The Beautiful Years: a novella (Kindle Single) by Lief Katia

Author:Lief, Katia [Lief, Katia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Blue Table Books
Published: 2016-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

The vast living room of Harry and Christina Fisher’s penthouse had floor-to-ceiling windows along one whole wall. Outside, the city glimmered in the darkening twilight. Deep-cushioned furniture was arranged in several conversation clusters, with a long sofa facing a fireplace. Above the mantel hung the Fishers’ prized Monet: a blue and orange painting, water and boats and sky and trees and moon that Ada might not have identified as a work of the great French artist. Presumably, water lilies would have been beyond the reach even of the Fishers. Claude had been named for the artist, and she found, today, that she couldn’t bear to look at the painting or even be in the same room with it.

So instead, she parked herself in the dining room, on a row of chairs facing the food. The Fishers’ polished walnut table was large enough to seat at least eighteen people, but they’d understood that no one wanted to be paralyzed by forced conversation that wouldn’t come. Thus they had catered a buffet that allowed guests to situate themselves anywhere they pleased. Ada was immeasurably grateful for this accommodation to her own blind grief—a term this day had made clear. By evening she had grown numb, and almost, actually, blind. Her peripheral vision felt blanked out, and sometimes dark splotches obliterated whatever was in front of her. If she blinked, her vision returned, but only briefly. George seemed to understand this intuitively, and he sat beside her, looking straight ahead as if they were strangers on a bus, with Claudia perched on his absently bouncing knee.

“I can’t believe it’s been five years,” Ada said, lamely. She didn’t know what to say to George, or how to begin, or if they should try. He was close enough that she could smell him, but he smelled different now.

“It doesn’t feel like it.” What it felt like, to George, was two days after graduation. Sprawled on his parents’ couch, emotionally spent, he couldn’t understand why Ada had done it. It felt like six months after that, a thin skin forming over his pain. It felt like one year later, two, three, adjusting to his grown-up, calloused heart. It felt like the walls of time caving in, as if being with Ada again had ruptured perspective.

“I know, right?” To Ada, this felt like the first moment after she’d admitted her infidelity to George, still in their caps and gowns, standing apart from the tent where celebratory families were gathered after the ceremony. To this day, she didn’t know why she’d come at it that way, like a kamikaze pilot. This felt like that moment of disbelief, before George had registered what she’d told him, when she still had a chance to say, “Just kidding!”

Claudia slid off George’s knee, which bounced a few more beats after she was gone. She headed straight for the bowl of fat strawberries with their green crowns still on. Before reaching for one, she glanced back at her mother, who was still talking to that man.

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