A Student of History by Nina Revoyr

Author:Nina Revoyr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2019-02-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was moving quickly through Mrs. W—’s journals. By now she was in her early thirties; she’d married Baron J— and had given birth to two of her children. The descriptions of events hadn’t gotten much more interesting, although her voice stayed consistently sassy. I had the odd sense that I was relating to two women: the Mrs. W— of today, and the one of her youth, whom I might know, at this point, better than she did. I’d gone through nine notebooks already, nearly seven hundred pages, and there were only three to go. Peeking ahead, I’d discerned that much of the final notebook was a history of her grandfather, an account of his life and career. But I didn’t let myself skip forward. I wanted to read the journals in order, to reserve that story until I’d earned it. It occurred to me that the end of the project was in sight, which meant the end of everything that came with it—the afternoons at Casa del Cielo, the charity events, the reasons to see Fiona. I didn’t want any of this to come to a close. I purposely slowed down my typing.

We had settled into a routine: I would read and transcribe for two hours or so, then break for lunch with Mrs. W— before working for another hour. Sometimes she would walk me through other wings of the mansion and talk about the paintings and sculptures she’d collected. Her tastes were eclectic, and ranged from classic to modern—van Gogh and Baldessari; Monet and Ruscha—and I slowly came to understand that she owned one of the finest collections in the city. She didn’t seem to mind my near total ignorance of art; maybe I was indulging her in a way her children hadn’t. And I drank up the attention, the education, which was all part of my improvement; which was preparing me to move more smoothly in her world.

One afternoon, as we sat on the patio and dined on shrimp salad, I presented her with a small wrapped package.

“A gift?” she asked, genuinely surprised. “For me?”

“Open it,” I said, grinning. It was hard to find an appropriate gift for someone who had everything, but I thought she might enjoy this one. She tore open my barely competent wrapping and pulled out two costumes for her dogs—one designed like a bottle of white wine, the other a bottle of red.

“For Chardonnay and Pinot,” I explained.

She laughed delightedly, and then I helped her gather the dogs, who stared up at me as I wiggled the costumes over their heads and then sat tolerantly on the patio to be admired. They looked ridiculous, and when Maria came out and saw them, she covered her mouth with her hand and giggled, which made Mrs. W— laugh all over again. I snapped a couple of pictures on my phone, so I could print one and have it framed.

Eventually we got back to eating lunch, and I described what I’d read that morning:

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