Summer of '69(49)

The house the boys live in blows Kirby’s mind. Sliding screen doors open onto one long room with stark white walls and white beams. The furniture is modern and curvy. Against one wall is a lipstick-red sofa that looks like a woman lying on her side; it’s flanked by two shell chairs, one turquoise, one electric lime green. There are enormous canvases on the walls, all female nudes, modern, reminiscent of Matisse and Chagall. At one end of the room is a minimalist kitchen—three swivel bar stools at a white marble countertop, on top of which is a wide wooden bowl filled with plums and bing cherries; open shelves stacked with rustic ceramic dishes.

At the other end of the house are two bedrooms, one with two double beds (for Tommy and Eugene), the other with one king bed (for Luke), all sheathed in crisp white linens. The bedrooms are connected by a white subway-tiled bathroom that has a floor paved with slate-blue river stones.

Okay, Kirby thinks. This is absolutely the grooviest house she has ever seen. There’s a chandelier in the living room that looks like an origami fish. It’s made of rice paper, Luke says.

“Who did all the paintings?” Kirby asks. The nude women are all voluptuous with long Botticelli-like hair.

“My mother,” Luke says. “Elsa Winslow?” He says the name like Kirby might have heard of her. She has taken one art history course at Simmons, which is how she knows Matisse and Chagall. Kirby wonders if Elsa Winslow is famous. Maybe she has a cult following, like Andy Warhol.

“She’s an amazing painter,” Kirby says.

“Yeah,” Luke says. “And she knows it.”

Kirby looks at Luke with new eyes. She had originally thought him just a regular guy—privileged, obviously, given the painstakingly restored Willys Jeep, but not so different from guys in Brookline. Now that Kirby is standing in this super-hip beach bungalow, she’s intrigued. Kirby imagines his parents—a midtown financial power broker and a Greenwich Village bohemian artist—with envy. They aren’t hung up on budgets or rules like Kirby’s parents are. They have given Luke his own house, essentially, to live in with his friends.

Kirby peers into the bedrooms. “Honestly, I thought with three guys living here, this place would be a mess. I can’t believe how tidy it is.”

“We have a housekeeper,” Luke says. “Martine. She lives up at the other house.” Luke grabs Patty and starts tickling her and Patty shrieks and the two of them fall over onto the red couch. When they start kissing, Kirby nearly asks them to quit it, but she doesn’t want to be a wet blanket. She wanders over to the kitchen counter and considers the bowl of fruit. The plums and the cherries are nearly the same color, but not quite—deep purple and glorious purplish red—and Kirby realizes that even the fruit is meant to be art. She plucks a cherry out of the bowl. It’s fat and juicy-looking, and Kirby can’t resist popping it into her mouth. Her diet since arriving on this island has consisted of breakfast porridge, fried clams from Giordano’s, and stale doughnuts at the inn. The cherry is sweeter than any she has ever tasted. She sucks on the pit until it’s clean then discreetly spits it out in her hand. Behind her, on the sofa, she hears wet tongue noises and heavy breathing; she tries not to think about Scottie Turbo. No one would ever call Kirby a prude, but she doesn’t want to stand here while Luke and Patty fool around. Kirby steps out the sliding door. In her peripheral vision, she catches sight of Luke leading Patty back to his bedroom. Kirby hears the door shut.

Fine.

She’s not sure why she feels embarrassed. They should feel embarrassed. Patty might not know any better, but Luke has clearly been raised with some social graces. And yet, he’s a boy…and boys want what they want when they want it. Kirby has learned this the hard way.

To distract herself, she takes in the view over the pond. It’s nothing short of spectacular. Kirby halfway hopes that Patty marries Luke and inherits this compound from the banker father and artist mother so that Kirby can continue to visit this spot for the rest of her life.

She sits on the deck with her face to the sun, and a little while later, Patty and Luke appear. Patty looks flushed, Luke triumphant.

“Shall we go to the beach?” Luke asks.



Because Luke lives in Chilmark, he has access to Lucy Vincent Beach. “It’s the most exclusive of all the Vineyard beaches,” he explains. “You guys are lucky you met me.” He grins, so Kirby can’t hate him, though she’s starting to, a little.

Once she steps onto Lucy Vincent, however, she agrees—they are lucky (they meaning Patty) they met Luke Winslow. The beach is wide and golden and backed by stark, dramatic cliffs. It’s far, far more beautiful than Inkwell, not even in the same class, really, which makes Kirby indignant. She wonders if this is an example of institutionalized racism, but then she tells herself to relax—Inkwell is a town beach, and this is an up-island beach, windswept and wild.

Kirby quickly sees that, up ahead, there’s a gentleman walking toward the water who is nude. As in, completely nude. She sees his penis hanging heavy between his legs. Kirby scans the beach and realizes that everyone on the beach is nude. They’re reading in chairs; they’re sleeping facedown, bippies to the sky; they’re walking hand in hand, having conversations—all completely nude.

Kirby tries not to let her surprise show on her face. It’s 1969; nudity is no big deal, she knows, but…my God. It’s more disconcerting being a clothed person on a nude beach than it is being a white person on a Negro beach. Will Kirby be expected to strip down? She casts a sidelong glance at Patty. Her face is bright red, but whether with embarrassment or the sun, Kirby can’t say. She’s a good Catholic. This must come as a shock.