Page 56 of Endless Summer: Stories
Helen, she gathered, had suffered with Garrison much worse. Jessie had once seen Helen crying in the ladies’ room at the Field and Oar Club, and she somehow knew it was because of Garrison. That was the moment Jessie and Helen had become real friends.
“I get it.” Jessie reaches for Helen’s hand, and Helen starts to quietly weep.
“You’re practically the only person who’s not afraid to touch me,” Helen says. “Even my own mother is afraid. She’s set aside a mug and a drinking glass and a set of utensils just for me. She thinks Ihaveit. Everyone thinks I have it. Heather won’t bring the kids over.” She bows her head between her knees like someone in a plane that’s about to crash. “Colin had a lover, a boyfriend, named Trey. Trey was also a doctor—he worked at St. Vincent’s, where all those men were dying. Trey died in February—it was on Valentine’s Day. Colin didn’t come home at all that night. And then, right after Easter, Colin told me he was infected. At first he claimed he’d gotten it from treating a patient, but as he got sicker, he told me the truth.”
Jessie releases a breath. In front of them, the ocean encroaches and recedes with indifference to any human drama unfolding on the shore. “Did it make you feel any better?” Jessie asks. “Learning the truth?” She doesn’t tell Helen, but she bumped into Colin on Dominick Street the previous Christmas. Jessie had been haunting record shops in search of a bootleg recording of Woodstock as a present for Pick and she’d seen Colin through the window of Alison’s. He’d been at a table for two with another man, and they were deep in conversation; something about it seemed odd to Jessie but she thought she’d pop in anyway to say hello. Then she noticed Colin and the other man were holding hands across the table. She had also noticed that the other man was gaunt and ghostly pale with a dark spot at his jaw.
“No,” Helen says. “Not really.” She mops her tears with her cocktail napkin. “I just really loved him as a person, as a friend, and I hated seeing him suffer. All those men dying… thousands and thousands of them.” She sniffs. “Enough of my maudlin story. Tell me what’s going on with you guys. How’s the family reunion–ing?”
Jessie waves a hand. “Oh, fine,” she says. “I mean, there’s stuff going on, but it’s not the end of the world.”
It’snotthe end of the world,Jessie thinks. Her family is downright lucky; their problems are surface wounds.
When she and Helen return, they find people eating in small groups. Kate and Bitsy are inside at the kitchen table. Tiger, Magee, and the kids have commandeered one end of the outdoor table, and the twins and their respective dates are eating on chaises by the pool—George and Sallie are sitting sideways on one, facing Genevieve and Andrew on the other. Sallie and Andrew are having a heated conversation about the punk scene in Boston. Andrew says there isn’t one and Sallie disagrees, citing the Middle East in Cambridge and edgier underground places in the South End.
Helen takes a single vegetable kebab and heads inside, but Jessie can’t handle Kate and Bitsy right now, nor does she want to crash Tiger and Magee’s family meal or be a fifth wheel with the twins. She ends up pouring herself another glass of punch, piling a plate with swordfish and macaroni salad, and settling on the side of the pool, her feet dangling in the water. She has always told Pick that she never quite felt she belonged in her family. Tonight is the perfect example.
After Tiger and Magee take the children back to All’s Fair and after George and Sallie check into their suite at the White Elephant (“It’s a surprise for my birthday,” George said, though they all knew there was no way George and Sallie could return to All’s Fair) and after Genevieve and Andrew head out to “hear some music” (on the car radio, Jessie thinks, while they have sex in the back of the Scout on some dead end off Red Barn Road) and after Helen has dragged Bitsy to the red Miata, Jessie finds herself alone in the kitchen with her mother. This is unexpected and unplanned. It’s so late, and Jessie and Kate have both had so much to drink that Jessie nearly decides to call it a night and go up to bed. Then again, it’s so late and they’ve both had so much to drink that Jessie thinks,What the hell.And,It’s now or never.This is her chance.
“Mom,” Jessie says. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Is it about Bitsy?” Kate says. “Or Genevieve? Or, hell, George and Sallie? Because I don’t want to hear it.”
“Lorraine is on Nantucket this summer, Mom,” Jessie says. She takes a beat, waiting for this information to sink in. “Lorraine Crimmins. She’s working at an organic farm on Polpis Road, apparently. She’s telling people to call her Rain. She’s been selling strawberries on Main Street.”
Kate turns to Jessie with wide eyes. “She’s selling strawberries on Main Street?”
Jessie nods. “Yes.” Does Kategetit? Does sheunderstand?She’s talking about Lorraine Crimmins, daughter of their beloved caretaker Bill Crimmins and mother of Jessie’s boyfriend, Pick. She’s talking about Lorraine Crimmins, who served as housekeeper, cook, and nanny to Blair, Kirby, and Tiger but who then had an affair with Kate’s first husband, Wilder Foley, and became pregnant with his child, causing the downfall of the Foley family.
She’s talking about Lorraine Crimmins, Kate’s sworn enemy.
Kate doesn’t yell; she doesn’t break down and cry; she doesn’t spit out that Lorraine Crimmins knows better than to set foot on this island:It’s my island, she gave up her right to it when she slept with my husband, when she caused his death!
Kate does none of these things. Instead, Kate chuckles. “That’s why Bitsy came back without any strawberries. She said it was gnats, but really, she’s just a good friend. The best I’ve ever had.” When Kate looks at Jessie, her eyes are shining with tears. For all her youthful hijinks this summer, Jessie thinks, her mother in this moment looks every one of her sixty-eight years. And she looks so much like her own mother, Exalta, that Jessie is spooked.
“Let’s get you up to bed, Mom,” she says.
Kate allows Jessie to help her to her feet. “Yes,” she says. “I’m tired.”
7. WELCOME TO THEJUNGLE
She hasn’t slept in twenty-seven hours—Kirby’s last-minute decision to fly east landed her in the middle seat of the back row of the plane, where she could enjoy the smell of the chemical toilet—so when she finally boards the ferry at the fresh hour of eight a.m., she buys herself a Bloody Mary and tells herself she’s earned it. What’s that saying? Fifty percent of life isjust showing up.
Here I am,Kirby thinks when the ferry docks in Nantucket. The prodigal aunt.
She goes into the terminal to use the pay phone, stopping at the ladies’ room first. Kirby flew without bags, but one look in the smudged mirror tells her they’re under her eyes. (Ha-ha.) Her skin is blotchy and dull, her hair, which she cut into a bob and permed in an attempt to look younger (her long, straight hairscreamedsixties flower child), is crispy with product (so much mousse, too much). But the vodka on the boat has given her a little spark—just enough, she hopes, to get her to Red Barn Road, where she will experience the “authentic high” (she’s using rehab-speak here) of taking her familycompletely by surprise.
She has to hurry; the buzz feels like a lit match burning to its end.
She calls the house and a voice says, “Good morning, Levin residence.”
It’s not Kirby’s mother, which would have been Kirby’s first choice, or Genevieve, which would have been her second. It is, in fact, her last choice.
“Jessie?” Kirby says. “It’s me.” She pauses. “Kirby.”
Jessie hangs up.
Fair enough, Kirby thinks. She deserved that. She calls back. The phone rings five times, then it’s picked up and slammed down. It’s like they’re children again. Kirby searches through her Gucci change purse that she bought on Rodeo Drive in more prosperous times, but she can’t find another quarter so she slides in three dimes. She’s so broke that wasting that extra nickel pains her.
