One fine spring day, Vinnie watches polar bears splashing at the London Zoo. Visiting cousins "doing London" have lured her here. Vinnie is happier than she has been in months, maybe years. Fido must have accompanied Chuck to Wiltshire. Literature teaches that after the age of fifty, women have no slots other than mother, daughter, or sister, but Vinnie feels very unlike the Spinster Professor. Novels expect those her age to be set in their ways, scarred apple trees destined to grow weak and hollow-their fruit crabbed. Most novelists remove the elderly trees to make room for saplings and Vinnie has spent years forcing herself to accept that the rest of her life will be an epilogue to an unexciting novel. No individual, however, feels peripheral in his or her own life and.....
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