Glaciers (10 page)

All these things tell a story, but is it
hers
? It has always been more than an aesthetic choice, holding on to the past; it's a kind of mourning for the things that do not last.

We
do not last, she thinks. In the end, only the stories survive.

She thinks of the photograph of the eleven-year-old girl, standing under a glacier, saying goodbye.

 

Then Michael says her name.

Isabel.

She holds her breath.

They are all quiet; their eyes rest on her. She doesn't know whether they are patiently attentive, or tired and needy, like children who will not fall asleep without one more story. She is the last. She thought that the party would be over by now.
Wrung out. The guests dreaming in their rumpled suits and dresses, piles of clothing in dozing heaps scattered over the furniture and floor.

Isabel, Michael says again. Tell us a story—

She closes her eyes, but she can feel him looking at her, searching.

—about longing, he says.

Oh, God, she says under her breath.

She thinks of their first and last kiss, and the pang she felt, turning away from him. Spoke is already halfway across the country, where people are making breakfast, letting dogs out onto dewy lawns, boarding buses and trains for downtowns, lining up in coffee shops.

In Amsterdam, it is already a lovely evening, the leaves turning, fall about to break.

She opens her eyes. Through the tall windows, she sees a pale light rising between the buildings.

So she begins, I've never been to Amsterdam.

Copyright © 2012 Alexis Smith

 

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Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York

Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth St., Berkeley, CA 94710,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Smith, Alexis M.

Glaciers / Alexis Smith. -- 1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-935-63921-3

1. Alaska--Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.M538G53 2012

813'.6--dc23

2011041838

First U.S. edition 2012