1977 Summer

The summer of 1977 is a threshold in Tully Hart’s coming of age: the dream of becoming a television reporter, first awakened by the Mularkeys’ example, begins to take practical form even as Tully’s family life becomes more precarious. Her entry into newspaper work gives her a first foothold in journalism; the death of her grandmother, Gran, soon tests the independence that work represents.

A dream takes shape

By the summer of 1977, Tully and Kate Mularkey are approaching their senior years at separate schools. Their friendship has been sustained for three years by faithful letters, a Sunday-night ritual in which Tully writes from her desk in her lavender-and-pink childhood bedroom. The letters range from hairstyles and school dances to sleeplessness and the hope that her absent mother might return and express pride in her. After Tully’s grandfather dies, Kate is the person she turns to; in their correspondence, Tully can be more nearly herself than she is elsewhere.

The ambition that gives those letters a forward direction began in the Mularkey household. Watching the news with Kate’s parents, Tully hears Mrs. Mularkey praise Jean Enersen as one of the first women to anchor a nightly news program. Tully announces that she will become a reporter. Years later, “The next Jean Enersen” has become a private mantra: a way to make an immense ambition feel attainable. The goal gives Tully a future to reach for, and she imagines sharing it with Kate as a reporting team.

The first step into journalism

The summer’s defining professional milestone is Tully’s arrival at the local ABC affiliate to pursue an opportunity she has worked toward for months. The station is less imposing than she imagined: its modest Denny Regrade building has an L-shaped desk, a receptionist, and three mustard-yellow plastic chairs rather than a grand lobby. Still, Tully approaches the interview with the gravity of someone standing before a formidable gateway, steadying herself before going inside.

The opportunity does not immediately become a reporting job. The following week, Tully gets work at the Queen Anne Bee, her neighborhood weekly newspaper. The pay is meager, and her duties are modest, but she is pleased to be inside the business. She spends much of the summer in the cramped office, learning by watching reporters, making copies, and delivering coffee. The work is an apprenticeship in attention: she treats even small tasks as a chance to absorb how a newsroom operates.

Her private routine helps preserve the connection between that work and the larger dream. Each Sunday, she sends Kate a detailed account of the week, signing an eight-page letter “Best Friends Forever, Tully V.” Kate is away on the Mularkeys’ annual camping trip, which she calls “Hell Week with Bugs.” Tully envies the family vacation and had found declining its invitation difficult, but the newspaper job and Gran’s declining health leave her feeling unable to go.

Work and loss

The summer’s promise is inseparable from a growing burden at home. Tully remains with Gran, whose declining health helps determine her choices, including giving up the camping trip. The same commitment that keeps Tully from joining Kate’s family also leaves her carrying responsibilities that make her feel older and more self-reliant than her age suggests.

One morning, as Tully prepares to leave for work, she finds Gran in bed, unresponsive. The scene abruptly overturns the ordinary pattern of the summer: the workday she was about to begin becomes the moment she discovers that her grandmother has died. Tully’s professional future is opening just as the home that has anchored her life is disappearing.

After Gran’s funeral, Tully’s mother, Cloud, is present briefly, then vanishes before Tully can voice the question she is holding back. A social-services worker tells Tully to pack her belongings. Tully argues that she is nearly eighteen, knows the house has no mortgage, and has paid its bills during the year; to her, these facts make living alone seem possible. The exchange exposes the gap between the independence she has exercised and the authority others have over where she can live.

Significance

The summer’s structure is one of simultaneous beginnings and endings. At the Queen Anne Bee, Tully enters the professional world in its most ordinary form, learning through errands and observation rather than immediate recognition. At home, Gran’s death and the social-services intervention threaten the stability that has made that work possible. The two developments sharpen the meaning of Tully’s ambition: journalism is not simply a career goal but a future she can organize herself around when family security fails.

The season also connects individual aspiration to the example of women in broadcasting. Mrs. Mularkey’s recognition of Jean Enersen gives Tully a model of female professional achievement, and Tully turns that model into a personal code. Yet the summer does not resolve the distance between dreaming of a career and attaining one. It records the first concrete foothold, the discipline behind it, and the losses that make the foothold feel necessary.