The Summer Without Men

wrote, “I’ve been Nikki’s best friend since first grade and I basically do what she does. When I saw she wasn’t afraid to cut herself, I decided to do it, too, even though I felt pretty yucky about it.”
    Joan as Peyton: “I want to be a cool girl, but I’m immature. I like sports better, and I went along with doing bad things to Alice on account of I wanted to be cool.”
    Nikki as Emma: “I suck up to Ashley because I think she can make me feel better about myself and it’s fun to be around her because she doesn’t really care about getting into trouble. When she decided to make me swallow that part of the dead mouse’s tail, I did it, even though it was disgusting. I’m like her slave. She dares people and I like falling for the dares. My little sister has muscular dystrophy and it worries me a lot so being with my friends and doing stupi things helps me not think about it.”
    Emma as Nikki wrote, “I like showing off and acting wild, dressing up in black clothes, putting on crazy makeup that makes my mom upset. Being mean to Alice was a way to show off.”
    Ashley wrote, “I’m Alice, Miss Perfect. I like Chicago because it’s a big city with lots of stores and museums and my mom escorted me to those artsy, fartsy places and now we can’t go anymore. I used to be Ashley’s friend, but I think I’m too sophisticated for her. I’m an only child and my parents spoil me, buying me expensive clothes and sending me to ballet in St. Paul. I use words the other kids don’t know just to make them feel stupid. I’m so moral I don’t know how to have any fun, and I look all hurt and weepy whenever somebody says the tiniest little thing. If I hadn’t been such a wimp, the girls wouldn’t have been able to do anything to me.”
    Alice wrote: “I hate Alice because she was Charlene in the play. It made me putrid with jealousy. She didn’t comprehend my deceit, and that made it smooth for me, as smooth as jelly from the jar. I could feign to like her, but injure her violently behind her back. My brothers and sisters are always kicking and hitting each other, slamming doors, and my house is a huge mess, and I have to take meds for a mood disorder, and my mom is always yelling at me for not taking them…”
    Recriminations, disavowals, and gasps punctuated the entire hour, but the fact that Ashley had assigned her own disorder, whatever it was, to Alice was by far the most disquieting revelation. Neither Alice nor Ashley had been able to penetrate each other’s psyches or find any mutual sympathy, but when Alice, unknowingly or knowingly, let go of Ashley’s secret, all the girls were quiet until Peyton yelled, “But Ashley, you said Alice had a mood disorder, not you.” The trick of trading first-person subjects had doubled back on itself. Ashley, it seemed, had already been playing the game.
    *   *   *
     
1. I will check the refrigerator for juice and milk and remember to buy them if we are low.
2. I will promise to read Middlemarch all the way through. (That goes for The Golden Bowl, too.)
3. I will not interrupt you when you are writing.
4. I will talk to you more.
5. I will learn to cook something besides eggs.
6. I will love you.
     
Boris
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    I read the list several times. To be frank, I did not believe the first five. That would require a revolution of the sort I had ceased to believe in. My world turned on number six, because, you see, Boris had loved me. He had loved me for a long time and the question was not so much whether he meant it—I believed he meant it—but whether there was self-delusion at work. Could he really leave his explosive Interlude behind him or would her phantom be in residence with us for the rest of our days? But worse, if Boris had lurched out the door once, what would prevent him from doing it again? When I replied, that was exactly what I asked him.
    *   *   *
     
    Regina returned to Rolling Meadows, but not to the independent-living quarters. She was placed in a special unit on the other side of the grounds for Alzheimer’s patients, even though she hadn’t been diagnosed with the disease. After “the incident,” the powers that be (mostly benevolent, but by no means infinitely tolerant) had made the decision that she could not be trusted. She had to be watched. My mother and I found her sitting in a small bare room—nearly identical to my own hospital room at Payne Whitney but with no view of the East River—on a grim cot with a blue