Summer of '69(69)

Nantucket was pretty at seven thirty, when she and Exalta would walk to the club for tennis, but at five thirty it was even more beautiful. The air was dewy, the light pearlescent. Fair Street was still; Jessie might have been the only person awake. She wished she could enjoy it, but she was too agitated. If she had lost the necklace on the street and someone had found it, then it was gone forever. It could have been picked up by a bird and woven into a nest. It could have been run over by a car, the chain broken, the knot flattened, the diamond dislodged. It could have fallen into a sewer grate and become mired in the muck and gray water that ran beneath the island.

Jessie cast her eyes down as she traveled the exact path back to the Mad Hatter that she and Kate had taken home. Glints in the sidewalk turned out to be mica, which felt like a cruel trick; ditto the tabs from beer and soda cans that littered the brick outside of Bosun’s Locker. As Jessie crossed Main Street, she looked in the crevices between the cobblestones. Meanwhile, she tried to imagine telling Exalta that she had lost the necklace. Jessie wasn’t even supposed to have the necklace; she had, essentially, stolen it from Exalta’s bedroom. This made it so much worse—two things to admit to instead of one.

Jessie got all the way across town without encountering another soul, which was fortunate because she had no explanation for what she was doing out and about this early. When she arrived at the Mad Hatter, she climbed the steps and knocked on the glass part of the door, but no one answered. She could hardly be surprised; it was barely six in the morning. As she wondered what time the cleaners came in, wondered if maybe they had found the necklace last night—under her chair, say—she gasped. The necklace wasn’t at the Mad Hatter because Jessie had touched it at her throat on the way home. On Main Street!

Jessie hurried back across town to the spot in front of the Pacific National Bank where she remembered fingering the necklace. She started there and searched every square inch of pavement diligently until she was back at All’s Fair.

It had to be somewhere, she reasoned.

But it wasn’t. It was gone.



Now, a week later, worry about the necklace has grown into a full-blown crisis. Every day when Jessie wakes up, she fills with dread, expecting that this will be the day Exalta realizes the necklace is gone.

Thursday evening, when Exalta goes to bridge at the Anglers’ Club, Jessie sneaks back into her bedroom. The air is chilled, the high single bed is made with crisp white linens, and the burgundy velvet box is on the triangular table. The sight of the velvet box is as gruesome to Jessie as a severed hand.

She experiences a glimmer of hope as she pries the box open; for one second, she imagines that she can change the past, that a week ago, she did not abscond with the necklace out of anger but left it right where it was.

The box is empty. Jessie’s stomach lurches.

She thinks about taking the box. Will Nonny notice its absence? Will taking the box lessen the chances of Exalta suggesting, on some future special occasion, that Jessie wear the necklace?

Maybe Jessie should take all the jewelry from the triangular table. She can leave the boxes open and askew, make it look as if they’ve been robbed.

Yes! Jessie thinks. This would solve everything. And it’s not too far-fetched. They leave the doors unlocked night and day; anyone could just come in and walk off with the jewels.

But there is rarely, if ever, a time when the house is completely unoccupied, especially now that Blair is here. And somehow Jessie knows that if she stages a burglary, the person who will be blamed is Pick.

Blair, Jessie thinks. She will confide in Blair and ask her advice. Blair seems pretty miserable; she could probably use a distraction. Maybe, just maybe, Blair will give Jessie the money to replace the necklace. She can go down to S. J. Patten on Main Street, describe the necklace, and commission a new one.

Jessie leaves the burgundy box where it is and heads down the hall to her room, which is now Blair’s room. The door is closed, so Blair is inside and not downstairs in front of the television, thank goodness. It’s impossible to tear her away from The Flying Nun.

When Jessie knocks, Blair utters a froggy “Come in.”

The air conditioner is humming and Blair has the drapes closed against the sun, which is still fairly bright even at seven in the evening. Blair is wearing the yellow dress that is starting to come apart at the seams. When she sees Jessie, she offers a smile and heaves herself up to sitting. Her hair is messy; she wears no makeup, not even lipstick; and her girth is so shocking, she looks as if she’s harboring an entire family under her dress.

“Hey,” Blair says.

“Hey,” Jessie says. She closes the door and sits on the bed next to Blair. “I have a problem.”

“Boy troubles?” Blair asks.

Jessie shakes her head as she thinks of being crammed into the buttery with Pick and how he basically asked to kiss her and what a missed opportunity that was. Yet this concern is pale and distant compared to the hot red urgency of the missing necklace.

“Is it…did you get your…”

“No,” Jessie says. She thinks back to her last evening in Brookline—Leslie announcing that she had officially entered puberty, Doris clutching her belly against imaginary cramps—and she marvels that she had ever been so innocent. She takes a deep breath. “Nonny gave me a necklace for my birthday. It was a gold knot with a tiny diamond in the center on a gold chain. I guess Gramps gave it to her for their first wedding anniversary.”