And I will tell you in all confidence, old friend, for that is what you are by now, Stalwart Reader, tested and true and so dear to me. I will tell you that the old man had been making inroads, as they say, and tromping closer and closer to whatever it was in there, in me, and the explanation was time, quite simply, time, all the time spent, and the daughter, who was born and loved and grew up into the kooky, kind, and gifted darling that she is, and all the talking and the fighting and the sex, too, between me and the big B., the memories of Sidney and my own Celia, who didn’t need to be discovered by Columbus, I can vouch for that. And in my secret heart of hearts, I admit there was some old mush that hadn’t been scooped out of me by hardship and insanity. But there was also the story itself, the story Boris and I had written together, and in that story, our bodies and thoughts and memories had gotten thelves so tangled up that it was hard to see where one person’s ended and the other’s began.
But back to the nineteenth of August 2009, late afternoon, around five o’clock. Flora was visiting with Moki, and Daisy was entertaining the two of them with a song-and-dance number. Flora was clapping wildly and encouraging Moki to do so as well. The weather was not good, a swamp of a day if ever there was one, ninety-five and bleary, mosquitoes on the loose after the rains. I was having some difficulty concentrating on my book, what with all the commotion, but I had finally come to Kierkegaard’s broken engagement. He loved her. She loved him, and he BREAKS it off, only to suffer grotesque and exquisite mental tortures. What a sad and perverse adventure that was. When I noticed that Daisy had stopped singing, I looked up. She had turned toward the window.
“A car’s coming up the driveway.” She leaned toward the glass. “I can’t see who it is. You’re not expecting anybody, are you? Good Lord, he’s getting out of the car. He’s walking toward the steps. He’s up the steps. He’s ringing the bell.” I heard the bell. “It’s Dad, Mom. It’s Dad! Well, well, aren’t you going to answer it? What’s the matter with you?”
Flora grabbed Daisy around the thighs and began to bounce up and down in anticipation. “Well?” she crowed. “Well?”
“You get it,” I said. “Let him come to me.”
FADE TO BLACK
ALSO BY SIRI HUSTVEDT
NOVELS
The Blindfold
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl
What I Loved
The Sorrows of an American
NONFICTION
Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting
A Plea for Eros
The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves
POETRY
Reading to You
THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN
. Copyright © 2011 by Siri Hustvedt. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Line drawings by Siri Hustvedt
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hustvedt, Siri.
The summer without men : a novel / Siri Hustvedt. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-57060-6
1. Women poets—Fiction. 2. Divorced women—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.U813S86 2011
813'.54—dc22
2010042380
First Edition: May 2011
eISBN 978-1-4299-9625-9
First Picador eBook Edition: April 2011