Summer of '69(24)

“Correct,” Evan says. “You also get breakfast every day except for Sunday. The shower and toilet are on the second floor, shared by three other girls.”

“Women,” Kirby says.

“Are you a feminist, then?” Evan asks. Suddenly, he looks intrigued. Maybe he’s wondering if Kirby is into free love, if she ever goes without a bra, if she has shed the sexual inhibitions that shackled girls who grew up in the 1950s.

Of course Kirby is a feminist! She has been somewhat promiscuous in the past (before Officer Scottie Turbo, she had two other lovers), though after what happened this spring, she has vowed to wait for love before jumping in the sack with someone again. She will never, ever sleep with Evan O’Rourke. But she can have some fun with him, maybe.

“Do you smoke grass, Evan?” she asks.

He looks startled and Kirby wonders if she misread him. Maybe he’ll ask Kirby to leave the house before she unpacks a single miniskirt. She will have to ask Rajani for a place to stay after all. Or she will be forced to spend the summer on Nantucket with Exalta, Kate, and Jessie. Unthinkable. When, when, when will she learn to keep her mouth shut?

Suddenly, Evan breaks out into a lopsided grin. “On occasion,” he says. “Though technically, smoking in the house is forbidden. Also forbidden are alcohol consumption and guests of the opposite sex.”

“All of that forbidden?” Kirby asks. No wonder David wrote the check so readily; he must have confirmed this place was a convent. “Really, Evan?” She reaches out to touch Evan’s hand, which is as pale as pudding. He jumps and Kirby pulls back; the last thing she wants is to give poor Evan an erection.

“Well, technically,” Evan says.

“What about music?” Kirby asks. “Is music allowed?”

“As long as it’s not too loud,” Evan says.

Kirby purses her lips. She’ll break Evan in slowly. She unzips her duffel. “I brought only six records,” she says. It took Kirby hours to choose the six, which were all that would fit in her bag; in the end, she decided it was most important to have an album for different moods: jubilance, anger (personal and political), hope (personal and political), heartbreak, mellow introspection, and rainy day/Sunday. Optimistic, she pulls out The Second. “How do you feel about Steppenwolf?”



A few minutes later, Kirby and Evan O’Rourke are on the roof, lying back and propping themselves up on their elbows, stoned out of their minds; John Kay wails in the background. The roof has a tremendous view of Circuit Avenue, Ocean Park, Vineyard Sound. Evan is far more tolerable to Kirby in her present condition.

“I’ve got a job cleaning rooms at the Shiretown Inn,” Kirby says.

“That’s in Edgartown,” Evan says. “Do you have a car?”

“No car,” Kirby says.

“A bike?”

“No bike,” Kirby says. “And no money to buy a bike, even secondhand.”

“So how will you go back and forth to Edgartown?” Evan asks.

“I thought maybe I’d walk?” Kirby says.

Evan breaks out in a fit of giggles. If Kirby closed her eyes, she would swear he was a ten-year-old girl.

“It’s too far to walk,” Evan says. “Three miles, at least.”

“Three miles isn’t that far,” Kirby says, though her heart sinks. She’s used to Nantucket, where there is only one town. On Martha’s Vineyard, there are six towns, some of them quite distant from here. She vaguely knew this, but she hadn’t given any thought to the reality of her commute. “What will I do?”

“You’ll have to hitchhike,” Evan says. “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t have any trouble.”



The next morning finds Kirby up early and one of the first women at breakfast, which is porridge with fresh blueberries, brown sugar, and milk as well as a platter of brown bread with butter and apricot preserves. Kirby isn’t usually a breakfast person and she certainly isn’t a porridge-and-brown-bread person but she decides that, since the food is free, she will eat, and eat lavishly.

When all of the women are assembled around the table, Kirby sees that she chose a good seat. The only person who looks even remotely promising is the woman sitting next to her. She’s plump with a pretty face, big blue eyes, long dark hair, rosy lips, and a cheerful attitude.

“Patricia O’Callahan,” she says, offering a hand. “Call me Patty.”

“Katharine Foley,” Kirby says. “Call me Kirby.”

“You took the attic room?” Patty asks.

“Yes, I love it,” Kirby says.

A thin-lipped girl across the table snorts. “It’s hot,” she says. “And there’s a mouse.”

“I kept the fan on,” Kirby says. “And I’m not scared of anything.”

“So there, Barb,” Patty says.

Barb scowls at Kirby, and Kirby regrets her display of bravado. The fact is, she is scared of certain things—hitchhiking, for one, and the prospect of unemployment for another. She lied to her parents, Dr. Frazier, and Evan O’Rourke when she said she had a job. The woman she’d spoken to at the Shiretown Inn had said only that they had openings for chambermaids. She couldn’t offer Kirby a job without an in-person interview.

During breakfast, Patty talks about herself: She’s the youngest of nine children, her parents live in South Boston, and she came to the Vineyard because her brother Tommy is the manager of the Strand movie theater and he got Patty a job working the ticket window for matinees and some evening shows. Patty wants to be an actress; she applied to the Lee Strasberg school for acting in New York but was rejected, and she doesn’t have the money to attend Yale. She figures if she sees as many movies as possible, she might learn by osmosis. Plus she gets free popcorn.