Summer of '69(96)

And so Jessie and Exalta set out for the club, first swinging by the post office so Jessie can drop her letter to Tiger in the mailbox. Exalta looks on with an expression of indulgence and pity, as though Jessie were mailing a letter off to Santa Claus.

Jessie’s anger at Pick is still lingering. She glares at Exalta. “Do you ever write to Tiger?”

Exalta says, “Come along or we’ll be late.”

But Jessie persists. She’s tired of being ignored, disregarded, redirected. “Nonny, do you write to Tiger? Have you written to him even once since he’s been overseas?”

“No,” Exalta says. The syllable hangs in the air, naked and cruel, and Exalta must realize this because she says, “Perhaps I should.”

Jessie wants to scream, Perhaps you should? Perhaps? But she has learned recently that silence is more powerful than a furious outburst.

When they arrive at the club, Jessie feels the need to steal again, steal something right from under Exalta’s nose, but that will backfire. Instead, she peels off for the locker room so she can calm herself before her lesson.

“Don’t dilly-dally,” Exalta says. “I’m off to find Mrs. Winter.”

Jessie slams into the locker room. She’s so angry she wants to smash the mirrors with her racket—but she stops short. Sitting on the love seat in the lounge is one of the Dunscombe twins, sobbing into her hands.

“Hello?” Jessie says gently. She isn’t sure if it’s Helen or Heather. If she knew it was Helen, Jessie would just ignore her, but she likes Heather and feels bad about stealing her money.

The twin looks up. Helen.

Now Jessie is stuck. “Everything okay?” she asks in a way that she hopes sounds rhetorical.

Helen struggles for a breath. “I hate my tennis instructor,” she says.

Jessie nearly rolls her eyes. It figures that Helen Dunscombe is crying over something stupid like tennis.

“I want to…I want to kill him!”

What snags Jessie’s attention aren’t the words—everyone wants to kill someone—it’s the guttural tone of Helen’s voice and the way she’s clenching her fists. Jessie starts to ask who Helen’s instructor is, but then she remembers it’s Garrison Howe. And then Jessie gets it. Although she does not like Helen at all, she sits down on the edge of the coffee table in front of her.

“Garrison,” she says. “Did he…” She doesn’t even have words at her disposal. She clears her throat. “He touched you, right?”

Helen stops crying for a second and looks at Jessie in astonishment before she whispers, “How did you know?”

“He rubbed against me during our first lesson,” Jessie says. “I ran.”

“I told my mother the first time it happened,” Helen says. “She told me I was being dramatic and to stop exaggerating. Then he did it again—he ran the back of his hand over my breast while he was correcting my serve—and when I told my mother that time, she said all men are like that and I should just get used to it.”

Jessie blinks. She wasn’t brave enough to tell Kate—or anyone else—for exactly that reason. “We could both go and tell Ollie Hayward,” she says. “With both of us, he would have to believe it.”

Helen shakes her head. “He might believe it, but he won’t do anything. Even Heather thinks I’m just looking for a way to switch to Topher.”

If Jessie didn’t know about Garrison, she might have thought this as well. “So you don’t want to tell anybody?” Jessie asks. She does the previously unthinkable—she reaches a hand out to Helen.

Helen takes it and gives Jessie a weak smile. “Well,” she says, “I just told you.”



Jessie spends her entire tennis lesson smacking the ball like never before. Her forehand is a fireball, her backhand solid and true, and her serve is blistering—or at least that’s how it seems to Jessie because she is just so angry. Garrison has been taking gross liberties with Helen Dunscombe and probably with all his other female tennis students, possibly some who are even younger than Helen and Jessie.

It’s this thought that makes Jessie pocket the ball and approach the net. Suze is on the other side, bent over, both hands on the handle of her racket, in the ready position.

“Oh, come on,” she says. “Don’t stop now. You’re on a roll. This is the strongest play I’ve seen all summer.”

“Suze,” Jessie says. “I have to tell you something.”

Jessie remembers her father’s advice to always think before she speaks. “Before I had you as an instructor, I had Garrison.” She stops to breathe. “During our first lesson, he was showing me a two-handed backhand and he rubbed his body against mine.”

“Rubbed it…suggestively?” Suze says. She puts her hands on her hips. “Are you kidding me?”

“I ran away,” Jessie says. “And I asked my grandmother for another instructor, a girl, and they gave me you.”

“Did you tell your grandmother what Garrison did?” Suze says. “Did you tell anyone?”

“No,” Jessie says.

“Oh, Jessie,” Suze says. Her voice is suddenly tender. “You could have told me. You know you could have come to me at any time.”