Summer of '69(12)

“Edith Wharton,” Angus said.

Blair was about to proffer her standard one-line Wharton biography—American novelist born into the upper echelons of New York society who was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature—because lots of people, especially men, had no idea who Edith Wharton was. But then Angus said, “I’ve read all her work.”

“Have you?” Blair assumed Angus was making fun of her. “Which novel was your favorite?”

Joey made a loud snoring noise, which was the kind of dismissive attitude Blair expected from men when she discussed Wharton. She ignored him.

“The Age of Innocence,” Angus said. “Countess Olenska is positioned as the other against the lily-white backdrop of May Welland.”

“You have read it!” Blair said.

“Yes,” Angus said. “I told you, I’ve read them all.”

“Of course,” Blair said. “It’s just that…Joey told me you were an astrophysicist.”

Angus offered her a wry smile. “And astrophysicists aren’t allowed to enjoy Wharton?”

Blair was dazzled. She felt suddenly connected to Angus, as though they had both visited the same far-off country.

Joey snatched up Angus’s notebook and held it over the candle flames. “Get out of here, Angus, or this goes up in smoke.”

“Joey!” Blair said.

Angus shook his head. “He does this all the time,” he said. “Acts like a child to get attention.” He took Blair’s hand. “Please, can I take you to dinner?” Blair looked into Angus’s soft brown eyes and thought, This date just got very complicated.



Blair and Angus’s wedding had been a small but lavish affair at the Union Club, paid for by Exalta, who had taken a particular shine to Angus. With Exalta, one was considered remarkable or one was barely noticed; those were the only two options. Blair herself fell into the latter category, but then, so did most people. Blair had suspected Exalta would view Angus’s rarefied intellect with disdain, but Exalta thought Angus was marvelous, and when Blair and Angus got engaged, Exalta’s opinion of Blair seemed to improve.

Blair loved being a bride. She loved her dress, a trumpet silhouette with lace overlay, a satin sash under the bustline, and a low dip in the back. It was from Priscilla’s of Boston, and Blair had been fitted by Priscilla herself, which made her feel like Grace Kelly. Blair loved licking stamps for the invitations and then checking the mail for the reply cards. Fifty guests were invited; forty-two accepted. Blair asked her sister Kirby to be the maid of honor, her best friend, Sallie, to be the bridesmaid, and her sister Jessie to be the junior bridesmaid. Blair chose peonies and lilies for her flowers, a palette of pink and green, and they were granted a stunning June day. The lamb and the duck at the reception was a welcome change from beef and chicken, and Exalta had agreed to French champagne, Bollinger. Blair and Angus danced to “Fly Me to the Moon,” which was a joke about Angus’s job; they held hands under the table through Joey Whalen’s sweet, funny, and very drunken toast (“We all worried you would never find a wife. And you didn’t. I found her”). After the reception, Blair changed into a peach silk shift with dyed-to-match pumps and they ran through a shower of rice to the getaway car, Angus’s black 1966 Ford Galaxie convertible, which had been festooned with crepe paper and empty tin cans.

The honeymoon was a week in Bermuda at the Hamilton Princess—pink sand, men in knee socks, sex. Angus was an accomplished lover, and Blair figured it must be a natural gift, like his intelligence, because he told her he had never had a real girlfriend before her.

However, it was on their honeymoon that Blair learned that the nimble, lightning-quick gymnastics of Angus’s mind came at a cost. On the third morning of their trip, Angus refused to get out of bed. He wasn’t sleeping; he just lay there, his eyes open but vacant. Blair placed a hand on his forehead. His skin was cool.

“Angus,” she said. “You’re scaring me. What is it?”

He shook his head, then his expression crumpled and he appeared ready to cry.

“What is it, Angus?” Blair asked. But of course, it could be only one thing. He didn’t love her; he’d made a mistake in marrying her. “Angus?”

“Please leave,” he said. “Just for a little while. I need to be alone.”

Blair left. What else could she do? She was relieved that at least it was temporary.



Blair wandered the hotel gardens, filled with June roses and butterflies, then sat pensively with a cup of coffee on the patio until an hour had passed. When she returned to the room, she heard Angus’s voice through the door. He was on the phone, she realized, which seemed like a good sign. She knocked, then entered. She heard Angus say, “I have to go now. Goodbye.”

Blair crossed the dim bedroom to kiss Angus’s forehead. Still cool. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“A bit better,” he said.

She waited for him to tell her who he had been talking to, but he didn’t and she decided she wouldn’t ask.

“I’m sorry,” Angus said. “Some days I wake up and I’m just…paralyzed.”

Blair assured him that he didn’t have to be sorry. She worried he had gotten too much sun or not enough sleep. She also suspected he was working too hard; even here in Bermuda, he sat at the little round table on their balcony and pored over his calculations, and when he finished, he picked up one of the books he’d brought. He was reading Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha in the original German and, “for fun,” The Death of Ivan Ilyich.