In June, 1968, hours before the events that pierced her soul and scarred her generation, Whitney Dane would have said that her youth had been as blessed as her future promised to be. So as she walked the beach beneath her parents’ summer home with her closest friend, Clarice Barkley—the first warming breath of spring in the air, the water of the Vineyard Sound a light, sparkling blue—this birthright informed her answer when Clarice asked curiously, “How are you feeling at this great crossroads of your life? Like the ingénue on the cover of American Bride? Or like you’ve been catapulted toward marriage still clutching your diploma, wondering how you got to be a grown-up?”
The tart phrasing, displaying an ironic turn of mind that Clarice tended to conceal, made Whitney smile as she considered her answer. “It’s moment to moment,” she confessed. “Depending on how good I am at suspending disbelief. A wife and mother is what Mom is, not me. But how can I not feel lucky? And now I’ve got four months with nothing to do but plan a perfect wedding on this perfect island. Unless it rains, of course.”
“Even then,” Clarice answered blithely, “I imagine Peter will show up. He seems suitably besotted.”
Whitney paused for a moment, a swift tug of honesty surfacing from the self-doubt at her core—she had always been the smart daughter, not the pretty one, with the pleasing but unremarkable face, and a sturdy figure which had always made her wonder at her genetic mismatch with her striking and willowy sister, their mother’s ideal. “I still can’t believe that someone like Peter was attracted to me,” she confessed. “And now I’ll have a life with him.” She glanced at Clarice, adding dryly. “For one shining day in late September, hopefully sunny, Janine won’t be the center of attention.”
Clarice’s smile at this was slightly sour. “Not that the crown princess won’t try. I can imagine her using the rehearsal dinner to announce her engagement to Mick Jagger.”
Her friend’s jaundiced view of Janine warmed Whitney with its loyalty. “Mick Jagger?” she responded. “Dad wouldn’t hear of it—you know how he is. And David Eisenhower is already taken.”
Clarice shot her a wicked grin. “Thank God. Imagine an entire life spent in the missionary position. Not that our princess doesn’t deserve it.”
Startled by her friend’s irreverence, Whitney laughed aloud, thinking that her luck included meeting Clarice in childhood. Among the Danes, Clarice had become the unofficial third daughter, joining them on vacations and sharing their celebrations. On the Vineyard, the Barkleys owned the property next door, and Clarice had a standing entrée to appear at dinner unannounced. At twenty-two, she retained the careless insouciance of her class, a girl for whom the laws of gravity and commerce seemed suspended—in no rush to find a job, Clarice was spending the summer after her graduation from Wellesley on the Vineyard, sailing and swimming and playing tennis, with trips off-island to shop or see friends. At its end, she would be Whitney’s Maid of Honor.
Clarice was a popular choice. Everyone seemed to like her—except, perhaps, Janine. Like Peter, Clarice was energetic, with a sense of fun, and, on the surface, disinclined to brooding or introspection. She had a pretty, sunny appearance, Grace Kelly with a touch of Doris Day, and people always invited her to their parties—her demeanor was cheerful, her manners impeccable, and she could be as good a listener as Whitney’s own mother, a master of the art. Clarice drew boys while hardly trying; one whom Whitney had secretly liked had called Clarice “classy without being scary.” Perhaps only Whitney saw the elusiveness that lay beneath. Others thought they knew her, but few really did; good grades and a well-crafted exterior concealed a subterranean wild streak and a keen sense of her social surroundings. Even for Whitney, at times it was impossible to decipher what Clarice Barkley was thinking or feeling. Her best friend, she had come to realize, was far more complicated than she seemed.
“What about you?” Whitney asked. “Is there anyone special? Or are you still searing the souls of the unwary?”
Stopping to look out at the water, Clarice dug her toes into the sand. “Why decide?” she responded delphically, then turned to her friend. “No offense, Whitney, but I’m glad that when I get married I’ll have had sex with more than one man. I mean, don’t you ever wonder what that would be like with someone different?”
“No offense, Clarice,” Whitney replied mildly, “but I don’t want to be promiscuous. I can only sleep with someone I really love.”
By unspoken consent they turned to walk into the surf, feeling the cool ocean water on their ankles and calves. “Love,” Clarice informed her friend archly, “is an elastic concept. There’ve been times when I was willing to love who I slept with, if that’s what’s required. I wasn’t thinking about marriage.
“But after marriage sex becomes routine, and sleeping with other guys problematic. So I might as well enjoy it now, because that’s not all I’m after in a husband. I’m not marrying some boy just because I like him inside me. I want a husband who’s also a man.” Glancing at Whitney, Clarice’s eyes glinted with humor. “And please don’t be shocked. These days shock is unbecoming unless you’re our mothers.”
“I’m not shocked,” Whitney rejoined crisply. “I just don’t want to be shocking.”
Clarice gave a twitch of her tan, graceful shoulders. “In your position, I’d feel the same. I just hope you don’t get restless, that’s all. Imagining things isn’t the same as doing them.”
Whitney waded in up to her knees. “So maybe I’m just unimaginative,” she said over her shoulder.
“You? I doubt it. So maybe having sex with Peter and imagining Paul Newman will work just fine.” Clarice stepped, beside her. “So how is it with Peter? You never really say.”
Whitney smiled a little. “Would you settle for ‘sweet’?”
“‘Sweet’? That’s lovely. But does the earth move? Or is it more like a mudslide?”
Folding her arms, Whitney replied with mock dignity, “I have nothing more to say, Miss Barkley. You’ll have to rely on your own lurid fantasies.”
To her surprise, Clarice did not respond in kind. Instead, she turned toward the sound, watching a sailboat in the distance. More seriously, she said, “I’m being kind of a pill, aren’t I? Maybe I envy you a little.”
“Why should you?”
Still watching the water, Clarice spoke more softly. “Your life is settled, all laid out in front of you. You have someone you love, who loves you. You don’t have to wonder who he’ll be, or if that man will want you, or how the two of you will live.”
In faint surprise, Whitney studied Clarice’s flawless profile. It was she who had always admired her friend’s serene blond looks, her self-containment, her matchless ability to charm and engage others—especially men. “You can have your pick of guys,” Whitney assured her. “All you have to do is choose.”
“I suppose,” Clarice replied in a distant tone. “But how will I know that he’s the right one?”
Once again, Whitney felt her own good fortune. She, and not Clarice, was the one Peter Brooks had chosen.