Summer of '69(50)

Luke finds a wide-open space and plops down their Styrofoam cooler, which is filled with Schlitz and chicken sandwiches prepared by Martine, the French maid. (Kirby caught a glimpse of her in her black uniform, complete with a white apron and frilled cap.) He sets up the chairs, and Kirby waits, wondering what will happen next. Patty pulls off her gauzy black cover-up to reveal a conservative black tank suit.

“We’re at Lucy Vincent,” Luke says. “Everything off.”

Patty shakes her head.

“Patricia,” Luke says.

“She doesn’t want to,” Kirby says. “And I don’t want to either.” Kirby pulls off her denim cutoffs and peasant blouse but decides her bikini is staying on.

Patty, however, peels away her black suit until she is standing before them in the splendid altogether. Her flesh is plentiful; she looks like a woman in a Rubens painting. She looks, Kirby thinks, like a woman in an Elsa Winslow painting, with her round breasts and ruddy nipples, her generous thighs and the curve of her belly that slopes down to her dark pubic hair. Kirby recognizes the romanticism before her: Luke has found his mother’s art personified in Patty.

But then Kirby notices that Patty is trembling. Kirby sees a pronounced red mark on Patty’s haunches—a handprint.

Luke shucks off his suit while facing away from Kirby so all she can see is his white behind. She busies herself by laying out her towel. She lies on her stomach and unties the string of her bikini top but that’s as far as she’ll go. She cranes her neck to see Luke leading Patty to the water, both of them naked as jaybirds.

Kirby sets her head down on her folded arms. What she told her parents is proving to be true: spending the summer in the Vineyard is quite educational.



A few days later, the temperature soars to the mid-eighties with 100 percent humidity. There’s a breeze off the water early in the week, but by Friday, the sky is heavy, gray, and overcast; the air is hot and soupy. Naturally, the fan in Kirby’s room picks this week to die a dramatic death. It stops spinning for no apparent reason, and when Kirby goes over to wiggle the plug, there is a sudden flash of electrical sparks followed by an acrid smell.

She can’t live without a fan. Heat rises and she’s in the attic, and although there’s a window, without the fan there’s no cross-ventilation. She corners Evan, Miss O’Rourke’s nephew, who says he will go out and get her a new fan. It would be his pleasure.

That afternoon, there’s a knock on Kirby’s bedroom door. She’s lying in bed listening to Aretha Franklin’s Lady Soul, which is the album she brought for her rainy day/Sunday mood. If it’s Michaela complaining about the volume, Kirby decides, she’ll apologize profusely and then, once Michaela is back downstairs, put on her angry-mood album, Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland, at top volume.

It might be Patty at the door. Luke picked Patty up earlier for a lobster-roll date in Menemsha, and Patty asked Kirby to go, but Kirby declined. Patty, not Kirby, is Luke’s girlfriend, and Kirby’s beginning to find it strange that Patty wants her to join them every time they’re together. Kirby wondered briefly if Patty was afraid of Luke. She had asked Patty about the red mark on her thigh.

“Did he hit you while you two were in the bedroom?” she asked. “Did he…I don’t know…spank you?”

Patty laughed uncomfortably. “It’s a game,” she said. “Role-playing.”

“Role-playing?” Kirby said.

“I’m an actress,” Patty said.

When Kirby opens the door, she finds Barb standing before her. Kirby is surprised; she would have thought the hot, mouse-infested attic was the last place Barb would ever show her face.

“You have a visitor,” Barb says.

“I do?” Kirby says. She assumes that Evan has arrived with the fan, and not a moment too soon. She throws on a polka-dot minidress and ties a bandanna around her hair. As she hurries down the stairs, she wonders what Evan might expect as a thank you.

Barb waits at the top of the second-floor stairs along with Miranda and Maureen—Michaela is blessedly absent—and Kirby figures they must be really bored if they’re that interested in seeing Evan in his brown polyester pants and Sunday-best shoes.

But when Kirby gets to the front door, she understands. It’s not Evan. It’s Darren Frazier. Kirby knows that for these girls, having a gentleman caller is a big deal. Having a Negro gentleman caller is, she suspects, brand-new territory for them.

Kirby’s heart fills like a hot-air balloon. “Hey, you!” she says.

“Day off,” he says. “I thought you might want to ride the carousel.”

“I’d love it,” Kirby says. She turns to wave at the girls who are loitering at the top of the stairs like they’re watching Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. “See ya, ladies!”



As rotten, terrible luck would have it, they bump into Evan outside on the sidewalk; he’s holding a huge rectangular box that Kirby can see is an air-conditioning unit.

“Is that for my room?” she asks hopefully.

“It’s supposed to be.” Evan grunts and drops the box onto the top step with a thud.

Air-conditioning is more than Kirby could have hoped for. “Evan, I can’t thank you enough. You have no idea what it’s like up there. I’ve been stewing in my own juices.” She chastises herself for using that gross phrase in front of two gentlemen. Her mother would be appalled. “I’m very grateful.”