Summer 1969

Summer 1969 is a season of beginnings and separations for Dominick Birdsey. His courtship of Dessa Constantine takes shape in the spacious, affluent Constantine family home, while at work he finds a new companion in Ralph Drinkwater and watches Thomas Birdsey become increasingly isolated. As college approaches, Ray Birdsey’s offer to pay tuition gives the brothers another chance, but Dominick privately decides that this time Thomas must manage without him.

Setting and Social Contrast

Dominick is dating Dessa by the time he first visits her family’s home in Hewett City, a sprawling three-story house sixteen miles north of Three Rivers. Its in-ground pool, tiled patio, formal gardens, marble-floored foyer, velvet furniture, oil portraits, and massive grandfather clock make an immediate impression. The clock, in particular, recalls the lesser one Ma had hoped to buy with saved Green Stamps. Entering the house makes Dominick feel the relative smallness of his own family’s circumstances; the contrast gives the courtship a social setting as well as a private one.

Dessa’s parents are away in Greece, but their authority remains palpable. Her father has installed a security system, asked his brother Costas to check on her, and required her to promise not to entertain men alone—especially Julian, the musician who had manhandled her. Dessa describes her father’s disapproval as something she expects to live under. Her mother presents the restrictions as protection from a dangerous world and argues that Dessa should be in Greece, relaxing and meeting suitable young men, rather than working as a barmaid at Le Club. Against this backdrop, Dominick’s visits feel both intimate and defiant.

The Early Courtship

Before his first visit, Dessa has already told Dominick over the phone about her father’s rules. He pedals his Columbia three-speed up the house’s U-shaped driveway, parks beside her mother’s dormant Chrysler Newport, and goes into the garage. The long bicycle rides become part of their routine: their work schedules leave them together on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, and after a late visit Dominick drinks coffee and cycles home after eleven or midnight.

Their physical intimacy is immediate and intense. Sometimes they swim in the pool after dark; sometimes they return to Dessa’s room. On one occasion, after Dominick waits in her parents’ bedroom during an unexpected visit from Costas, Dessa finds him there when she comes upstairs, and they make love on the floor. The scene places their unplanned intimacy amid her mother’s colognes and lotions, with a mirror reflecting the couple. Dominick recalls the relationship’s beginning as a force that made them feel both powerful and powerless. That mixture of closeness and loss of control marks the connection before later strains enter the story.

Work, Friendship, and Exclusion

At work, graveball breaks the ice between Dominick and Ralph. After roughly a week, Ralph begins sharing marijuana with Dominick and Leo Blood. What starts as a novelty becomes a routine: while Dell Weeks sleeps off a drinking spell, or sometimes while he is awake, the three find reasons to work in the woods and get high on company time. Their shared diversion turns them into a trio.

Thomas refuses Leo’s repeated attempts to get him high. The pressure embarrasses him and sharpens his sense of being judged; rather than join in, he rebukes Leo’s behavior. The social change has practical consequences on the job. When there is mowing or brush to clear, Ralph, Leo, and Dominick make plans together, leaving Thomas to work alone. At lunch he sits apart, often in a huff. Dell sometimes assigns Thomas a separate task, watches him work, and criticizes him; Ralph warns Dominick that Thomas should watch out for Dell. The new camaraderie therefore carries a cost: it gives Dominick companionship while deepening Thomas’s exclusion and leaving him more exposed to Dell’s attention.

Tuition and the Coming Separation

In mid-August, Ray gives Ma a two-thousand-dollar check for the brothers’ tuition bills, due that week. Thomas responds with promises to keep up with assignments, go to bed earlier, take walks when nervous, and study with Dominick in the library. His pledge answers Ray’s decision to finance one last chance, and Ma’s tearful gratitude underscores the importance of the offer to the household.

Dominick makes a different promise silently. He decides that Thomas will succeed or fail without Dominick holding his hand, escorting him to the library, or covering for another outburst against their typewriter. He also resolves not to live with him at college. The decision is not simply a change in housing: it sets a boundary against the caretaking role that has organized Dominick’s life with his twin. Three weeks before the tuition conversation, Dominick and Leo had secretly gone to the university housing office and made a request. The remembered summer thus ends with intimacy and new friendships alongside a deliberate withdrawal: Dominick is preparing to enter college without continuing to act as Thomas’s constant protector.