The Summer Without Men

and tucking up his bottom in a Pamper, and then I found a rocking chair, into which we settled, and I rocked and lullabyed the small scion of the family into the arms or, rather, the lap of Morpheus. Meanwhile, Lola waged a parallel campaign with the chattering, not-yet-four fruitcake, Flora, who dillydallied and shammed and bargained her way toward what Sir Thomas Browne once called the “Brother of Death.” Valiantly, how valiantly she fought the loss of consciousness with every possible ruse: bedtime stories and glasses of water and just one more song until she, too, exhausted from the rigors of battle, collapsed, knuckle of curled index finger inside her mouth, free arm flung out across bedspread featuring large purple dinosaur, while Giraffey and his companion, a peroxide beast stolen from the head of slumbering warrior, kept vigil from the bedside table.
    Lola and I ate the quiche and slowly got potted over the course of several hours. She lay on the sofa, birdcages catching the light, her tanned, round legs stretched out in front of her. From time to time she wiggled her bare feet, with their slightly dirtied soles, as if she were reminding herself that they were still attached to her ankles. By eleven o’clock I had discovered that Pete was a problem, “even though I love him.” Lola had been informed of my marital fiasco and a tear or two had dripped down both of our noses. We had laughed about our Problems as well, chortled loudly over their mutual propensity for odiferous socks that stiffened with some unknown manly secretion, especially in winter. The girl had a good laugh, a deep and surprising one, which seemed to come from somewhere below her lungs, and a direct way of speaking that charmed me. No indirect discourse or Kierkegaardian ironies for this daughter of Minnesota. “I wish I knew what you know,” she said at one point. “I should have studied harder. Now with the kids, I don’t have time.” I muttered some platitude in response to this, but the fact was, the content of our conversation that night was of little importance. What mattered was that an alliance had been established between us, a felt camaraderie that we both hoped would continue. The unspoken directed the evening. When we parted we hugged and, in a fit of affection augmented by alcohol, I cupped her round face in my hands and thanked her heartily for everything.
    The transience of human feeling is nothing short of ludicrous. My mercurial fluctuations in the course of a single evening made me feel as if I had a character made of chewing gum. I had fallen into the ugly depths of self-pity, a terrain just above the even more hideous lowlands of despair. Then, easily distracted twit that I am, I had, soon after, found myself on maternal heights, where I had practically swooned with pleasure as I bobbed and fondled the borrowed homunculus next door. I had eaten well, drunk too much wine, and embraced a young woman I hardly knew. In short, I had thoroughly enjoyed myself and had every intention of doing so again.

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    It may come as no surprise to you that brains are not all that different from those of our mammalian cousins the rats. My own rat man has spent his life championing a subcortical primal affective self across species, heralding our shared brain areas and neurochemistries. Only in later years has he begun to relate this core spot to the puzzle of higher levels of reflection, mirroring, and self-consciousness—in monkeys, dolphins, elephants, human beings, and pigeons, too (most recently)—publishing papers on the various systems of this mysterious thing we call selfness, enriching his understanding with phenomenology, with quotes from the luminous Merleau-Ponty and the murkier Edmund Husserl, courtesy of HIS WIFE, who walked him through the philosophy step by step, retreating to Hegel, Kant, and Hume when needed (although the old man has less use for them, his interest is in embodiment, yes, Leib, schéma corporel ), and read over each word carefully, painstakingly correcting errors and smoothing prose. No, you moan, not she, not she of the small stature, red curls, and comely bosom! Not the lady poet! Yes, it is so, I tell you in all gravity. The great Boris Izcovich has repeatedly gone marauding for ideas in the brain of his own wife, has even acknowledged her contributions. So? So? you say. Isn’t that all right then? It is NOT all right because THEY do not believe him. He is the Philosopher