Summer of '69(16)

Everyone promised Blair she would feel better during her second trimester, and this proved to be true. The month of April delivered the sweet spot in her pregnancy. The nausea was gone, and the exhaustion had abated somewhat. Blair’s hair was long and shiny; her appetite for both food and sex were prodigious. But Angus was even more distant and remote and he suffered his episodes more frequently. The only days he took off from work, he spent lying in bed, despondent.

On Tuesday, April 8, two days after Easter, Blair woke up and immediately consumed two grilled-cheese sandwiches, a butterscotch pudding, three chocolate-coconut eggs, and a handful of black jellybeans from the Easter basket that Exalta still prepared for all four of her grandchildren even though three of them were adults. It was a glorious spring day, warm for the first time in months. Blair, energized by the sudden sugar rush, decided to walk from their apartment all the way over to the MIT campus and surprise Angus at work. She wore one of her new maternity dresses, a full-term size even though she was only five and a half months pregnant. Her girth was a source of private embarrassment. She was so big. Exalta had commented on it with disapproval at Easter, and Blair had feared that Exalta might even withhold her Easter basket. Blair had no explanation for her size except that everything about her pregnancy had been extreme—she had been so sick and so tired, and now she was so enormous. She assumed it meant that the baby would be a strapping, healthy boy—smart like Angus, handsome like Joey, athletic like Tiger.

Blair wore low, stacked heels, comfortable for walking, but when she reached Marlborough Street a tiny, blue-haired woman stopped her on the sidewalk, told her she had no right to be out in her condition, and implored her to return home.

Blair stared at the woman, aghast. “But I’m only five months along,” she said. She immediately regretted giving out this piece of personal information. One thing she had noticed with dismay was that being pregnant made her public property. It meant that old women who had probably given birth at the turn of the century felt they could stop her on the street and tell her to go home.

Blair had moved on, indignant but self-conscious. Her maternity dress was buttercup yellow, which suited the spring day but also made her stand out. She had been looking forward to strolling over the Longfellow Bridge and watching the rowers below, but after she’d walked a few more blocks, a taxicab pulled up alongside her; the driver cranked down the passenger-side window and said, “Lady, where ya going? I’ll give you a ride for free.”

Blair thought about protesting, but her feet were starting to complain and the bridge was still a ways off and MIT ten to twelve blocks beyond that.

“Thank you,” she said and accepted the ride.



When Blair reached the astrophysics department, she was informed by the receptionist, a graduate student who introduced himself as Dobbins, that Angus was out.

“Out?” Blair said. “What does that mean?”

Dobbins was wearing a glen plaid suit with a matching bow tie and pocket square—Jaunty! Blair thought—but his expression was dour. The department secretary, Mrs. Himstedt, had retired in January, and Angus and his colleagues had been too busy to find a replacement, so they assigned graduate students the odious tasks that Mrs. Himstedt used to handle. Most of the graduate students felt put-upon, as young Dobbins clearly did. He also seemed to be offended by Blair’s pregnant state; he watched her warily, as though he thought she might burst. “Professor Whalen had an appointment at ten.”

Blair had started out the day with a strong sense of optimism, but it was rapidly dissolving. “Where is the appointment?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“I’m his wife.”

“I’m sorry,” Dobbins said.

“Please just tell me where he went. Is he somewhere on campus?”

“Actually,” Dobbins said, “it was a personal appointment.”

“Personal?”

“That’s what he said. Personal.”

Personal, Blair thought. Where could he be? He had his hair cut every other Saturday without deviation and he wasn’t scheduled to see the dentist until the following month.

She said, “I’ll wait for him to return.”

Dobbins pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose and turned his attention to a textbook on the desk before him. Blair took a seat in a straight-backed chair and perched her handbag on what remained of her lap. She eyed Dobbins and caught him glancing up from his studying to inspect her with obvious distaste. He was probably made uncomfortable by her fecundity. So many men were.

She sat for more than thirty minutes and was about to get up and leave—she would take a taxi home, she decided, because the sitting was causing her lower back to ache—when Angus came rushing through the door.

“Angus!” Blair cried out, both relieved and joyful. She struggled to her feet.

The expression on Angus’s face wasn’t one she remembered seeing before. He looked…caught. He looked…guilty of something. And then Blair noticed he was in a state of disarray, his tie askew, his shirt misbuttoned, and his hair mussed. Blair blinked.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. Then an instant later, he added, “I was at a department meeting.”

Blair looked to Dobbins, who had wisely fixed his gaze on his textbook again. “This nice young gentleman told me you were at an appointment. A personal appointment. Who was it with?”