Summer of '69(73)

Kate nods in approval. “Wonderful,” she says. “They make the best gimlets.”



The Nantucket Cottage Hospital is country medicine but what it lacks in big-city sophistication, it makes up for in personal attention. Dr. Van de Berg is a wonderful, welcome change from the smug condescension of Dr. Sayer at the Boston Hospital for Women. Dr. Van de Berg is a short man who has the countenance of a cheerful elf. He’s tanned and healthy; he looks as if delivering babies is something he does between sailing in regattas and playing rounds of golf. He’s wearing a white lab coat over a baby-blue polo and a pair of snappy madras pants. Blair loves everything about Dr. Van de Berg; he is the apotheosis of a summer doctor. She doesn’t even mind when he asks her to lie back on the metal table so he can check her.

Being “checked” in this instance means Dr. Van de Berg reaching up inside of Blair, which makes Blair think of Julia Child’s instructions about removing the gizzards from a raw chicken. That leads her to remember her three failed attempts to make poulet au porto the previous autumn. She wonders if Trixie is an accomplished French cook whose pan sauces never break. Blair is so consumed with envy over Trixie’s imagined skills in the kitchen that she isn’t listening when Dr. Van de Berg says something from his post between her legs.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You’re a hundred percent effaced and two centimeters dilated. The babies should be here in a week, maybe two. Maybe sooner.”

Blair sits up on her elbows. “What?”



When Blair returns to the waiting room and Kate asks how everything went, Blair says, “Just fine. Let’s go to lunch, I’m starving.”

As they drive to the Galley, Blair practices her breathing. She needs to calm down. On the one hand, the news is exhilarating—a week, maybe two, maybe sooner. On the other hand, Blair is forced to consider her circumstances. If she gives birth tomorrow or next week or in two weeks, she will be doing it alone. There has been no word from Angus and no word from Joey. The situation is enough to send Blair back to the solace of her bed, but she doesn’t want to miss what might be her last chance to get out of the house.

The Galley offers simple lunch fare, but it’s right on Cliffside Beach, a mere forty yards from the lapping waves of Nantucket Sound. Kate and Blair are seated at a coveted two-top on the outer edge of the restaurant, along the rope railing. Blair positions her arm so it’s resting in the sun. The ma?tre d’ is the same man as the year before, though he doesn’t recognize Blair. When he saw her approaching, he cleared the way for her as though she were a Mack Truck about to barrel through the restaurant. Blair is so happy to be here that she doesn’t even feel self-conscious about her yellow dress. The Galley isn’t a formal place; nearly all the diners are in bathing suits and cover-ups.

If Blair’s motivation for being here is to get out of the house and dig into a lobster roll and French fries, Kate’s is to start drinking.

“I’d like a gimlet,” Kate tells the waitress, a girl of about seventeen who has her hair in pigtails. “And another one in ten minutes.”

Behind her sunglasses, Blair raises her eyebrows but doesn’t comment. She orders an iced tea and studies her mother—Katharine Nichols Foley Levin, the summertime version. Kate seems to have aged ten years since Tiger was deployed. Kate’s skin is lightly tanned and her hair is loose, held off her face by a grosgrain headband, but there are tense lines around her mouth and etched into her forehead, and Blair knows that if Kate removes her sunglasses, her eyes will be bleary. She wears her pearls with a crisp white short-sleeved blouse, so she’s still recognizable as herself, but she drains the first gimlet in under a minute. Three long sips. Blair counts as she drinks her iced tea.

“Mother,” Blair says.

Kate gazes at the sea until her second gimlet arrives and once that, too, is gone, she turns to Blair and says, “I have some things to tell you that might be difficult for you to hear.”

Blair presumes her mother is going to list the reasons why Blair must forsake Joey Whalen and reunite with Angus. “Mother—”

“Just listen,” Kate says. She flags down the waitress and says, “Two lobster rolls, please, with French fries. And another gimlet.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The pigtailed waitress departs. What must she think about a woman who is on track to drink half a dozen gimlets before lunch is over?

Kate leans forward and says, “Your father, Wilder Foley, was a philanderer. He slept with…scores of women while we were married.”

Blair stirs up the sugar from the bottom of her iced tea with her straw. She isn’t exactly surprised to hear that her father stepped out—she’d always had a feeling—but scores? Surely Kate is exaggerating.

“I’m not exaggerating,” Kate says. “There were upwards of forty.” She taps her finger against the weathered wood of the table. “And those were the ones I knew about here at home. While he was at war…” She laughs unhappily. “Well, the sky’s the limit.”

“Why did you stay?” Blair asks.

“Three little children,” Kate says. “Plus, it was what was done back then. Women turned a blind eye. And I was afraid of what your grandmother would say if I left. She adored Wilder.”

Yes, this is common family knowledge; Nonny had favored Wilder, just as she now favors Kirby. And Angus too, Blair realizes with a heavy heart. Nonny is particularly fond of Angus.