Page 47 of Summer of '69
Now their waitress arrives, wearing a blue dress with a white pinafore. She tells them her name is Alice, then she lowers her voice to a whisper and says, “It’sreallyAlice.”
Something is a little off with Alice, Jessie thinks. Her voice sounds spacey and her eyes are red, like Kirby’s when she smokes marijuana. Jessie remembers one time after Kirby had been smoking that Exalta noticed her red eyes and asked if she had been swimming in a pool. Kirby and Tiger—and even Blair—had cracked up about that later, and “swimming in a pool” became their code for getting high.
Has their waitress Alice been swimming in a pool? Jessie wonders. She wishes her siblings were there so she could make them laugh by asking.
Kate orders a martini with two olives and Jessie orders a Shirley Temple with two cherries and Alice giggles. Kate scans the other tables and the chairs around the sunken Jabberwocky bar, but there is no one she knows, and she seems to relax. When her martini arrives, she loosens up even more. She actuallysmiles. Jessie realizes she hasn’t seen her mother smile since the letter from the Selective Service arrived.
“Cheers to you, my darling,” Kate says. “Happy birthday!”
It’s ten days after Jessie’s birthday, but this definitely qualifies as a case of better late than never. Jessie touches her mother’s glass with her own, and together, they drink.
The relish tray arrives. Using the tiny, three-pronged fork, Jessie plucks out a piece of pickled cauliflower. She doesn’t particularly care for the taste, but her siblings used to fight over the cauliflower, and because of this, it has become a prize.
Next, Alice brings the plate with the whipped cheese and an assortment of crackers. Kate nudges the plate closer to Jessie and says, “Go crazy, darling,” because Jessie loves nothing more than the zesty cheese spread on an onion-salt cracker. She lifts the delicate piece of paper covering the cheese—it’s stamped with a picture of the Mad Hatter—fixes herself two crackers, then offers one to her mother, who shakes her head. The basket of rolls is the next present to arrive—Nonny calls them “presents,” because this is the food you get just for sitting down. Jessie has long wondered why anyone would order food you have to pay for when you could easily make a meal out of the relish tray, the cheese and crackers, and the rolls. Included in the Mad Hatter breadbasket are homemade cinnamon rolls, which were Tiger’s particular favorite. Although Jessie wants one very badly, she leaves them both, as if Tiger might magically appear from the war and sit down to enjoy them. Instead, Jessie helps herself to one of the warm, pillowy Parker House rolls. She pulls it apart, then breaks it into smaller pieces and butters each piece as she goes, just as Nonny has taught her. She is showboating a little, willing Kate to notice her impeccable manners, but Kate is in a trance. She drains her first martini and orders a second, which Alice promptly delivers. Jessie’s spirits sink because she senses her birthday dinner is going to end with her mother getting drunk and weepy and making a scene here at the Mad Hatter, and then they won’t be able to return for the rest of the summer.
But the second martini might have contained a shot of adrenaline, because Kate perks up.
“Darling,” she says. “I want you to tell me everything.”
“Everything?” Jessie says.
“Yes, everything that’s going on in that beautiful, brilliant mind of yours. Blair said you’re getting breasts and now I can see that’s true.” Kate gazes at Jessie’s chest and Jessie steels herself for questions about the necklace, but none come.
“I never told your grandmother anything,” her mother says. “I kept secrets all through growing up, even silly things like Timothy Whitby down the street teaching me to drive in his Studebaker, and do you know what that did? It made me good at keeping secrets.” Kate picks the olives out of her martini and pulls one off the toothpick with her teeth. Jessie is glad to see her mother eating something because she hasn’t touched the relish tray, the crackers, or the bread. “And I’m still keeping secrets now, even though I’m a grown-up. Big secrets.”
“You are?” Jessie says. She tries to imagine what kinds of secrets Kate could be keeping, but she comes up blank.
Kate nods, eats the second olive. “That’s why I want you to know you can tell me anything, and I meananything,and I won’t be angry. I’m still going to love you just as much as I already do. Blair and Kirby are like me, you know, they keep secrets, but Tiger tells me everything and you will too, won’t you?” She blinks rapidly. “Won’t you please, Jessie, tell me everything?”
Jessie thinks about what it would be like to tell her mothereverything. Back home, in Brookline, Leslie made up a game where we all took something without paying for it.The “game,” Jessie knows, wasn’t a game; it was stealing.And even though I knew it was wrong, I liked it. So now, whenever I’m upset, I steal. For example, when my tennis instructor Garrison Howe wrapped his arms around me and rubbed…
Jessie feels her face grow warm even thinking the words. There isabsolutely no wayshe can tell her mother about Garrison.
Alice arrives with the blackboard menu and Jessie pretends to consider the options—veal Oscar, duck à l’orange, coquilles St. Jacques—as does Kate, but they both know what they’re ordering because they always order the same thing: a Caesar salad to share, the shrimp scampi for Kate, and the filet mignon with béarnaise sauce and a baked potato with sour cream and chives for Jessie.
“One strawberry shortcake for dessert, please,” Kate adds, because everyone knows the kitchen runs out of strawberry shortcake fast so you have to call dibs on it right away.
Alice writes down their order on her little pad, then reads it back. “‘Caesar, two forks; one scampi, one filet medium rare with baked. And one shortcake, two forks.’” She gives them an inscrutable smile. “Remember what the Dormouse said.”
“What?” Jessie asks.
Alice breaks into a fit of giggles; her tiny red eyes scrunch up and leak tears.
“I’ll have another martini,” Kate says.
Jessie finishes her roll and eats another cracker, even though she’s getting full. She will never eat all of her steak, which is fine. She’ll have it boxed up to go and maybe she can share it with Pick later.
I have a crush on Pick.Jessie thinks about telling her motherthisbut decides against it. If Jessie admits to having grown-up feelings, she suspects she will be whisked right out of Little Fair and forced to sleep next to Nonny.
Jessie realizes it’s fine if she doesn’t tell her mother everything, or even anything, because after Alice drops off the third martini, Kate smiles at Jessie in a dreamy way that lets Jessie know she’s forgotten she even asked. For some reason, however, Jessie decides she doesn’t want to be let off the hook.
“I do have something to tell you,” Jessie says.
Kate snaps to attention and leans over the table. “Have you gotten your period, darling?”
“No.” Jessie can’t believe what she’s about to say. But yes, she must say it. The words are collecting at the back of her throat like an angry crowd. Thirteen, she reminds herself, is an age of maturity and responsibility. “Nonny won’t let me sign the name Levin at the club,” Jessie says. “Because she’s anti-Semitic.”
Jessie isn’t sure what she expected—shocked indignation, anger, incredulousness—but it isn’t her mother laughing. Kate throws her head back to expose her neck and her pearls. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
