Page 23 of Summer of '69
“And I’ll be back on the first of August, like we discussed, so I can be with you for the birth.”
“I’m leaving Angus,” Blair says.
Kate doesn’t even blink. “I know he’s been working hard, sweetheart. But the moon landing—”
“Damn the moon landing!” Blair says. Liftoff for Apollo 11 is scheduled for July 16, although any one of a thousand things could delay it, pushing it back a few weeks to Blair’s due date. At this point, she hopes Angusisin Houston when the baby comes; she doesn’t want him anywhere near her. “He’s having an affair with some woman named Trixie.” She can’t bear to admit the prostitute part to Kate, but perhaps the nameTrixiemakes that obvious.
“Really?” Kate asks. She sounds skeptical. “Are you sure? It’s common, you know, toimaginehe’s being unfaithful because you’re feeling undesirable—”
“Thisisn’ta figment of my imagination, Mother,” Blair says. “Shecalledhere. I heard her voice.”
“Well, I’m sure Angus will come to his senses once the baby is born,” Kate says.
Blair closes her eyes and sees red, and all she can imagine is her blood pressure spiking to such an alarming level that the baby shoots right out of her. She needs to calm down. She opens her nightstand drawer, pulls out a pack of Kents, and lights one up. “So you suggest I just wait for this to end on its own? You suggest Itoleratethis?”
“You’re seven months pregnant, sweetheart,” Kate says. “You can’t leave and you can’t get divorced and you can’t confront Angus because the emotional turmoil is bad for the baby.”
Blair should never have told her mother. She should have just swallowed her pride and confided in Kirby. Kirby would never advise Blair to stay with a cheating husband. “That’s such an old-fashioned view, Mother,” Blair declares. “What would Betty Friedan say?”
“Who?” Kate says.
Blair shakes her head and collects herself. “I thought maybe I could move into Nonny’s house,” she says. “Since she’s away.”
Kate laughs.
“The house is just sitting there, empty,” Blair says. Her grandmother’s town house in Beacon Hill is large, cool, and gracious with clocks that chime and hand-knotted silk rugs that feel like heaven under bare feet. The bed in the guest room is a king, and the windows look out over the back courtyard, where there’s a tall, wrought-iron fountain that makes a soothing gurgling sound. It wouldn’t be as good as escaping to the islands but it would be better than staying here on Comm. Ave.
“And empty it will remain,” Kate says. “I’m sorry, sweet pea. You’re twenty-four years old, a grown woman, married, and pregnant, and you need to act like an adult and not a child who runs away from her problems. Angus has a remarkable career and provides very well for you. If he is having a dalliance with this…Trixie,it’s probably because he’s under so much pressure. Really, you might think to be grateful.”
“Grateful?” Blair says. “Grateful,Mother? He’s never home, he works all the time, and on the rare occasions he does make an appearance”—she pauses, unsure how much more she wants her mother to know. Kate looks at her expectantly—“he’s…moody. Unpredictable. Sometimes he seems like a completely different person than the man I married.”
“Oh, honey.” Kate seems to soften a bit. She reaches over to brush a stray hair from Blair’s forehead, and Blair briefly leans into the cooling comfort of her mother’s palm, remembering how she used to pretend she felt feverish just so that her mother would rest that soft and steady hand against her face. The memory ends when Kate stands up briskly and leaves the bedroom. She returns a moment later with a glass of brown liquid over ice. At first, Blair thinks it’s iced tea, but when she smells it, she’s happy to find it’s scotch.
“Isn’t your doctor’s appointment tomorrow?” Kate asks.
The appointment with Dr. Sayer, yes. The deplorable Dr. Sayer with the grotesque overgrown beard who feels Blair up with cold hands while his googly eyes swim behind his glasses.
“Yes,” Blair says. She stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray by the bed and takes a sip of scotch. Immediately, she relaxes. “At ten.”
“Is Angus going with you?”
“He’ssupposedto,” Blair says. “But he may have forgotten and planned a rendezvous with Trixie.”
Kate laughs and says, “It’s best to keep a sense of humor about it. Let me know how it goes. We should be on Nantucket by four in the afternoon tomorrow. Love you, sweet pea. Be well.” Kate leans over to kiss Blair on the forehead and give her shoulder a squeeze, and for one instant, Blair feels okay.
“Bye,” Blair says. She can’t believe her mother is being so nonchalant about the news. Blair should have disclosed the prostitute part; maybe then Kate would have been appropriately aghast. Her mother grew up in a time when young women were expected to just put up with unfaithful husbands. But now it’s 1969 and Blair won’t stand for it. If moving into Nonny’s isn’t an option, then Blair will just go to Nantucket for the summer. She’ll have the baby on the island, at the cottage hospital.
But…Blair won’t last two hours in the car and two hours on a ferry; merely driving up the cobblestones of Main Street might send her into premature labor.
She’s trapped.
Angus remembers about Blair’s doctor’s appointment the next day, which is a relief to Blair because the notion of going anywhere alone in her condition is daunting.
Ruth, the office receptionist, takes one look at Blair and Angus and leads them right back to the office where Dr. Sayer is sitting at the desk, smoking. Blair can’t tell if Ruth is alarmed by her size or if she’s impressed that Dr. Whalen has chosen to accompany his wife to the appointment when he’s such a busy man working on a matter that’s so important to the nation’s pride. Maybe it’s a little of both.
There is no mistaking Dr. Sayer’s reaction, however. When he sees Angus, he jumps to his feet and starts pumping Angus’s hand. There follows a long conversation about the moon launch and the merits of various astronauts—Angus wholly defends Armstrong and Aldrin, but Dr. Sayer feels Jim Lovell should be included—and then Angus shifts into technical talk about thrust, elliptical orbits, and Hohmann transfers, and Dr. Sayer nods along, though Blair is certain he’s just as lost as she is.
When she can’t stand being ignored another second, she clears her throat.
