LEXI BLUM

Lexi hunched over her laptop in the darkened living room, frustrated that the annual hospital reports did not yield the information she wanted. At Evelyn’s urging, she had added rape to the list of search words, along with pregnancy, childbirth, infant, abortion, and adoption.

“Listen to this.” Lexi looked up from her laptop, but only Evelyn was awake. “This first mention of reproductive issues at all is in 1940. They report that one woman died that year from ‘Diseases of Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Puerperal State.’”

“What happened to her?” Evelyn asked.

“That’s all. No explanation. The year before, the pathologist reported that seven pregnancy tests were performed, with no information about the results or why the tests were ordered. This is nuts. They report the weights in precise pounds of each crop grown in the hospital gardens, but nothing about female patients being pregnant or giving birth? How can they think that 4,008 pounds of cauliflower and 85,324 pounds of potatoes are more important than the health and wellness of the women in their care?”

“Hmmmm,” murmured Evelyn.

Lexi closed the laptop, careful not to jostle her mother, and considered the women dozing in Jess and Gandalf’s living room. Iris sat to Lexi’s right, mother’s head resting on daughter’s shoulder. Probably physically closer than they’d been in years. Gloria sat on Iris’s other side, with the yellow cat sprawled half on Iris’s lap, half on Gloria’s. First known to them as the homeless woman who parked nearby but now possibly, and also impossibly, the daughter of her mother’s long-lost best friend.

Gloria was probably not Harriet’s daughter, Lexi knew that. It was too much of a coincidence. Her mother knew it too, but if she wanted to welcome Gloria into their family, Lexi would do her best to go along. She pushed away a small tinge of jealousy and wondered instead about how her father would accept Harriet’s quasi-daughter in their lives. A daily reminder of his fallibility and shame might even up the balance of power in Number Two Azalea Court. The thought made her smile.

To Lexi’s left, Evelyn dozed on the recliner. Gandalf and her wife Jess had fallen asleep on the sofa but left to go to their bedroom an hour earlier. Gandalf—the stiff and aloof woman who never spoke to any of them before the events of this weekend—had looked calm and almost relaxed. Maybe even happy. Even Evelyn looked peaceful, for the moment not telling everyone what they should be doing.

Detective McPhee had left an hour earlier, a little less angry about being suspended from the police department. She had looked like she belonged in the circle. Before she left, before Gandalf and Jess went to bed, the women started planning how they would take over the memorial service in just a few hours, and how that would begin to repair their Azalea Court world.

As she started falling asleep, Lexi realized that the women of Azalea Court probably would never go back to the way it was, each alone around this small circle of homes. They were now connected, woman to woman, bringing the men along even if they were reluctant. Even she, who didn’t live on the Court anymore. Even Gloria, who didn’t live anywhere. Woman to woman and bungalow to bungalow. She imagined their arms stretched long out of their kitchen windows with their hands grasped across driveways around the Circle. Their circle included the hands of the lost and mostly forgotten women who once lived in this place. Ghosts or not. This weekend, the weekend of her mother running away from her father, of looking for Harriet and finding Gloria, this weekend changed them. The women of Azalea Court had somehow become dear to each other.