The Summer Without Men

“hanging out” at Jessie’s house, the girls had jointly decided not to look at or answer Alice when she spoke, to behave as if she were both invisible and inaudible. After half an hour of this treatment, our heroine had escaped into the “pelting rain, weeping violently, her hair whipping in the wind” while “lightning flashed crooked in the sky.” When she arrived home, this tragic creature was “soaked to the skin and frozen to her bones with crazily chattering teeth.” Although Alice may not have enjoyed the Coven’s version of Meidung, she had certainly taken pleasure in writing about it. Alice the literary character served a redemptive function for just plain Alice, who was going into the seventh grade. Her narrative ended with the words “Never before have I felt such deep, unbearable despair.”
    I did not smile. I remembered.
    Poor Peyton, whose remorse was already in full bloom, cried and blew her nose.
    Jessie did not look at Alice, but she apologized in a mortified whisper.
    Nikki and Joan wriggled with unease.
    Ashley and Emma remained implacable.
    I sent them off with their assignments. I gave Ashley and Alice to each other, paired Peyton and Joan, Nikki and Emma, and because seven is uneven, I took Jessie for myself, and she was given the task of writing as the mostly ignorant poetry teacher.
    *   *   *
     
    Boris wooed.
     
Mia,
     
   I was just a fat-headed guy full of pain.
     
       Boris
    (Reference: T. R. Devlin, played by Cary Grant, to Alicia Huberman, played by Ingrid Bergman, near the end of Notorious . The hero is, if I remember correctly, carrying his drugged-by-poison beloved down the stairs when he makes this remark. Boris and I had seen the film at least seven times together, and every time B.I. had become tearful over this succinct explanation for Mr. Devlin’s genuinely wretched treatment of the divine Miss Huberman. I was not unmoved by this bit of wooing. No, I won’t hedge: I was moved. It would never do to replace Cary with Boris or me with Ingrid. When I imagine my slightly rotund in the middle, bespectacled neuroscientist puffing and groaning as he bears frizzy-headed fifty-five-year-old versifier down enormous Hollywood staircase, the illusion is lost. But that is not the point. We must all allow ourselves the fantasy of projection from time to time, a chance to clothe ourselves in the imaginary gowns and tails of what has never been and never will be. This gives some polish to our tarnished lives, and sometimes we may choose one dream over another, and in the choosing find some respite from ordinary sadness. After all, we, none of us, can ever untangle the knot of fictions that make up that wobbly thing we call a self.)
    *   *   *
     
    From Bea, after having been informed of the Boris/Mia developments:
     
Just remember, Baby Huey, we all screw up. Love, B.
    *   *   *
     
    From Nobody, finally:
     
Kidney stones.
    Poor Mr. Nobody, my high-flying partner in dialogue, had been brought down by those excruciating pebbles. I wished him a swift recovery.
    *   *   *
     
    I had learned to wait for some time after knocking for Abigail to appear at the door. My visits had been fairly regular. I had gone either alone or with my mother, and we had both worried about our mutual friend since her fall. She seemed to dwindle daily, and yet, the force of her personality remained strong. In fact, what attracted me to Abigail was her rigidity. This is not usually regarded as a desirable feature in human beings, but in her it seemed to have developed as resistance to a particular midwestern ethos of frightened conformity. Abigail had sewn and embroidered and appliquéd in quiet but adamant insurrection. I now knew the story of Private Gardener. She had married him on an impulse just before he headed off for the Pacific, but when he returned after the war, he brought the war back with him. Plagued by nightmares, fits of rage, and bouts of ferocious drinking to the point of unconsciousness, the man who had come home bore little resemblance to the boy she had vowed to “love, honor, and obey,” but then, as she put it, “I didn’t really know him from a hole in the wall to begin with.” One day, to her immense relief, her spouse went AWOL. A year later, she received a letter of contrition from the ex-soldier asking her to join him in Milwaukee. Because the very thought of it turned her “cold as an ice cube,” Abigail refused, asked for a