Page 3 of Summer of '69
“Jessie!” her father calls. He sounds irritated. She stands up from the table and scurries to the front door.
David is holding the screen open. Outside, illuminated by the porch light, are Leslie and Doris.
“I told your friends we were eating,” David says. “But since you’re leaving tomorrow, I’ll give you five minutes. They came to say goodbye.”
Jessie nods. “Thank you,” she whispers. She sees the relief on her father’s face. Being disrupted during the dinner hour is not good, but the reason for it is far, far better than what they had all privately feared.
Jessie steps out onto the porch. “Five minutes,”David says, and heshuts the screen door behind her.
Jessie waits for her heart rate to return to normal. “You guys walked?” she asks. Leslie lives six blocks away, Doris nearly ten.
Doris nods. She looks glum, as usual. Her Coke-bottle glasses slide to the end of her nose. She’s wearing her bell-bottom jeans with the embroidered flowers on the front pockets, of course. Doris lives in those jeans. But as a concession to the heat, she’s paired them with a white-eyelet halter top that would be pretty if it weren’t for the ketchup stain on the front. Doris’s father owns two McDonald’s franchises; she eats a lot of hamburgers.
The air is balmy, and among the trees bordering the road, Jessie sees the flash of fireflies. Oh, how she longs to stay in Brookline through the summer! She can ride her bike to the country club with Leslie and Doris, and in the late afternoons they can buy bomb pops from the Good Humor man. They can hang out at the shops in Coolidge Corner and pretend they’re just bumping into boys from school. Kirby told Jessie that this is the summer boys her age will finally start getting taller.
“We came to saybon voyage,” Leslie says. She peers behind Jessie to make sure no one is lingering on the other side of the screen door and then lowers her voice. “Also, I have news.”
“Two pieces of news,” Doris says.
“First of all,” Leslie says, “it came.”
“It,” Jessie repeats, though she knows Leslie means her period.
Doris wraps an arm across her own midsection. “I’ve been feeling crampy,” she says. “So I suppose I’ll be next.”
Jessie isn’t sure what to say. How should she greet the news that one of her best friends has taken the first step into womanhood while she, Jessie, remains resolutely a child? Jessie is envious, fiendishly so, because ever since “the talk” led by the school nurse last month, the topic of menstruation has consumed their private conversations. Jessie assumed Leslie would be first among them to get her period because Leslie is the most developed. She already has small, firm breasts and wears a training bra, whereas Jessie and Doris are as flat as ironing boards. Jessie’s envy and longing and, on some days, anxiety—she heard a story about a girl who never got her periodat all—is foolish, she knows. Both of Jessie’s older sisters moan about their periods; Kirby calls it “the curse,” which is a fairly apt term in Kirby’s case, as the monthly onset gives her migraine headaches and debilitating cramps and puts her in a foul temper. Blair is slightly more delicate when referring to her own cycle, although it’s not an issue at the moment because she’s pregnant.
Leslie can get pregnantnow,Jessie thinks, a notion that is almost laughable. She’s ready to stop talking about all of this; she wants to go back inside and finish her pizza.
“What’s the second piece of news?” Jessie asks.
“This,” Leslie says, and she produces a flat, square, wrapped present from behind her back. “Happy birthday.”
“Oh,” Jessie says, stunned. Like everyone else with a summer birthday, she has given up hoping that it will ever be properly celebrated by her classmates. She accepts the gift; it is, quite obviously, a record album. “Thank you.” She beams at Leslie, then at Doris, who is still clutching her abdomen against imaginary cramps, and then she rips the wrapping paper off. It’sClouds,by Joni Mitchell, as Jessie hoped it would be. She is obsessed with the song “Both Sides Now.” It’s the most beautiful song in the world. Jessie could listen to it every single second of every day between now and the time she died and she still wouldn’t be sick of it.
She hugs Leslie, then Doris, who says, “We split the cost.” This statement seems meant to elicit a second thank-you, which Jessie delivers more specifically to Doris. Jessie is happy to hear they actuallyboughtthe album because, in the two weeks since school let out, the three of them have engaged in a spate of shoplifting. Leslie stole two pink pencil erasers and one package of crayons from Irving’s, Doris stole a day-old egg bagel from the kosher bakery, and Jessie, under extreme pressure from the other two, stole a Maybelline mascara from the Woolworths in Coolidge Corner, which was a far riskier crime because Woolworths was said to be wired with hidden cameras. Jessie knows that stealing is wrong, but Leslie turned it into a challenge, and Jessie felt her honor was at stake. When Jessie walked into Woolworths on the day of her turn, she had been afraid, indeed terrified, and was already framing the apology to her parents, already deciding to blame her bad decision-making on the stress of her brother’s deployment, but when she walked out of Woolworths with the mascara tucked safely in the pocket of her orange windbreaker, she felt a rush of adrenaline that she thought must be similar to getting high. She feltgreat!She feltpowerful!She had been so intoxicated that she stopped at the gas station near the corner of Beacon and Harvard, went into the ladies’ room, and applied the mascara right then and there in the dingy mirror.
The less thrilling part of the story was that Kate detected the mascara the second Jessie walked into the house, and the Spanish Inquisition had followed. What was on Jessie’s eyes? Was it mascara? Where did she getmascara?Jessie had given Kate the only believable answer: it was Leslie’s. Jessie hoped and prayed that Kate wouldn’t call Leslie’s mother, because if Leslie’s mother asked Leslie about it, it was fifty-fifty whether Leslie would cover for Jessie or not.
All in all, Jessie is relieved not to be receiving a stolen record album. If her mother ever found out about the shoplifting, she would pluck Jessie from Leslie’s sphere of influence permanently.
“When are you coming back?” Leslie asks.
“Labor Day,” Jessie says. It seems like an eternity from now. “Write me. You still have the address, right?”
“Yup,” Doris says. “I already sent you a postcard.”
“You did?” Jessie says. She’s touched by this unexpected act of kindness from grouchy old Doris.
“We’re gonna miss you,” Leslie says.
Jessie hugs the record album to her chest as she waves goodbye and then goes back into the house. She wasn’t the first to get her period, she might not even be the second, but that doesn’t matter. Her friends love her—they bought her something they knew she wanted—and, more important, her brother is still alive. For one brief moment at the tail end of her twelfth year, Jessie Levin is happy.
Early in the morning, there is a light rapping on Jessie’s bedroom door. Her father pokes his head in.
“You up?” he asks.
“No,” she says. She pulls the covers over her head. The floaty feeling from last night has disappeared. Jessie doesn’t want to go to Nantucket. It isn’t even possible to look atboth sidesnow.There is only one side, which is that without her siblings—and, eventually, without her mother—Nantucket is going to stink.
