kind of threat, all he said was, ‘We just want to make sure he leaves here the same way he came in.’ Bobby felt it, too—you could see it in his eyes. But he kept on riding in open convertibles, letting people see him.

  “That last week in California was like a fever dream—the crowds, the screaming, the desperation of whites and blacks and Hispanics reaching out for him. In Los Angeles, someone put a kid in his arms as we passed, this pretty black girl of maybe five. There’s this craziness all around us and she’s just sitting in Bobby’s lap, holding a stuffed rabbit while he whispers in her ear, like nothing matters to him except what’s going on with this kid. Finally, he gets her to remember her phone number and address, tells the driver to stop, and asks me to find a cop to make sure she gets home safely. When the car started moving, he was still looking back at her. It was the last time I ever rode with him.”

  “Were you there?” Whitney asked hesitantly. “When it happened, I mean.”

  Still staring at the screen, Ben nodded mutely. “After his victory speech,” he said at last, “I expected him to wade through the crowd, like he always did. Instead someone told him to take a rear passageway out of the hotel. So Bobby and his bodyguards go down a hallway past a serving kitchen, with me trailing behind him.” In profile, Ben’s eyes moistened almost imperceptibly. “I see him stop to shake hands with a dishwasher, then hear a sound like dry wood snapping. Suddenly I can’t find him, and there’s chaos and screaming all around where Bobby was standing. When I get there, Ethel’s kneeling over him. For an instant I can see the look in his eyes, aware but unsurprised, like he was thinking, ‘so this is it.’ Then his bodyguards closed around, and they took him away. It was the last time I prayed for anyone, or ever will.”

  Her throat constricted, Whitney found nothing to say.

  Reaching for the bottle, Ben resumed staring at the convention’s heartless pageantry, the cameras trained on Daley as he scanned the floor with the satisfaction of an oligarch certain of his power. At last, Hubert Humphrey came to the podium, looking as happy as anyone could manage amidst the violence in the streets, the thwarted longing for Robert Kennedy inside the hall.

  “Are you sure you want to watch this?” Whitney asked.

  “It’s the new reality,” he answered.

  “Rioting, burning, sniping, muggings, traffic in narcotics, and disregard for the law,” Humphrey was declaiming in his pipe organ voice, “are the advance guard of anarchy, and they must and will be stopped . . .”

  Daley’s galleries released a full-throated roar, drawing from their nominee an incongruous look of delight. Then he launched into what sounded, at least to Whitney, like some nightmare amalgam of hackneyed Fourth of July speeches.

  “Once again, we give our testimonial to America. Each and every one of us in our own way should reaffirm for ourselves and our posterity that we love this nation, we love America.” Invoking Democratic presidents like a litany of saints, he concluded with Lyndon Johnson. “And tonight, Mr. President, I say thank you. Thank you, Mr. President . . .”

  “For making me a eunuch,” Ben muttered with bottomless disdain.

  But Humphrey’s pieties continued unabated. “We are, and we must be, one nation, united by liberty and justice for all, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all . . .”

  “And Wonder Bread,” Ben added, “which builds strong bodies twelve ways.”

  “With the help of that vast, unfrightened, dedicated, faithful majority of Americans,” Humphrey effused, “I say to this great convention tonight, to this great nation of ours, I am ready to lead America . . .”

  He was in a bubble, Whitney thought, more otherworldly and horrific for the violence outside. She could not easily imagine how Ben felt.

  The telephone rang. Abruptly, he got up to answer, listening intently before murmuring, “Jesus Christ . . .”

  For the next few moments, Ben said little. Hanging up, he stood there, arms folded tightly, staring at the floor.

  “What is it?”

  At first, he did not answer. “That was a friend, a Kennedy guy who went to Chicago. While Humphrey was bloviating there was another riot at the Hilton, worse than last night. Seth got caught between the cops and the hotel.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Except for a split lip and two missing teeth. Some guy from the McCarthy campaign pulled him into the lobby, still puking from the tear gas, then took him up to a hotel room fifteen floors up. From there he could see everything. A man carrying a woman with her skull cracked open until the cops pummeled them to the ground; people begging for mercy as police beat them to a pulp; more cops clubbing anyone with a camera; waves of cops in blue helmets trampling helpless kids. Even that far up Seth could hear clubs cracking skulls and smell the mace and tear gas. He says the floor of the hotel room was like a MASH unit, people lying there bleeding onto the carpet.” He stopped, then finished with acidic quotation of Hubert Humphrey’s speech, “‘Once again, we give our testament to America . . .’”

  Whitney stood, walking toward him. “I’m sorry.”

  For the first time Ben looked into her eyes. “For what?”

  “That it ended this way for you.” She hesitated. “For all of us.”

  Wordless, he stared at her. “Oh, well,” he responded tonelessly. “Life will go on for you.”

  Rebuffed, Whitney turned away. “I’d better go . . .”

  “Damn you,” he said under his breath. “Damn you, Whitney Dane.”

  Startled, she looked up at him, shaken by the intensity in his eyes. Placing his hand behind her neck, Ben pulled her face to his.

  In her confusion, Whitney did not pull away. She felt the warmth of his lips, her blood rushing, the world closing down. Instinctively, she shut her eyes.

  She was kissing him back now, she realized, their tongues touching, bodies pressed against each other’s. A last protest from deep in her core caused Whitney to pull back.

  “My God, Ben—what am I doing?”

  He gazed at her, breathing hard, hands clasping her waist. “What you want to do.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  Tearing herself away, Whitney hurried through the door.

  Blindly, she rushed toward home, the air chilling the flush on her skin, tears of shock stinging her eyes. She felt as though the earth had opened up beneath her.

  Her mother had left the porch light on. She headed toward it, legs still weak from panic and desire. She forced herself to slow, fighting to compose herself, then entered the house.

  Her mother was in the living room, dressed in a chiffon robe. “Where have you been?” she asked in a tight voice. “When I knocked on your bedroom door, you weren’t there.”

  Whitney had no answer to give. “Sorry if I worried you.”

  Anne gazed up at her. More quietly, she said, “You look a mess, Whitney. Is there anything we should discuss?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  Without awaiting an answer, Whitney went to her
room.

  Undressing, she lay in the dark, a stranger to herself, bereft in her solitude, yet grateful for it.

  Who am I? she wondered. But all that came to her was the warmth of Ben’s lips, the press of his body.

  Instinctively, Whitney touched herself.

  Ben came to her, as he had with Peter inside her. She felt her body tighten, seeking him again. The climax came in waves, leaving her limbs slack, the warmth of her release commingling with shame.

  Please, she told herself, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do this to Peter.

  She had to see him. She did not know what she would say or do. But she could not stay here, or something irrevocable would happen. Perhaps it already had, for Whitney no longer knew herself.

  Three

  The next morning, Whitney found her mother in the sunroom. “I’ve decided to visit Peter this weekend,” she informed her. “I’ve already booked the ten o’clock flight. I’d like to do some grocery shopping and surprise him when he gets home.”

  “What a nice idea,” Anne remarked with evident relief. “When we were living in that same apartment, your dad always loved it when I had his scotch and a good dinner waiting for him. No matter how late the hour.”

  Whitney caught a wistful note. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  Though Anne smiled, a glimmer of uncertainty surfaced in her eyes. “Perhaps you can also drop in on Janine. In the last few days I’ve had trouble reaching her.”

  At last, Whitney sensed, the worries she had expressed for her sister were, though unacknowledged, germinating in their mother’s mind. But she had deeper worries of her own.

  “I’ll try,” she promised vaguely.

  In the taxi to the airport, Whitney felt anxious and confused. Issuing from the radio, the new Beatles anthem, “Revolution,” became the ironic soundtrack for her own disorientation, jumbled images of the violence in Chicago merging with her desire for Ben. Perhaps she should tell Peter the truth, confessing her fault, and seek his help in sorting through her emotions. But she could not easily imagine hurting him this way—or her own hurt if she lost the only boy she had ever loved.

  Had she done enough to deserve that, really? She had broken away from Ben, unfaithful only in her imaginings. In another week or two, he might be gone to the army; a short time after that, she and Peter would be safely married. As Clarice often told her, sometimes it was best to conceal what could only create harm. It would become Whitney’s mission to make up for her behavior without seeking absolution.

  She mulled these thoughts over and over as the half-empty plane rose from the tarmac and headed out over the Atlantic. After a few moments of choppy air, the flight settled into a smooth trajectory, the only sound the whirring of propellers on the wing visible through her window. An hour later, as they descended toward LaGuardia, a few cirrus clouds hovered over New York City. But it was warm and sunny when she fetched her luggage, hailed a Yellow Cab, and headed for midtown Manhattan.

  Crossing the Triborough Bridge, she felt the familiar surge of excitement at the sight of the Empire State Building jutting from the skyline. She and Peter would be lucky to live here before they retreated to the green tranquility of Greenwich, the hush of sweeping grounds and secluded homes. And she was anxious to see the apartment again, to contemplate its spaces at leisure and in solitude, picturing what furniture or pieces of art might go where, so that later she could share her thoughts without straining Peter’s limited patience with such things. Imagining this, she felt an inexpressible relief to have left Martha’s Vineyard and Benjamin Blaine behind—for once, Manhattan seemed the simpler place, a refuge that also held her future.

  In this mood, even the gridlock, the horns blaring as her cab made its fitful progress from block to block of the East Side, felt less annoying than enveloping. Instead of counting the minutes, she scanned the streets for restaurants or galleries that she and Peter might frequent on crisp fall days, envisioning leisurely mornings and afternoons of unearthing finds for the apartment or visiting museums before stopping at an outdoor café. She felt lucky beyond words to have been granted such a life.

  At last the cab stopped in front of their apartment building. In a philanthropic mood, she tipped the cabbie generously, then toted her suitcase to the door. The doorman seemed to be missing. Reaching inside her purse for the keys that Charles had given her, she unlocked the glass-and-wrought-iron door and carried her suitcase across the polished marble floor of the lobby to the bank of elevators that, by the look of them, had been in service since her parents’ time. Pressing a button, she heard the whine of cables before the elevator settled with a metallic clank, its steel mesh creaking as it parted to admit her. She stepped inside, the mesh closing around her, and the elevator lurched upward before its ascent ended with a slightly jarring abruptness.

  Savoring the eccentricities that lent the building character, Whitney went down the hallway and stopped at the wooden door, marked 9-E, with the brass knocker beneath the eyehole. She put down her suitcase, and opened it. Pausing in the doorway, she surveyed their apartment, smiling to herself, then stifled a sharp, sudden intake of breath.

  A woman’s leather purse, its style familiar, lay on the breakfast table. Whitney stepped inside.

  The bedroom door was ajar. Through it she heard footsteps on the wooden floor of what had been her parents’ sanctuary and now was Peter’s. The sounds made by a light, bare foot.

  With agonizing softness, Whitney closed the door behind her.

  Instinctively, she stepped out of her pumps, inching sideways to peer through the door. “I know what you want,” a woman’s voice teased.

  Heart racing, Whitney saw her blond hair and slender, perfect form—the tip of a pert breast, the tan, slender legs and firm bottom as she glided toward the bed. “I enjoy it, too,” Clarice assured him softly. “But maybe I’ll torture you a little.”

  Her tone was serene, that of a woman confident in her allure for the man who watched her. Then the sliver of Clarice’s body vanished like a flickering frame of film.

  There was a rustling of sheets, a muffled male sigh. Whitney closed her eyes. She could not bear seeing or hearing them, searing this terrible moment into her memory until she died. Numb, she knelt to pick up her shoes, her backward footsteps silent, the only sound in the apartment the quiet stirring of the two lovers in her bedroom.

  Careful to make no sound, Whitney closed the door as she left, then rested her face against it, tears running down her cheeks.

  She stayed there like that, with no desire to move until, at last, she willed herself to take her purse and suitcase and, dabbing at her eyes, tried to reclaim some semblance of the woman who had come here.

  Like an automaton, she pressed the button to the elevator, hand trembling with the shock of Peter’s betrayal, the toxic selfishness of her closest friend. No wonder Clarice spent time away, and what a fool they must think her to be. But what shriveled her soul was the callousness hidden beneath Peter’s guileless persona, his enjoyment of Clarice’s sexual insouciance despite all of Whitney’s efforts to please him, shattering her belief that she was capable of knowing anyone at all.

  The elevator came to a stop, its passage yawning open. Stepping inside, Whitney allowed it to take her down. When it opened again, she stood there, suspended in misery, before stepping back into the lobby.

  The uniformed doorman had returned, a stocky Italian with a seamed face. Though Whitney had encountered him before, he gave her a slightly puzzled smile. In her dream-state, she thought he must not recognize her then realized the doorman must have known, long before her, who was visiting 9-E, and for what purpose. Humiliated, she passed him without speaking and walked to the door, not acknowledging that he held it open for her.

  Outside, the sun of early afternoon felt pitiless, and the humid, sooty air stung her eyes. In a dull fever, Whitney crossed the street, heedless of the cab that skidded short of her with a sharp blare of its horn, reaching the other side before she t
urned back toward the apartment building, still clutching her suitcase, a refugee from her own life. All she could manage was to lean against the rough bark of the nearest tree, its shade a barely noticed mercy in the searing heat.

  What could she do now?

  She had come to Peter ashamed of her betrayal, only to learn she had been betrayed by the two people who, outside her family, she loved most—her closest friend and the man to whom she had entrusted her heart. The full measure of her friend’s duplicity struck her hard, less as a surprise in itself—Clarice was candid enough about that much—but that she would turn it on Whitney, claiming the right to toy with Peter without respecting him as a man, all the while condescending to Whitney in her pitiable innocence. And so had Peter, counseling her to conceal her sister’s secrets, all too conscious of his own.

  A belated fury seeped through Whitney’ shock. Suddenly all she wanted was to unleash her rage on whoever left the apartment, one or both, indifferent to what might follow the moment of feral satisfaction when her startled quarry saw her coming toward them.

  Taking a deep breath, she struggled to calm herself and wait.

  She passed an hour against the tree, its shelter overcome by heat that dampened her forehead and the back of her dress. She tried to empty her mind, blocking out the cars and pedestrians and delivery trucks—the urban life all around her—intent only on watching the door. She must not think of the future she no longer had.

  The door opened.

  As Whitney tensed, a gray-haired woman emerged, smiling at the doorman as her cocker spaniel strained at its leash. Reflexively, Whitney slid behind the tree, head lowered, a tremor of trapped emotion causing her chest to rise and fall. When she looked up, the door was opening again.

  A soft cry escaped her throat.

  Charles Dane strode into the sunlight, turning his head sharply to spot a cab, his air as commanding as though he were moving from one business meeting to the next, expecting this one, too, to go as he willed. The sight of him was like a punch to the stomach—she felt nauseated, helpless to fight the searing image of her own father mounting his surrogate daughter. If Charles looked across the street, he would see her.