Free The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt

because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don’t, because it makes their lives harder. Regina is an exception. I suspect she needs the attention. She flirts with everyone.”
    My mother, her chin lowered as I gently pressed my fingers into her neck, continued the theme of relations between the sexes with a story: Returning from her book club the night before, she had run into Oscar Busley, one of a dwindling number of Rolling’s male residents. Although his peripatetic days were behind him, Oscar had retained kinesis and increased his personal velocity by means of an Electric Mobility Scooter. Busley had whirred beside my mother down the corridor, chatting amiably, as they headed in the direction of her apartment. When they reached her door, she stopped to take her keys from her bag. The man must have unclenched his fists from the Mobility’s handlebars and lunged precipitously, because my mother was amazed to discover that Oscar had attached himself to her midsection. He had tric Mobild his arms firmly around her as he nestled his pate just beneath her breasts. With equal suddenness and probably greater force (she lifted weights twice a week), my mother had disengaged herself from the unwelcome embrace, rushed into her apartment, and slammed the door.
    There followed a brief discussion between us about the disinhibition that sometimes occurs in cases of dementia. My mother, however, insisted that the man was “quite all right in his mind”; it was the rest of him that needed restraining. She then countered the Oscar Busley tale with the Robert Springer story. She had attended a dinner in St. Paul and met one of my father’s old law acquaintances, Springer, “a tall handsome man” with “a nice head of hair,” who was there with Mrs. Springer. This entirely nonviolent encounter consisted of a handshake accompanied by a meaningful gaze. By then, back rub over, my mother had moved into a chair and was facing me. She made an opening gesture with both hands, palms up. “He held it too long, you understand, just a little longer than was appropriate.”
    “And?” I said.
    “And I nearly swooned. The pressure of his hand went right through me. I was weak in the knees. Mia, it was lovely.”
    Yes, I thought, the electric air.
     
… lift your fingers white
And strip me naked, touch me light,
Light, light all over.
    Lawrence in my head. Touch me light.
    My mother’s wrinkled, slender face looked thoughtful. Our minds moved along parallel paths. She said, “I make a point of touching my friends, you know, a pat, a hug. It’s a problem. In a place like this, many people aren’t touched enough.”
    *   *   *
     
    The girls were out of sorts. It may have been the heat. We were cool inside, but outside the day was muggy—swamp weather. Alice looked especially wilted, and her large brown eyes had a rheumy glaze to them. When I asked her if she was unwell, she said her allergies were bothering her. They chattered about Facebook, and boys’ names were mentioned: Andrew, Sean, Brandon, Dylan, Zack. I heard the phrase “later at the pool” several times, “bikinis,” and lots of whispering and hushing. But beyond the titillating expectation of meeting members of the other sex, there was an additional tension among them, not without excitement, but that turbulence, whatever it was, had a smothered, invidious quality I could feel as surely as the humidity beyond the room. Nikki, especially, seemed discomposed. She was unable to stop herself from simpering at every possible interval. Jessie’s pale blue eyes were heavy with significance, and once she mouthed a word to Emma, but I couldn’t rher lips. Peyton repeatedly laid her head down on the table as if she were suffering from a sudden onset of narcolepsy. Although her expression was illegible, Ashley’s always erect posture had an extra rigidity, and she applied lip gloss to her already shining mouth three times in a single hour. Emma, too, appeared