Summer of '79: A Summer of '69 Story(11)
“Reverend,” Kate says. “I need to borrow Katharine for a moment.”
“Uh oh,” Kirby says. “If she’s calling me Katharine, I’m in trouble. Pray for me, Reverend.”
Kate leads Kirby into the snack bar, where it’s shaded and quiet and smells like French fries.
“Did you plan a bonfire for tonight?” Kate asks. “At Ram Pasture? In your grandmother’s honor? Did you do this and not…inform me? Did you not…invite me?”
“Mom,” Kirby says.
5. Night Fever
They drive the Scout right onto the sand, near the spot where Tiger dug the giant hole and filled it with stacked wooden pallets that he took from the back alley behind Charlie’s Market. Jessie and Kirby set out thin kilim rugs that Kirby transported from New York in the back of the LTD. There was a place downtown that practically gave them away, she said. They cover Kate’s long folding table with a tapestry and arrange a row of votive candles down the center. They set out the refreshments: whole salted almonds, dates, dried apricots, an assortment of olives, goat cheese sprinkled with pistachios, melba toast, hummus, and lots and lots of grapes. Jessie had suggested they also get fixings for s’mores but Kirby shot that idea down. There were no s’mores in northern Africa.
Well, there were no kegs of Schlitz, either, Jessie thinks, and yet that’s what they’re drinking at this oasis. The keg is in the back of Mr. Crimmins’s pickup, which he’s letting them borrow, though Mr. Crimmins isn’t coming to the bonfire.
“You young people have fun,” he said. “And tomorrow, come over to the house. Your grandmother left a list of things she wanted you to have.”
Things she wanted you to have. Exalta’s considerable collection of whirligigs and whimmy-diddles will be divided up between the four grandchildren. Exalta’s jewelry—the rings she kept in exquisite porcelain boxes, and bracelets and necklaces that lived in a locked case—will be passed to Kate, Jessie, Blair, Kirby, and Magee. Even one-quarter or one-fifth of these possessions will be worth quite a lot, Jessie knows, but only if she sells them. She may, in fact, sell some of the jewelry to ease her third year of law school—maybe buy a new desk lamp or an interview suit—but the whirligigs and whimmy-diddles are so inexorably Exalta’s that Jessie could never let them go. She will be their steward until she dies and every time she sets eyes on them, she will think of her grandmother.
People start arriving the second it gets dark. Blair has left the twins back at the house; she hitches a ride to the beach with Tiger and Magee. The Dunscombe twins show up with their husbands. Joey Whalen pulls up in his Porsche and Larry Winter is driving his grandmother’s ancient Jeep Cherokee. There are a bunch of friends of Kirby’s from her Madequecham days, as well as people that Blair, Kirby, and Tiger knew from sailing at the Field and Oar.
Kirby has a boombox and Tiger brought serious speakers. As soon as the fire is lit, there’s music: Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” sets the mood, followed by Earth, Wind & Fire, the Doobie Brothers, Bob Seger, Rod Stewart. Jessie stands at the food table and tries an olive, though she isn’t hungry. She’s not sure who to hang out with. Kirby is surrounded by her old friends, smoking clove cigarettes. Tiger and Magee are talking to the Dunscombe twins about whatever it is that’s important to married people—mortgages? casseroles?—and Blair is the bologna in a Larry-Winter-and-Joey-Whalen sandwich.
Blair tries to lasso Jessie. “You remember Larry Winter, don’t you, Jessie? He lives in Florida now.”
Blair obviously wants to do the sorority bump-and-roll, passing off Larry to Jessie, but nope, sorry, Jessie isn’t that desperate for company. Larry Winter is a hundred years old, or thirty-five, and he has a mustache like Rollie Fingers.
“Hitting the keg,” Jessie says.
She does hit the keg, filling two plastic cups with cold Schlitz, then she strolls past the fire pit to the water’s edge. She feels like a stranger in her own family, but there’s nothing new about that. She fingers the gold knot at her neck and runs it along the chain. The necklace was originally a gift to Exalta from Jessie’s grandfather on the occasion of their first wedding anniversary. It’s priceless, and Exalta chose to give it to Jessie.
Jessie guzzles down one beer, feels a little better, tries to remind herself that, as soon as she wants to, she can rejoin the party and talk to Heather and Helen Dunscombe. They went through the predictable trajectory of being friends, then hating each other, then being friends again after it turned out that both Jessie and Helen Dunscombe had been molested by their tennis instructor, Garrison. But Jessie’s afraid they’ll have nothing in common now. Jessie is in law school and lives in Greenwich Village. She’s single. The twins are married and live in the suburbs. Jessie takes the subway; the twins drive station wagons. This time next year, Jessie will be studying for the bar exam. This time next year, one or both of the Dunscombe twins will be pregnant.
Will Jessie still be single this time next year? She can’t believe it’s 1979 and the first thing a person wants to know about a woman is if she has managed to catch a man. The song changes to Donna Summer, “Heaven Knows.” Heaven knows it’s not the way it should be. Do people care if Donna Summer is married or single? They do not; she is fabulous either way. So there’s hope.