Summer of '69(11)

She knows who I am, Kirby thinks, and her dream of a fresh start with a clean slate here on Martha’s Vineyard vanishes in a snap.





Fly Me to the Moon



People throw around the phrase married with children like loose change, Blair thinks. No one ever talks about the drama that matrimony and parenthood entail. So is it any wonder Blair was taken by surprise?

Blair met Angus Whalen, a professor of astrophysics at MIT, because she was dating his younger brother, Joey. Blair had just graduated from Wellesley, and Joey from Boston College. Blair was teaching honors English and the Art of the Novel to senior girls at the Winsor School. Joey wanted to move to New York City and “get into business,” but for the time being, he was captaining one of the swan boats in Boston’s Public Garden and living in Cambridge with Angus.

“My brother is a crazy genius,” Joey told Blair. “He’s helping NASA with the moon launch.”

Blair’s ears had perked up. “He’s an astronaut?” Blair was obsessed with astronauts. She’d covered her dorm-room corkboard with pictures of Jim Lovell and Pete Conrad and the most handsome astronaut of all, Gordon Cooper.

“Not an astronaut exactly,” Joey said. “I mean, he’s not going up in the rocket. He just does the calculations that make the rockets fly.”

Close enough, Blair thought. If she and Joey ended up getting married, she would have a brother-in-law who was almost an astronaut!

Although Blair considered herself a modern woman, getting married was never far from her mind. Nearly all of Blair’s Wellesley classmates were engaged by the time they graduated. The exception was Blair’s best friend, Sallie, who, like Blair, wanted a career.

A truly modern woman, Blair thought, could have both.

Blair liked Joey. He was handsome, fun-loving, and easy to be with. If Blair had a complaint, it was that he was maybe too easy—but, she reasoned, she was complicated enough for both of them. Joey was head over heels for Blair and she got swept up by the wave of his enthusiasm. He once sent a bouquet of fat red roses to Blair at the Winsor School, and the administration saw fit to deliver it right in the middle of Blair’s lecture on Carson McCullers. Blair’s students all swooned, and Frankie from The Member of the Wedding was forgotten as the girls buried their noses in the flowers and inhaled what they naively believed to be the scent of true love.

The weekend after the (distracting) arrival of the roses, Joey invited Blair for a private ride on his swan boat. It was early October and the leaves in the Boston Public Garden were at their most flamboyant. Joey pedaled to the middle of the pond, produced a bottle of cold duck, and poured it into waxy paper cups. He and Blair drank and talked and laughed until dusk descended. At some point, they started kissing, really kissing, and the swan boat tilted first in one direction, then the other. Joey broke away, out of breath. “Will you come to my place?” he asked. “Please?”

Blair didn’t want Joey to think she was too easy, but the cold duck had gone right to her head.

“Okay,” she said. “But no promises.”



Joey’s “place” was the entire ground floor of one of the gracious turn-of-the-century mansions on Mt. Auburn Street. Blair had been expecting a bachelor pad—posters of Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe, piles of dirty laundry, empty beer cans—but when Joey opened the door and ushered Blair inside, she was pleasantly surprised. A framed print of édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère hung in the entryway, and Blair heard Rachmaninoff playing somewhere in the house.

Art? Blair thought. Classical music?

“Damn,” Joey said. “My brother’s home.”

When they stepped into the great room, Blair took a quick inventory: Persian rug, leather sofa, mirror-topped cigar table, and, most impressive, a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. At the far end of the room, a man sat at the head of a long harvest table, working by the light of three pillar candles. This was Joey’s brother, Blair realized, Angus, the almost astronaut. He was bent over a notebook, scribbling furiously. He didn’t even seem to notice them come in.

Joey was visibly perturbed. “I thought you were going to the faculty potluck.”

Angus didn’t respond. He’s working! Blair thought. Leave him be. It was clear, however, that it would be rude to withdraw to the bedroom for amorous pursuits.

“Angus!” Joey said. “Get out of here. We’d like some privacy.”

Angus held up an index finger as he scribbled something in his notes. “Got it!” He slammed the notebook shut and, with this action, seemed to reenter the present moment. He said, “Who is ‘we’?”—and then he noticed Blair and leaped to his feet. “Hello?” he said. He moved toward Blair tentatively, as though she were an exotic bird that might fly away. “Who are you?”

Behind Angus’s glasses, Blair noticed, were a pair of tender brown eyes. Her head buzzed with the effects of the cold duck.

“Blair Foley,” she said, offering her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I just love your apartment. I noticed the Manet print when I walked in. That painting is a particular favorite of mine.”

“Did you study art history, then?” Angus asked.

“I thought you were going to the faculty potluck,” Joey said again.

“Literature, actually,” Blair said. “Female novelists, to be specific. Edith Wharton, to be specifically specific.”