Two mornings later, limping slightly, Whitney went to find Ben.
He was at the mooring behind the house he tended, ripping away rotted boards and hammering new ones into place. Standing at the end of the catwalk, Whitney waited for him to notice her.
At last he did, turning as he rested on his knees. “How you doing?”
“Much better. I just came over to thank you.”
Ben wiped the sweat from his eyes. “No need. You already did.”
Whitney paused, weighing whether to express her feelings. “I guess so. But I wasn’t sure we were adequately effusive.”
Ben shot her a sideways grin. “Your mom wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me, was she? At least I didn’t track seaweed on the Persian rugs.”
“She was just startled.” There was no point in saying more about her mother, Whitney realized. “Speaking for myself, I’m happy to be alive.”
Ben put down his hammer, regarding her with an indecipherable expression. “Speaking for yourself, want to cook some lobster on the beach tonight? I haven’t done that in years.”
Stuck between gratitude and ambivalence, Whitney hesitated. “Where should I meet you?”
He gave her a knowing smile. “Here’s fine. Bring some wine, if you have it.”
When she left the house that night, she told Anne she was going out with Clarice, chagrined that Ben had read daughter and mother so well.
They drove to Menemsha a little before seven. The fishing village felt quaint and peaceful—the trawlers were in, the last soft putter of an outboard motor echoed in the harbor, and the sun slipped toward the ocean in a pastel sky. All that was open was the fish market. Ben and Whitney ordered two lobsters and drove to Dogfish Bar.
In the bed of Ben’s truck was a lobster pot and a cooler containing ice, shrimp, and a container of green salad, to which Whitney contributed a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet from her parents’ spare refrigerator. As they reached the rise sheltering the beach, the half disk of a setting sun cast a shimmering glow on the water, backlighting the line of clouds bright orange. “It’s what I love about this place,” Ben told her.
Gathering driftwood and dried seaweed, they dug a pit with their hands. Within minutes Ben had a fire crackling beneath the pot, and they were sipping wine from paper cups. Then Whitney heard the still-living crustaceans rattling around in their cardboard container. “It feels weird to boil them alive.”
“That’s why I didn’t name them,” Ben said laconically. “That way you don’t become attached.” He took another sip of wine. “Do you folks always drink nectar like this?”
“Always.”
The last traces of sunlight faded in a cobalt sky. As Ben tossed the wriggling lobsters into the pot, Whitney reflected on her meager cooking skills. All her life, various people had provided her meals: Billie or her mother at home; her father at restaurants; cooks at summer camps, boarding school, and college. There was a metaphor here, she supposed—others had always taken care of her needs. Now it would be Peter and, she admitted, her father. Little wonder that Clarice worried about her own father, or that Whitney had been more grateful than rebellious. Little wonder Ben felt so much older.
“How did you get into Yale?” she asked.
Ben started stirring butter into a skillet. “I was always smart enough. But I didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, I had an English teacher and a coach who helped me win a scholarship.” His voice softened. “When I got in, I damn near wept. Neither of my parents had gotten past eighth grade. Now I was going somewhere I’d never dreamed of, all because two other people cared enough to tell me I could.”
Whitney could feel Ben’s wonder at his own deliverance. “You must have felt really grateful to them.”
“Not felt—feel, and not just to them. A lot of my classmates were the sons of rich alumni. For them, going to Yale was as natural as breathing. But I’d never have gotten there without people who funded scholarships like mine.” Taking lobster tongs from a grocery bag, Ben continued in the same quiet tone. “Same for Yale’s president—even though some alumni hated it, he pushed to admit more Jews and blacks and public school kids. Without Kingman Brewster, I don’t get to Yale.”
Though Whitney did not say so, her family knew the Brewsters. They had a summer place on West Chop; the Brewsters and the Danes interacted socially, and Janine and Whitney knew their kids. That the Brewster children might be viewed as somewhat aimless served, in her father’s view, to confirm what befalls the offspring of wealthy liberals. But Whitney admired Kingman Brewster for his principles. “What was Yale like for you?” she asked.
“A mixed bag.” Ben deposited the lobsters on paper plates. “It opened me up to a larger world—not just ideas, but possibilities. It also stripped the varnish off our pretenses about equality. My closest friends were like me—without connections to the clubby world of the East Coast establishment, the network of influence that protects each new generation of the lucky sperm club. Some of our smugger classmates called us ‘blips’—accidents in the life of Yale. They’re the ones who have jobs waiting for them, and will never see Vietnam except on television.”
This last sentence, clearly referring to Peter, was delivered so casually that it took a moment for Whitney to react. “Up to this moment,” she said sharply, “I was enjoying myself. But you just can’t stifle your resentments, can you?”
The look he gave her contained a glimmer of regret. “No,” he acknowledged. “I can’t. But can you say I’m wrong?”
Whitney weighed her answer. “Yes, if you’re calling Peter smug. He’s one of the kindest people I know.”
Ben poured them both more wine. “And generous enough to let somebody else get drafted in his place. But Peter aside, I don’t hear a rousing defense of privilege.”
“I won’t defend Peter or myself,” Whitney said evenly, “or a world we didn’t make. All I can do is try to become a halfway decent human being. But whatever I am, I’m not accountable to you.”
To her surprise, Ben smiled at this. “Fair enough, Whitney. I don’t want to spoil your lobster.”
Using a nutcracker and small fork, he separated the tail and meat from shell, placing them on her plate. Then he served her salad and put a cup of drawn butter between them. They ate in the glow of the fire, its warmth cutting the chill of descending night. Content, Whitney watched the stars appear in the darkness over the water, listened to the faint susurrus of waves splashing on the sand.
After a while, Ben told her, “What I should have said is that I won’t turn into one more guy who pulls the ladder up after me, forgetting who lent me a hand. Too many people still don’t get the chance that I had.”
“I agree, Ben. That’s what you should have said.”
He held up his hand. “That was a semi-apology, okay? So let me ask a simple question—how many blacks and Jews came to your parents’ home? Except for those favorite mealtime companions, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima.”
Whitney gave him an arid smile. “Are you trying to prove that you’re incorrigible? As I’m sure you know, blacks don’t live in Greenwich, and there weren’t many at Rosemary Hall or Wheaton. I did have a Jewish friend in college, if you’re still keeping score.”
Whitney paused there, remembering a classmate saying indulgently about her friend, “Lisa doesn’t seem that Jewish to me.” Lisa had later confessed to Whitney that she worried about being stereotyped. Though Whitney had reassured her, Lisa had been right to worry; her subsequent engagement to a guy from Brown raised a stink within his family, culminating in their stiffly worded request that any children be raised as Episcopalians. Whitney had been dismayed; though there were no Jews among their closer family friends, she had never heard a trace of anti-Semitism from either of her parents. “Actually,” she continued, “Lisa encouraged me to tutor in Roxbury. Maybe that seems like naïve do-gooding to you, two white girls spending a couple of hours in the ghetto before returning to the cloistered halls. But at least we did something.”
Ben’s expression changed, becoming thoughtful and even conciliatory. “You’re right, Whitney. No one’s responsible for where they’re born, only for what they do. For myself, I’d have happily traded places with you or your fiancé. Feel free to call me on it.”
The surprising concession softened Whitney’s defenses. “And vice-versa, Ben. But without taking shots at a guy I love, who you don’t even know.”
Ben batted away a stray cinder. “A last question, then. Did Peter applaud your forays into Roxbury?”
Once again, Whitney considered her answer. “If it matters to you, Peter respects me enough to support anything I do.”
From the glint in his eyes, Ben caught her syntactical evasion. “But has he ever asked what you want, or taken an interest in your writing? Or does he assume that all you need from life is to be married?”
Whitney did not know what stung her more—Ben’s assumption that he knew the answers, or the questions themselves. “I don’t want to talk about Peter,” she said stiffly. “I don’t know why you do.”
“How quickly I’ve fallen from grace,” Ben said in mock dismay. “All I’m really wondering is what you want for yourself.”
At first Whitney did not answer. The final stanza of the Wheaton Hymn sounded in her mind:
A hundred years pass like a dream
Yet early founders still are we
Whose works are greater than they seem
Because of what we yet shall be
In the bright noon of other days
Mid other men and other ways.
The future was open, the hopeful words had said to her, Whitney’s to write for herself. But perhaps her future was already written. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted.
In the light of the fire, Ben studied her. “You’ve still got time,” he said, and left it there.
That night, unable to sleep, Whitney took Couples to the library, and began reading in the light of a standing lamp. To her surprise, Charles emerged from the bedroom in robe and slippers, headed for the kitchen before he spotted Whitney.
“Hi, Dad. When did you get home?”
“A few hours ago. I decided to start the weekend early.”
He did not say why, and Whitney recognized the abstracted look he wore when there was something on his mind. Instead, he asked, “What do you think of the book?”
“Too soon to tell, except that Updike’s a wonderful stylist. I stop to reread a sentence, and wonder if I could ever write anything that perfect.”
Charles gave her a veiled look. “The language is fine, I’m sure. But I understand that the story is elegant smut—one act of adultery after another. You might have chosen something a little bit more uplifting.”
What was this about, Whitney wondered. “It’s just a novel, Dad.”
“No doubt I’m a bit musty in my tastes. This is a free country, after all, where adults can read what they like.” Her father sat across from her. “Still, I’ve often thought that people’s lives are defined by the thoughts they choose to entertain. But I wonder if books like this cause people to consider doing things they otherwise wouldn’t.”
Watching his face, Whitney sensed a second, wordless conversation lurking beneath the first. Mildly, she said, “I hope you’re not including me.”
Solemn, Charles appraised her. “Of course not, Whitney. You’ve always had a sturdy character, as well as a fine mind. It’s just that a society is defined by what the more educated deem acceptable, whether in art or film or—in this case—a novel that elevates infidelity.”
Whitney gave him a deflective smile. “I won’t know if I’ve become wanton until I finish the book. Then I’ll tell you how I turned out.”
His smile in return was measured. “Please don’t, Whitney. I like you too much as you are.”
Without saying more, Charles proceeded to the kitchen.
Whitney put down the book, pondering the recesses of her father’s mind. Did his core philosophy, focused on predictability and order, exist to suppress something in human nature that he deeply feared—whether personified by demonstrators, leftists, or a novelist who dared to write so explicitly about adultery and despair? But there was no one to whom she could express those thoughts. Except, perhaps, for Benjamin Blaine, and that would feel like a betrayal of her family and, even worse, of Peter.