Read Online Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky - Free Book Online Page A

I say just as quietly, “it’s that you have even the slightest hint of an idea about my feelings.”
    Ms. Mahler lets out a horrified “Oh.” The rounded mouth suits her. I look quickly at her and away again. The man nods.
    “There’s not much I can say in response to that. Any attempt to try to demonstrate my understanding is doomed to failure. Even if I were to use the word ‘tragedy,’ it seems to me it would probably sound like an arrogant attempt to encapsulate your fate in a conveniently empty phrase that could never possibly express the full extent of your situation.”
    “You are absolutely right about that,” I say.
    “But there is one thing I have to say,” he says, and he sounds helpless and forlorn. Ms. Mahler shifts her gaze from me to him.
    He turns to her and nods. I watch, astonished, as she stands up, politely pushes her chair in, offers me a pained smile and “goodbye and best wishes,” and leaves the room.
    “Actually,” I say amid the silence, “I wanted to talk to her.”
    The man leans back and puts his hands on the table. “What would you have said to her?”
    “That her article was shameless and stupid.”
    “You already made that clear. And besides,” he says, pausing to push the plate of cookies toward me, “besides, she already knows that.”
    “What? I’m sorry?”
    “She knows because I already told her.”
    I look at the cookies. There are square and round ones with chocolate icing, shortbread, star-shaped cookies with a dollop of jam in the middle, and some that look like spirals.
    “Please help yourself,” says the man. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Mineral water? We have cola in the canteen—I can go get one for you.”
    I shake my head.
    “I want to tell you something, something I would otherwise never tell an outsider,” he says, taking a round cookie. “Then perhaps you will understand a little better why Ms. Mahler isn’t here for our conversation. Perhaps you will also not find the article so . . . outrageous. Ms. Mahler is an intern. She is working here as part of a work experience program. And—just between you and me—she’s not one of the best of our interns. Not even a decent one.”
    I look at him. He has taken a bite of his cookie and is turning what’s left around in his fingers.
    “I was out of the office when her piece was published,” he says. “Ms. Mahler wrote it up quickly after her thrilling visit to the prison, there was space open on the page, and so it appeared the next day. There it was in the paper. For your information, we have a policy whereby anything written by an intern must be read by an editor and, if necessary, rewritten. Within our strict standards for what we consider worthy of publication, there is some room for discretion. It can depend on the individual taste of the editor, on time pressures, or on any number of other factors. I must admit the person responsible for editing this piece did not exercise due diligence. To call what this piece needed ‘editing’ is itself a euphemism. Because the problems in Ms. Mahler’s piece are not limited to a few stylistic mistakes. If you are going to take on this subject, it can’t be done the way she did it. It should have been approached completely differently. And I’m afraid Ms. Mahler was not the right person for the assignment. Her reporting was completely unacceptable. For you, someone affected by the events, it was even less acceptable. There’s no way else to say it.”
    I listen silently as if hypnotized by the rotating motion of the half-eaten cookie.
    “I find myself having to take responsibility for something that cannot be justified. Whatever you criticize us about, you will be completely in the right.”
    “Why do you have to?” I ask.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Why do you have to take responsibility?”
    “Because I’m the section editor,” says the man flatly. “I am in charge of the local news. When I came back from vacation, I gave Ms.