Summer of '69(111)

“Mr. Ames gave him his key,” Kirby says. She stares at her hands in her lap. “I was off the property when the senator returned.”

“What?” Mrs. Bennie says.

“I was dealing with an intruder.”

“An intruder?”

“My roommate’s boyfriend came into the lobby. He was acting inappropriately, raising his voice. He was drunk and angry. We put him in a taxi.”

“I should hope so!” Mrs. Bennie exclaims.

“I went along with him,” Kirby says. She appeals to Sergeant Braga because she’s too ashamed to look at Mrs. Bennie. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to leave the inn but I needed to make sure Luke went straight home. I was afraid he would hunt down my roommate and hurt her.”

Instead of being impressed by Kirby’s brave display of devotion and friendship, Sergeant Braga looks disappointed. “So you didn’t see the senator at all? You had no contact with him?”

“None,” Kirby says.

The sergeant stands up. “All right, I’m finished here. Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Bennie. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

Mrs. Bennie rises while resting a firm hand on Kirby’s shoulder to let her know to stay put. “Please do, Sergeant,” she says.

The instant the door to the office closes, Mrs. Bennie says, “The senator did not kill that girl. It was an accident. We all take our lives into our own hands when we get into a car.”

Kirby can sympathize with Mrs. Bennie’s distress; in fact, she shares it. There’s nothing quite so disheartening as discovering your hero is just an ordinary man. However, unlike Mrs. Bennie, Kirby thinks the senator might very well be responsible for Mary Jo Kopechne’s death. It sounds like he was the one who drove the car off the bridge, and it also sounds like he left the scene without pulling Mary Jo from the car. The senator had asked Mr. Ames if he was sure it wasn’t earlier than two thirty. He must have been looking for an alibi that would put him at the hotel and not on Chappaquiddick!

Kirby’s theorizing is interrupted by Mrs. Bennie sighing. “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to let you go,” she says.

“What?” Kirby says.

“You left the property without permission,” Mrs. Bennie says. “We don’t pay you to gallivant about, no matter how noble the crusade.”

“But…but…” Kirby’s protest sputters out.

Mrs. Bennie removes her reading glasses and lets them rest on her bosom. “I know it’s difficult, Katharine,” she says. “We’ve been very pleased with your performance here. I wish none of this had ever happened. The poor, poor senator—”

“And poor Mary Jo!” Kirby says. “Mary Jo is dead.” Kirby nearly mentions that she met Mary Jo briefly. She met the young woman who drowned in an accident that was probably caused by Senator Kennedy. Maybe history wouldn’t hold on to the name Mary Jo Kopechne, but Kirby certainly would.

“I’ll write you a wonderful reference,” Mrs. Bennie says. “And you’ll be paid for the entire week.”

Kirby sees that no amount of begging will get her her job back and she knows that Mrs. Bennie is being more than fair about the reference and the salary—probably because she wants Kirby to go quietly instead of adding more angst to this whole sordid situation.

As Kirby stands on the front porch of the inn waiting for her taxi back to Oak Bluffs, she puzzles over how things can be just fine one minute and so completely not fine the next.

She’s going to miss Edgartown—the white clapboard houses with black shutters and overflowing window boxes, the blue stripe of the harbor visible through the side yards. It feels familiar, nearly like home, which means only that she has nothing left to prove.

She will head back to the house on Narragansett Avenue to pack her things. In the morning, she’ll leave for Nantucket.



It’s only eleven miles from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket as the crow flies, but for Kirby to actually get there, she has to take the ferry to Woods Hole and then take a different ferry to Nantucket.

Darren offers to drive her to the wharf but Kirby insists she can walk.

“With all your luggage?” Darren says. “Just let me. Please, Kirby?”

Kirby agrees but she tells him her plan is to slip out early, before the other girls go to breakfast. She hates goodbyes, and especially in this case, because she’s leaving halfway through the summer under ignominious circumstances. The only person Kirby will truly miss is Patty—even though Patty and Luke are now more together than they’ve ever been. In fact, when the summer was over, Patty told Kirby in a righteous tone, she would be moving to New York City with him. She’s going to pursue her dream of becoming an actress the old-fashioned way—by reading Backstage and showing up at cattle calls.

“I’ll be waiting out front at seven,” Darren says. “No fanfare.”

He’s there, as promised, leaning against his car. When Kirby emerges, he rushes to help her with her bags. She climbs into the car and gives the house one long last look. She left a note for the girls, and she supposes that they will now quarrel over who gets to live in her igloo.

Darren parks at the terminal, despite Kirby’s protests, because he wants to put her luggage on the cart. Okay, okay, thank you, she thinks, now leave. Her dislike of goodbyes is especially strong when it comes to saying goodbye to Darren.