Summer of '69(70)

“Wow,” Blair says. “And she gave it to you…to have? Like, permanently?”

Jessie’s eyes fill with tears. “She did. It was supposed to be a special-occasion necklace.”

“I should think so,” Blair says.

“But she was keeping it for me in her room. And last Thursday night when Mom and I went to the Mad Hatter, I put it on…without asking Nonny, I mean. She was at bridge, so I couldn’t ask her…”

“Yeah?” Blair says warily.

“And I lost it!” Jessie says. “It must have fallen off my neck. I’ve looked everywhere in this house, I retraced my steps through town, I checked to make sure it wasn’t caught inside my dress. It’s gone, Blair.”

Blair falls back against her pillows with her fingers laced across her belly. “Jessie,” she says.

“I know!” Jessie cries. “You don’t have to make me feel bad about it because I already feel rotten and you don’t have to tell me I’m irresponsible with nice things because that much is obvious.”

“Oh, Jessie,” Blair says. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s priceless,” Jessie says, wiping a hand under her nose. “Gramps gave it to her in 1919. It lasted fifty years and then I had it for one night and now it’s gone.”

“I take it you haven’t told Nonny,” Blair says.

“I can’t tell Nonny,” Jessie says. “I just can’t.”

“She’s going to find out sooner or later, though. You know that, right?”

“I was hoping you could give me money so I could go to the jeweler and ask them to make another one,” Jessie says. “It doesn’t have to be exact. Nonny’s eyesight isn’t that great. If she doesn’t look closely, she won’t notice. And I’ll pay you back every penny, I swear.”

Blair laughs. “Oh, honey.”

Jessie assumes that means no. She bows her head. Her only hope now is that Exalta won’t notice the necklace missing for the next six weeks, at which point Jessie will go with Pick to Woodstock and never return.

“Wait right here,” Blair says. She lumbers across the room to the bookshelves and scans the titles. These books are mostly old. Some belonged to their mother growing up; some belonged to Nonny. Blair extracts a slim volume and presses it on Jessie.

“Read this,” she says. “Then you’ll know what to do.”

The book is The Necklace and Other Stories, by Guy de Maupassant.

Jessie takes the book back to Little Fair and lies across her bed to read it; she is out of options. The first story, “The Necklace,” is about a woman who wants to impress people at a fancy party and borrows an expensive necklace from an acquaintance—and then loses it. She finds a similar necklace in a jewelry store, and she and her husband sell everything they own and take out multiple loans to buy it. She gives this necklace to the acquaintance without mentioning that it’s a replacement, and the couple spend years in poverty, the wife doing scullery work in order to repay the loans. A decade later, she runs into the acquaintance and finds out that the necklace she lost was not valuable at all; the jewels were made of paste.

When Jessie finishes the story, she slams the book shut. This doesn’t help her because the necklace she lost wasn’t a fake. It was real, the real necklace that Nonny received from Gramps. Right? It had the heft of gold, and the diamond looked genuine. Maybe Blair thinks Nonny gave her a decoy to see if she was ready to care for a fine piece of jewelry.

That would be such a relief! But Jessie doubts it’s true.

She understands why Blair suggested the book. There’s only one correct course of action: tell Nonny the truth.

When is the right time? On their way to tennis lessons? On their way home from tennis lessons? In the evening, after Nonny has had a couple of gin and tonics? Jessie starts scrutinizing her grandmother’s moods. Every time she imagines telling Exalta the truth, she feels sick. She can’t do it.

Then, after the Fourth of July, Exalta spends a long stretch of time in the den watching Wimbledon on TV. Her favorite player, Rod Laver, wins his quarter-final match, then his semifinal match. And then he wins the final match against John Newcombe. He is the Wimbledon champion once again and Exalta claps her hands with glee. When Jessie sits down next to her on the sofa, Exalta turns to her and says, “Isn’t that marvelous?”

Jessie wants to blurt out the words Nonny, I lost the necklace. But she can’t bring herself to ruin Exalta’s good mood.



That evening after dinner, Jessie returns to Little Fair to find an envelope on the kitchen table. She creeps toward it as though it’s a dove that might fly away. What are the chances that someone found the necklace and left it in this envelope for Jessie? She squeezes her eyes closed then bravely opens them, thinking that whatever the envelope is, it will be fine.

It’s a letter, addressed to her here at All’s Fair.

The return address is Private Richard Foley, U.S. Army.

It’s from Tiger.

Jessie falls into a seat at the table and fingers the envelope; she wants to rip it open. She holds the letter in both hands and considers doing that—but somehow she knows she has to wait.

Wait until after she has told Nonny the truth.



The next morning, Jessie wakes up to pouring rain. She puts on her whites and pulls her hair into a ponytail, though clearly there’ll be no tennis today; just a run through the backyard to All’s Fair leaves her drenched. Nonny is sitting in the kitchen in the green kimono with the embroidered hibiscus that she got in Japan before World War II. She’s drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, which is unusual, but then Jessie sees she’s reading the sports page. There’s a large picture of Rod Laver.