Alena: A Novel by Rachel Pastan

Author:Rachel Pastan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Alone in my office, the door shut, I stood by the enormous window and dialed Bernard. The sky, so blue an hour earlier, was pale with haze.

“Cara,” he said. “How are you? How are things in that dimple on the sea nymph’s elbow?” He sounded relaxed, ebullient, his voice projecting a brightness I hadn’t seen in person. Through the phone I could hear voices, rumblings, chinkings. Ice rattling, laughter. “Wait,” he said, “I’ll just go outside.” I listened to the sounds shift, the roar of voices exchanged for the roar of cars. “That’s better,” he said. “Now, how are you? What have you been doing?”

“Barbara took me to see Willa Somerset today,” I said. Standing wasn’t easy. I steadied myself against the glass, then took a careful step toward my chair and dropped into it, clutching the hard leather arm.

“Wonderful! Willa is the Nauk’s guardian angel. She’s sharp. She sees things clearly.”

I thought of the old lady’s flickering confusion, her plaintive desire for Alena, her unconscious chewing. I wondered when Bernard had last been to visit her. “Yes. Barbara said. Only, Bernard?”

“What, cara?”

“I’m the curator. Right? I choose the shows.”

Through the phone, I could hear footsteps approach, heels clattering. The squeal of a bus, the slam of a door, a snatch of music from a radio. Out the window I watched the wind ripple the grass, the gray-green waves churning glassily in the afternoon glare. A barely visible airplane droned overhead, a silver flaw in the hazy sky. Why was Bernard still there—wherever there was—when he claimed to love it so much here? “Of course,” he said.

“Good. I just wanted to make sure. I want to be clear about my role.” I opened my mouth again to tell him about McManus, but instead I found myself saying, “It’s all so new, and everything’s so undefined.”

Faintly through the phone came a man’s voice, musical and unfamiliar: “You almost done?”

“We’ll work together, of course,” Bernard said. “Consider, discuss.”

“But ultimately it’s my job?” Out over the water a black cormorant flapped heavily by, flying low over the churning bay. A motorboat drew a seething line of dirty white through the gray-green water. The sky, nearly drained of blue, was the color of skimmed milk.

“Yes,” he said. “Your job.”

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