Summer of '79: A Summer of '69 Story(15)

9. Reunited




Jessie didn’t learn what she knows about love from being with Theo Feigelbaum. No—Jessie’s first teacher in lessons of the heart is the man with the shorn head who is now sitting next to her: Pickford Crimmins. Pick.

Jessie jumps to her feet. “Pick?” she says. “I thought you were in…Africa?”

“I was,” Pick says. “I got home to Cali last week. And then I called Bill and he told me about Exalta, so I hitched a ride with a buddy who was going to Philadelphia and I took a bus the rest of the way.”

“I can’t…I don’t…wow.” Jessie needs to get a grip. “So…how was the Peace Corps? You were in…?”

“Kenya,” he says. “I worked in Nairobi for a while, digging wells. Then I was sent out to the Mara, the Kenyan savannah. It was incredible, Jess. It was like an episode of Wild Kingdom every day. We saw a giraffe give birth, a cheetah kill, prides of lions, baby elephants, the black rhino. For six weeks, I lived with the Maasai villagers. I learned how to shoot a bow and arrow, I drank cow’s blood, I learned the tribal dances.”

Jessie nods dumbly. She’d thought it was amazing that she got an A in her Torts class and managed to successfully transport two pastrami sandwiches on the subway.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have any time to write letters home,” Pick says. “I’m sure Bill thought I dropped off the face of the earth.”

“He’s proud of you,” Jessie says, which she’s sure is true though Mr. Crimmins never says much about his own family—probably because his daughter, Lorraine, who lives on a commune in California, has caused so much anxiety and confusion for the Foley-Levins. Jessie knew Pick went to Africa with the Peace Corps and she’d been glad to hear that, hadn’t she? Partly because she liked knowing that Pick was contributing in a positive way to the world and partly because Africa was so remote that Jessie’s lingering feelings for Pick became a moot point.

Pick settles back into the sand and Jessie follows suit. The party rages behind them but Jessie doesn’t care. Pick is here.

“So,” he says. “Tell me about everyone. Actually, forget everyone. Tell me about you.”

“I live in Greenwich Village,” Jessie says. “I’m a second-year law student at NYU.”

“Law school,” Pick says. “Like your dad.”

“I guess,” Jessie says. The law that David practices—corporate litigation—is last on Jessie’s list of interests. “I want to practice immigration law. Or maybe work for the ACLU. I want to help people.”

“That’s my girl,” Pick says.

Jessie wonders if she’s trying to make herself sound altruistic in order to impress Pick. She has never before mentioned immigration or civil rights law out loud. If she’d said this to Theo, he would have gone on a diatribe about Jessie’s “privilege.” She could afford to practice immigration law, hell, she could become a public defender—because she had a trust fund. But as for Theo, he was looking at a big-firm, big-money future. He wanted to be in-house counsel at a Wall Street bank.

“I made Bill promise to tell me if you got married,” Pick says, “so I could come home and disrupt the wedding like Benjamin in The Graduate.”

Jessie smiles. “You did not.”

“I did.”

“Well, I’m not married.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Theo,” she says, and even though Pick is sitting a foot away from her, she can feel him tense up. “But we broke up. He cheated on me.”

“What an idiot,” Pick says.

Jessie nudges him with her elbow. “You’re one to talk.”

“What?”

“That summer you lived with us, you left me in the dust for Sabrina.”

“Sabrina who?”

“Sabrina was…the girl you worked with at the North Shore restaurant. You started dating her.”

“Oh,” Pick says. “I don’t remember Sabrina.”

“You don’t?” Jessie says. She finds this unfair. Jessie had been crushed when Pick introduced her to Sabrina one fateful day at Surfside Beach; it was a moment that has both haunted her and served as a cautionary tale. When you fall in love, your heart opens in a burst of flower petals and gossamer streamers. But beware—because that same heart can just as quickly be cored like an apple, the most tender piece of you extracted and thrown onto the compost pile of the unrequited. For the past ten years, Sabrina—not the girl herself but the specter of someone prettier and more desirable—has haunted Jessie, inspired her even.

“You kissed me,” Jessie says. “Twice. You really kissed me.”

“Yes,” Pick says. “That I do remember. Upstairs, in the cottage.”

“And then a couple of days later, you were dating Sabrina.”

“I’m the idiot, then,” Pick says. “All I remember is that you were young—too young. I thought I’d get in trouble if anything else happened. The dynamic between me and your family was weird. I didn’t know why at the time, but I know now. And I’m assuming you know?”

“That Wilder Foley was your father?” Jessie says. “Yes.” Wilder Foley was Kate’s first husband, the father of Blair, Kirby, and Tiger, who had an affair with Lorraine Crimmins and got her pregnant. So Pick is a half sibling to Blair, Kirby, and Tiger, just like Jessie.