Summer of '79: A Summer of '69 Story(10)
Kate sees Bitsy Dunscombe step onto the brick patio with her second husband, Arturo, her identical twins, Heather and Helen, and their husbands. Heather and Helen are Jessie’s age, twenty-three, they both went to Briarcliffe, and are both new housewives of just under a year. Bitsy and her loathsome first husband, Ward Dunscombe, threw the twins a double wedding here at the club last July. Kate and David had attended, mainly because Bitsy declared it would be the “wedding of the decade,” and Kate had wanted to see what that looked like. For Kate the best part of the wedding wasn’t the girls in matching dresses—they looked lovely, though the double vision came across as something of a sideshow spectacle—but rather when Bitsy’s first husband and second husband had a fistfight in the parking lot. By all accounts, it was Ward who threw the first punch (he was a notoriously nasty drunk) but, alas, it was Arturo who had gotten posted. Ward was the sixth wealthiest man on Nantucket and was a lifelong member of the Field and Oar, whereas Arturo was a Panamanian national who came to the island to work as a waiter at the Opera House restaurant.
Technically, Arturo isn’t allowed to set foot in the club, but Kate won’t say a word. It’s a funeral.
“Kate,” Bitsy says, her arms open in a V and her head cocked back. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Exalta was one of a kind.”
These are probably the nicest words Bitsy could say about Exalta without lying, because for seventy-four of her eighty-four years, Exalta was imperious, judgmental, and cold. That she had thawed so late in life was the only thing that kept today from being a celebration. Ding-dong, the witch is dead.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kate sees Bill Crimmins standing out on the dock, hands crammed into his pockets, gazing at the water. He might feel more uncomfortable here at the Field and Oar than even Arturo. Kate should go over and bring Bill into the fold, but she can’t dismiss Bitsy quite so fast.
“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.