Page 12 of Summer of '69
Angus seemed relieved by this distraction; however, finding a ladies’ room was a problem. The population of the building was so overwhelmingly male that there was only one ladies’ room, and it was on the first floor. This involved an elevator ride and a walk down a hushed hallway past closed doors behind which, Blair assumed, men were busy calculating. All the while, Blair was praying she didn’t leak. Also, she was wondering about the identity of Angus’s mistress. That Angus had a mistress, she had no doubt.
Most professors would have chosen a student, but all of Angus’s students were male, every single one, and his colleagues in his department were men. It could be one of the other wives; maybe the Joanne who wore all the turquoise eye shadow. Or it could be a stewardess from one of the flights Angus had taken the previous fall.
Blair finally reached the ladies’ room, and she was so relieved to release her bladder that nothing else mattered. And then when she emerged, Angus announced that her visit was a lovely surprise but that he had to get back to work. He would see her at home.
“But…” Blair said.
Angus kissed her and pressed two dollars into her hand for a taxi. Then he smiled, which was rare these days. She supposed he was saving his smiles for the other woman. “I love you,” he said, but the words rang hollow.
Blair moved toward the exit, then stopped. “Angus?” she said.
Angus, about to step into the elevator, held the door and turned around. “Yes, darling?”
She wanted to say something terrible likeI’m sorry I married you instead of JoeyorI’m attending Harvard the instant this baby is born, no matter what you say.She wouldnotstand idly by while Angus lied to her!
But she couldn’t start a fight here, in a public building, his place of employment. She had been raised better than that.
“Fix your shirt,” she said. “You missed a button.”
Time of the Season
Her mother drives the Grand Wagoneer and her grandmother sits up front. Without Kirby or Tiger along, Jessie has the entire back seat to herself so she’s able to lie down, resting her head on one of the duffels. The Wagoneer is jam-packed with trunks and valises, boxes and bags, piled to within an inch of the roof. There is no way to see out the back; there never is on this trip, even though every year David implores Kate to bring less “paraphernalia,” and every year Kate promises to bring only the bare necessities. Much of the cargo is clothes, of course—for Exalta, for Kate, for Jessie, for David, and even for Tiger, just in case the war ends at some point over the summer and he is sent home. Their summer wardrobes are completely different from what they wear the rest of the year in Boston. Kate packs Lilly Pulitzer patio dresses, espadrilles, a different bathing suit for every day of the week, clam diggers, Bermuda shorts, boatneck tees, her tennis dresses, and Tretorns. Jessie brings basically the same thing, although on a younger, less sophisticated scale. She has terry-cloth playsuits, a pair of white bell-bottoms, two sundresses for dinners out at restaurants, a crocheted vest, and a Fair Isle sweater for the inevitable rainy days. There’s a small trunk filled with foul-weather gear—raincoats, hats, boots, umbrellas. There’s a box of cooking implements—Kate’s cast-iron pan and her chef’s knife and butcher block. There’s a cooler of steaks and French cheese from Savenor’s because Nantucket is okay for seafood but everything else is subpar compared to the city, according to both Kate and Exalta. Jessie brought her summer reading—Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl—and her new record album. There are tennis rackets and clam rakes, new life preservers for the boat, new wicker baskets for the bicycles.
The drive along Route 93 and then Route 3 is dull and Jessie’s mind wanders. She isn’t sure she’ll be brave enough to ask Exalta if she can play Joni Mitchell on the Magnavox. Her grandmother listens to big-band records; Glenn Miller is her favorite. Her mother is a little better—she likes Ricky Nelson and the Beach Boys. Jessie wishes her own taste in music were cooler. Kirby likes Steppenwolf and the Rolling Stones, and Tiger listens to Led Zeppelin and the Who.
Will Tiger remember to send letters to Nantucket? Jessie kind of doubts it, so that means she’ll have to wait for David to bring the letters down on the weekends.
She feels a twinge in her abdomen. Is it maybe a cramp? Might her period be coming? She suspects it’s simple dread. They will get takeout tonight from Susie’s Snack Bar at the end of Straight Wharf like they always do on the first night, and then tomorrow Jessie will start her tennis lessons at the Field and Oar Club, but what will she do with her afternoons? Go to the beach with hermother?Her mother likes to drive all the way out to Ram Pasture because there is never anyone there. She can plant her chair and read, sleep, and swim in peace. Ram Pasture is the only beach Exalta will go to as well; sometimes, she and Kate go together. Exalta wears a wide-brimmed straw hat and a bathing suit with a skirt. Jessie envisions herself next to her mother and grandmother. It’s a happy picture of three generations enjoying a deserted beach, except nothing could be farther from the truth.
“Jessie!” Kate says, startling Jessie.
“What?”
“‘Yes, Mother,’” Kate prompts.
“Yes, Mother?” Jessie says, sitting up. Her mother is a stickler for manners when Exalta is around.
“The bridge,” Kate says.
The Sagamore Bridge is suddenly before them, distinctive and majestic, an arc of steel girders. Objectively, Jessie supposes, it’s quite hideous, but even so, Jessie feels a rush of fondness for it. Seeing the Sagamore means that summer is beginning, and Jessie’s twelve previous summers here have provided her enough joyful memories that she feels something like anticipation. The air smells like salt and pine, and as Kate drives over the crest of the bridge, Jessie sees boats slicing through the water of the Cape Cod Canal.
This optimism lasts all the way to the ferry dock. Driving the Wagoneer into the hold of theNobskais a ritual for the family, and Jessie suddenly feels privileged to be doing it. Blair is stuck at home in Boston with heartburn and swollen ankles; Kirby is on Martha’s Vineyard among strangers. Tiger is in the jungle in Vietnam. Tiger would likely give anything to be here right now. Before Jessie complains again, even to herself, she’s going to remember that.
They park the car so its front bumper is right up against the back bumper of the ragtop VW bug in front of them, and Jessie is reminded of Miss Flowers’s juicy orange bug—but school seems very far away. It’s the family’s tradition to climb to the uppermost deck and “take in the sea air,” as Exalta says, so Jessie follows her mother and grandmother up the metal staircase, first to the main deck, where there are the men’s and women’s toilets, which are filled with a blue chemical instead of water, and a snack bar that sells hot dogs and chowder, and then to the upper deck, where the sun is the brightest and the breeze the strongest.
“Oh, look, there’s Bitsy Dunscombe,” Kate says. “I’m going to say hello. Want to come, Mother?”
“Heavens, no,” Exalta says. “That whole family is tiresome.”
Jessie happens to agree. Bitsy Dunscombe is the mother of twins, Helen and Heather, who are Jessie’s age. A “friendship” with the Dunscombe twins has been pressed on Jessie since early childhood. The twins are absolutely identical, each with white-blond hair in a pixie cut, freckles across her nose, a slight gap between her two front teeth, and, recently, pierced ears (which Jessie finds scandalous, since she has been taught that the proper age for a girl to get her ears pierced is sixteen). Heather Dunscombe is lovely and kind, while Helen Dunscombe is mean and stinky. (For example, Helen routinely asks Jessie when she’s getting a nose job.) Jessie would be okay hanging out with just Heather, but they come as a package, so Jessie keeps her distance whenever she’s given a choice.
Kate saunters off, leaving Exalta and Jessie standing at the railing, staring at the water. It looks blue in the distance but green when Jessie gazes down on it directly from above, and she knows that if she were to collect this water in a glass, it would be clear. Water has no color, she learned in science class. What people see is a reflection of light. Jessie thinks about sharing this knowledge with Exalta in order to break the silence, but Exalta is humming as though she’s in some kind of meditative state, which makes her seem unlike her normal self.
Finally, she turns to Jessie, tilts her head, and says, “Where did you get that necklace?’
Jessie’s hand flies up to touch the pendant. “My father gave it to me this morning. It’s the Tree of Life.”
Exalta lifts it from Jessie’s neck to better inspect it. “Tree of Life, you say? What doesthatmean?”
