Page 94 of Summer of '69
David smiles. “Good morning,” he says to the fill-in girl, who has messy hair and dark circles under her eyes and looks like she was roused from bed five minutes earlier. “I’m David Levin, son-in-law of Exalta Nichols. My daughter and I are going to go hit.”
The girl-who-just-woke-up—BRENDA,her name tag says—doesn’t even blink. “Sign in,” she says groggily.
Jessie watches her father sign:Nichols N-3.
He turns to Jessie. “Ready to play?”
“How come you didn’t sign Levin?” she asks as they walk toward the courts.
“Because it’s your grandmother’s membership.”
“Yeah, but Levin is your name,” she says.And my name!“Did you not sign it because you don’t want anyone to know you’re Jewish?”
David throws his head back and laughs. He wraps an arm around Jessie and pulls her in close. “Trust me, everyone here already knows I’m Jewish. But you know what else they know?”
“What?” Jessie says.
They are right in front of court 11, which is closest to the water. It’s the only court Jessie has played on all summer but she has been so racked with anxiety about her lessons that she has never once noticed how pretty her surroundings are. Today the sky is brilliant blue, and an American flag ripples in the breeze. The harbor is dotted with boats. The view from here is breathtaking but also exclusive because it’s not for everybody.
David says, “They know I’m smart and that I have an important job and they know I’m a really, really good tennis player. They also know how much I love your mother and your sisters and your brother and you. And to most people here, Jessie, the good people, that’s all that matters. Okay?”
Tears are standing in Jessie’s eyes but she hopes they’re hidden by the bill of her visor. She nods and leads her father onto the court.
They hit the ball around, Jessie accepting her father’s compliments—“Your backhand is so strong and accurate! Your serving form is darn near perfect!”—but after an hour, the sun is high and hot, and both Jessie and David have had enough.
“How about we go to the Sweet Shoppe?” David says. “Get that ice cream I promised you.”
Even though it’s July 20, this is Jessie’s first trip all summer to the Sweet Shoppe. It smells the way all good ice cream parlors should, like toasted marshmallows, melted chocolate, and the malt-and-vanilla scent of just-baked waffle cones. Jessie orders a double scoop of malachite chip in a silver bowl and David gets black raspberry in a cone and they sit at one of the tiny circular marble tables in uncomfortable wrought-iron chairs.
“It’s time for you to pour your heart out,” David says. “I’m not here to judge. I’m just here to listen.”
Not here to judge. This is an unusual statement, Jessie thinks, which must be a sign that she can hand over her mother’s awful secret and David will respectfully accept it and take care of it.
She can’t say it.
She wonders if maybe she can ease into the news about her mother. There are many other places to start: Garrison’s unwanted liberties, Jessie’s spate of thefts, her losing Nonny’s necklace and the subsequent grounding, falling in love with Pick, her first kiss, her first heartbreak upon meeting Sabrina, the bra shopping that was interrupted by Blair’s water breaking on the floor at Buttner’s, her mother’s drinking problem, Jessie’s first period, her angst that Anne Frank did not survive the war, the scene with Lorraine Crimmins followed by Pick’s departure that is maybe forever, Tiger’s letter telling Jessie two of his friends, Frog and Puppy, had been killed and that he was being shipped on a secret mission, the discovery that Exalta and Mr. Crimmins were…girlfriend and boyfriend?
Jessie opens her mouth to speak but her tongue is frozen, both literally and figuratively. She feels like a stunted, thwarted failure. She is unable to share any of the things that happened to her this summer. She just can’t do it.
Instead, she digs into her malachite chip—it’s just a fancy name for mint chocolate chip—which has reached that seductively melted stage.
She feels the cool weight of her Tree of Life pendant against her breastbone. When her father noticed her wearing it, his eyes lit up.Maturity and responsibility,she thinks. And then, a radical idea seizes her.
When she was a child, she told her parents everything:I’m hungry, I’m tired, I need to use the bathroom, I skinned my knee, I like, I hate, I want, I need.What if growing up means keeping some things to herself? The experiences of this summer will become as much a part of her as her bones and muscle, her brains and heart. Ten or twenty years from now, when she looks back on the summer of 1969, she will think:That was the summer I became real. My own real person.
She draws her spoon along the delicious melty edge of her ice cream and says, “I haven’t been able to play my new record album even once.”
“The Joni Mitchell?” David says.
Jessie loves her father for remembering. And then another radical thought strikes: to her father, she is already a real person.
“Well, let’s remedy that as soon as we get home,” David says. He tilts his head and catches her eye. “So it’s fair to say this summer has turned out better than you thought?”
“Oh yes,” Jessie tells her father. “Much better.”
For What It’s Worth
Senator Kennedy is in trouble.
