Summer of '69(47)

The sad fact was that Kate was a captive of her own mother, of All’s Fair, and of the life she’d known for the past forty-eight years on Nantucket. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to change.

“Mother won’t live forever,” Kate said.

David, because he was a gentle, kind man and wouldn’t argue with her even when she had summarily dismissed his hope for a new life here, smiled. “Wanna bet?”



The night had deteriorated on the walk home. Kate hadn’t yet told her husband that Bill Crimmins and his grandson were living in Little Fair; he knew nothing about the arrangement she’d made.

She said, “I think I forgot to mention that Mother offered Little Fair to Bill Crimmins for the summer.”

David said, “Actually, Exalta told me you offered it to him. And his grandson.”

Kate nodded. She was so drunk it felt like she was moving underwater. “It was me. Are you mad?”

“It’s very thoughtful of you, Katie. Bill Crimmins has always done right by you, hasn’t he?”

Kate bowed her head and watched the toes of her pink Pappagallo flats move forward, left, then right. She was so drunk it was like watching someone else’s feet. Had Bill Crimmins always done right by her? Their relationship was far too complicated for that kind of blanket statement, but David, of course, knew nothing about Kate’s past with the Crimmins family. She couldn’t tell him about that, nor could she tell him about her agreement with Bill Crimmins this summer. David would think she was simply being kind when, really, she had traded Little Fair for Tiger’s safety.

Kate started to cry. David hadn’t brought any letters from Tiger. Letters were oxygen, and without oxygen, Kate could not survive.



She manages to make it all the way through Monday without a drink, which requires her to say no to Exalta for lunch at the club and no to Jessie for the beach because Kate can’t endure either without wine. Instead, she shops at Charlie’s for actual groceries and she visits the farm stand on Hummock Pond Road. It’s too early for corn or tomatoes so Kate must be satisfied with radishes, lamb’s lettuce, and a cantaloupe. She makes a final stop at Aime’s Bakery for Portuguese bread, arriving just as they’re pulling fresh loaves out of the oven. She wants to make a fine cold supper—the bread with salted butter, the lettuce and sliced radishes and some cold poached chicken with homemade Russian dressing, and she’ll break out one or two of the cheeses they brought from Savenor’s. This seems like a lot for just herself, Exalta, and Jessie, so Kate ponders inviting Bill Crimmins to join them. Will this seem pushy? Kate wants to know if he has heard back from his brother-in-law, the personal friend and confidant of General Creighton W. Abrams. She assumes that Bill will come to her as soon as he has news, and she decides that having Bill Crimmins sit at the table will make her speculation unbearable.

Kate watches Walter Cronkite, then she and Jessie and Exalta eat the cold supper in the kitchen. Exalta praises the dressing and eats four pieces of bread. She drains two Hendrick’s and tonics packed with ice and garnished with a twist of lime—she prepares the twist herself, her only kitchen trick—and Kate volunteers to clean up in order to keep her hands occupied. At seven thirty, when the dishes are done and the leftovers wrapped up and put away, the sun is still shining. It’s three days past the solstice, and sunlight hours are long, too long. The effort required to keep from drinking has exhausted Kate.

She goes up to bed.



Can she do it again on Tuesday? She hears Jessie and Exalta up early for Jessie’s tennis lesson and she wants to go along but her mother will order a mimosa and it will be too much for Kate to resist. She lies back in bed, puts a pillow across her face to block the sun.

When she wakes up again, the house is quiet. Kate climbs out of bed and goes to the window just in time to see Pick disappear the wrong way down Fair Street on his bicycle. He’s wearing only a pair of yellow swim trunks and a towel around his neck. He’s barefoot. Off to the beach, Kate supposes, and she yearns for the summer days when she was a child. She has yet to be properly introduced to the boy; Bill Crimmins is probably avoiding it for the obvious reasons. But it will have to happen sooner or later.

Kate waits until Pick has disappeared from view, then she goes down to the kitchen to make herself a screwdriver, extra-strong.



She’s halfway through her second drink when she hears someone coming in the back door. Kate has been sitting in the den, watching the summer breeze stir the moving parts of Exalta’s whirligigs. The Indian chief in the canoe was always Tiger’s favorite.

It’s too early for Jessie and Exalta to be back, which means it must be Bill Crimmins.

Maybe he’s been to the post office. Maybe he has her answer.

She abandons the screwdriver in the den. If Bill tells her what she wants to hear—what she needs to hear—she promises God that she’ll quit drinking forever.

When Kate enters the kitchen, she cries out in surprise. It’s not Bill Crimmins she finds—it’s Blair! Kate blinks, thinking her mind is playing tricks on her thanks to vodka so early in the morning, and this notion is reinforced by the fact that Blair doesn’t look like Blair. She looks like a cartoon rendering of herself—like Blair if someone pumped her with air to the point of almost popping.

“Sweet pea?” Kate says.