lady friend – but during these recent pilgrimages concluded that was not the case. She was just so earthy, so conventional. Something convinced him she was simply a solitary person, more likely asexual than bi. One of Michael’s nieces had recently written to Ingrid thanking her for setting an example, for proving that a woman doesn’t need a man to succeed in life. When Michael arrived, Ingrid requested rather urgently that he tell this niece, when he saw her again, that she didn’t endorse being single but it had just worked out that way for her. She would have been happy to be married but it never happened.
        He was always intimidated by Ingrid. She was so self-assured and impatient when he misspoke or misunderstood. There seemed to be an underlying intolerance that he’d privately concluded was a hatred for men stemming from being jilted so many years ago. He was instinctively passive and non-committal in her presence, which seemed to minimize the friction. Now, though, all that was swept away. These hours of conversation were quite special, quite intimate and fresh, quite wonderful.
        Still, it could be difficult filling five or six hours each day with lively give and take. Michael would be on the island five days during this visit, show up each day around 11:00, latte and pastry in hand, visit until around 2:00, then return around 5:00 with take-out food and they’d talk until maybe eight. Then he’d return to her house, have a couple of drinks on the lanai, talk to Deborah, and prepare to do it again the next day.
        The previous night, pondering what new topics they might explore, he’d thought of a subject he was curious about: Ingrid’s mother Martha. He knew nothing about her except that she had died many years ago when he was three and Ingrid nineteen. He remembered Martha overseeing him and his oldest sister as they were helping prepare a family meal one Sunday at the Resig apartment in downtown LA. Michael had been assigned the task of slicing carrots. But at age three he knew little about this and was trying to cut with the dull side of the knife. Seeing this, Martha pounced on him, scolding him quite sternly, he thought. He remembered being afraid of her, a large, matronly woman with a pinched face in a simple peasant dress and an incomplete grasp of English.  
        But he knew almost nothing else about her. But now, she was a mysterious void, as if she never existed: no legacy, no artifacts, barely any photographs.  
        “You know, Ingrid, I thought of a subject we could talk about. Why don’t you tell me about your mother? I hardly know anything about her at all.”
        The tension rose perceptibly in the room, she fumbled to look at her watch. She seemed flustered, but then, Ingrid was never flustered. Quickly