Summer of '69(80)

They made love three or four times that day, then slept intertwined on the cot; they even went skinny-dipping in the lake. The water was so cold it burned, but when Kirby emerged she felt clean and strong, as though she had been dipped in steel. When the sun started to descend, they got back in the Dodge and drove to a little tavern downtown for hot roast beef sandwiches and cold beer.

When Scottie dropped Kirby back off at Simmons, she knew she was in love.



Kirby doesn’t tell Darren all of this, naturally, just the gist of it, and she doesn’t check to see how he’s processing everything. They reach the point on the beach where they can’t go any farther, and that seems like a natural place to turn around and head back.

Now comes the hard part, Kirby thinks.

Once Kirby and Scottie had slept together, the genie could not be put back into the bottle. There followed a string of days when all Kirby could think about was how they could be together. Another trip to Winnipesaukee was impractical, so they resorted to fast, furtive interludes in the dark corners and crevices of Boston. Behind the warehouse in Braintree was a favorite spot, as was as a certain hidden nook in the park along the Charles River; one time, it was the bathroom of an Irish bar next to Fenway during one of the first Red Sox games of the season.

And then Kirby felt a change. She was dizzy; her breasts were tender; she was tired.

No, she thought. Blair was pregnant but she was married to Angus, which made it a proper and joyful event. Kirby being in the same boat was a disgrace. There was also the undeniable fact that Kirby didn’t want children, ever.

When she started to feel nauseated, she made an appointment at the free clinic in Roxbury under the name of Clarissa Bouvier—the name Clarissa had been plucked right from the book she was reading in her contemporary literature class, Mrs. Dalloway, and Bouvier was a tribute to the former First Lady, Jackie Kennedy. After the nurse confirmed that yes, Kirby was probably about six weeks along, she said, “The doctor will be in to examine you.”

The woman who walked in was named Dr. Frazier. Kirby had started to cry.

Dr. Frazier had cocked an eyebrow. “So…I take it this wasn’t planned?”

No, not planned, not wanted. “I can’t have this baby,” Kirby said. “I cannot. I can’t even go away, have the baby, and come back. I’m in college. My brother just went to war. My family can’t handle any more shocks. Plus they’ll disown me.”

“I highly doubt that,” Dr. Frazier said. “Where do you live?”

“Brookline,” Kirby said.

“So you have resources, then,” Dr. Frazier said.

If by resources, she meant money, then yes. The Foley-Levins had financial resources. But they were growing short on emotional resources. “I can’t have this baby. It’s not an option.”

“Legally, that’s your only option,” Dr. Frazier said. Kirby can remember hating Dr. Frazier at that moment. The doctor was in her mid-forties and very attractive, very put-together, too put-together to be working at this crappy clinic. Kirby guessed that she volunteered here a day or two a week.

“Surely there must be someplace,” Kirby said. There were rumors at Simmons about ways to handle an unwanted pregnancy, like a storefront in Chinatown. If you knew the secret password, they’d give you a magic potion, and when you woke up, it was done. “In Chinatown?”

The doctor sighed. “I could get in trouble for telling you this, but here’s an address. Don’t wait on this”—Dr. Frazier checked the file for her patient’s name—“Clarissa. It’s safe but it’s not cheap.”

This was the worst event of Kirby’s life, but for the doctor, Kirby supposed, it was just another day in the office. The address was on Washington Street, somewhere in the desolate South End. Kirby clutched the piece of paper like the life preserver it was.

Don’t wait on this, Dr. Frazier had said, but Kirby had to take care of something first. She arranged to meet Scottie that evening behind the warehouse in Braintree. She didn’t let on that anything was wrong but when she saw him, she tells Darren, she stuttered until she got the words out: Scottie, I’m p-pregnant!

“And what did he say?” Darren wants to know. “Did he do the honorable thing and ask you to marry him?”

Would she be standing here if he had? She had been so blindly infatuated with Scottie Turbo that if he had said he wanted to marry her and keep the baby, she would have said yes. But Scottie Turbo had said no such thing. He had pulled all the cash out of his wallet—a hundred and forty-two dollars—and said he hoped that was enough. Kirby didn’t say, Enough for what? She knew what it was for. And even though an abortion was what she wanted, it hurt her that it was what he wanted too.

She took his money and said, “You don’t live with your mother, do you? You’re married, aren’t you?”

He said, “What are you, a detective?” And then he’d kissed her forehead and hurried back to his squad car.

She never heard from him again.

Later that night, she had awoken with painful cramping, and in the morning, she started to bleed.

“Things took care of themselves,” Kirby says to Darren now. “But I couldn’t believe it when Rajani took me to your house and…there was Dr. Frazier. At first, I didn’t think she remembered me. But now I know that she does.”