The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

General anesthesia always gives Lenni vivid dreams. This time, she dreams that she’s the “fiercest of friends” with a purple octopus and that she can hear “the most wonderful music” (121).

Margot shares a memory from February 1959. At age 28, Margot decides to leave Glasgow. Her mother died two years ago, and her father remained distant because of post-traumatic stress disorder. Margot found her isolated status as a “childless mother and a husbandless wife, a parentless daughter” both freeing and saddening (123). She journeyed to London in search of Johnny. At the police station, she struggled to fill out a missing person’s report because her husband was by then a virtual stranger to her. A lively blond woman named Meena sat beside Margot, listened to her story, and encouraged her not to let her husband define her any longer. She offered Margot a place to stay and then tossed the report in a rubbish bin.

The narrative returns to 2014. Upon reuniting with her friend in the Rose Room, Margot hugs Lenni tight. Lenni swears when she sees the quantity and excellence of the sketches and paintings that Margot has made in her absence. Pippa welcomes Lenni back, but Lenni finds it irritating when the art teacher, like other people she has encountered, wants “to know all the surgical details.