. . . motherless, and this made Blair suspect that, while she was here looking for someone who would trim the hedges and take the car for an oil change, the gentlemen were looking for a woman who knew how to French braid and who might be willing to cook a hot breakfast every morning.
If Blair were to date or, God forbid, marry one of the men in PWP, she would become . . . a stepmother. This wasn’t something she had considered.
Of course Blair had been raised by a stepfather—David Levin, who had been perfect in nearly every way. But that felt different somehow. Kate had been tragically widowed; David had swooped in to save the day. It hadn’t been two broken families awkwardly trying to fit themselves together.
Blair is too much of a feminist to admit that she’s now looking for a David—a single man without children who will love Blair, George, and Gennie unconditionally—but secretly, she fears she is.
The Red Sox game was Blair’s one and only foray with PWP. Sallie, meanwhile, dated angry Al Sparks for six weeks before declaring him an “absolute psychopath,” when he got drunk at a Memorial Day picnic and lost his temper over a Frisbee that landed on the grill.
BLAIR IS IRRITATED WITH her mother’s comments about the propriety of her taking the children to the Sweet Shoppe, although as she parks the car on Main Street in front of Bosun’s Locker, she does in fact worry that she will bump into someone she knows who will want to express his or her condolences about Exalta—and how will Blair explain that they’re on their way out for sundaes?
“Let’s hurry along,” Blair says. The twins are in the backseat, completely oblivious to their surroundings, despite the rumbling of the Scout over the cobblestones. Gennie is immersed in her book of science experiments and George is doing the crossword puzzle from the Boston Herald.
They are, Blair thinks somewhat mournfully, Angus’s children—obsessed with the world of the mind.
But then she brightens, because at least the twins look like Blair. They’re both blond, pink-cheeked, nicely proportioned, and they have straight white teeth. Gennie is an inch or two taller than George, but that will soon change. Next month, they’ll be ten. How did that happen?
“You know,” Blair says. “I went into labor with the two of you on this very street.”
“We know,” they say in unison.
Of course they know, it’s part of Foley-Levin-Whalen family lore. In the summer of 1969, while Angus was in Houston working on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, Blair went into labor right in the middle of Buttner’s department store. She had taken Jessie in to be fitted for her first bra when her water broke. Blair had waddled up Main Street, leaking amniotic fluid all over the brick sidewalk, while Jessie ran ahead to get Kate, who appeared moments later in the Scout. Because Blair couldn’t possibly endure a trip over the cobblestones, Kate had driven down one-way Fair Street in reverse. The twins had been born the next morning, a scant hour before the moon launch.
Blair climbs out of the car and has to snap her fingers through the open back window to get the twins to move.
“Let’s go,” she says. “Hot fudge.”
“BLAIR?” A VOICE SAYS. “Blair Foley?”
Blair has been inside the Sweet Shoppe for ten seconds, just long enough to shepherd the twins to the end of the line. The Sweet Shoppe never changes. It’s still deliciously cool and smells like vanilla waffle cones.
Blair turns. A man is standing at the cash register holding a double scoop of rocky road in a sugar cone. He accepts a quarter in change, grabs a napkin from the dispenser, and heads right for Blair with a sly smile on his face.
Blair tries to prepare herself. Who is this? The man is her age. He’s wearing a powder blue leisure suit and blue gradient-lensed glasses; his reddish hair is long and feathered. Surely this isn’t someone she knows?
“It’s Larry,” he says. “Larry Winter.”
Larry Winter! Blair dated Larry Winter for three consecutive summers when she was a teenager. In those days, Blair, Kirby, and Tiger lived in the guest cottage of Exalta’s house, called Little Fair. Larry Winter would ride over from Walsh Street on his Schwinn, throw a pebble at Blair’s bedroom window, and the two of them would neck—Larry perched on the top rail of the fence, Blair tucked between his legs. To this day, it was some of