The Summer Without Men

father is the only male personage in attendance) convene around the time Bea, my mother, and I are having a glass of Sancerre as we prepare our farewell dinner for Bea in my rented kitchen—a succulent roast chicken with garlic, lemon, and olive oil, a new-potato salad, and beans from Lola’s garden. The secondhand reports cannot be reassembled perfectly, but the drama unfolds, if not as follows, then in a way very much like it and, as we all know, even eyewitness accounts are hardly reliable, so you will just have to swallow this report as I have decided to render it.
    Six tense mothers straggle into the Wrights’ living room with sullen, irritable daughters in tow. (Whether or not anyone glances at the large poster of Goya’s priest defeating a robber in six frames from the Chicago Art Institute that hangs over the sofa, I cannot say, but it is a great work even in reproduction.) Ellen Wright, who once trained in social work, now employed as an administrator at the Bonden Health Clinic, opens the forum with a short speech, during which she uses the current verb of choice to describe the events in question: bullying. She notes its prevalence, its potential damage to long-term mental health, notes that girls are sneakier and more underhanded than boys (my adjectives) and that these activities do not go away by themselves; it takes a village . I am not responsible for the dead phrases that litter the discourse of pop sociology. Mrs. Wright then articulates a heartfelt desire to listen, to open the floor to all players.
    Silence ensues. Several pairs of eyes glare at Alice, who sits between parental buffers.
    Mrs.-Lorquat-of-the-frowning-Deity, mother of Jessie, wonders aloud how, when so much of what went on was anonymous, can it be known that her Jessie was even involved.
    Mrs. Hartley, mother of Emma, pokes her child to prompt words. Several pokes later, Emma, red-faced, confesses to messages cooked up by an ensemble cast. And she names names: Jessie, Ashley, Joan, Nikki, and herself. But they hadn’t really meant it; it was just stupid stuff kids do.
    Nikki and Joan alternately make short exclamatory remarks to the effect that they, too, had not intended to do any real harm. It was just that Alice was always talking about Chicago and she was always reading books and acting better than they were and so they thought she was kinda stuck-up and everything and so …
    Mrs. Larsen, mother of Ashley, weary-faced, meek-voiced, inquires innocently of stone-faced daughter: But I thought you and Alice were such good friends.
    We are!
    Peyton, squirming under an avalanche of guilt, shouts the word liar and unloads revelations that will come as no surprise to either you or me, while Mrs. Berg tries to dampen her daughter’s zeal by saying quietly, Don’t shout, Peyton, but Peyton shouts anyway that Ashley took the photographs and posted them, that she suggested the Zack deception, and that she, Peyton, went along with it and she feels bad, really bad. But Peyton isn’t finished. There is more. Peyton says she was scared to tell, freaked, because she, Ashley, started a club called the Coven. Before joining the group, each girl agreed to cut herself with a knife and bleed enough to sign her name in blood to a document, in which she swore her allegiance to the other members and promised that their dark alliance would remain a secret forever. Peyton produces small scar on thigh of very long left leg as evidence.
    This gothic twist on the proceedings, with its air of satanic ritual, creates a stir among the adults. Poor Mr. Wright, a chemistry professor, accustomed to shepherding premed students through the peaks and valleys of predicting formulas with polyatomic ions, is uncomfortable in the extreme and begins an intense examination of his fingernails. Mrs. Lorquat issues a gasp, as bloody documents are even more offensive to God than D. H. Lawrence. The mothers of Nikki and Joan, friends for life, seated side by side, drop their jaws in unison. Aghast questioning of Coven members ensues.
    Ashley commences crying.
    Alice watches.
    Ellen watches Alice.
    What Alice thinks at this juncture we do not know, but it is more than likely that she feels some satisfaction that the pubescent witches of Bonden have been exposed. At the same time, Alice isn’t going anywhere. She is staying in town with the little she-devils, her friends.
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    Commentary: The instruments of darkness tell us truths. What are they? Boys