To brand each plague, ordain its cure;
I wanted to make literature.
When I was in my middle age
I tried to dazzle, page by page,
To celebrate each setting day.
I had a thing or two to say.
I’m old now and I’ve nearly found
The limits of my world around:
To make a little public time,
To make my poem, word by line.
Maybe she’d call it Three Women for Robert Frost.
A week after the explosion, early evening, the sun going down, Sarah and Carney were sitting on the cabin’s porch. They listened to water from the spring gurgling in, watched bats swoop for mosquitoes, and, in the way they’d gotten used to, kept their silence. He felt her eyes then, watching and memorizing. What more to know? he wondered. He glanced over to her.
Her face didn’t change. “Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” he said. “How are you?”
She said, “Pregnant. How about you?”
•
And Lola? Why, she’s come home. Getting back meant reaching for the edge, leaping up and free. And yes, the Gods can’t remember ever missing her. No one missed me. And nothing’s changed between us.
“Sure it has.” Lola smiles, but charming sin shines in her eyes. “I’ve seen their joy and fear, I’ve felt their juices flow.” Her right eyebrow rises, a new talent. “Yours too.”
“From now on, be discreet.”
“Here and below, there’s lots of tricks to try.”
“Lola. When you meddle with mortals—”
“Me? Theresa planned it all. Anyway, leave guilt to the living. We’re too far away from that world.” She thinks for a moment. “And too dead.” She shakes her head. “Proud of your boy?”
I am indeed. Except, and here’s my one regret, I’ll never get to hold my grandkid, not in the world’s way. Though I did go down there once. We’ll see.
Sarah wants to call the kid Teddy. For Theodore, or Theodora.
Think of this: my son, Carney, in his fifties, me thirty-six forever, and soon a tiny baby. With Milton and me as co-grandfathers.
Lola says, “Let’s go play.”
Sometimes I shrug and say, “Why not?”
She grins. Sometimes I say I need to keep an eye on the down below, find more stories to tell her. Sometimes she grabs the hem of my robe, that lustrous magenta, and trips me off my feet.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Great thanks to those who have read one or another of the several drafts of the Lola manuscript and commented on it—you have greatly helped focus and clarify my intentions: Rhonda Bailey, Robert Barsky, Sandy Frances Duncan, Marie-Christine Leps, Alison Szanto, David Szanto. Thanks as well to my erstwhile publisher at Brindle & Glass, Ruth Linka, for her appreciation of Whatever Lola Wants. And Leah Fowler, my editor, with whom I had not worked before, was brilliant in helping me cut and pare. Thank you, Leah.
A National Magazine Award recipient and winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction, George Szanto is the author of several books of essays and half a dozen novels. His most recent novel prior to Whatever Lola Wants is The Tartarus House on Crab. A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Szanto is the co-author (with Sandy Frances Duncan) of the Island Investigations International mystery series, which includes Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island, Always Kiss the Corpse on Whidbey Island, Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Island, and Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island. In 2013 he published a chronicle/memoir, Bog Tender: Coming Home to Nature and Memory. Please visit his website at georgeszanto.com.
Copyright © 2014 George Szanto
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit accesscopyright.ca.
Brindle & Glass Publishing Ltd.
brindleandglass.com
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Szanto, George, 1940–, author
Whatever Lola wants / George Szanto.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-927366-36-3 (html).--ISBN 978-1-927366-37-0 (pdf)
I. Title.
PS8587.Z3W43 2014 C813'.54 C2014-902772-9
Editor: Leah Fowler
Proofreader: Heather Sangster, Strong Finish
Cover image: RetroAtelier, istockphoto.com
Author photo: Bob Meyer
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for our publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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