Summer of '69(36)
Jessie clears her throat. “I’d like a different instructor tomorrow.”
“What?” Exalta says. “Whatever for?”
Jessie widens her eyes, hoping to convey her distress. Her grandmother was quite beautiful in her day. Surely she received her share of unwanted attention. But Jessie doesn’t have the words to explain what happened, much less in front of Mrs. Winter. Tumescence, she thinks. The word from Blair’s novel. She hears Blair say, There’s no reason to be grossed out by sex. But she is.
“He taught me a two-handed backhand,” Jessie says.
Exalta pushes herself up from the table. “Does the boy not have ears? That won’t do at all,” she says. “We’ll find you someone else.”
“A girl,” Jessie says. “Please.”
Mrs. Winter is stuck to Exalta like lint to a sweater, and when Mrs. Winter says, “Tell me, Exalta, how is Blair? She married an astronaut, didn’t she? I’ve always been so fond of her, even though she broke my Larry’s heart,” Jessie excuses herself and goes to the locker room. She splashes water on her face; it’s burning, whether from the sun or the humiliation she just endured, she isn’t sure. The sensation of Garrison rubbing up against her won’t go away. It’s like he’s branded her. She wants to cry, wants to scream, but she’s at the club so she can do neither. When she gets home, she’ll tell her mother what happened, and Garrison will be fired and sent back to Tennessee. But Jessie fears she will never, ever have the courage to tell her mother. Nor can she imagine telling her father. She could tell Blair or Kirby, but her older sisters aren’t here. They’ve abandoned her.
When Jessie emerges from the locker room, Exalta is still out on the patio chatting with Mrs. Winter. Jessie wants to leave and just walk home by herself, but she knows there will be a price to pay for such rudeness, and so she lingers at the reception desk. Lizz has vanished; the desk is unmanned. On a shelf just behind the desk are polo shirts, visors, cocktail napkins, and stationery emblazoned with the kelly-green-and-white club burgee. Jessie’s blood quickens. She glances around, sees no one. She leans over the counter and snatches the first thing within reach—a pair of terry-cloth wristbands, packaged in cellophane. The cellophane crackles; Jessie thinks that surely someone will appear and ask her for Exalta’s member number so her account can be charged. But no one notices and Jessie stashes the wristbands in the roomy pocket of her tennis skirt. She goes to wait for Exalta on the front porch.
Everyday People
After almost twenty-one years of swimming against the tide—questioning authority, rebelling against the rules, and making poor decisions—Kirby Foley is surprised to find that quiet order and routine are the best parts of her front-desk job at the Shiretown Inn. The inn has twelve rooms, each with an en suite bath, and because of the location in downtown Edgartown, the clientele is upscale, as Mrs. Bennie promised. They have a few honeymooning couples, but most of the guests are Kirby’s parents’ age or older. During Kirby’s first week of work, she finds everyone she comes in contact with polite and delightful.
Her shift quickly develops a rhythm. Between the hours of eleven p.m. and one a.m., the guests return from their evenings out—dinner at the Dunes, bonfires on the beach, a nightcap on the deck at the Navigator. Kirby has been trained by Mrs. Bennie to look for signs of trouble, but all of the guests seem happy and relaxed, maybe a bit tipsy, although not problematically so. Kirby’s favorite are the Eltringhams from New Hope, Pennsylvania. (Kirby simply adores the name New Hope and applies it to her own situation now. After two arrests and the unspeakable situation with Scottie Turbo, for her, living and working on the Vineyard offers just that—new hope.) Mr. Eltringham is a banker in Philadelphia, and Mrs. Eltringham owns a small antiques shop in the village of New Hope. It’s the second marriage for both Mr. and Mrs. Eltringham; Mr. Eltringham has grown-up children by his first wife, and Mrs. Eltringham, in her life before him, was a nurse in the burn unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. Kirby is surprised at how much she learned about the Eltringhams with just a few thoughtful questions. On Kirby’s third night of work, the Eltringhams bring her a piece of peach cobbler from the Art Cliff Diner. This gesture is so unexpected and so kind that for a second, Kirby is suspicious. But the cobbler is delicious. Kirby needs to start trusting people again.
The overnight shift isn’t easy, by any means. Right around two a.m., Kirby starts to nod off. By then, she has reviewed the bills for guests checking out in the morning and has tidied the small lobby and made sure that all twelve rooms keys have been claimed. She nearly yearns for some drama—an unclaimed key, for example, or a noise complaint—because then there would be an impetus to stay awake.
Kirby sometimes steps out to the front porch to reinvigorate herself with the fresh night air, and she does that now; she takes in the silent, dark streets of Edgartown and tries not to think about everyone else on the island fast asleep.
Kirby wonders how things are going eleven miles away, on Nantucket. When Kirby called her mother from the house phone to tell her about the job, Kate responded, “Oh, good for you,” and then informed Kirby that Blair was having twins. Kirby had been irritated to have her good news trumped. Of course Blair was having twins! Anybody with one good eye could see that Blair was big enough to require her own zip code.