A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum

Author:Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum [ROSENBAUM, LISA PEARL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780316033916
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2008-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

26

UPON RETURNING TO HER ROOM, ELLEN CALLED HER MOTHER. If her father had been alive she would have admitted that her first day with the company had been difficult and that she was pretty depressed. But she had learned that the death of a parent creates an imbalance that is less forgiving of normal family complaints.

“Today was fine. Really fine. It was a good class, just a little weird in Polish. I couldn’t talk much to anyone,” she said in her bright upper register. She described the cobbled streets, the courtyards, the hejnalج the amber earrings she’d just bought at the Cloth Hall. Taking a small risk, she said she wished Dad could have seen all this too. The silence that followed this remark made her add, “This afternoon I’m going to visit the castle in the middle of the city. It’s on the top of a fortified hill.”

“By yourself?” Her mother sounded alarmed.

“Yes, by myself. It’s totally safe.” What Ellen wasn’t going to admit was that she felt unmoored, that she’d have preferred to work, to connect, not to loll hours away on tourist attractions. “You know how I am when I travel. I like to scope out a city alone. Anyway, this place is called Wawel.” She cleared her throat and affected a deep tourist guide’s voice. “This was the seat of Polish kings for five hundred years.”

“I see,” her mother said.

“No, really, there’s a whole museum complex up there, and a cathedral.” She was aware of working too hard for her mother’s approval.

“Don’t you have work to do with the company?”

From the careful tone her mother used, Ellen knew she had detected something was wrong. “Today is sort of an off day. There’s nothing scheduled until tomorrow.” She hoped her mother wouldn’t ask why because she had no answer, which, in itself, was worrisome.

“I thought there’d be some sort of reception for you tonight,” her mother suggested.

Ellen crumpled into a ball on the lumpy bed and tried to keep her voice even. This was something her father would have said. Receptions for visitors were the specialty of academicians. They were something her mother, who’d traveled often with him, had grown to expect. Meanwhile, she hadn’t even thought about how she was going to get through the evening. “They don’t do that kind of thing,” she told her mother, in what she hoped was a casual voice.

“But some kind of welcome would seem appropriate,” her mother insisted.

Tears popped over Ellen’s lower lids as if they’d been waiting in the wings for their cue. They dripped sloppily off her nose and onto her pillow. She wiped her eyes. “Pronaszko said he wanted to take me out to lunch but he had some kind of fund-raising meeting. We’re going to do dinner another day.” But even this now seemed tenuous to her.

“I see,” her mother said, in a way that sounded doubtful and judgmental of Pronaszko. For that, Ellen loved her fiercely. She gripped the phone hand piece, straining to be closer to home.

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