Loss of Innocence (24 page)

Eight

In early evening, filled with doubt, Whitney knocked on Ben’s door.

He opened it, seemingly surprised, then mustered a smile that did not conceal his wariness. “I thought you’d run away.”

“I had to,” she said simply.

“So what are you doing here?”

Where to start, she wondered. But all she could think to say was, “I’ve broken my engagement.”

His expression changed, doubt and curiosity warring in his eyes. “That can’t have gone over very well.”

“It didn’t. Can I come in?”

He held the door open. As she entered, she saw some official-looking papers on his kitchen table. Following her gaze, he said, “Not a good weekend for me, either. I got them the day after you took off.”

She went to the table, and picked them up. The first document was headed, “Order to Report for Induction.” Whitney stared at it, the small print swimming in front of her, then saw the date and time of his induction:
September 21, 1968, at 7 a.m.
“Seems like they’re in a hurry,” Ben remarked. “I must be very desirable.”

Whitney sat down at the table, feeling queasy, though she made herself look up at him. “My father did this, Ben.”

His expression darkened. “How?”

“He used his influence to move you up the list, so you couldn’t get back to Yale.” She bit her lip, then added baldly, “To make sure nothing happened with us.”

Ben’s face closed. “I should have guessed. Truth to tell, I wondered once or twice. He’s the kind of man who safeguards his possessions.”

Whitney shook her head. “He doesn’t own me anymore. No one does.”

He sat across from her. Staring at the draft notice, he said softly, “All this because we spent time together. What a mistake it was to meet him.”

“That was my fault. I can’t tell you how terrible I feel.”

“Oh, I can—and then some. Amazing how easy it is for him to play with other peoples’ lives. Whether I live or die is less important than some waiter screwing up his drink order.” His voice quickened with repressed anger. “It’s not even callousness—that takes too much thought. It’s the carelessness of privilege. Lesser humans like me are stick figures on the periphery of your lives.”

“I know how you feel about my father. But that’s not fair to me.”

The cast of his face became a shade less adamantine. “Maybe not. But some days it’s hard to make these fine distinctions.”

Whitney did not answer. “Is there anything you can do now?” she asked.

“My draft advisor doesn’t think so. If I were married, he tells me, maybe I’d have a chance. But I’m single, healthy, poor, and dropped out of college to campaign for a liberal. Perfect raw material for the American Imperium.” His voice took on a sarcastic fatalism. “During the Civil War, the sons of wealth paid boys with no prospects to join the army in their place. Now men like your father can arrange for pawns like me to substitute for guys like Peter Brooks. He didn’t even need to open his wallet.”

There was nothing Whitney could say to this. For a painfully long time, Ben watched her, his hatred for her father replaced by a neutral curiosity. “So now you’ve explained my fate, Whitney. Is there anything else?”

To her surprise, she found his dispassion more devastating than anger. “It doesn’t matter now. I just came to tell you the truth, and to say goodbye.”

He cocked his head. “Are you going somewhere? Or am I the only one?”

Whitney hesitated. “Actually, I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Literally? Or figuratively?”

“Both,” she said, and realized how much she wanted his understanding. “How can I know where I’m going, Ben, when I don’t know who I am?”

“But you
do
know. You’re Whitney Dane, daughter of a wealthy family, with all the resources and time in the world to find out what you want, and a swarm of people—your parents’ friends—to help you on the way. All you have to do is tell them what you’ve decided to become.”

“You really don’t get it. Everything has changed for me—especially how I see my parents. I may not know who I am, but I know who I never want to be.”

His puzzled smile was not unkind. “Poor little rich girl. You really
are
lost, aren’t you?”

She did not need to answer this, and to try would only seem foolish. “That night, why did you kiss me?”

The grin he shot her contained a dose of real amusement. “You’re kidding, right?”

Whitney felt belittled. “Because I was there, I guess. Sort of like Mt. Everest.”

He shook his head, the grin becoming a smile that played across his lips. “With all respect, I’m hardly Sir Edmund Hillary, and even you’re not voluptuous enough for comparison to Mt. Everest. Climbing you would not require heroism.”

Whitney flushed. “I guess you hadn’t been with anyone for awhile.”

His face closed again. “With all that’s gone on with me lately, I haven’t been counting the weeks. But if the mood struck me, why not go for Clarice? She’s not engaged to anyone.”

The startling image of Clarice naked before her father left Whitney speechless. There was so much she wanted to tell him; so little, for her mother’s sake, that she could say—especially to someone so filled with hatred for her family. “This is hopeless,” she said. “I should have stopped with an apology.”

“Talk about hopeless,” Ben retorted with quiet vehemence. “For such a smart woman, you’re a complete idiot. I spent hours and days talking with you—a girl who’s engaged to be married and out of my reach even if she weren’t, telling you things I don’t tell anyone, and all you can do with that is wonder why I kissed you. Maybe you should ask Clarice. She might actually be able to tell you.”

Whitney stared at him. For once his eyes seemed naked, his desire for her so startling that she looked away. “I didn’t know,” she said softly.

“You didn’t want to. So now you do, and there’s not Peter anymore. Or is there?”

Thinking of Peter, she felt a renewed sadness. “No. There’s not.”

“So what do you want with me, Whitney Dane?”

Her next words, whatever they were, felt so consequential that the answer caught in her throat. The doubt in her eyes made him reach across the table, gripping her arm in a way that felt proprietary. “At least I know what I want,” he told her. “And who.”

He drew her up, face close to his. Whitney found herself unable to move, or turn from him. Ben’s mouth met hers, kissing her hard. Reflexively, her lips opened to receive his tongue as she pressed against him, not asking herself why or what she should do. Drawing back, he started kissing her neck with surprising tenderness. “God,” he murmured. “I want you.”

An answering murmur came from deep within her throat, the sound of assent. He began unbuttoning her blouse.

It was dusk now, and the unlit room was shadowy and dim, a mercy to Whitney in her shyness. Unsure of what to do, she let Ben undress her, lingering on each part of her with his hands and mouth, now on her nipples, then her stomach, then the lushness of the fur between her legs. Then he was standing again, gently kissing her as he undressed, leading her to the bed, her heart beating, skin tingling with uncertainty and anticipation, knowing only that she wished to be swept through this moment to another not governed by her conscious mind. She lay back, and felt his lips repeating the downward journey until his tongue was inside her with an avidity so unlike Peter that, writhing against him, Whitney prayed he wanted this as much as she. She moaned her pleasure, worried that he might pull away. But the insistent probing of his tongue, an end in itself, kept on until the blood rushed to the center of her, and her shuddering cry of anguish and rapture muffled his quiet laugh of pleasure in her release. And then, kissing her tenderly on the mouth, he slid on top of her.

Whitney opened her legs to receive him. Slowly, he slipped inside her, filling her with his hardness, moving slowly and gently as he spoke her name. She felt herself again swelling with desire, whispering “more,” wrapping her legs around him as if to pull him in deeper, their movements losing all sense of reason except their need for each other. The world turned black. Whitney cried out with pleasure, nipping at his neck as she felt him quake with his own release, becoming for this moment hers. And then he was lying beside her, fingers tangled in the tendrils of her thick brown hair. But the ebbing of desire, she discovered, left her feeling lost.

“Let me turn on the light,” he told her. “I want to see you.”

She writhed with embarrassment. With shaky humor she said, “Don’t you think that’s pushing things a little, Mr. Blaine? I barely know you.”

“If it helps, Whitney, you can close your eyes.”

He moved away, flicking on the bedside lamp. She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the light, and saw Ben smiling as he gazed at her. “You’re beautiful . . .”

“Please, stop . . .”

“I’ve never heard a more halfhearted protest. You look as good as you feel—full and generous in all the ways I imagined. And I imagined you quite a lot.”

Whitney covered her face. “I can’t believe this.”

“You should, Whitney You remind me of Tim Hardin’s song:
You look like love forever—too good to last, too lovely not to try.
You still don’t grasp your power as a woman. Just like I’m guessing you sell your abilities as a writer way too short.”

She felt a mix of pleasure and confusion. “That’s very nice of you, Ben. Now please turn off the lights.”

He kissed her. “Only if you’ll stay the night.”

For a moment, she was quiet. “Yes,” she answered. “Where else would I go, after all?”

Nine

That night a thunderstorm struck the island, awakening Whitney with a start.

Outside, the wind whistled and moaned, rattling windows and branches, driving pellets of rain like bullets as streaks of lightning illuminated the pitch-black night, pursued by explosions of thunder so close that they felt like the judgment of an angry god. Sitting up, Ben turned on the bedside light. A bolt of yellow struck near the guesthouse, knocking out the electricity and causing the lamp to sizzle before it went out in a flash. The sheer violence of the storm had an awesome grandeur, making Whitney feel smaller, unmoored from all she had known. Ben held her until the storm passed, and she fell into a fitful, broken sleep.

At dawn, Whitney stirred awake, fleetingly startled by her surroundings before remembering where she was. Ben was making coffee at the gas stove, dressed only in cutoff jeans. The look he gave her combined humor and uncertainty.

“Well,” he said, “do you still respect me in the morning?”

Whitney fought back her own disorientation. “You, yes. Me, I’m not so sure about. It’s like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, and there’s nothing to grab onto.”

Ben studied her. “I’m real enough,” he said, then inquired matter-of-factly, “What do you take in your coffee?”

“A splash of milk, thanks. If you have it.”

Ben brought her the coffee in bed. She sat up, trying to cover her breasts with a sheet, then giving up. The sensuality yet domesticity of the moment felt strange, even embarrassing, but not entirely unpleasant. “You’re also beautiful this morning,” he assured her. “If that’s what you’re wondering about.”

She shook her head. “I can’t even say what I’m thinking. There’s been too much.”

He sat in a chair with his coffee cupped in both hands, legs stretched out in front of him. “Do you want to stay for awhile?”

The sense of all that awaited came crashing down on her. “Truth to tell, I’d like to pull the covers over my head until everything goes away. But my parents are coming home again, and there’s a lot for me to face up to.”

Alone, she did not need to add. His expression became guarded. “Will I see you again?”

The question surprised her, suggesting that he might be as confused as she. “After last night? I’d hope that’s something we both want.”

He got up, sitting beside her on the bed, then reached for her hand. “Did you think I was just killing time?”

“I didn’t know. I still don’t, really.”

“I’m not,” he said flatly. “Thanks to your father, all I’ve got is the next three weeks. You can decide how much of that belongs to us.”

Three weeks from now, Whitney thought, she was to have been married. She drank the coffee in silence, not letting go of his hand, gazing out at the sunlight brightening a newly cleansed world. Asking nothing, Ben let her be, her companion in limbo—his time foreshortened, her future unfathomable, neither able to help the other.
After awhile she dressed as he watched her, then gave him a chaste kiss before she went back to her empty house, showered, dressed, and drove to Dogfish Bar.

For a long time Whitney watched the blue of the sea and sky deepen with mid-morning, unable to write a word. Her journal felt like an artifact from another life, a narrative of doubts and observations recorded by a stranger whose life was bounded by certainties—the goodness of her family, the loyalty of her best friend, her love for Peter Brooks, her own children waiting somewhere beyond her wedding day. The young woman who had upended her own world, separated from her former self by the chasm of a single weekend, had yet to write a line.

All that seemed real to her was Benjamin Blaine—if only more real, she amended, than she did to herself. But how do you describe a void? she wondered. The touchstones of the life she had believed in until now had spawned questions she could record, then ponder, in safety. Her writing was part of all she had lost; stripped of certainties, she had nothing to doubt, or even to say. She felt empty, and achingly alone.

Except for Ben.

There were times she came alive with him. Alive as a sexual being; alive as a woman who discovered thoughts and feelings in his presence she might not have found on her own. It was not just when he was inside her that Ben filled her heart and mind.

She went to find him again, pulsing with anticipation and confusion.

He was working beside the catwalk, sitting cross-legged inside the dinghy as he replaced the frayed rope of its outboard motor. He looked up at her, his dark eyes questioning, his lean body unnaturally still. “So I came back,” she said.

The weight of these words hung there in the silence. “For what?” he asked.

“Whatever happens.”

There was nothing more either wanted to say. Reaching out for her, he helped her into the dinghy. Kneeling between his outstretched legs, she looked into his face, reaching beneath his T-shirt to clasp his shoulder blades. He kissed back hungrily, both of them knowing that this was not enough. Neither seemed to care who saw them.

Hurriedly, she peeled off her sweatshirt, bra, and jeans, as he struggled out of his clothes. They fell together to the floorboard, Ben on his back, Whitney taking him in her mouth. She felt him swell, tasting his saltiness, heard him say in a low, fierce tone, “I want all of you”—the only words she needed from him.

Whitney sat up, arching her back. She was already wet when he slipped a probing finger inside her. His eyes smiling into hers, he moved so that she could slide down on his shaft, his hands cradling her breasts as he flicked the tips of her nipples with his fingers, sending currents of desire racing through her body which merged with the sun on her skin, the cool whisper of breeze against her face. His hips thrust upward, eyes locking hers as though he never wanted to look away. Moving with him, she forced her eyes to shut, willing herself to experience only the tightening of her body before it broke with a deep, ecstatic shudder that drew a long cry from lips tightened to suppress it. As her spasms died, she heard him call her name from the distant place she had sent him until, at last, his body went slack as hers.

He eyes opened, blinking at the sunlight as if she had just emerged from a darkened room. Ben gently touched her face with curled fingers. “Hope no one saw us, Whitney. Bad for your reputation.”

“What about yours?”

“Nothing to lose. Not on this island, or anywhere else.”

Against her will, his faintly sardonic inflection made her imagine other women—a chastening reminder of how Clarice Barkley
had read him, perhaps sensing the kinship of two sexual adventurers. Then she remembered what his brother had said:
People fall in line for him, women most of all. But I’ve never known a woman who Ben respected.

Was this an adventure for him? Whitney wondered? However little she understood about herself, whatever she had chosen to precipitate, she knew that she was not that way. She lay down beside him, looking for answers, and found only an answering curiosity.

“I can see your mind working,” he told her. “Already. It’s not very flattering.”

Whitney found she could not question him—at least not yet. “Wasn’t what we just finished flattering enough?”

He did not smile, instead giving her the narrow-eyed look she had begun to associate with wanting to peer inside her. Softly, he said, “I guess it’ll do.” He paused, then added in an even voice, “Actually, there
is
another way you can prove your love.”

“You’re certainly demanding,” Whitney said with mock vexation. “I didn’t know there was anything left.”

“At least one thing,” he casually responded. “I’d like to read your journal.”

Surprised, she leaned on her elbow, looking down at him. “Why?”

“Weeks ago, I made a guess about you. I need to know if I’m right.”

Whitney felt herself withdraw. “It’s personal to me, Ben.”

He smiled at this. “More personal than sex?”

“Different. I’ve never shown it to anyone. Including Peter.”

This caused a glint in his eyes. “I’m not ‘anyone,’” he retorted. “And I’m sure as hell not Peter. Writing is something I care about—yours, especially. You can pick any pages you like.”

Whitney frowned, fearing, yet stimulated by, the thought of exposing herself in this way, cracking open the protective wall she had built around this hidden part of her. “It’s that important to you?”

“Yes.”

She felt the warmth of their lovemaking slip away, an instinctive reluctance to cross one more boundary, leaving another piece of her in someone else’s hands. Yet she cared deeply about what he thought, she suddenly realized. As strange and unsettling as this was, perhaps if he read what she had written she would feel less alone, be comprehended as more than another woman who wanted him.

“It’s in the car,” she said simply.