The
Question Authority
a novel
Rachel Cline
The Question Authority
Copyright © 2019 by Rachel Cline
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Book layout by Mark E. Cull
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cline, Rachel, 1957– author.
Title: The Question Authority : a novel / Rachel Cline.
Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055869| ISBN 9781597098984 (pbk.) | ISBN 1597098981 (pbk.)
Classification: LCC PS3603.L555 Q47 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055869
Publication of this book has been made possible in part through the financial support of Ann Beman.
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Allergan Foundation, and the Riordan Foundation all partially support Red Hen Press.
First Edition
Published by Red Hen Press
“Good morning little school girl, can I go home with you?”
—traditional
1
Nora
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Sometimes I get grief and resentment confused. Also fear and anticipation. It’s not that I don’t know what the words mean, but that whatever it seems like I should be feeling (grief over my mother’s death, excitement about a potential date) is not what I am feeling. It’s been like this since I was a kid, but it’s taken me until recently to put it together: I have a fundamental emotional wiring problem. Is fifty-three too old to be learning new things about your psyche?
The trouble of the moment—what’s keeping me awake on a work night—is the problem of my lost cat. “Lost” is a misnomer; I let him out. I had this idea that by letting him roam I was honoring his essential cat-ness, his life as a hunter and wanderer. Only it’s February and I live in New York City and, even though Brooklyn Heights is a tree-lined neighborhood where you rarely see a car traveling at more than parking-seeking speed, it’s been almost three days now. People have found him before, and called me—he has a tag—but that was only one night away, at most.
Given the timing, it’s likely that my cat-freedom gambit was some kind of hedge against my mother’s death. Adeline died eighteen months ago: three months before I adopted the cat. Prior to her death, I’d convinced myself that she wasn’t all that important to me—that her role in my life was more like that of an eccentric aunt than the woman who’d breastfed me till I was three (or so she claimed). Every single time she saw me, she opened with a criticism (“You look pale.” “What happened to your hair?” “What are you wearing?”); she’d never noticed or admitted that I was fundamentally depressed from age thirteen to thirty-five (when: Prozac); and—adding insult to injury—she did none of what they call “advance planning” for her own demise. She left me not only broke but awash in legal and financial perplexities. I had no choice but to move back into this apartment, the apartment I grew up in, after I’d sold its contents. Maybe by letting the cat roam, I felt better about feeling trapped myself?
In any case, I was proud of my liberated cat, of trusting him to find his own way home—it mirrored the way I was raised. Back then, I was not the only kid around here with an apartment key on the same length of twine as the key to her roller skates. I had a best friend, and a three-dollar-a-week allowance, and—as long as we stayed on the right side of Atlantic Avenue and were home for dinner—we did what we pleased. Beth did, anyway. She was the brave one. But that’s another story.
Tin Man, please come home.
2
Nora
Iwake up on Thursday morning expecting the cat to be with me, emanating warmth and profound disinterest from his customary sleeping spot in the V between my butt and my feet. The light in the bedroom is gray and bright— unmistakably after seven—but finding that Tin Man’s spot is empty throws my whole morning routine into question. I hate my job, I hate my life, I live in the emptiest apartment in the universe . . . what’s the point? Under normal circumstances, I would just bury my face in the cat and tell him how much I love him and how little I want to get up, but with no cat, I’m stymied. I don’t want to say that stuff out loud to myself—it sounds pathetic and ridiculous. I sit up and gaze dolefully at the stupendous view. The harbor is silver-gray and choppy and the orange lozenge of the Staten Island Ferry chugging by is perfect in color, shape, and size. The cranes and gantries of Port Newark have a poetic quality in the hazy distance. Even Governor’s Island looks charming. What am I to do with my conflicting emotions?
I live in my grandfather’s apartment. He’s long dead, and it’s got nothing in it but the crap I bought at IKEA when I moved in, but it’s a penthouse with four bedrooms, three baths, a library, a music room, and two working fireplaces—a relic from a time when a poet could actually get rich. Back then, brownstones were going up everywhere (like condos, these days) and were far too hoi polloi for a grand figure like my poet granddad. Now, it’s worth a fortune—even after the recent crash. But I am not allowed to sell it under the terms of his trust. This is something my mother might have fixed before she died, if she’d been willing to admit that dying was in the cards, but she wasn’t, and didn’t, and so. Here I am again in Brooklyn Heights.
To anyone who didn’t grow up here, the first impression is always of wealth. Walking under old, leafy trees, you catch glimpses of chic sitting rooms and private gardens; historic landmarks and secret-seeming alleys; adorable carriage houses and ornate mansions; as well as churches for all comers. Standing at the edge of the Promenade to watch the sunset, you will invariably hear someone (perhaps your own inner real estate agent) pronounce the words “million-dollar view.”
When my grandfather got here, in the early twenties, it was “America’s first suburb,” and indeed a wealthy enclave. But when my mother dragged me back to this apartment in 1963, the Heights was actually a fairly Bohemian place. That first summer, I attended a settlement house day camp with black and Puerto Rican kids where we sang spirituals and spent our days in city parks and pools. The formerly grand hotels that dotted the neighborhood were all then sheltering welfare recipients, but the ethnic mix of kids at camp came from nearby apartments—as did artists and writers and folk singers and even, briefly, Marilyn Monroe.
And now, in 2009, it’s changing again. Lots of empty storefronts, but no more welfare hotels. On the street I still see people I recognize from the old days: the grumpy shoemaker; Julie Something’s little sister, now model-beautiful and married