“Are you going to tell them I proposed?”
“No,” she responded firmly. “This decision belongs to us. But I can’t run away from them, either.”
For an instant she read the answer in his eyes—You could. But his only words were, “Then go, Whitney. Just remember what I’ve said.”
“How could I forget?” she asked him softly. Then she gathered herself for the walk back to her parents’ home, the remnant of the life she had always known.
Eleven
Her mother and father were in the living room, snifters of brandy in front of them—Anne haggard, Charles looking deflated. Sitting on the couch with their bodies slightly turned from each other, they reminded Whitney for a lacerating moment of mannequins someone had left there. Looking up, her father marshaled a semblance of command. “Where have you been?”
“With Ben.”
“Doing what?” her mother broke in.
“For the last hour or so? Talking.” The disdain Whitney heard in her own voice sounded like that of a stranger. “You know—that’s when one person speaks, the other listens, and they keep on taking turns. It works best when both of them are trying to tell the truth.” Seeing the hurt and confusion in her mother’s eyes, she said more evenly, “But never mind Ben and me. How was Janine when you left her?”
Anne stared at her as though Whitney were as alien as she felt. “Bereft,” she said, glancing at her husband. “It felt so cruel to leave her in such a place.”
Whitney heard the resistance in her mother’s voice, her need to recreate Janine pushing stubbornly to the surface. Turning to her father, Whitney said, “You’re keeping her there, right?”
Her imperative tone seemed to widen the fissure between her parents. Anne turned to Charles, her expression pleading. But she did not—could not—know the leverage Whitney had to compel her father’s decision. “Yes,” he told his daughter. “At least until the doctors have spent more time with her.”
The last phrase made her uneasy. “Can we talk, Dad?”
Anne shot her an angry look. “Are you dismissing me like some menial?”
“No, I’m not. But right now I need to speak with Dad.”
Without waiting for an answer, Whitney quickly walked to Charles’s den, leaving the door open behind her. Her father followed, closing the door before he sat across from her.
“Well?” he asked.
Whitney composed herself. “If you don’t make her stay there, Janine could fall apart—maybe even die. I’m not protecting your secret because you deserve it.”
“Maybe I don’t,” Charles said with barely repressed anger. “But your mother does.”
Oddly, his outrage increased Whitney’s sense, still astonishing to her, that she could force him to do what she wanted. “True. But Janine isn’t Mom’s consolation prize. Don’t let her ruin my sister to buy yourself some peace.”
“Yes, all right. But you’ve become quite the hanging judge, Whitney, for a twenty-one-year-old girl who’s throwing away her life.”
Once again, Whitney felt the hollowness of not knowing who she was. “Let’s talk about Clarice. Have you told her yet?”
“Yes.” Charles sounded both accusatory and aggrieved. “I’d like to have done the decent thing, tell her in person. But I no longer know what you’ll do. So I called her while your mother was with Janine, and explained what you’d seen and what you wanted.”
Whitney could imagine Clarice, hearing this on the phone in her bedroom, the place where they had shared so many sleepovers. “How did she take all that?”
“Except for a brief moment, with admirable self-control.” Charles’s voice lowered. “It will please you to know I found her poise more painful than anger, and that you’ll never hear from her again. So now that I’ve done my part, I expect the same from you.”
“What is my part, exactly?”
Standing, Charles began to pace, his voice firm. “You’ve stumbled on the fact that I have feet of clay, and you’re bristling with righteous indignation. But I’m still your father, with the right to expect that this family will pick up as before—all of us—and that you’ll recommence acting as my daughter, not my parole officer.” He paused for emphasis, speaking slowly but firmly. “And, more than that, as Peter’s fiancé—not his judge. I’ve spoken with him, and he’s willing to look past this infatuation with Ben if you’ll forgive his forced complicity in sins he never approved of. You’re getting the best of that bargain by a long shot.”
“Isn’t that up to me?”
“Three days ago, I’d have trusted your judgment about almost anything. Now I’m asking you to stop and think. There’s been enough disruption in this family, and in your life. It would be best for you to have the wedding, and to resume living as you were always meant to.” Gazing down at her, he continued with the confidence that once had brooked no argument. “This importunate young man you’re involved with will never give you the security you’ve always needed, far more than I think you know. Peter will.”
Angry, Whitney stood. “It’s you who’s assured my future. Including the security of knowing I may never see Ben again.”
“I shouldn’t have done that, Whitney. But Benjamin Blaine gives me a feeling so dire I can’t begin to describe it.” Her father’s manner became imploring. “When I sense something this strongly, I’m very seldom wrong. All Ben truly cares about is what he wants and needs. Please understand I was trying to protect you from immeasurable heartache.”
“So now I should protect myself by marrying Peter.”
“You’re forgetting all his virtues,” her father protested, “including that he loves you and is devastated by what happened. But if you want to put it that way, yes. You’ve received a jolt for which I’ve asked forgiveness, more than once. But your judgment is impaired, and mine—about this—is not. If you have any doubts about what to do, please consider your mother’s feelings.”
Suddenly Whitney felt less anger than a deep and abiding sadness. It was a moment before she found the will and the words to answer. “I have considered her, Father. Not just how she feels, but who she’s become. Her example is one reason, among many, that I broke off my engagement.” Her tone softened. “Poor Peter. He must feel as lost as I do, still wanting to marry a girl who’s in love with someone else.”
Before he could respond, she walked past him, out of the room and through the rear door of the house, desperate to breathe the cool night air.
Walking toward the ocean, she sat on a ledge above the water. In search of calm, she gazed up at the stars glinting in the night sky, undimmed by city lights. Since her first glimmerings of comprehension, she had pondered them each summer. As a child, holding her father’s hand, she had marveled at how close they seemed; as a schoolgirl, she had struggled to grasp that they were light years away, their illumination far older than she was. Now she absorbed their permanence, an unchanging feature of a life that had changed so much.
She watched them for an hour, weighing her future, irresolute in the face of such confident men, so certain of who she was and what she needed. Whitney would have to face them, knowing all that she might lose or gain while understanding no more than she did now. It was terrible that what she felt for Ben, so immediate and so strong, could be freighted with such apprehension.
“Sleep which knits the raveled sleeve of care,” Shakespeare had written somewhere. She wished that she could fall into its spell and awaken as a different woman, strong and calm and certain. But even if she managed to sleep, the most she could hope for was to feel less depleted, a little more able to sort through the men and choices tearing her apart, the fears of a young woman, still barely an adult, who seemed to know so much less about herself than she had three months before.
That she was somehow changed was all she knew, uncertainty her only certainty. With that scant consolation, she went back to the house and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, twisting the sheets in a fractured sleep interrupted by her dread of dawn.
He was sitting at the end of the mooring, a cup of coffee in his hand, a metal thermos beside him. When he looked over his shoulder at the sound of her footsteps, his eyes were bleary, his hair disheveled. “Didn’t sleep much,” he said. “Did you?”
“No.”
She sat beside him, uncertain of what she would say. “Made any decisions?” he asked.
Perhaps her answer was spurred by the impatience she heard beneath his worry—an echo of her father, though softened by the fact that she might hold his future in her hands, creating a vulnerability that must torment him. She tried to smile but could not. “I can’t marry you, Ben.”
He searched her eyes so intently that she wanted to look away. “Now—or ever?”
“Now,” she answered softly. “Or ten days from now.” Fearful of losing him, she clutched his hand. “I’m not talking about the future. I love you as much as I can. But I can’t run from one man to another—from two men, actually, not knowing who I am or what I want from life.” She looked into his face, imploring him to understand. “Ever since I can remember, there was always someone to take care of me—my mom and dad; our housekeeper, Billie; the teachers at my schools and counselors at summer camp. Even in college, I still came home to the parents who supported me.
“Peter would have been next. And after that I’d have a family of my own, emulating my mother, with our future underwritten by my father.” She grasped his hand tighter. “Maybe I want something more—to be something more than what other people think I should be. Even you.”
“Be whatever you like,” he retorted swiftly. “All I want is a life with you.”
Whitney felt a stab of fear—that by refusing Ben she was placing him on the dangerous path her father had ordained. “I so hate saying this,” she said fiercely. “I’d die inside if anything happened to you, and I value you so much. You make me think, and you make me feel. I need that, much more than I ever knew.” She paused, her throat tightening. “But I just can’t go from being the future Mrs. Peter Brooks to Mrs. Benjamin Blaine. If you weren’t the one who was asking, you’d say I was selling myself too short.”
Hurt caused him to look away, and then he tried to cover this with a smile. “It’s obvious I talk too much. But you worry too much. I don’t see you in an apron, unless that’s all you’re wearing.”
Heartsick, Whitney touched his face. “Whatever happens—even if you have to go away—I won’t be married when you come back. That’s one thing I’m sure of.” She paused again, trying to put words to feelings. “There’s so much I have to learn about myself, and about you. For all that’s happened, in so many ways I still don’t know you.”
A glint of anger surfaced in his eyes. “You know enough. Our minds meet, and we’re good in bed. Most people never have that.”
Whitney drew a breath, then spoke in a more level voice. “I thought I knew my father, and Peter. I didn’t. You’re a complicated person, Ben, and you take up a lot of space. Sometimes you scare me a little. But even without that, I have to find my way before I can imagine a life with you.”
Ben’s face hardened in a cast she had never seen, an obdurate mask. “I don’t think so,” he said harshly. “This feels like our moment, Whitney. In a year or two, I may be dead. You know that, and you’ve chosen to treat what we have like a summer romance and nothing more. If I get through this, who can say you won’t be married? That’s an empty promise, a pathetic consolation prize.” He stood abruptly. “I’ll spare you the awkward days and nights of pretending we’re not finished by ignoring where I’m going, and why. Maybe I’ll get lucky. But if I wind up getting shot at in some stinking Vietnamese jungle, I’ll remember why I’m there—not just by your father’s choice, but yours. Even if I survive, I don’t think we could get past that.”
Shaken, Whitney rose to face him. “You’re forcing me to make an impossible choice . . .”
“Am I? Maybe so. But life is choices—at least for you. You’re still the daughter of privilege, free to walk away and seek whatever future you can find, no matter what mine turns out to be. So I’m walking away first.” He looked at her hard, then said firmly, “Goodbye, Whitney. It’s better for me this way.”
Gazing into his eyes, Whitney felt guilt, loss, resentment and, beyond that, all the wounds his life had dealt him, too deep for her to salve. He started down the catwalk, then turned to look at her again. “I’ll remember you,” he said. “You’re the one I couldn’t have.” He stood there for a moment, then finished, “Maybe you’ll even remember me. I’m the one who kept you from drowning.”
Before she could answer, he turned again, walking swiftly away without a backward glance. A stubborn pride of her own kept Whitney where she was.
Twelve
On the beach at Dogfish Bar, Whitney wept from exhaustion, an aching sense of loneliness and loss. Finally, the shudders wracking her body subsided, and the tears dried on her face. She was all cried out.
What was she now, Whitney wondered, but a strung out girl with an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach, her resources too paltry to navigate the nothingness she faced. Then she recalled her journal.
Writers write, Ben had quoted his professor. It’s like breathing—it’s what they do.
Whitney opened it, staring at the next blank page. Then, haltingly at first, she began to write her future.
Her parents sat on the porch in what struck Whitney as a tableau of their former life, Charles reading the Wall Street Journal, with Anne beside him working a crossword puzzle. Regarding them in silence, Whitney felt less anger than sadness, an odd feeling of compassion that she wished seemed more like love than the desire not to jar their fragile hold on this pose of a calm, contented couple. From beneath their veneer, both parents eyed her warily, as though a volatile new element had been added to the play, an ingénue who improvised her lines. With what struck her as exaggerated care, Charles folded the paper in front of him, and Anne placed the crossword puzzle on the coffee table beside her glass of orange juice.
“I’m leaving,” Whitney told them. “This afternoon, I think.”
Fear stole into her mother’s fixed expression. “With him?”
“No. I’m going to Manhattan to look for a job. In publishing, if I’m lucky, but I’ll take whatever will support me.”
“When did you decide all this?” Charles asked peremptorily.
“A few hours ago. But it’s the only thing that feels right to me.”
“I assume you’ll be moving into the apartment.”
Whitney shook her head. “That was for Peter and me, so I’d feel much better if you sold it. I want to make it on my own.”
Anne struggled to comprehend this. “But how will you live, and where?”
“I saved up money from all those summers as a camp counselor and what Grandfather Padgett gave me. I’ll have to make that last to my first paycheck. As for where, I can sleep on friends’ sofas until I find a place.”
Anne gazed up at her in dismay, eyes suddenly moist. “This is so very different than what I imagined for you.”
“Me, too,” Whitney said, then smiled a little. “But it’s not like I’m moving to Nairobi—lots of girls do this. In a week or so, I’ll call to tell you how I am.”
Charles studied her closely, as though discerning something he had not seen before. “Please do,” he said firmly. “You’re not an orphan, Whitney.”
“I know,” Whitney answered softly. “Believe me, I know.”
Her mother looked perplexed, as though searching for her role in Whitney’s new life. “Let me help you pack,” she said at last. “Hopefully we can pick out some clothes suitable for the city.”
Before leaving, Whitney took the path toward Ben’s house.
/> She did this without knowing her reasons, or what she would say, but that it would feel cowardly just to vanish. Only when she neared his place did she acknowledge the unpredictable part of her that still craved him, and that might impel her to change course.
On the bluff overlooking the guesthouse, Whitney stopped.
Clarice Barkley stood at Ben’s door, her blond hair skimmed back to accent her perfect features. After a moment, he opened it. From a distance he looked surprised—or so Whitney tried to imagine. Then he nodded, and let Clarice inside.
Shoulders slumping, Whitney closed her eyes. Perhaps this was nothing. But she sensed a new dynamic that felt somehow inevitable; she had taken her father from Clarice, herself from Ben, and now their anger at her might feed the attraction between this young man and woman to whom, so recently, Whitney had felt close. Like Whitney herself, Clarice symbolized what Ben must want in spite of his professed loathing—the life of privilege he had never known, the freedom to cross the boundaries that divided a girl like Clarice from the boy who waited on her table. “Poor Scott Fitzgerald,” Ben had once remarked, “forever admiring the rich, like a boy with his face pressed against the window of a debutante’s mansion.” Perhaps Ben understood Fitzgerald all too well. And though Clarice might never tell him of her affair with Charles Dane, through Ben she could exact her quiet revenge on both Charles and his daughter.
Before this moment, Whitney thought, she might have weakened. If so, Clarice had kept her from ever becoming Ben’s wife. Then Whitney had one more intuition: that whoever he married—and she suddenly knew that it might be Clarice—the woman would suffer many hours of regret.
Standing there, Whitney fought back tears. Perhaps she was wrong; perhaps she only imagined all this. But whatever the truth might be, she had cried enough.
Beyond the guesthouse, the water glistened in the sun. It had been a long, golden summer, one that might have ended with her wedding. Now her present had parted from her past. There was no mending the rift; all she could do is move into the future armed with nothing but her own heart and mind.
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