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.
Jessie has nearly finished her second beer when someone plops in the sand next to her.
“Jessie Levin,” a voice says. “Surprise.”
Jessie turns. Male person, her age, or maybe a little older. Shorn head, so what Jessie first thinks is that Tiger saw her sitting by herself, felt sorry for her, and sent over one of his army buddies.
“Surprise?” she says.
“It’s me,” he says. “Pick.”
6. Paradise by the Dashboard Light
Blair is desperate to get rid of Larry Winter. How had she entertained the thought even for a second that there might still be something between them? He came to the church in a tan leisure suit with a wide-collared paisley shirt underneath, and although he was kind and solicitous with his grandmother, Blair had to close her eyes against the sight of him. Then, at the reception, he’d been stuck to her like flypaper. She was unable to talk to anyone else—meaning she couldn’t have a proper, private conversation with Joey Whalen.
Well, that’s not exactly true, is it? There were the stolen moments the night before.
After the twins went to the guest cottage to watch Mork & Mindy before bed, Blair slipped out to Joey’s Porsche under the auspices of saying good night.
“I can’t believe you came,” Blair said.
“Family,” Joey said.
“Yes, well,” Blair said, meaning: your brother didn’t think it was worth flying up from Houston for. But Angus must have called Joey—because how else would he have heard about Exalta? Maybe Angus suggested Joey appear on Nantucket in his place. Maybe—is Blair reaching here?—Angus realizes that long ago, he thwarted the romance between Blair and Joey. Because Blair and Joey had been a couple first! “I’m grateful you’re here. And the kids…” The kids had been ecstatic when they saw their uncle, all thoughts of experiments and puzzles abandoned. They had launched themselves into Joey’s arms like little rockets. Joey was God, Santa Claus, and Jim Rice rolled into one.
“I love those kids like they’re my own,” Joey said.
And me? Blair wanted to ask. Do you love me like I’m your own? Joey is still a bachelor, still working in advertising. He’s the head of the national campaign for Stouffer’s, so he travels the country and eats a lot of French bread pizza. The pay is good and he has no one to support but himself—hence the Porsche, and a summer place in Newport.
“Well, Blair,” Joey said, sliding down into the leather bucket seat of the Porsche. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow meant church, family, obligation. It seemed like Joey was going to leave without so much as a good-night kiss. Was Blair going to let that happen?
Blair ran a finger along the racing stripe. “This car is foxy,” she said. “How fast does it go?”
Joey hadn’t hesitated, even for a second. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
They’d ended up zipping down the Madaket Road then careening along Cliff before they stopped to make out at the end of Hinckley Lane. It might have gone even further, Blair might have let Joey have her across the hood or she might have followed him back to his room at the Jared Coffin House, but at the last minute, she suffered a crisis of conscience and stopped him.
“My brother wins again, I see,” Joey said.
“Just think how it will look!” Blair says. “It’ll look scandalous…incestuous, even.”
This made Joey laugh. “We aren’t related,” he said.
“I know…”
“But you care what people think,” Joey said. “Because you’re just like your mother and your grandmother.”
“I am not,” Blair insisted. “I’m my own woman.”
“If you want to know how it will look, I’ll tell you,” Joey said. “It’ll look like I’ve been crazy for you since the day I met you. It’ll look like I’ve been biding my time until the inevitable happened and you and Angus split. And even then, I’ve let a proper amount of time pass. But now I’m here and I want to make this work.”
Wasn’t that what Blair wanted, too? She had thought of Joey every day since returning to Boston, but she’d been too timid—and yes, too conventional—to consider calling him. Plus, he was impossible to pin down; the only person she could have asked about his whereabouts was…Angus. So his appearing on Nantucket was both a surprise and an answer to a longing that Blair was hesitant to admit she’d been holding in her heart.
“Drive me home, please,” Blair said. “I need to think about it.”
Now, here it is, a full twenty-four hours later, and Blair has reached a decision. She wants to be with Joey Whalen. Maybe it’s outrageous—dating her ex-husband’s brother—or maybe it happens all the time. Angus won’t be at all surprised and neither will Blair’s family. The children, though—how will Gennie and George feel about their mother dating their uncle—and their uncle, possibly, becoming their stepfather?
Well, they’ll either be thrilled or disgusted. Or, more likely, thrilled one day and disgusted the next. But Blair won’t sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of the children. She reasons that if she’s happy, the children will be happy. This is a modern attitude—her neighbors will say she’s been reading too much Redbook—but come on, it’s 1979, and in six months, it will be 1980!