The Summer Without Men

novel, the above paragraph gives you an idea of what I said, so we won’t bother to rehearse it here.
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    The DISCUSSANTS: The three remaining Swans, my mother, armed with well-marked copy of book in question; Abigail, looking more doubled over than ever and exceedingly frail, dressed in elaborately embroidered blouse depicting dragons; and the mild, good-natured Peg, with her bright side showing, as well as three ladies new to me: Betty Petersen, with a sharp chin and sharper gaze, had made extra money for the family as the author of humorous texts for a greeting card company; Rosemary Snesrud, former -grade English teacher, and Dorothy Glad, widow of Pastor Glad, who had once presided at the small Moravian Church on Apple Street.
    The SETTING: two sofas upholstered in an alarming green-and-violet print of aggressive foliage facing each other, two stuffed chairs, far less excited in appearance, also parked across from each other, all of which circled long oval coffee table with one unstable leg, which caused it to lurch every now and again when especially perturbed. Three windows on far wall with view of courtyard and gazebo. Bookshelves with volumes, most of which were lying wearily on their sides or leaning with a desultory air against a divider, but too few of these to qualify for the noun library. General hush in building interrupted only by squeaking walkers in nearby hallway and the occasional cough.
    The CONTROVERSY: Should the young Anne Elliot have been persuaded by her vain, silly, profligate father, her vain and cold sister, Elizabeth, and her well-meaning, kind, but very possibly misguided older friend, Lady Russell, to break with Captain Wentworth, with whom she was madly in love because he had only prospects, no fortune? As you may have noticed, in general members of book clubs regard the characters inside books exactly the way they regard the characters outside books. The facts that the former are made of the alphabet and the latter of muscle, tissue, and bone are of little relevance. You may think I would disapprove of this, I, who had endured the ongoing trials of literary theory, who had taken the linguistic turn, witnessed the death of the author and somehow survived fin de l’homme, who had lived the life hermeneutical, peered into aporias, puzzled over différance, and worried about sein as opposed to Sein, not to speak of that convoluted Frenchman’s little a versus his big one, and a host of additional intellectual knots and wrinkles I have had to untie and smooth out in the course of my life, but you would be wrong. A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other. Back to the controversy at hand:
    Peg looks on the bright side. Because Anne gets Wentworth in the end, all is well.
    Abigail strongly disagrees: “Wasted years! Who has time to waste years?” Adamant statement followed by table limping to one side. Glass slides. Grabbed by Rosemary Snesrud. Does not fall.
    Uncomfortable silence pertaining to waste, my own silence among the other silences, a wondering silence about wasted years, about the not done, the not written.
    Dorothy Glad injects extraliterary not-at-all-glad possibility: “He might have drowned at sea! Then she would never have found love.”
    I suggest sticking to the text itself, as it was written without that particular shipwreck.
    My mother holds up imaginary scale and weighs familial duty against passion. Imagine the pain of alienating one’s family. That has to be considered, too. There was no easy solution for Anne. For the motherless Anne, breaking with Lady Russell was tantamount to breaking with her mother.
    Rosemary S. defends my mother. According to the Snesrud philosophy, life’s decisions are “sticky.”
    Betty Petersen brings in unsavory Elliot cousin destined to inherit family baronetcy: “She might have hitched herself to that snake in the grass, if her friend, what’s-her-name, hadn’t given her the dope on him. Lady Russell was completely snowed.”
    Abigail, irritation mounting, insists that stepping on one’s desires is deforming. She makes strong pronouncement accompanied by feeble bang on the table’s surface: “It mutilates the soul!” Table nods in agreement, but Peg clicks her tongue. Talk of mutilation threatens brightness of all kinds.
    My mother gazes soberly at her friend Abigail, understanding that it is not Anne’s