Summary

Section 1 of “Elephants’ Graveyard” is titled “To Die in Madagascar.” Shay sits at the head of the dinner table at the Red House, the only woman there. The other guests are friends of Senna’s, older white men who are either retired, starting new businesses, or both. Shay is on her last night at the house, leaving for Italy the next day “to take her place among the distant pantheon of disapproving wives, ex-wives, mistresses, girlfriends, sisters. (Their mothers are all long departed and now inspire worship instead of guilt)” (220). She listens as they discuss friendship, sex, women, and death, with the latter being a particular concern as a friend of theirs wants to come to the Red House to die. When they ask what she thinks as “the lady of the house” (220), she says it should happen, but wonders why the...