Page 38 of Summer of '69
Dear God,Kate thinks,what is Blair going to say?
“…and I kissed him, Mother.Reallykissed him. And Angus walked in on us!” Blair starts weeping again. “Angus surprised me at home withflowersto celebrate the news about the twins and I wasnecking with his brother!”
Oh dear,Kate thinks. She has long suspected that Blair still carries a torch for Joey and vice versa.
“Surely Angus understands that you were upset about his relationship with the other woman? And surely you explained that you aren’t yourself because of your condition?”
“He wouldn’t hear any of that,” Blair says. “Joey made it worse by proclaiming his love for me. They had a fistfight right in front of me and then Angus told me he thought I would be happier with Joey anyway.”
“What?” Kate says. “Nonsense!”
“Joey drove me to the ferry,” Blair says. “I think he still has feelings for me. In fact, I know he does.”
“How Joey Whalen feels is not our concern,” Kate says. “Our concern is howyoufeel, and you love Angus. Right?”
Blair hesitates, but her answer to this question doesn’t matter. She married Angus for better or for worse. Angus is the father of those babies, not Joey. Fatherhood isn’t something you can just pass off to another man. Although Kate did just that; David raised her three children like they were his own.
“Joey is thoughtful and dotes on me,” Blair says. “I’m sure he would encourage me to work after the babies are born if I wanted to.”
“Work after thebabiesare born?” Kate says. “You’re having twins, sweet pea. They’ll provide plenty of work.”
“I wanted whipped cream on my cake and Joey ran and bought some from the ice cream man,” Blair says.
Kate puts an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “You need to stop talking nonsense. You’re married to Angus, you’ll remain married to Angus, and you will stay home and raise those children just like I stayed home to raise you. Motherhood is a sacrifice. That’s what makes it so rewarding.”
“But—”
“Angus will come around in a few days,” Kate says. “A week at the most. And then we’ll ship you home.”
While Blair sobs into the handkerchief, Kate considers the logistics of having Blair here for even a week. They’ll need to call the cottage hospital that very afternoon to make certain there’s a doctor who can deliver the babies in case of emergency. And where will Blairsleep?Kate can’t put her in Little Fair with the Crimminses; she’ll have to take Jessie’s room, and Jessie can go over to Little Fair. That’s not optimal, but it’s only a week. Jessie will survive.
Poor Jessie. Kate promised her a beach day, and that’s now out the window, plus she’s being kicked out of her bedroom. Kate downs her screwdriver, and despite the chaos, a calm spreads through her. She’ll take Jessie out to dinner Thursday night while Exalta is at bridge. And she’ll start to give Jessie a little more freedom. That’s what all kids want these days, Kate thinks. Freedom.
Magic Carpet Ride (Reprise)
Kirby spends her first days off being a third wheel with Patty and Luke, who have very quickly become a couple. Luke Winslow is a rising senior at Columbia University; he’s majoring in business and when he graduates, he will head straight to Wall Street, he says, to work for his father’s investment firm, Drexel Harriman Ripley. In fact, Luke’s parents own the house on the Vineyard where Patty’s brother Tommy and his roommate, Eugene, live. Kirby expects something halfway between a flophouse and a fraternity house, but when they pull into the driveway, after a beautiful, hilly, bucolic ride up-island to Chilmark, Kirby sees a compound that overlooks Nashaquitsa Pond. There are two ranch houses sided with cedar shingles like most of the homes on Nantucket. The slightly smaller one is where the boys live. Luke’s parents live in the other, though they come to the Vineyard only on the weekends.
The house the boys live in blows Kirby’s mind. Sliding screen doors open onto one long room with stark white walls and white beams. The furniture is modern and curvy. Against one wall is a lipstick-red sofa that looks like a woman lying on her side; it’s flanked by two shell chairs, one turquoise, one electric lime green. There are enormous canvases on the walls, all female nudes, modern, reminiscent of Matisse and Chagall. At one end of the room is a minimalist kitchen—three swivel bar stools at a white marble countertop, on top of which is a wide wooden bowl filled with plums and bing cherries; open shelves stacked with rustic ceramic dishes.
At the other end of the house are two bedrooms, one with two double beds (for Tommy and Eugene), the other with one king bed (for Luke), all sheathed in crisp white linens. The bedrooms are connected by a white subway-tiled bathroom that has a floor paved with slate-blue river stones.
Okay,Kirby thinks. This is absolutely the grooviest house she has ever seen. There’s a chandelier in the living room that looks like an origami fish. It’s made of rice paper, Luke says.
“Who did all the paintings?” Kirby asks. The nude women are all voluptuous with long Botticelli-like hair.
“My mother,” Luke says. “Elsa Winslow?” He says the name like Kirby might have heard of her. She has taken one art history course at Simmons, which is how she knows Matisse and Chagall. Kirby wonders if Elsa Winslow is famous. Maybe she has a cult following, like Andy Warhol.
“She’s anamazingpainter,” Kirby says.
“Yeah,” Luke says. “And she knows it.”
Kirby looks at Luke with new eyes. She had originally thought him just a regular guy—privileged, obviously, given the painstakingly restored Willys Jeep, but not so different from guys in Brookline. Now that Kirby is standing in this super-hip beach bungalow, she’s intrigued. Kirby imagines his parents—a midtown financial power broker and a Greenwich Village bohemian artist—with envy. They aren’t hung up on budgets or rules like Kirby’s parents are. They have given Luke his own house, essentially, to live in with his friends.
Kirby peers into the bedrooms. “Honestly, I thought with three guys living here, this place would be a mess. I can’t believe how tidy it is.”
“We have a housekeeper,” Luke says. “Martine. She lives up at the other house.” Luke grabs Patty and starts tickling her and Patty shrieks and the two of them fall over onto the red couch. When they start kissing, Kirby nearly asks them to quit it, but she doesn’t want to be a wet blanket. She wanders over to the kitchen counter and considers the bowl of fruit. The plums and the cherries are nearly the same color, but not quite—deep purple and glorious purplish red—and Kirby realizes that even the fruit is meant to be art. She plucks a cherry out of the bowl. It’s fat and juicy-looking, and Kirby can’t resist popping it into her mouth. Her diet since arriving on this island has consisted of breakfast porridge, fried clams from Giordano’s, and stale doughnuts at the inn. The cherry is sweeter than any she has ever tasted. She sucks on the pit until it’s clean then discreetly spits it out in her hand. Behind her, on the sofa, she hears wet tongue noises and heavy breathing; she tries not to think about Scottie Turbo. No one would ever call Kirby a prude, but she doesn’t want to stand here while Luke and Patty fool around. Kirby steps out the sliding door. In her peripheral vision, she catches sight of Luke leading Patty back to his bedroom. Kirby hears the door shut.
Fine.
