“Thank you for coming, Bitsy,” she says. “Of course Mother adored you.” This isn’t true, but Kate treads lightly where Bitsy is concerned. Ten years earlier, Kate and Bitsy had had a fight in the middle of dinner at the Opera House—the night Bitsy revealed that she was sleeping with Arturo—because Bitsy accused Jessie of stealing from her daughter Heather. Kate had stormed out, indignant, only to later find out that it had been true. Jessie had stolen five dollars and a lip gloss from Heather Dunscombe’s Bermuda bag.
That had been a tumultuous summer for them all—1969. Kate wouldn’t relive that summer for all the tea in China.
Kate had never apologized to Bitsy the way she should have but by the following summer, Ward had found out about Arturo, and a messy divorce followed. Kate made amends by supporting Bitsy and inviting her and Arturo to their new house on Red Barn Road for cocktails. Bitsy had loved the house and intimated that she, too, might leave the socially suffocating cobblestone streets of downtown and move to a place that was secluded and private, where “not everyone knows what you had for breakfast.”
In the intervening years, Kate and Bitsy have handled their relationship like some kind of fragile family heirloom that will shatter if they aren’t careful.
“I’m sorry we didn’t make it to the church,” Bitsy says. “Robert had a call with his law firm that ran longer than we expected.” Robert was one of the husbands, the lawyer, and the other husband was a doctor. Both twins now lived in Westchester County—one in Rye, one in Ardsley. “But I knew you wouldn’t mind. Exalta wasn’t particularly religious, was she? She used St. Paul’s like the rest of us. For networking.”
Networking? Kate thinks. What a bizarre thing to say! Their family attended St. Paul’s for one reason only—because they were Episcopalian.
“Mother loved the music,” Kate says.
“Speaking of,” Bitsy says. “The girls tell me there’s to be a bonfire at Ram Pasture tonight in Exalta’s honor. For the young people?”
“Bonfire?” Kate says. “Ram Pasture? I think you must be mistaken. I’ve heard nothing about this.”
“Helen?” Bitsy says, calling over one perfectly coiffed twin, who’s wearing a Lilly Pulitzer patio dress printed with turquoise giraffes. “Didn’t you tell me there was a bonfire tonight at Ram Pasture?”
“Yes,” Helen says. “Midnight at the Oasis, Kirby is calling it. Heather and I have been discussing what to wear. It sounds vaguely Moroccan so we were thinking caftans.” When Helen brings her Mount Gay and tonic to her lips, Kate can’t help noticing the enormous diamond on her left hand, resting over a simple gold wedding band. She fights the jealousy she feels that Bitsy has two married daughters and Kate has zero. Zero married daughters out of three! “Kirby is so clever. So…sophisticated.”
“Yes,” Kate says. “Isn’t she just.”
Kate finds Kirby looking deceptively wholesome in a sleeveless navy silk sheath with one of Exalta’s brooches at the neck, eating finger sandwiches and chatting with Reverend Meeker. Kate wonders what Kirby and the reverend could possibly be talking about; they have exactly nothing in common. Kirby’s life in New York, as Kate understands it, includes a lot of expense-account lunches with that dreadful Gurley Brown woman and then it’s off to the disco every night, wearing gold lamé jumpsuits. Kirby sleeps with men but doesn’t date them; she flits from one to the next like a child who grows bored with her toys. This is her excuse for not settling down: she can’t find anyone who holds her attention. She thinks marriage should be one episode of Laugh-In after another, which it most decidedly is not.
“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.