When she returned, Ben was leaning against the inside of the dinghy, still shirtless. He looked up at her, expectant. Whitney hesitated, then handed him the journal with two pages dog-eared. “You can read what I’ve marked,” she told him.
He nodded, opening the journal. She stepped away, willing herself to trust him, gazing in the opposite direction so that all she saw was the endless water.
The entry she had chosen contained her musings about Clarice, the distillation of elusive thoughts that, in some morning of intuitive disquiet, had anticipated her friend’s betrayal. She remembered its final passages almost perfectly.
Clarice lives in compartments. Presenting one face to her parents; another to mine; still another to the men she chooses as lovers, preserving for those she does not want the image of an unattainable woman. Then there is the Clarice who goes on about her days, optimistic and spirited, an uncomplicated girl who savors the life she has been given, and accepts others for who they are. Beneath all those is my friend and confidante, filled with clear-eyed realism, a cool knowingness and practicality, who views all the other Clarices, and the audiences she conjures them for, with a clinical detachment that verges on the ruthless.
I’ve always felt close to her, able to say anything without being seen too harshly. But which one of all the people who know Clarice is indispensable to her, the person she feels so bound to by a love and loyalty she could not do without? Before this summer, I would have said it was me; more often than not, I still think that. But at stray but strangely lucid moments, I wonder if there’s anyone at all.
Those moments come more often now. I’ve begun to think there is something about Clarice that is unknowable, perhaps even to herself. It’s always been easy to imagine her finding a happy life. But she could also have a lonely one, forever distant from herself and others, deepening the loneliness of those around her.
She heard Ben climb up out of the boat, standing beside her on the mooring before he placed the journal in her hand. “You certainly nailed her,” he remarked. “Is that what you wanted me to see?”
Whitney did not look at him. “That’s not what mattered to me most.”
He fell silent until she faced him and, when she did, his eyes held a new intensity. “You can write, Whitney—and you can see things. That was the bet I’d made with myself. Whatever else you do, don’t let that go.”
Whitney felt a surge of relief, swiftly overwhelmed by self-doubt that washed away his words as though written in sand. “It feels like I have nothing left to say.”
Ben’s voice became sharp and almost angry. “Because of a rift with your parents and their presumptive Mr. Right? Give me a break, Whitney—or better yet, give yourself one. Your talent didn’t come from them, and it will surface on the page again, bet on it. One of my professors once told me, ‘writers write. To them, its like breathing—what they’re meant to do.’”
He was speaking to himself, she realized—and about himself. But he was also speaking to her. Amidst his own frustration, his fear of what the future held, Ben was trying to give her something.
Her parents were due to arrive, Whitney thought again. But she did not go home.
That evening they sat by the mooring, snacking on cheese and crackers and drinking a bottle of Chianti. Afterwards she lay back in his arms, watching with him as the sunset spread orange-gold across the water.
“This is my favorite time of day,” he told her. “The sun casting a glow on the ocean and, on a perfect evening, backlighting a thin layer of clouds. This island gives us that rarest of things—a western exposure on the Atlantic, so you can see the sun rising from the water in the morning, and slipping into it at night. Since I was a kid, I’ve sat on the promontory behind the Barkleys, watching sunsets just like this.”
He spoke with reverence, so close to tenderness that it surprised her. She realized how little she knew about him yet, how fraught and fleeting the days would be until he left. She felt suspended in time, somewhere between a past that had evanesced and a future that lay beyond the horizon of her imaginings. Being with him felt at once ephemeral and intensely real; for a moment she wished, fancifully, that she could stop the setting of the sun and stay cocooned with him in this no longer finite moment. Feeling him kiss the nape of her neck, Whitney closed her eyes.
“Marry me,” she heard him say.
Whitney froze, wondering if her thoughts had drawn this from him, even as the reasoning part of her replayed his tone. In a muffled voice, she responded, “Did I hear you correctly?”
“Yes,” he answered calmly. “I asked you to marry me.”
She put down her wine glass, turning so that she could see him. Ben regarded her with a seriousness so deep that Whitney had trouble speaking. “The wine is lovely,” she said, “and so is the sunset.”
His face darkened. “Don’t condescend to me, Whitney. I can’t stand that.”
Quickly, she touched his cheek. “I didn’t mean to. I’m just so startled. Forty-eight hours ago, more or less, I was engaged to someone else.”
“Believe me, I’m well aware of that.”
She looked into his face, struggling to understand him. “When did you start thinking about this?”
He considered the question gravely. “When, deep in my subconscious, did I imagine being with you? Some moment when we were on the water, I guess—well before I kissed you, or even thought that we were possible. But marrying you? When I closed your journal, I knew that something had changed.” His voice filled with quiet urgency. “For the first time in your life, Whitney, you’re free. I’m the person you were born to be with.”
She felt a momentary frisson, as if someone had just read her palm and forecast the path of her life. “How can you know that?”
Taking both hands in his, he answered with the patience of a man forced to explain the obvious to a woman blinded by its seeming novelty. “Because you’ve broken with them. Would you have done that if we’d never met?”
Mind clouded, Whitney searched her heart for an honest answer. “Maybe not,” she managed to say amidst the chaos of her thoughts. But this only deepened her confusion between Ben as catalyst and as cause—how could she, the creation of her family, have become the creation of someone else she had met two months before? Desperately, she explained, “So many things have happened so quickly. I can’t tell you why they did, or where you and I fit in.”
“I can,” he said with certitude. “You’re Mrs. Me. You and I nourish each other. When I came here, I was dead inside. I’m not anymore. I feel this fierce will to live, to seize the future I’ve always wanted. You’re part of that now.”
She felt the pressure of reality, a stab of guilt that rightly belonged to her father. “But you’re leaving. In three weeks you’ll be gone.”
“We know who caused that,” he replied with an edge in his voice. “So let him have what he deserves—a marriage to me, without his fingerprints all over it.” His tone evened out again. “Your parents will come around. What choice do they have—exiling their own daughter is too embarrassing. But if they do, to hell with them. I’ve done without my parents just fine. My only regret is not getting rid of them sooner.” He took her face in his hands, willing her to act. “We can make our own life, Whitney.”
“But how can we if you’re gone?”
“People do,” he said flatly. “If we’re married, maybe we could even get me back to Yale.”
From the sea of print in his induction papers she remembered the instruction: “If married, bring proof of your marriage.” Shaken, she asked, “What difference would that make?”
“It might lower my draft priority. All I need is to postpone my induction. From there I can put up a real fight.” His eyes bore into hers. “I get what you must be thinking, with Peter always looking for an out. But what’s been happening since the day we met has nothing to do with the draft—once you were free, it was only a matter of time until we decided on each other. But your father cut our time short, so I have to ask you now or risk losing you forever.” He clasped her hands again. “Whatever we do, I’ll probably have to go away. But if marriage gives us back what your father stole from me, call it poetic justice.”
There must be truth in this, Whitney thought. They had grown toward each other oblivious to her father’s maneuverings, both believing she would be married to Peter, rendering impossible the calculation that had dictated her wedding date. But knowing too late how callously her father had changed Ben’s life, what was her obligation, and to whom? She leaned her face against his chest, feeling and hearing the strong, steady beat of his heat. “You’ve asked me to marry you,” she told him, “without ever having said you love me.”
Softly, Ben laughed. “When was I supposed to fit that in? When you were engaged to Peter? All it took was a kiss to send you screaming into the night. Long ago I learned not to love people who can only hurt you. But okay.” Cradling her chin, he said, “I love you, Whitney Dane. I guess that’s why I asked you to be my wife.”
Whitney could not help but smile at this, then saw that he was waiting for her answer. She tried to find the words that would please him, yet be true to the muddle of an honest mind. “I love what I know about you,” she said at last. “I feel things with you that I never felt with Peter, pieces of myself falling into place. But I can’t know what I’ll know in a year—about you, or me.”
Ben’s lips compressed. “You can guess. Okay, neither one of us would have chosen how things are. But look how far we’ve come, so quickly.” He stopped himself, smiling a little. “Anyhow, you don’t need to answer this minute. I count nineteen days before I disappear.”
Whether meant to be sad or simply ironic, she was grateful for this reprieve. In hours or days, it might all become clearer—perhaps then she could see a life with him. But there was so much to absorb, including things she could never tell him, that part of her felt leaden.
“My parents still exist,” she finally said. “I’m sure they’re home by now, and I have to see them.”
“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.