Page 93 of Summer of '69
Leslie was stopped by the police two blocks away.
The police took her to the station, called her parents, said they had witnessed the burglary on a hidden camera and they could charge Leslie and she would go to court and maybe even a juvenile delinquent center. Leslie’s father managed to talk the police out of it and he took Leslie home.
But now…Leslie’s parents have decided to send her to boarding school in Switzerland (which is where her grandmother lives) because they don’t want Leslie going down a “wayward path.”
So I guess that just leaves you and me, facing seventh grade together!
See you in a few weeks.
From your best friend, Doris
The drama of the day and the sun at the beach have worn Jessie down. She has every intention of using the dollar her father gave her to walk down to Vincent’s for pizza, but the second her parents leave for dinner at the Skipper, she goes up to her room and falls asleep.
She wakes up in the middle of the night, absolutely ravenous. She knows the offerings in the fridge at Little Fair are meager—half a jar of pickles, grape jam, a package of hot dogs that would require boiling, which seems like too much work. Jessie tiptoes down the stairs but finds the door to Mr. Crimmins’s room open. The room is empty and dark, and Jessie wonders if Mr. Crimmins will move back to Pine Street now that Pick is gone. She supposes the answer is yes.
Jessie crosses the yard and enters the kitchen at All’s Fair, hoping that Kate brought home a doggie bag from the Skipper; her mother hasn’t eaten a full meal since Tiger left. Sure enough, there’s a paper bag on the counter and inside is a box containing cold fried chicken. Jessie is so hungry she bites into the drumstick right away. She hears voices. Maybe she’s not the only person awake, or maybe someone left the television on.
Jessie tiptoes down the hall. No one has turned on the TV since Blair left for the hospital. But Jessie can see the watery light flickering into the hall.
She pauses at the doorway, drumstick still in hand, and peers in. She sees the silhouette of her parents sitting on the sofa, but what catches Jessie’s attention is the television screen. There’s a man in an astronaut suit emerging from a rocket.
A voice says, “We see you coming down the ladder.”
It’s the moon landing! Jessie knew it was happening soon but with everything else going on, she forgot it was tonight. She issohappy she woke up.
There’s another voice, far away and distorted, like a man talking into a tin can. The voice says, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Her parents stand up—but then Jessie realizes it’snother parents. It’s…Nonny and Mr. Crimmins. Nonny turns to Mr. Crimmins, offering both her hands.
“Bill,” she says. “Did you ever think we’d live long enough to see this?”
Mr. Crimmins pulls Exalta to him and kisses her—reallykisses her, like a character in one of Blair’s soap operas.
Jessie’s mouth falls open. Behind Exalta and Bill Crimmins, Neil Armstrong walks on the surface of the moon.
Man is walking on the moon!
Exalta isn’t pushing Mr. Crimmins away. She is kissing him back. They arekissingand Jessie realizes that Exalta, too, is real. She’s a real person who has feelings for Mr. Crimmins.
Exalta breaks away. “Come upstairs with me,” she says.
Jessie quietly, oh, so quietly, scurries back down the hall to the kitchen.
Sunlight floods Jessie’s room the next morning and she awakens, blinking at the ceiling. Then, she starts to laugh. It’s funny, isn’t it? Funny peculiar but also, for some reason, funny ha-ha. Exalta isold!Mr. Crimmins isolder!And yet, there they were. Jessie wonders how long their romance has been going on. Was it just a spontaneous moment inspired by the wonder of space travel? Or has it been happening all summer? Or…is Jessie going to discover that Exalta and Mr. Crimmins have been conducting a love affair for years and years, ever since Penn Nichols died, or even before that?
Jessie hops out of bed, pads past Mr. Crimmins’s closed bedroom door, walks across the yard, and goes into the kitchen, where she finds her father reading the newspaper. Splashed across the front is the headline “Man Walks on Moon,” and there’s a grainy black-and-white photo of Armstrong and Aldrin planting the flag.
“We missed the moon landing,” David says. “Too much wine at dinner. I’m sorry, Jessie. I wanted to wake you up so we could watch it.”
“That’s okay,” Jessie says. She can’t look her father in the eye or she’ll give him a crazy-person grin. She pokes her head into the fridge looking for juice.
“Your mother went to the hospital to bring Blair and the babies home, so what do you say you and I get out of the house for a while to give them some space? We can go play tennis. You can show me what you’ve learned.”
Tennis on a Sunday; it’s worse than church. But Jessie needs to talk to her father alone, and this might give her the opportunity. “Okay,” she says.
After breakfast, Jessie and her father put on their whites, grab their rackets, and walk to the club. Jessie has butterflies in her stomach that increase in number the closer they get to the club. She’s obviously nervous about disclosing her mother’s secret, but more immediately, she’s nervous about her father signing in at the club desk. What if they don’t let him in because he’s Jewish? She nearly suggests they walk a quarter mile to play on the public courts at the Jetties but she doesn’t want to alert her father to a possible problem or make him think he’s not good enough for the Field and Oar Club.
When they approach the desk, Jessie’s heart is hammering in her chest. It’s not even Lizz at the desk; it’s some fill-in person who won’t recognize Jessie and know she’s a member.
