Page 52 of Summer of '69
“Not Mr. Rochester?” Kirby asks.
“I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” Mr. Ames says.
Kirby puts the rose in a bud vase and sets it on the desk. She supposes the flower could be from Bobby Hogue, who is back at the inn this week. He’s such a nice man, though even older than Scottie Turbo, and Kirby wonders whether she could be in a relationship with a man with a missing hand. Yes, she decides. If Darren were missing a hand, she would still like him.
When it’s time to leave work and head home, Mr. Ames tells Kirby to go on out front; he has to check in with Mrs. Bennie for a moment. Kirby thinks this is strange—they don’t usually overlap with Mrs. Bennie, who arrives at nine—but she steps outside anyway.
There, idling at the front curb, is Darren in his red Corvair. When he sees Kirby, he hops out of the car and races around to open the passenger door.
“Ride home?” he says.
She can’t believe this is happening. Darren is here at the inn at seven o’clock in the morning to take her home. He’s not wearing his white T-shirt and shorts, which means he isn’t on his way to work. He came only to see her. And Mr. Ames is in on it.Darrenis the one who brought Kirby the rose!
Kirby keeps her cool. “I’d love it,” she says as she folds her legs gracefully into the front seat. “Thank you.”
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
Kate never would have guessed it, but Bitsy Dunscombe drinks even more than she does. It’s a Friday night in July and they have managed to score a decent table at the Opera House. This alone is reason to celebrate. Bitsy calls their waiter over and orders champagne, the best, a vintage Krug.
Bitsy Dunscombe, née Entwistle, of Park Avenue, New York City, and Main Street, Nantucket, was born an aristocrat. She married Ward Dunscombe, whose family owns platinum mines, and now Bitsy has more money than everyone else on Nantucket combined—or close to it, anyway. Kate finds Bitsy’s blatant displays of wealth obnoxious, except in situations like this one.
As the piano tinkles away and the regulars sitting at table 1 hoot with laughter, Kate and Bitsy make quick work of the Krug, and Kate eats one of the tiny gougères brought out by their waiter before they order their martinis.
Bitsy isn’t Kate’s first choice of dinner companion on a Friday night but the two of them do make a tradition of getting together once a summer, and neither David nor Ward is coming to the island this weekend, so when Bitsy called, Kate thought,Why not,and accepted the invitation.
David called the night before to say he was bogged down in a case and couldn’t get away, but Kate knows he’s keeping his distance on purpose. He’ll show up when she cuts back on her drinking, when she can make it through a short phone conversation without hiccupping or slurring her words, which hasn’t happened since she arrived.
As for Ward…well, everyone knows that Ward Dunscombe has a mistress on Long Island; her name is Kimberly Titus and she’s the daughter of Reggie Titus, flour king. Even Bitsy knows and she seems to accept it as a matter of course. When Kate informed Bitsy that David wasn’t coming this weekend, Bitsy said, “Does David have a Kimberly in Boston?”
“No,” Kate said. “He has a job.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew Bitsy must find her naive and way too trusting, but Kate had been married to a philanderer once and she wasn’t crazy enough to do it a second time. David is principled; if anything, he’stooprincipled. Kate is the one with the dark secret and questionable morals.
One martini, two martinis. Kate orders the escargots to start and Bitsy the hot appetizer—a crepe of seafood tossed in béchamel—which she barely touches.
“Shall we order wine?” Bitsy asks. This seems excessive. Kate is already seeing double, and the garlic from the escargot is repeating on her, so she eats a piece of bread slathered with the sublime French butter. But the question was, of course, rhetorical. Bitsy calls over their waiter and keeps him at the table far longer than is necessary, hanging on to his arm, asking obnoxious questions about Sancerre versus Chablis when she has already announced that she’s orderingle boeuffor her main course.
When poor Fernando or Arnoldo—Kate can’t remember the man’s name for love or money—finally escapes, Bitsy looks at Kate across the table and says, “I’m sleeping with him.”
Kate nearly chokes on her bread. “With whom?”
“Arturo,” Bitsy says. “He comes to the house after service and throws pebbles at my window.”
Kate brings her menu up to her face to shield the aghast expression she can’t wish away. Bitsy Dunscombe is sleeping with an Opera House waiter. Kate realizes there’s a sexual revolution going on in the rest of the country, but she never thought it would infiltrate the upper echelons of society here on Nantucket.
“Don’tjudgeme, Katie Nichols,” Bitsy says. Kate dislikes her childhood nickname, although Bitsy is one of the few people who has known Kate long enough to use it. They’d taken sailing lessons together when they were only eleven years old. “I know you’ve always thought you were better than me with your four perfect children, but I have news for you…”
So this is Bitsy Dunscombe fueled by one too many, Kate thinks. She gets ugly—not only her language, but her face as well. Her expression contorts into a hideous mask with narrowed, accusing eyes and twisted lips. If she says anything about Tiger, Kate will slap her or throw a drink in her face. The piano player will stop right in the middle of “Try to Remember,” and the revelers at table 1 will gape first and gossip later, and who could blame them? Kate Levin and Bitsy Dunscombe are two middle-aged matrons, both impeccably bred and raised, who should be able to get through dinner at the Opera House without making a scene.
No, Kate thinks. She pulls her comportment out as though it were something tucked away in her pocketbook. “I never thought I was better than you, Bitsy. You have beautiful twin girls. You were much smarter than I—you didn’t make the mistake of marrying too young.”
“Don’t patronize me,” Bitsy whispers fiercely. “I won’t have it.”
At that moment, Arturo arrives with the wine, a cabernet that will complement both Bitsy’sboeufand Kate’scanard. As Bitsy goes through the theatrics of tasting the wine, Kate gazes around the room. The Opera House is tiny, a jewel box, really, dark and magical, with the iconic velvet-lined phone booth in the corner where Kate once caught Wilder kissing the Broussards’ Swedish au pair. Wilder had been drunk, too drunk to know what he was doing, so Kate had forgiven him, despite the public humiliation.
Kate thinks of poor Blair, probably at that very moment lolling on the couch in front of the television like a walrus on an ice floe, stuffing her face with grilled-cheese sandwiches and pudding cups. Kate encouraged Blair to stick it out with Angus even though Angus is engaging in an affair with the woman named Trixie (who can only be a prostitute) because that was what Kate herself had done—she stuck it out. But why should poor Blair have to suffer as Kate did? For propriety’s sake? Propriety means next to nothing these days, as Bitsy Dunscombe is so plainly demonstrating. Why shouldn’t Blair be with Angus’s brother, Joey, if that’s who she really loves? Blair deserves to be adored. All women deserve to be adored.
“I’m sorry, Bitsy, your words came as a shock,” Kate says. She lowers her voice. “I assure you, I would never judge—”
“You should be positively ashamed of your daughter,” Bitsy says. She takes a long drink of her wine; it stains her lips purple. Kate wonders if Bitsy has heard about Blair; her presence on the island can hardly be kept hush-hush. The news must have circulated that Blair and Angus are having marital problems and perhaps someone got hold of the sordid story about Angus kicking Blair out of the apartment because he caught her withhis own brother. But who would have leaked such a story? Exalta? Exalta meets Mrs. Winter for mimosas every morning. She might have said something accidentally, and everyone knows how Mrs. Winter holds a grudge against Blair for dumping her son, Larry.
