Summer of '69(32)

Blair pours two glasses of the cold duck for old times’ sake as Joey gets plates and a knife and slices into the warm, fragrant babka. They sit next to each other on the sofa and Blair feels happy for the first time in a long while, despite the fact that she won’t be able to get up off the sofa without help.

“Babka,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever tried it before.”

“New York has the greatest Polish bakeries,” Joey says. “I eat so much Sara Lee that it’s a nice change to have something made from scratch. But I’d never tell my bosses that.” He takes a sip of his cold duck. “The other thing I love about New York is the Thai food. Have you ever had Thai food?”

“Thai food?” Blair says. She can’t believe that Joey Whalen, who used to pedal the swan boats and whose idea of a gourmet meal was the oyster stew at Durgin-Park, has become so sophisticated. She remembers how he held Angus’s notebook filled with calculations over the candle flame in a plea for attention and how, at that time, it had been crystal clear that she would be far better off with Angus.

Now she’s not so sure. If she had married Joey instead, she might be living in New York City, visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday afternoons and hanging out in Greenwich Village with the likes of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg.

“How’s your brother?” Joey asks, which Blair supposes is a natural segue—from Thai food to the battlegrounds of Vietnam.

“Still alive,” Blair says. “He sends letters.”

“It’s an immoral war,” Joey says. “Our guys are over there killing women and children.”

The babies kick with the first bite of babka. Blair can’t believe that Joey now has political opinions. She privately agrees the war is immoral. The last three administrations have valued the eradication of Communism over the lives of American soldiers. But Blair knows Tiger is over there fighting for their continued freedom and she’s proud of him for that.

“So I have two pieces of news,” Blair says. “The first is, I’m having twins.”

Joey gives a whoop and then, crazily, he moves the coffee table out of the way and gets down on his hands and knees in front of Blair so he can rub her belly. “That’s incredible. Not one human life contained inside you, but two. Two!” His touch feels good and Blair feels faintly aroused, sexually aroused, which is wrong on many levels. She laughs and swats at him. “Get up.” She prefers Joey’s enthusiasm to Angus’s reaction yesterday, which fell somewhere between apathy and scientific interest. He had studied the X-ray, trying to see if the twins would likely be identical—one egg that split—or fraternal, two separate eggs, both fertilized. And then, all the way home from the hospital, he wondered aloud if at least one of the twins would be a boy.

Joey sits back down on the sofa, closer to Blair than he was before. “What’s the second piece of news?”

Blair takes as deep a breath as she can manage. The babies have started to crowd her lungs. “Angus is having an affair with someone named Trixie,” she says. Every time Blair says the name, she pictures a character from a Disney movie. “He meets her during the workday. She called here on the phone.”

Joey’s elation at the news of twins twists into something fierce and angry. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I wish I were,” Blair says, and she starts to cry.

“Oh, hey,” Joey says. “Hey, Blair, come on now.” He puts an arm around Blair’s shoulders and she falls into his arms and sobs all over his fine white shirt. “Angus is a dope. He’s a heel. He’s never known what he has—he’s so damn smart, he just takes everything as his due.”

“I thought he loved me!” Blair wails.

“I’m sure he does,” Joey says. “I know he does. This is just…well, he must be panicking about the moon launch…or the babies.”

“Panicking about the babies?” Blair says. “He sees the babies as my responsibility and mine alone. Babies are women’s work, and rocket ships are men’s work.” Blair bursts into a fresh round of tears.

“Aw, Blair, don’t cry,” Joey says. “You’re so pretty and smart and such a catch for someone like Angus…I’m sure this Trixie person doesn’t hold a candle to you. I mean, how could she?”

Maybe it’s that these words are exactly what Blair needs to hear or maybe it’s that the hormones from not one but two babies are making Blair delirious, but whatever the reason, the next thing Blair knows, she’s kissing Joey Whalen and he is kissing her back. Blair can’t believe something so outrageous is happening and yet it feels so good that Blair is powerless to stop it. Angus never touches her anymore. Sex stopped last month because Blair read that it was unsafe in the final trimester of pregnancy, but along with the sex went handholding, back rubs, and kissing.

Joey tastes of the cold duck and warm chocolate; Blair can’t get enough of his lips, his tongue, his touch. She is transported right back to that afternoon on the swan boat. She had felt this same passion then, back when she thought she would be marrying Joey. One of Joey’s hands travels up Blair’s thigh and one gently massages her nipple through the thin material of her threadbare dress.

She needs to put an end to this, Blair thinks, right now. But instead, things heat up. Joey starts unbuttoning the front of Blair’s dress; honestly, Blair would like him to rip it off.