The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [198]
She’d worked a short shift in the dining hall this morning. Then she’d eaten lunch with Professor Eglantine, who’d offered to supervise her in a one-on-one tutorial for the fall, and who’d insisted she call her “Judy.” Pella worried that Professor Eglantine, Judy, was just being kind, but then again she’d seemed to be enjoying herself, and it would be great to have her for a tutor and possibly, if it wasn’t too much to ask, for a friend. The syllabus they’d constructed, while Professor Eglantine picked unconvincingly at her Cobb salad, centered on the letters of Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt. All in all, it had been a very heartening lunch.
Now she was on her way to Dean Melkin’s office, on the ground floor of Glendinning Hall, to finalize the details of her enrollment for the fall. Pella wasn’t sure how many details still needed finalizing, or why Dean Melkin, whom she’d never met, was so burningly eager to finalize them. Granted it was August now, but he’d been calling the quarters all summer, beginning much too soon after her dad’s death, begging her to meet. Pella had put him off with a series of brief, widely spaced e-mails, saying she wasn’t yet up for a face-to-face but had been in touch with Admissions, with the Registrar, with Student Health. These other departments of Westish simply e-mailed forms to her, and Mike filled out the forms and dropped them off. Whereas Dean Melkin kept leaving pleading messages on the machine.
Dean Melkin was on the phone when Pella peered cautiously around his half-closed door. He smiled and waggled two fingers to indicate how many minutes he’d need. After precisely that many minutes he invited her in, a slender man in khaki pants and a too-large houndstooth jacket with elbow patches, youthful in that slightly fetal way of certain descendants of the upper British Isles, his pale hair beating a ragged retreat from all directions at once.
“Pella.” He smiled at her pinkly. “Thank you for coming in. I know this has been a very difficult summer.”
Pella nodded in an unforlorn way meant to indicate that they needn’t talk about it.
“If you’d ever like to chat,” he went on, “morning, noon, or night, please don’t hesitate. I’ve left my cell number on your machine, but I can give it to you now too.”
“Thanks,” Pella said.
They sat down. Arranged on Dean Melkin’s desk, beneath a Post-it that bore her name, was a tall stack of materials—materials regarding core requirements, online registration, foreign language requirements, AP credits, dining hall plans, health insurance. He began to talk her through them, or to try to, but each time Pella, after waiting a minimally polite period of time, quietly indicated that yes, and yes, and yes, it had been taken care of. Each time Dean Melkin, seeming oddly nervous, lauded her conscientiousness and moved on to the next already-taken-care-of matter.
“Last but not least,” he said. “Housing. It wasn’t easy to fit you in—we have limited flexibility regarding late admits—but I did some finagling, and I found not only a room for you, but I think an excellent situation.” He leaned back happily in his chair. “You’ll be rooming with a young woman named Angela Fan, who was not only the winner of this year’s Maria Westish Award, which as you may know indicates an extremely high level of academic accomplishment, but also recently published a chapbook of poetry with a small press in Portland. And she took a gap year last year to work on an organic farm in Maryland, so she’s also a slightly more mature roommate than you might otherwise have had.”
“Oh no,” Pella said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I didn’t mention this earlier. I’ve been making plans to live off campus. In fact I just signed a lease on a place. With my boyfriend.” She didn’t know why she’d added the boyfriend part—it seemed