The Summer Without Men

cover, her beautiful long white hair disheveled and hanging around her face. When my mother walked through the door, Regina cried out, “Laura!” and stretched her arms out for her friend. The two hugged each other and then, still in the embrace, rocked back and forth for a minute or so. When they separated, Regina looked at me as if she were searching, and I realized that the fallen Swan had forgotten my name, possibly my entire being, but my mother rescued her comrade by identifying me as soon as she understood that I was missing from Regina’s mental storehouse.
    The two women talked, but Regina talked more. She chattered about her ordeal—the tests, the kind doctor and the nasty one, the endless questions about presidents and the time of year and could she feel this pinprick and on and on. She broke down and blubbered but recovered quickly and within seconds began to wax nostalgic. Hadn’t it been wonderful on the other side, in Independent? She had her apartment there with all her “lovely things,” and they had been only a short walk away from each other, and oh my dear, the spider plant, had anyone watered it? And now look at her, in exile with “the crazies” and the people who “drooled and peed and dirtied their pants.” If only she could get back to the other side. I saw my mother open her mouth and then close it. If Regina wanted to remember the “home” she had detested as a paradise, who was she to destroy the illusion? As we were leaving, the old woman lifted her head, tossed back her messy locks, and beamed. She blew kisses to us and sang out in a high brittle voice, “Come back, Laura. Won’t you? I’ve missed you terribly. You will remember to come back.”
    Just before I closed the door, I took a last glance at Regina. She looked deflated, as if the theatrical good-bye had taken all the air out of her.
    Outside in the hallway, my mother stopped. She pressed both hands to her chest, closed her eyes, and said under her breath, “It’s so bitter.”
    “What, Mama?”
    “Old age.”
    *   *   *
     
    The Lola, Pete, Flora, and Simon soap opera had been one of repetition without much difference, as Lola herself had acknowledged, but now circumstances conspired to make some difference, and the difference was money. As much as I liked my Chrysler Buildings and had indulged Lola by listening to her business plans, I hadn’t been optimistic. The poor young woman had had little time to devote to her jewelry and, all in all, the prospects for success had seemed poor. And then, out of the blue, just as it happens in novels, especially eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, Lola’s godmother, a single, frugal lady who had worked as a bursar at St. Joseph’s College for fifty years, died, and this elderly deus ex machina left her goddaughter a complete set of Wedgwood china and a hundred thousand dollars. (Let us be fair: This happens all the time in twentieth- and twenty-first-century LIFE; it just happens less often in twentieth- and twenty-first-century NOVELS.)
    And so, at least for a while, Lola was flush, and more important, the money was hers, not Pete’s. In the same week, a small store in Minneapolis agreed to sell Lola’s creations. They were partial to the architectural earrings, especially the Leaning Towers of Pisa. Joy was abroad at the neighbors’. We celebrated Friday night after a hard week with the witches. (I will report on that later. Chronology is sometimes overrated as a narrative device.) My mother, Peg, Lola, and the two poppets were in attendance. I invited Abigail, but she was too weak, she said, to make the journey, even though we offered to drive her the few yards to the Burdas’.
    Lola wore pink. My mother wore Simon most of the evening, and the two had a high time. The little man was singing. When my mother sang to him, he sang back, admittedly in tones that were unconventional, possibly even bizarre, but he sang nevertheless, and his flutelike emissions were the source of much hilarity. Flora ran wild and wigless and whispered to Moki and stuffed cake into her mouth. I was careful to fawn and crow over her so she would not feel that her infant brother won every cuteness battle. Peg shone brightly. At a family gathering, she was in her element, and her presence added sugar to what was already a sweet occasion.
    I asked Lola if Pete was traveling, but no, her husband had stayed home. He had felt uncomfortable, she said, as the only man, and he had