Summer of '79: A Summer of '69 Story(7)
If the whole thing sounded out of character for Kate, well, it was a bit—but Kate made no secret that she wanted the compound filled with grandchildren someday.
On that front, Blair had done her part. The onus now fell to her other three siblings.
Kirby, Tiger, and Jessie are all out on the back patio, sitting under the awning by the pool. Mr. Crimmins and Kate and David are there as well, and Magee, Tiger’s wife, who quit her dental hygienist’s job to care for Exalta when she first fell sick. (Kate had been relieved, Blair knows. She was certain the reason Tiger and Magee didn’t have children was because Magee worked too hard.)
The blender isn’t purring, the grill isn’t smoking; there isn’t a drink in sight, not even iced tea. Kate is holding tight to her principles. They are a family in mourning; no one will enjoy himself. Blair’s not sure how she’ll explain that she and the children have just been to the Sweet Shoppe, though perhaps Kate has already announced this. Perhaps everyone has been discussing Blair’s blasphemy, her loosened morals since getting divorced.
Tiger moves to the edge of the patio to light a cigarette and he’s joined by a dark-haired gentleman wearing a white polo, madras shorts, and Wayfarer sunglasses.
Blair’s heart isn’t frozen after all because suddenly, it revs like a race car engine. She will be taking a ride in that Porsche later, her face raised to the night sky, her hair streaming out behind her.
It’s Joey Whalen, Angus’s little brother, who was Blair’s boyfriend before (and after) she met Angus.
“How about that, my darlings,” Blair says. “Your uncle is here.”
3. Sad Eyes
Magee hasn’t stopped crying since Exalta died and finally, on the morning of the funeral, Tiger realizes he can’t ignore it any longer. This isn’t normal, run-of-the-mill grief. Something else is going on with his wife.
They’re in their summer bedroom, getting dressed. Kate has okayed navy blazers instead of suits for men. Tiger is still in just khaki pants and an undershirt. Magee is in her slip, her hair in the pink spongy rollers she sleeps in when she wants waves. She’s sobbing into Tiger’s pajama top, presumably so no one else in the house will hear her.
“Mags,” he says, sitting next to her on the end of the bed. “What’s wrong?”
She raises her face and her sweet, soft pink bottom lip quivers. “I can’t believe you have to ask that. Your. Grandmother. Is. Dead.”
Tiger is careful how he proceeds. Yes, Exalta is dead. Exalta was sick for months, her internal organs shutting down one after another, like someone shutting the lights off in a house before bed. It wasn’t a violent death or even gruesome and it wasn’t a surprise. Exalta was eighty-four years old. Tiger watched men die nearly every day in Vietnam, some of those “men” only eighteen years old, some still virgins. Exalta had lived a full and privileged life. She had known love not only with Tiger’s grandfather, Pennington Nichols, but also with Mr. Crimmins. She had one child, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren—with more, presumably, on the way.
This, Tiger knows, is the real reason Magee is crying. She and Tiger will have been married for nine years next month and although they’ve been trying since day one, they haven’t been able to conceive a child.
At first, they were too busy to notice. When Tiger got home from his tour, he was eligible to inherit his trust from Exalta. The first thing he did was to buy a house in Holliston, thirty miles southwest of Boston. The house had been built in the 1840s. It was three stories and had plenty of charm—five bedrooms and a finished playroom in the attic. (In retrospect, Tiger wonders if buying such a big house wasn’t what jinxed them.)
The second thing Tiger did was to open a bowling alley on the Holliston-Sherborn line called Tiger Lanes. Tiger had spent countless hours in-country dreaming about the perfect bowling alley. He would have twelve state-of-the-art lanes on one side of the building and a pinball arcade on the other, with a soda fountain and snack bar in the middle. There would be music and party lights. It would be a hangout for teenagers and adults alike, a place to bridge the widening generation gap. He would start a Tiger Lanes bowling league for veterans.
Tiger is aware that he was lucky to come home not only in one piece physically, but one piece mentally. Lots of veterans found themselves at loose ends. They were traumatized, they’d become drug addicts, they’d become adrenaline addicts, in search of the high that was part of being on the front lines. When every day was a struggle to stay alive, coming home to conveniences like ten kinds of bread at the supermarket and Johnny Carson every night at eleven felt like trying to sleep in a bed that was too soft. Where was the action, the danger, the purpose? Some soldiers came home from thirteen hellish months of defending the ideals of American democracy only to be spit upon, harassed, and called “baby killers.”
None of this happened to Tiger, but that didn’t mean he was unaffected by the war. He’d watched his best friends, Puppy and Frog, get blown to bits. They didn’t have a chance to make something of their lives, but Tiger did and he’d be damned if he was going to waste it. He would be enough of a success and make enough positive change in the world for all of them—Puppy, Frog, and every other American serviceman and woman who died in Vietnam.
Tiger bought a defunct shoe factory and transformed it into the first Tiger Lanes. It was such a surprising success that Tiger opened a second location in Franklin the following year—followed by one in Needham and one in Mansfield. He then opened the grandest of them all, a flagship with twenty lanes, a disco floor, and a full bar, in Newton. At that point, Tiger sold the five-bedroom in Holliston and bought a brick center-entrance colonial in Wellesley that had four bedrooms and a finished basement rec room with shag carpeting and a wet bar. The house also had a detached two-car garage where Tiger kept his Trans Am and Magee’s hot rod, a Datsun 240Z.