Loss of Innocence (22 page)

Four

Janine, too, lived on the East Side, in an apartment on East Seventy-fifth paid for by their father. In the muddled hope of finding solace, or at least a hiding place where no one else could see her fall apart, Whitney carried her suitcase for blocks and, moist and bedraggled, pressed the buzzer outside the entrance.

No answer. Maybe Janine was asleep, Whitney thought—her sister’s hours seemed increasingly erratic. She pushed the button once more, then again, her vision of asylum slowly ebbing. As she stood there, utterly lost, her sister’s voice echoed through the speaker, sounding narcotized yet anxious.

“Who is it?”

“Me. Whitney.”

A moment’s silence followed. “What are you doing here?”

“Please,” Whitney pleaded, “can I come up?”

“Now?” her sister asked. But the uncertainty in her voice suggested that Whitney’s tone of entreaty had punctured her resistance. “Did Mom send you?”

“No,” Whitney insisted desperately. “Why would she?”

Again Janine was silent. Then the buzzer sounded, allowing Whitney to enter.

Taking the elevator, she longed for the innocence with which she had entered another building, a scant two hours before, marking the fault line that separated her past, now a dream state, from the black hole of her future. What could she say, she wondered, having discovered that their family was an illusion? A mirage like Janine herself, Whitney thought, unsure of how to approach a woman whose charmed existence was yet another myth. When she knocked on the door, knowing only that she wanted to sit somewhere cooler and darker, seconds dragged by before her sister peered through the crack in the door, its chain strained tight.

Her face was drained of blood, and there were dark smudges beneath her eyes. She looked years older than she had at the celebration of Whitney’s engagement, like a female Dorian Gray ensnared by the ravages of time. Though Janine’s eyes were dull, she seemed to register Whitney’s expression. She looked down, as though ashamed at her exposure, then unlatched the door, backing to the side.

What she saw in the small, shadowed space jarred Whitney even more. On the coffee table was a near-empty bottle of vodka, a carton of orange juice, and a large glass with a residue of pulp at the bottom. Turning toward the couch, Janine stumbled, knocking a plastic bottle off the table and spilling pills across the carpet. Righting herself, she sat there, her expression miserable and trapped.

For a moment, Whitney could not speak. She smelled, then saw, a pool of vomit on the carpet. Picking up the bottle, she read the word
Valium
. All she could think to do was head to the bathroom for a glass of water and a washcloth to cool her sister’s clammy, pallid face.

Entering the bedroom, she paused again. Her sister’s bed was disheveled, a bloody towel strewn across its tangled sheets. Whitney forced herself to continue to the bathroom, filling a glass and dampening a washcloth, overcome by her own confusion and
inadequacy. When she returned to the living room, Janine’s gaze held a shame that made it seem more lucid.

Whitney sat beside her, holding out the glass of water. “Drink this,” she instructed.

Shakily, Janine complied. Asking her to lie back, Whitney placed the damp cloth to her sister’s face. In a strained voice, she asked, “How many pills did you take?”

Janine closed her eyes. “I don’t remember. They level me out, so I’m not so anxious . . .”

“When did you take the last ones?”

As though compelled by Whitney’s urgency, Janine mustered the will to respond. “A few hours ago, I guess—I was sleeping for awhile.” Though her eyes remained shut, Whitney saw tears on her lashes. “I hoped I wouldn’t wake up, that everything would just go dark.”

Whitney steeled herself. “I have to call emergency . . .”

“No,” Janine protested. “I don’t want them to know. Please, just stay with me.”

Irresolute, Whitney felt her sister’s pulse, light but steady enough. “I saw that towel in the bedroom, like you’re having a really awful period. Tell me what’s happening—please.”

Though she did not speak, Janine’s eyes welled again. With a new foreboding, Whitney pressed, “What was it, Janine?”

Janine’s throat worked. “I had an abortion. This morning.”

Whitney felt shock, then fear. “We should get you to a hospital. With all that blood, there could be something wrong inside.”

“I think I’ll be okay,” Janine said wanly.” A doctor did it—David arranged for everything.” Her voice faltered. “I threw our baby away, like it was trash. Because he wanted me to.”

Whitney struggled to drain her speech of judgment. “Tell me about David.”

“He’s a photographer. I met him on a job.”

“Why isn’t he with you now?”

Janine curled sideways. “He’s married.”

Absorbing this, Whitney saw the pattern of Janine’s behavior. “When did you find out?” she asked.

“I always knew.” Janine paused, inhaling. “When he asked me to dinner, he was so completely charming I said yes. Later, I said yes to the rest of it.”

“Why, Janine?”

“You should have seen the way he looked at me.” Janine hesitated again, her remembered excitement descending into hollowness. “He told me I was different—that I made his world brighter, his enjoyment of everything more complete. That he’d never heard the longing in Sinatra’s voice until he listened with me.”

Janine spoke in a child’s voice, made more heartbreaking by how deluded she sounded. Whitney felt a fresh, pulsing anger at both her mother and father. “I guess he promised to leave his wife.”

Janine nodded. “Then I got pregnant,” she added huskily. “David got so upset. He said if I loved him, I’d get rid of it. So I did. Now he’s gone, and so is our baby.”

Whitney grasped her hand. After a time, she asked, “When did you lose your job?”

Her sister showed no surprise, as though Whitney had cracked open the door to her life, and become omniscient. “When David couldn’t see me, I got lonely and depressed. So I started taking the pills he gave me. After awhile, I was missing work. So David gave me money, and Dad . . .”

“Did
he
know?”

“Of course not.” Janine’s voice filled with a weary, dispirited irony. “Mom helped, too. I told her I needed new clothes, and she sent a check from her own account. Her note said I deserved to feel as beautiful as I am.”

Reflexively, Whitney responded, “You
are
beautiful, Janine. I always wanted to look like you.”

Hearing herself, Whitney realized that this was all she had to offer. “Beautiful,” Janine repeated in an ashen voice. “I’m like an empty glass they filled with all these brightly colored stones, and
imagined the stones were diamonds. But the stones are worthless, and the glass is, too.”

Suddenly, Whitney felt the burden of a psychic devastation too complete for her to shoulder. Her parents alone had the resources and authority to repair what they had created. “We’re going to the Vineyard, all right? Our parents have to know what happened.”

“No,” Janine exclaimed with renewed vehemence. “They can’t.”

“Why?” Whitney asked fiercely. “So you and they can go on inventing a daughter who doesn’t exist? If they don’t help you now, they’ll destroy you.” She paused, softening her voice. “I love you, Janine. I don’t want you dead, or wishing you were. I won’t let them take you with them . . .”

“What do you mean? The two of them are so happy . . .”

“Are they?” Whitney cut in, and stopped herself. “Then they’re strong enough to deal with this. It’s not your job to prop up our mother anymore. You can’t fill the holes in her heart by letting her play dress-up with you as the doll.”

Facing Whitney, Janine opened her eyes. Dully, she said, “What holes?”

“Oh, she has them. And I think you’ve always known it. In your own way, you’re been trying to take care of her for years. I won’t let that happen anymore.”

To Whitney’s surprise, her sister did not protest. Finding a telephone in the kitchen, Whitney called the airlines, then booked a taxi.

In the hour before they left, Whitney packed Janine’s clothes, then washed the sheets clean. It bothered her that this seemed like something Anne would do.

When she reappeared in the living room, Janine regarded her with a new curiosity. Without preface, she asked tiredly, “What’s going on with you and Mom and Dad?”

Startled at her sister’s question, Whitney resolved to protect her from the truth. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Is it something about Peter?” Janine persisted. “Or another guy?”

Tensing, Whitney sat beside her. “Who told you that?”

“No one, exactly.” Janine bit her lip. “It was something I overheard . . .”

“Where?”

“At Dad’s office, when I went to ask him for money.”

She stopped abruptly. “Tell me,” Whitney persisted. “I need to know.”

Slowly, Janine nodded. “His door was ajar, so I just stepped in. Dad was on the phone. But he was facing the window, so he didn’t see me. I just stood there, not wanting to interrupt. Then he said something like, ‘Thank you, Commissioner. The army needs able young men, and I need this particular young man out of my daughter’s life.’ When he turned and saw me, he had this funny look, like he’d been caught at something.”

Staring at the carpet, Whitney felt short of breath. Then she remembered the last piece in the mosaic of events—her father speaking with a local politician, the man who wanted to keep a Jewish family from buying a home in West Chop. “As we discussed on the phone,” the man had said, “you and I can help each other.”

By whatever sleight of hand, Whitney knew, Charles had thwarted the sale to ensure that Ben was drafted. He had put his finger on the scales of Ben’s life, in order to direct the course of Whitney’s, and in the process, eliminate a discordant element from his own—a young man who, whatever his lack of resources, had challenged Charles’s dominance without realizing what the older man could do. Her father would sooner cause Ben’s death than be bothered with him.

“You bastard,” she said in a low voice.

Janine stared at her. “What is it, Whitney?
Is
there someone else?”

Choking on her own guilt, Whitney felt a loathing so profound that Janine, watching her face, asked nothing more. Nor could Whitney speak. She despised herself, but not as much as she hated Charles Dane.

Five

Pale as china, Janine endured their check-in at LaGuardia, wearing a spectral, otherworldly expression, then sat near the gate while Whitney found a pay phone to call their mother.

“Janine’s pretty much broken down,” she said tersely. “I’m bringing her home. Lock up the liquor cabinet and any pills in her bathroom . . .”

“What happened?” Anne broke in. “Is she all right?”

“She probably won’t die, Mom. But, no, she’s not all right and hasn’t been for years. It’s time for you and Dad to face the truth.”

She hung up without permitting her mother to answer. As she returned to the gate area, her sister regarded her with fatalistic blankness. “What did she say?”

“Not much. I didn’t give her a chance.”

Janine slumped back, eyelids half-closed, for once oblivious to how she looked. Whitney sat beside her, trying to imagine their homecoming.

Mercifully, no one they knew was on the plane. Once it took off, Janine curled up and fell asleep. Staring out the window as dusk
enveloped the fading light, Whitney thought of how she had spoken to her mother. Perhaps this was her act of revenge, dragging her damaged sister home the way a cat deposits a dead bird at the front door.

See this?

The last few hours came crashing down on her—the falsity of those she had loved, the loss of her own identity as their masks slipped away. Who was she if not solid and sensible Whitney Dane, daughter of a loving couple—the wise, masterful father and poised, contented mother; the fiancée of Peter Brooks, her honorable and open partner for life; the best friend of Clarice Barkley, her loyal confidante since childhood; the younger sister to a stunning model who, whatever her flaws, was far too good at pretending to have become the listless, defeated woman who slept beside her now. A life built on deceptions and delusions, the life she was to emulate with Peter and now saw as a charade. Though she despised her father, Clarice had betrayed her almost as cruelly—sleeping with Charles, spurring him to ruin Ben by revealing Whitney’s secrets. As Clarice’s friend, she had thought she was in on the joke. But the most heartless joke was on her: she had never anticipated that Clarice’s elusive nature, the protective coloring she deployed against men and adults, could be turned on her as well.

She had no one to believe in. How could she even believe in herself when she no longer knew who she was, or what she wanted? With a mix of empathy and dispassion she regarded her sister anew.

Janine was still asleep, her streaked blond hair falling across her face. “If I have only one life,” the ad proclaimed, “let me live it as a blonde.” Janine had certainly done that, Whitney thought—she was exhausted by the effort to look like something, rather than be someone. If only by comparison, Whitney supposed, she was the fortunate daughter. But she and Janine had more in common than either had known—both were their parents’ inventions.

Interrupting her thoughts, the plane swooped in a vertiginous descent. As they landed, Whitney found herself in a familiar place she no longer knew.

Startled awake, Janine blinked, the remembrance of reality clouding her eyes. She walked haltingly down the stairs to the tarmac, waiting for Whitney as if she were a girl waiting for her mother. They did not speak on the cab ride home, punctuated by oncoming headlights that illuminated Janine’s waxen profile.

The cabbie stopped at the house and carried their suitcases to the door. Anne opened it before Whitney could finish paying him, shooing Janine inside with an impatient glance at her second daughter, as though preparing to seal the family from the outside world. When Whitney followed them into the alcove, her mother was addressing Janine in an anxious, peremptory tone. “What happened to you, Janine?”

Janine glanced at her sister. “Alcohol and pills,” Whitney told their mother flatly. “We’re lucky they didn’t kill her, and right now she needs rest.”

Her tone induced in Anne a stung, confused expression. Reasserting herself, Anne told Janine, “I’ll take you to your room.”

“No,” Whitney snapped. “I will.”

Stunned, Anne looked from Whitney to Janine. “It’s all right, Mom,” Janine said tiredly. “I’m too wiped out to talk.”

Without awaiting Anne’s response, Whitney picked up Janine’s suitcase and, lightly touching her arm, led her up the stairs. Turning on the bedroom lights, she went to the bathroom for a glass of water and placed it on the nightstand. Watching her sister undress, she was appalled by the thinness of her body. In a feeble voice, Janine asked, “What will you tell her?”

Everything
, Whitney wanted to say, imagining the savage pleasure of shredding her mother’s fantasies before recoiling from her own thoughts. “I don’t know,” she answered tiredly. “All I’m sure of is you can’t go on like this.” Quiet for a moment, she regarded this new creature who was still her sister. “I love you,” she added gently. “I just want you to be all right.”

Kissing Janine on the forehead, she went to confront their mother, softly closing the door behind her.

Anne waited in the living room, her expression in the thin electric light composed in a semblance of calm. But her tone was brittle and demanding. “Tell me what happened, Whitney. I need to know.”

Still standing, Whitney regarded her in silence, angry yet irresolute.

“I’m her mother, dammit.”

Whitney felt the desperation in Anne’s voice cut through her own desire to lash out, replacing it with a strange, sad resolve. Anger had no place now; what she had to say felt cruel enough. “You certainly are, Mom. That’s a big part of Janine’s problem.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“I went to see her without calling ahead. It took awhile for her to answer, and she looked like walking death. Her apartment was like the inside of a madwoman’s brain. She’d drunk nearly a fifth of vodka and had taken pills on top of that. If I hadn’t showed up, she might have kept on going.”

Anne stiffened in protest. “What would make a girl so vibrant . . .”

“Kill herself? Because no one in this family knows her, you least of all. Do you know why she didn’t want me to tell you what she’d done? Because it would hurt you too much.” Whitney’s tone hardened. “You’ve built a myth of beauty and drama with Janine as your surrogate, filling the empty spaces in your own life . . .”

Her mother sprang up, face contracted, hand raised to slap her daughter—less out of rage, Whitney sensed, than the visceral need to silence her. Whitney grasped her wrist in midair, their faces close. “Do you think shutting me up will erase all the damage to Janine? Then go ahead—hit me.”

Whitney released her mother’s wrist. Slowly, the fury in Anne’s eyes was replaced by shame; as though by its own volition, her hand fell to her side. Heart racing, Whitney told her, “She’s become a walking Barbie doll, with no one home inside, who lives to be who you imagine because she’s got nothing else but her looks and your approval and the desperate need for a man to complete her. But it hasn’t quite worked for you, Mother, and Janine isn’t half as strong as you are. She’s not ‘too strong’ for men; she’s pathetically needy
and insecure, and once they see past that electric first impression they use her for awhile and then run from her like the plague . . .”

“How can you know this?”

“How can you not? Anyone could read the pattern who wasn’t invested in a fantasy of their own creation.” Whitney paused, considering her next words. “The human wreckage I found was the result of an affair with a man who treated her like garbage. You don’t need to know the details—for once, please don’t pump Janine. She can tell you what she wants, and it’s not important now.

“What matters is that you and Dad accept the truth: she’s not your society-page ingénue, but a fragile, damaged woman who depends on alcohol, drugs, and falsehoods to keep her going. You need to send her somewhere where she can get help, away from this family and the world she’s been drowning in. Then you can start trying to love whoever you get back.”

Listening, Anne recovered a semblance of poise. “So suddenly our twenty-one-year-old daughter is the head of our family, the great authority on all our faults.”

Having said so much, Whitney felt too exhausted to defend herself. “I just want you to be a real family for Janine. All I’ve got left is to tell you what I see. Whether Janine destroys herself is up to you.”

All at once, her mother seemed deflated. “Your father is flying in tomorrow morning with Peter. He’ll know what to do.”

The thought of seeing Charles, or Peter, was more than Whitney could bear—she had already passed the moment, with her mother, which had been as far ahead as she could see. Then she remembered Ben and wondered if the light was on in his guesthouse. But she could not run to him, let alone imagine what she would say if she did.

“Get some sleep,” she told her mother. “I’ll stay with Janine.” She paused, then added in a reflex of politeness, “Good night, Mom.”

Janine slept in the darkened bedroom, her breathing shallow but even. Whitney settled in an overstuffed chair, uncertain of whose needs she was serving, her sister’s or her own. Like Janine, part of her wished to fall asleep and never wake up or, if she must, to awaken to the life she had before, still innocent.