Loss of Innocence Read Online Free PDF

fourteen, leaving his son well provided for, but without much guidance from a feckless mother stunned by her husband’s death. Whatever her misgivings about his new employment, that Peter gravitated toward Charles was a gift to them both.
    Her mother sat at the opposite end of the table, seated nearest Janine in an unspoken affinity group, her blond hair a perfectly coiffed artifice, her fine features flawed only by the slight bump in her nose, a blemish she had not permitted Janine. Anne’s rationale had been that Janine was a photographer’s model, occasionally appearing in magazines and more often the society pages, having developed an uncanny talent for striking a pose. But Anne’s motives, Whitney perceived, went deeper than a career Janine would drop once she found a man who deserved her. Their entwinement seemed to have begun at her sister’s birth, spawning Anne’s current absorption in Janine’s life, beneath which Whitney sensed an anxious need for Janine to epitomize the feminine role Anne embraced so completely. Whitney had once hoped to feel closer to her mother. But once Janine turned sixteen, Anne had focused on her sister’s boyfriends, social life and sense of fashion, the vibrancy and allure she so often praised. Now she imagined Janine marrying someone prominent and powerful, a glamorous partner in a public life.
    By contrast, Whitney had drawn her mother’s attention chiefly because of her intermittent problems with weight. Nor did Whitney, who enjoyed books and literature, share her sister’s and mother’s interest in clothes or interior design, or in the artful arrangement of atmosphere, seating and guests that comprised the perfect dinner party. Whitney had come to accept that she would never quite gain Anne’s approval, and thus might always feel a little outside the charmed circle of her parents and Janine.
    At times Charles seemed to sense this. Though his tastes in books were those of a practical man—contemporary history or politics or business—he sometimes took her to readings by female writers which Whitney sensed he cared nothing about, asking her opinionso gravely that she wanted to hug him. More recently, he had come to the father-daughter dance at Wheaton, where dads dressed in tuxedos and became their daughters’ dates for the weekend, a hoary tradition which excluded mothers and moved a suitemate to remark, “Paging Dr. Freud.” But Whitney was proud of how pleased Charles looked, how other men deferred to him, and most of all, how attentive he was—as if, for once, no one else mattered. Instead of an odd memory, this became one of her warmest.
    As Charles stood to offer a toast, Whitney gazed at him in the flickering candlelight with unalloyed affection. Beneath thick, curly chestnut hair barely flecked with gray was the countenance she had always loved, round and ruddy, featuring large brown eyes which could move from commanding to attentive to humorous at will. The planes of his face were broad, his slightly cleft chin pleasantly plump, reminding Whitney that she had always resembled her father rather too closely, her mother not at all. Were there perfect justice, she sometimes thought, she would have been his son—perhaps a business partner to be—rather than the younger, plainer daughter he praised for her stability and common sense.
    These traits radiated from Charles himself, along with his self-confidence, keen mind, and the relentless ability to forge his path. To Whitney he epitomized an investment banker as she imagined the breed—a man of wisdom without illusions, cool headed and decisive, with a sense of probity that served him for the long haul. Working his way through school he had learned that time was precious, and became foresighted and proactive, never surprised or out of control. When Whitney went off to Rosemary Hall, he had told her, “Organize your time, and husband your resources. If I had to stay up the night to before an exam, I’d already