Exalta isn’t a warm and fuzzy grandmother who bakes cookies and pinches cheeks. For Jessie, every interaction with Exalta is like falling headlong into a pricker bush; it’s not a question of whether she will be stuck, only where and how badly. Jessie has floated the possibility of returning to Boston with Kate, but her mother’s response was “You shouldn’t have to interrupt your summer.”
“It wouldn’t be interrupting,” Jessie insisted. The truth is, coming back early would mean saving her summer. Jessie’s friends Leslie and Doris stay in Brookline and swim at the country club using Leslie’s family’s membership. Last summer, Leslie and Doris grew closer in Jessie’s absence. Their bond made up the sturdiest side of the triangle, leaving Jessie on shaky ground. Leslie is the queen bee among them because she’s blond and pretty and her parents are occasionally dinner guests of Teddy and Joan Kennedy. Leslie sometimes gives Jessie and Doris the impression that she thinks she’s doing them a favor by remaining their friend. She has enough social currency to hang with Pammy Pope and the really popular girls if she wants. With Jessie gone all summer, Leslie might disappear from her life for good.
Jessie’s next older sister, Kirby, is a junior at Simmons College. Kirby’s arguments with their parents are loud and fascinating. Years of eavesdropping on her parents’ conversations have led Jessie to understand the main problem: Kirby is a “free spirit” who “doesn’t know what’s good for her.” Kirby changed her major twice at Simmons, then she tried to create her own major, Gender and Racial Studies, but it was rejected by the dean. And so Kirby decided she would be the first student ever to graduate from Simmons without a major. Again, the dean said no.
“He said graduating without a major would be like attending the commencement ceremony in the nude,” Kirby told Jessie. “And I said he shouldn’t tempt me.”
Jessie can easily imagine her sister striding across the stage to accept her diploma in just her birthday suit. Kirby started participating in political protests while she was still in high school. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Roxbury through the slums and dangerous neighborhoods to Boston Common, where Jessie’s father picked Kirby up and took her home. This past year, Kirby marched in two antiwar protests and got arrested both times.
Arrested!
Jessie’s parents are running out of patience with Kirby—Jessie overheard her mother saying, “We aren’t giving that girl another dime until she learns to color inside the lines!”—but Kirby is no longer their biggest concern.
Their biggest concern is Jessie’s brother, Richard, known to one and all as Tiger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in April. After basic training, Tiger was deployed to the Central Highlands of Vietnam with Charlie Company of the Twelfth Regiment of the Third Brigade of the Fourth Infantry. This situation has rocked the foundation of the family. They’d all believed that only working-class boys went to war, not star receivers from Brookline High School.
Everyone at school treated Jessie differently after Tiger was deployed. Pammy Pope invited Jessie to her family’s annual Memorial Day picnic—Jessie declined out of loyalty to Leslie and Doris, who hadn’t been included—and the guidance counselor Miss Flowers pulled Jessie out of class one Monday in early June to see how she was doing. The class was home economics, and Jessie’s leaving inspired enormous envy in all the other girls, who were battling with their sewing machines in an attempt to finish their navy corduroy vests before the end of the term. Miss Flowers brought Jessie to her office, closed the door, and made Jessie a cup of hot tea using an electric kettle. Jessie didn’t drink hot tea, although she liked coffee—Exalta permitted Jessie one cup of milky coffee at Sunday brunch, despite Kate’s protests that it would stunt Jessie’s growth—but Jessie enjoyed the escape to the cozy confines of Miss Flowers’s office. Miss Flowers had a wooden box filled with exotic teas—chamomile, chicory, jasmine—and Jessie chose a flavor as if her life depended on picking the right one. She decided on hibiscus. The tea was a pale orange color even after the tea bag had steeped for several minutes. Jessie added three cubes of sugar, fearing the tea would have no taste otherwise. And she was right; it tasted like orange sugar water.
“So,” Miss Flowers said. “I understand your brother is overseas. Have you heard from him yet?”
“Two letters,” Jessie said. One of the letters had been