Page 91 of Summer of '69
For a second, Jessie is suspended in sheer panic, thinking she has fallen in love withher own brother—but then she recalculates. Pickisn’ther brother. His parents are Lorraine Crimmins and Wilder Foley. Her parents are Kate and David. Pick is, however, the half brother of Blair, Kirby, and Tiger, just as Jessie is their half sister. Pick isher,but on the flip side.
Jessie is dizzy. “Does Nonny know?” she asks.
Kate shrugs. “I’m sure she suspects. Although, actually, I have no idea. Your grandmother and I haven’t talked about it because we don’t talk about anything. I’ve had a very lonely life.”
“Youhave?” Jessie says. In her mind, Kate is the center of everything. She’s Exalta’s daughter; she was Wilder’s wife and now she’s David’s wife; she’s Blair’s, Kirby’s, Tiger’s, and Jessie’s mother. How can she be lonely?
Kate’s eyes fill with tears and Jessie gazes at her with wonder. Her mother is so beautiful, even in her bathrobe and pink silk pajamas, even without pearls or lipstick. Jessie knows her mother is sick with worry about Tiger but now it appears she’s sad about all sorts of other things, older things.
“The night Wilder died…” Kate says.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Jessie says.
“I have to tellsomeone,don’t you see?” Kate says. She squeezes Jessie’s hand, and for the first time ever in her life, Jessie understands that her mother is real.
It’s a revelation. Her mother is a human being who feels pain—sadness, loneliness, confusion. Jessie thought all grown-ups lived in a different atmosphere, one that was like a cool, clear gel. Adults had problems, Jessie knew—money and their children—but one of the benefits of reaching adulthood, she thought, was that you outgrew the raw, hot, chaotic emotions of adolescence.
“The night Wilder died was a couple of days after I received a letter from Lorraine telling me that she was pregnant with his baby.”
Jessie’s stomach drops.
“I wanted to confront him while the children were asleep,” Kate says. “I found him in his workshop, cleaning his gun.”
Jessie bows her head and closes her eyes. She knows she should be honored that her mother has chosenheras a confidante…but she doesn’t want to hear another word. Already the story is different from the one Jessie believed to be true her whole life. She thought that Kate had walked into the workshop and found Wilder dead.
“I let him read the letter from Lorraine,” Kate goes on, “and I said, ‘It looks like you’re to have a bastard child. I’m taking the children and leaving you. I’m moving back to Beacon Hill with my parents. I’m through, Wilder, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ve contacted a lawyer and I’m filing for divorce.’”
Jessie holds her breath. She had been told long ago—by whom, she can’t remember—that Wilder shot himself accidentally and that Kate had hired David Levin to prove it wasn’t a suicide and he had done that.
“I closed the door and walked away,” Kate says. “But do you know what I regret?”
Jessie senses that she’s not expected to answer, and she can’t find her voice anyway.
“I regret not slamming the door,” Kate says. “If I’d shown anger, Wilder might have snapped to his senses and come after me to argue or plead his case. He had…dramatic mood swings, problems with pills and whiskey…but I didn’t realize how low his low points were. Honestly, Jessica, I wasn’t thinking about him in that moment. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking that he had betrayed me. He had been unfaithful with someone I knew, someone I liked. And he’d been careless enough to get her pregnant, which meant that the whole wide world would know that Wilder preferred Lorraine Crimmins to me, and I would be humiliated on top of my heartbreak.”
“What happened?” Jessie asks.
“A split second after I’d closed the door quietly but firmly, with a click, and walked away, I heard a shot.”
“He killed himself,” Jessie says.
“Yes,” Kate says. “I wasn’t a hundred percent certain at first because Wilder was prone to drama. I thought it was possible he’d fired a shot into the wall to make methinkhe’d killed himself. And he was so unstable that I also thought it was possible that I’d open that door and he would be pointing the gun at me.”
“What did you do?” Jessie asks.
“I waited a few minutes and when I heard nothing but silence, I opened the door and I saw what he’d done.” Kate eyes are dry, her face calm. She might be telling Jessie that she opened the door to find Wilder had fixed the vacuum. “My first emotion was completely irrational: anger. I was furious that Wilder had taken the easy way out. I wanted him to face what he’d done. I wanted him to feel shame in front of my father, in front of my mother.”
This is so unexpected, Jessie doesn’t know how to arrange her expression.
“And then I felt guilt, like an ocean wave crashing over me, a really powerful wave, the kind that knocks you down and fills your nose and mouth with burning salt water. Because…” Kate laughs sadly. “I can’t believe I’m telling you all this. I should stop.”
Yes,Jessie thinks.Stop. Stop!But somehow she knows Kate isn’t able to stop.
“I felt guilty because I had lied to Wilder. I hadn’t contacted a lawyer and I didn’t plan on divorcing him. I would have moved to Nonny’s temporarily, then we would have worked it out. I only said what I did in order to upset him.” Kate pauses, thinks for a minute, then says, “The only person in the whole world who knows the truth is Bill Crimmins.”
“Mr. Crimmins?” Jessie says.
“I called him on Nantucket and told him what happened. He got on the ferry and made it to our house by midnight. He fixed it.”
