Summer of '69(104)
Kate stares at Lorraine. Of course she remembers the broken spinning wheel. Was Lorraine confessing now, so many years later, that she had stolen Kate’s diet pills (she had struggled to lose weight after giving birth to Tiger) and while speeding on those pills, she had broken the house’s most valuable antique and then pinned the blame on a five-year-old?
“All the family secrets are coming out!” Lorraine says with a lunatic’s smile. One of her side teeth is missing. “I would have spoken up if Kirby got into any real trouble, but of course she didn’t. She was Exalta’s lapdog. By the way, how is Blair? Did she ever stop sucking her thumb? And what about my favorite, little Tiger? How is our little Tiger?”
“You’re a whore,” Kate says. “A common whore.”
“Lucky for your husband,” Lorraine says.
That’s it; Kate snaps. She grabs Lorraine by the arm and pulls her toward the back door, but Lorraine digs into the linoleum with her dirty heels. Kate prays for her mother to appear; Lorraine has always looked up to Exalta. But the person who materializes on the back porch is Jessie. Kate wonders how long she’s been standing there and what, exactly, she’s heard. Behind Jessie is Pick dressed in his mustard-yellow board shorts with a towel draped around his neck, climbing onto his bike.
Lorraine must see Pick also because all of a sudden, she bursts forward, eager to go exactly where Kate wants her to go—outside.
It’s a messy reunion, and loud. Lorraine is sobbing; she begs for forgiveness and professes her love, but Pick seems to rebuff his mother. Finally, however, he lets her hug him and then they’re embracing and rocking back and forth. Kate and Jessie watch from the back porch. Kate is…incredulous. She can’t believe Lorraine Crimmins has returned to Nantucket and that she had the gall to knock on the front door of All’s Fair after the disgraceful way she left so many years ago.
And yet, the reunion between mother and son is strangely touching.
Tiger, Kate thinks.
But Tiger is off fighting a war for the U.S. Army. He’s fighting so that rootless, toothless floozies like Lorraine Crimmins can wander the country in bare feet.
“Is she taking him back to California?” Jessie asks.
“Who knows,” Kate says.
“What did she mean when—”
“I’ll explain later,” Kate says. “Right now, I have to find Bill Crimmins.”
Kate starts by calling down to the Charcoal Galley to see if Bill was in for breakfast and if he said where he was headed later.
The waitress, Joelle, says, “He’s been doing handyman work at the Congregational church all week.”
Wonderful. Kate calls the Congregational church and asks the secretary in the office to please send Bill Crimmins home to Fair Street.
“His daughter has paid us a surprise visit from California,” Kate says.
Bill pulls up a few minutes later. Kate and Jessie are at the kitchen table; Kate is drinking her morning coffee, and through the window, she sees him slam his truck door shut and then slam into Little Fair. Kate has no idea what will transpire. Jessie, drinking juice and nibbling a piece of toast, watches him as well.
“Do you think—” Jessie asks.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Kate says. “You shouldn’t care either. They’re not our family.” Kate throws back what’s left of her coffee. “Not really.”
Not really.
Lucky for your husband.
Kate fills her coffee cup again and resists the temptation to add whiskey because David is coming today and she cannot, will not, be drunk when he arrives. However, without alcohol, it’s difficult to banish the ghosts.
Wilder.
Kate knew he was unfaithful early in the marriage—he had flirted with Kate’s own cousin at their wedding reception in a way that was completely inappropriate—but it had taken her a while to realize just how crucial to his self-worth the philandering was. It didn’t matter what Kate said or did. She would threaten to leave; he would earnestly promise to stop. A few weeks or months later, he would be back at the bars, coming home late, not coming home at all.
It was, frankly, a relief when he left for Korea.
When Wilder came home, he seemed like a new man—devoted, chastened, passionate about Kate and Kate only. On Nantucket that summer, Exalta fawned all over him—telling all the ladies at the Field and Oar that Wilder was a war hero—and Kate’s father, Penn, indulged him with scotch and good cigars. But after only a few weeks, the highs of Wilder’s personality dropped into deep troughs. Kate was aware that Wilder had started taking Benzedrine overseas in order to stay sharp and she suspected the habit had continued here at home. She could tell when he was high—his eyes had a certain glint and he talked a mile a minute. The only thing that could bring him down softly was alcohol. That summer, there were late nights at Bosun’s Locker and then a string of nights when he didn’t come home at all. One morning, he showed up with mud-caked shoes; he said he’d fallen asleep on a grave in the Quaker cemetery, weeping over the men he’d lost in Korea. Another night he brought half a pound of sand to bed with him. He told Kate he’d walked all the way to Surfside Beach, then from Surfside to Cisco, then from Cisco home.
She had chosen to believe him.
On what turned out to be the last of those nights, when Kate woke up and Wilder wasn’t in bed, she went to the kitchen to make some warm milk. She heard a noise coming from the hallway and when she’d gone to investigate, she’d found Wilder hiding in the buttery. At first she thought he was in there alone, which wasn’t too surprising—he was definitely drunk and he might have mistaken her for Exalta or Penn and tried to hide. But then Kate caught a glimpse of a ghost-white foot sticking out of the back of the buttery.