Summer of '69(19)
Jessie had never seen this particular necklace but she knew that some of Exalta’s more valuable pieces were kept in a case that locked—her pearls, for example, and a diamond tennis bracelet and her grandfather’s Harvard class ring, the one Exalta gave to Tiger before he deployed. Jessie had never dreamed that she would receive something out of the locked case.
The problem with this gift, however, is that it requires her to take off the necklace from her father. Jessie sees no alternative, so she unclasps the silver chain and slips the Tree of Life necklace into the front pocket of her shorts. She secures her grandmother’s necklace around her neck, and Exalta beams and says, “Exquisite on you, as I knew it would be.”
Jessie forces the corners of her mouth up. She is, of course, thrilled about the necklace and about Exalta thinking her worthy of it, but she feels bad about the necklace her father gave her, the Tree of Life, which isn’t in the same class as this one. She worries that Exalta somehow schemed to give Jessie the gold knot with the diamond in order to replace the Tree of Life so that Jessie won’t be wearing any symbol of her Jewish heritage.
What is she going to do?
“We need to put that back in the box,” Exalta says. “It’s too precious for everyday wear. Special occasions only. I’ll keep it in my room, where it will be safe.”
Jessie is relieved. Special occasions only. The rest of the time, she can wear the Tree of Life. For once, things have worked out perfectly.
“Thank you, Nonny,” Jessie says, and she kisses her grandmother’s cheek.
Part of the appeal of Nantucket is that it never changes, which is especially important now that the rest of the country is going haywire. John F. Kennedy was shot when Jessie was in first grade, though she was too young to understand what that meant. Then last year, when Jessie was in fifth grade, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Memphis, and later that year, Bobby Kennedy was shot in California. Jessie’s parents had been deeply unsettled by these assassinations, and Kirby had been inconsolable. “Every man who tries to move the country forward is being murdered in cold blood!”
And, of course, American soldiers were being killed every day in Vietnam.
It’s comforting for Jessie to see all the familiar signs as they roll up the cobblestones of Main Street in the Grand Wagoneer. The Charcoal Galley is the greasy spoon; it stays open late to accommodate the patrons of Bosun’s Locker, the bar next door. (Jessie has been taught to cross Main Street to avoid passing Bosun’s Locker, which only makes it more interesting.)
Charlie’s Market is where her mother does the shopping, and sometimes Jessie goes along. And then there is Buttner’s department store. A few summers earlier, a housekeeper had parked her employers’ Bonneville in front of the store and gone to run some errands. She returned to the car, started it up, and put it in reverse—or so she thought; she’d actually put it in drive. The curb stopped the car from moving forward, and the housekeeper, not understanding why the car wouldn’t back up, hit the gas hard, which sent the vehicle shooting through the front window of Buttner’s. As soon as that news reached All’s Fair, Tiger and Jessie ran down to view the crash. Jessie had been aghast; in her mind, the destruction caused by the car ramming into a building could never be fixed. Tiger, she remembers, had been delighted. He stood by as one policeman tried to calm the hysterical housekeeper and another policeman tried to calm Miss Timsy, a longtime saleslady at Buttner’s, and the photographer from the Inquirer and Mirror snapped pictures. The car had practically no damage, and, luckily, no one had been hurt. For two weeks, Buttner’s window had been covered with brown paper, but then one day the glass was back in and a man came and painted on the lettering in black and gold, and it was just like nothing ever happened.
They pass Claire Elaine’s Beauty Shop and Mitchell’s Book Corner, new last year, and the Sweet Shoppe, where Jessie will go with her father to eat malachite chip ice cream and air her grievances.
After they pass the Pacific Bank, they are on Upper Main Street, where most of Exalta’s friends live. Some families come to the island before Memorial Day, but Exalta feels it’s still too chilly in May. She has claimed the third Monday in June as “her” arrival day. On Thursday of this week, Jessie knows, the Inquirer and Mirror will announce that “Mrs. Pennington (Exalta) Nichols is in residence at her home on Fair Street for the summer after spending the winter at her home on Mt. Vernon Street in Boston.”
The entire family believes that Fair Street is the prettiest road on the entire island. It’s narrow, and traffic runs one way into town; Fair connects to only small side streets, so there aren’t many passing cars. The homes on Fair Street are old but well cared for. Most of them are gray-shingled with trim freshly painted white every few summers. Some of the neighbors engage in unofficial competitions for the best window boxes, which Exalta claims is a “preposterous waste of time,” but Jessie and Kirby used to have fun riding their bikes up and down the street, awarding first, second, and third prizes to the geraniums, petunias, pansies, and impatiens. Nearly all the homes have names—Fair and Square, Fairy Tale, Family Affair. Exalta’s house, which is distinctive because of its yellow clapboard front, is called All’s Fair, taken from the saying “All’s fair in love and war.” A few houses down on the right is Jessie’s favorite, a white Victorian with a turret and fancy fretwork, although she keeps her preference to herself because she knows Exalta would be offended and might even tell Jessie to go knock on the Blackstocks’ door and see if she can live with them since she likes that house so much.