The Paper Wasp

by Lauren Acampora

  “No, you’re not,” I said.

  He smiled, and there was real pleasure in his face. “I really am. You don’t believe me?” He held up a hand, palm out, fingers together, in the mitten shape every Michigander knows. He pointed to a spot halfway up the western shore, the base of the pinkie finger. “Right here.”

  My own town was on the western shore, too, at the spring of the lifeline. My surprise must have been visible, because he said, “We can talk more about it next time.”

  After I gave him my number, he stood from his ottoman and put out a hand. I shook it, still sitting, and watched him go across the room, past the jazz band, to the exit.

  VI.

  WHEN I thought of Michigan now, the kitchen linoleum and freezing rain, I shuddered. I looked out your guest room window to the vibrant, replenishing vista and felt as if I were balanced on a threshold, in danger of falling back into the past. In Michigan, the sun had been permanently blocked by clouds, the trees bare by November. The low-wattage bulbs put an anemic cast on everything inside the house. Stains on the paisley couch. Scuffed baseboards. The artificial Christmas tree and its yellow tinsel.

  I’d called home only a few times in these past weeks—on Sunday mornings, when I knew my parents wouldn’t be there. I’d left the requisite messages on the answering machine, putting a casual tune into my voice. “Sorry I missed you! Everything’s great out here. California is beautiful. I’ll try you again soon. Hope all’s well.”

  I hadn’t answered my mother’s quavering rings on my phone. As her messages played back in my ear, her voice had a wheedling, sucking quality that returned me to my earlier self. I remembered the bad days in Michigan, the bad years, wilting in unwashed bedsheets. I feared that speaking to her would somehow yank me back there, that it would pop the balloon that encased me. As long as I remained disconnected, I could float on the breeze of this daydream, extend it indefinitely.

  “I’m working now,” I chirped into my parents’ answering machine. “I’m doing some administrative stuff for Elise, getting to know the movie industry. I’ll try you again later.”

  My mother’s response, on my voicemail: “Thanks for calling. We’re glad everything’s okay. Call back, please, when you can. We want to talk to you.”

  As concerned as they purported to be, at heart they must have been relieved. At last, I’d pulled out from the dark undertow they’d assumed to be permanent. They didn’t care that I’d stolen the money to get here. I’d done them a favor by leaving. Their disappointment in me had long surpassed their atrophied frustration with Shelby. The one who’d exploded, the one who’d imploded. The one who’d bolted, the one who’d sunk.

  Here, I was a new person. Just as you’d left Michigan far behind, Elise, so had I. The sunshine of California made everything easier. My moods were generally lighter, less abruptly volatile. For weeks now, I’d avoided the trapdoor of anxiety. Even my artwork was different. I was using brighter colors, expanding beyond dream visions to create imaginative scenes. I drew the hedge maze from my old story, the one you loved, about the abducted girl. I drew the two of us as children, dressed as animals: you as a zebra, me as a goat.

  Perhaps inevitably, you found my drawings. I thought I’d put them away, but it’s possible I’d left them out that day. Subconsciously, I may have done it on purpose. I was angry—having been abandoned again while you went to the Rhizome—and had gone to Venice for my own self-guided Perrenian session. You were in my room when I came back, standing at the glossy black desk. The drawing on top of the pile, the one you were looking at, depicted a red-haired woman adrift at sea, clinging to a plank of wood. For a moment, I held my breath. When you turned your head toward me, there was a startled look in your eye, as if I were the intruder.

  “Holy shit, Abby,” you said.

  I moved reflexively toward the drawings. “I’m sorry. I thought I put those away.”

  You shook your head, staring. “No. Don’t put them away. These are incredible. Why haven’t you shown them to me?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “You’ve been busy.”

  “You’re unbelievable, Abby. Really. You’re so freaking talented. You always were, from the beginning.” You gave me a look somewhere between fear and pity. “How long have you been doing these?”

  “I don’t know. Years.”

  Your head tilted, and before I could think, I was telling you the truth. “Actually, I dropped out of U of M,” I said. “I never went to graduate school. I made that up so you wouldn’t know I was at home all that time. I was at home, doing this,” I gestured to the drawings. “And I’ve been following Perren’s program, independently. I have his book.”

  I felt the shame of a child admitting a lie, and waited for the consequence. Irrationally, I felt that I’d invaded your space by admitting my involvement with Perren, when really it was you who’d invaded mine.

  You came toward me and put your arms around my neck as if to slow dance. “Why are you hiding your gifts, Abby?” you said quietly. “All these years, you’ve been hiding, haven’t you? But now you’re here. Now you have to come out. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded. You tilted your head, your face so close to mine, as if you would kiss me. I smelled smoke and the sweetness of alcohol on your breath.

  “These ideas, these pictures, they can’t just stay in this room. You have to get them out into the world.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. Well, that’s not so easy to do.”

  You held my shoulders and blinked at me. “Maybe I can help you.”

  My face reddened, and I pulled away. My earlier feeling of animosity toward you had dissolved, or I’d lost my grasp on it. “How was your time at the Rhizome?” I asked, moving toward the desk, blocking the drawings with my body.

  “Great,” you said. “I’m totally spent, but in a good way.” You sat on the bed in your burlap dress with embroidered feathers, your hair in two loose braids. “I’m supposed to keep practicing at home, but I can never find the time. Or maybe it’s not really that I don’t have time. It’s more that I feel self-conscious doing it by myself. I like it better at the Rhizome, with my guide telling me what to do.”

  You looked so young and helpless, there on the bed in your silly ensemble, that I almost felt sorry for you. The Rhizome was far above your level, and Perren was in a different orbit. You weren’t creative in the slightest, and you were wasting your time. It seemed unfair to allow actors to join the Rhizome at all, when they were inherently unequipped for the work.

  You’d stopped talking and were looking intently at me. “Seriously, Abby, think about how I might help you. I’m willing to make introductions. I’m sure I could arrange an internship somewhere. I might be able to talk to someone in the costume department at Paramount or the camera people, if you want to go that route.” You paused, then said, “Or, you could always try to be a PA, but that’s so competitive. So many people come here to try to break into the business.”

  I looked back at you in disbelief. It seemed impossible that you were unaware of the insult you were giving me. Having just seen my drawings, having recognized their value, you had the temerity—or ignorance—to suggest an internship in the costume department. I blinked rapidly, as if to clear the implications from my mind. If I considered the injustice, the outrageous condescension, it would be too great to swallow.

  You stood from the bed. “Hey. Your birthday’s coming up, isn’t it?”

  “Next week.”

  “I always remember it,” you said.

  My anger softened a bit. “I always remember yours, too.”

  On the morning of my twenty-eighth birthday, I found myself in your blue Mustang, winding inland on Malibu Canyon Road. You hadn’t told me where we were going. I pictured some secret restaurant in the woods, where you could order a bottle of champagne in honor of my birthday and drink it yourself without being seen. We pulled off onto an unmarked, unpaved driveway that stretched through the trees. At the end of the driveway stood a
tall, ivy-covered stone building, crenellated like a manor house. I recognized it at once. I blinked and shook my head. It was the stone building from my loveseat dream—the place where I’d finally found you. A chill spread through me, and goose bumps came to my arms.

  “What is this place?” I asked softly as I climbed out of the car.

  “Any guesses?”

  You parked between a Mercedes sedan and a Mercedes SUV. We walked wordlessly to the entrance, a massive arched door, and you pressed the buzzer. The door magically unlatched, and we stepped into a marble lobby. A grand staircase swept upward. You took my hand and led me to the reception desk, where a willowy young woman flashed a smile at us.

  “I brought a special guest today,” you said. “It’s her birthday, and I’d like to give her a day pass to the grounds and spa and an introductory guided session.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed the receptionist, looking at me. “What a wonderful birthday gift!”

  The goose bumps were still on my skin as pleasure and fear rushed through my body. I opened my mouth, but nothing emerged.

  “Okay, sweetie,” the receptionist said to me. “Just sign in here.”

  I glanced at you, and you nodded, smiling at me like a mother as I wrote my name in the Rhizome ledger.

  “I’ll get her set up with Tello,” the receptionist told you. “He’s got an open slot at twelve, same time as your session, Elise. Room seven.”

  “Come on.” You put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get manicures and massages first.”

  We went through the foyer, our footsteps echoing off the marble walls, and came outside into a landscaped courtyard with a triple-tiered fountain. The sound of splashing water lent the garden an enchanted quality. I could picture nymphs emerging from the foliage, holding immortal fruit.

  “Oh, I want to show you something,” you said. “This way.” You led me to a wall of boxwood and took me into a slot in the hedge. Before us were more hedges, intersecting paths. “What do you think? Left, right, or forward?” You still held my hand, and pulled me to the path on the left. When we finally came to a dead end, you laughed and spun me around. “It’s like your story about the woman with the hedge maze,” you said. “Remember? And the little girl who wants to stay with her.”

  A breeze of joy passed through me. I gripped your hand and didn’t feel the ground under my feet as we went through the maze, losing direction. At last we came out on the other side, into a tropical copse. Agave plants splayed their limbs among purple verbena. A wave of honeysuckle overtook me, and from far off, I heard the sound of children.

  “Are there kids here?”

  “Oh, yeah. There are always kids around. There’s a camp in the summer and after-school sessions and a daycare. It’s all free for members. People even bring their babies here.”

  You led me over a winding path to the spa, a separate stone structure that contained a nail salon, massage rooms, and a sauna. We visited each of these in order. I didn’t tell you that it was my first manicure. You sat beside me with your ivory hand extended like a duchess’s. After my own nails had been scrubbed and clipped and the polish applied—a seafoam green that you chose for me—I kept my fingers motionless for five minutes beneath a heat lamp and tried to lose myself in the ocean sounds pulsing from the speakers.

  “It’s almost time for our sessions,” you said afterward. “They take about an hour, but I’ll probably stop in the actors’ lounge afterward. Maybe you can have someone give you a tour in the meantime? You can ask the receptionist.”

  Back inside the main building, we climbed the grand staircase carpeted in a pattern of black and violet knots. At the top, we paused at a tall doorway.

  “This is the actors’ lounge,” you whispered. The room had sheer curtains and low velvet daybeds. Handsome men and women sprawled, some of them recognizably famous. They barely seemed to register our presence.

  As we withdrew, I spoke softly. “Are they here for Perren? I mean, are they hoping to catch his eye and get cast in a movie?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I found out that it’s actually the guides who make that happen. Somebody was telling me that the guides are his talent scouts, in a way—that they recommend the artists they think have the most creative depth and scope, or whatever. They’re Perren’s gatekeepers, I guess you could say.”

  I was quiet as we went down the long corridor, following the dizzying carpet pattern, knots interlocking with knots. “Well, what does your guide think of you?” I ventured.

  You glanced at me. “I’m a work in progress, let’s put it that way,” you said and stopped at one of the doors. “This is my room. I’ll see you back downstairs later?”

  “I’ll wait in the garden by the pool,” I offered, to show my equanimity.

  I continued down the hall until I found a door with the number 7. I knocked softly and turned the handle. Suddenly, all the questions I hadn’t asked you shot to the surface like panicked fish. The room was small and narrow with a window at its far end. There were two wooden spindle chairs, facing each other. A man sat on one of these chairs and stood as I entered.

  “Abigail?”

  I felt weightless, my heart speeding uselessly like a rabbit caught in the open. “You can call me Abby.”

  “I’m Tello.” He was middle-aged, with close-shaven hair and an ovoid face. When he smiled, there was warmth in his eyes, which were small and dark with no visible sclera. This small detail lent him a puppet-like, oracular look. “Have a seat, please,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from his.

  I positioned myself on the uncushioned chair and felt its hard spindles against my back.

  “Today we’ll keep it simple,” Tello said. “I’ll take you through your first active imagination session.”

  I strained to keep my back straight. As I sat, I struggled with a mix of excitement and shame. It felt oddly public to be sitting this way in front of another person, rather than by myself in my childhood bedroom. And yet it was electrifying to pursue Unity Gain right here, in the very building where Perren had his own sessions, his own visions.

  “As we go through the session, you’ll witness your inner self, and as your guide, I’ll witness your outer self.” Tello lifted a panel in the wall and pressed an invisible button, filling the room with a wash of harmonious sound—an intimation of ocean and wind, with the low bassoon notes of a foghorn. “Please close your eyes,” he directed, “and witness as light and shape take form in front of you.”

  I closed my eyes and stared at the dark sheet behind my lids. The dim molecules that skimmed past at first were always vague and fleeting.

  “Do you see?”

  I nodded.

  “Rub your eyes. Are the shapes stronger now? Do you see the checkerboard patterns, the black-and-white geometry?” He paused. “Now, watch it all dissolve and turn colored …”

  It always happened that way, just as he described it. As I took my hands away from my eyes, the op-art canvas erupted before me, an elaborate grid taking rapid form and pulling apart.

  “Now, watch the pieces of the checkerboard slide out of sight. Choose a piece and follow it. See where it leads you.”

  This was the hardest part. I waited for one of the fragments to draw my attention. The shapes traded places, assumed stronger contours, until the amphitheater of my eyelids showcased a fox-trot of orange crescents and white bars, all bubbling from some inner turbine. I snapped to the awareness that this was how dreaming began, and at the same instant my awareness became a searchlight that bleached the images out. It was paradoxical to be both performer and audience at once. But then a yellow sphere appeared, rising from a black sea. As I watched, the sea became a river, and the sphere was the setting sun. I was on the sidewalk in Ann Arbor, going toward the bridge, the traffic intersection, the medical center looming ahead. I saw the falling snow. I saw the cars approaching with their headlights.

  Tello interjected, “Don’t force the imagery. Just sit back and be the audience. Watch what’s
presented to you.”

  I reversed course, walked backward away from the bridge, erased the scene. I drew down a dark curtain, aware of myself sitting on the chair, rigidly inert. My back ached as I watched the roulette of microbes on the black background. After a few moments, one of them abruptly grew in size, turned fishlike, and swam out of the frame. Instantly, the scene changed.

  “Stay open,” Tello said. “Witness.”

  There was a bush with red leaves. It looked familiar, like the burning bush in my childhood Bible. And now a snake, banded black and yellow, gliding under the bush. Archetypal, my labeling brain intruded. The snake and bush trembled and then hurtled away as if the film had been yanked off the reel. My eyes opened. Tello sat in the spindle chair with a little grin on his face.

  “Excellent start,” he said, as if he presumed to know the content of my visualization. My face heated. “Try again.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Same thing,” he said. “Rub your eyes, then choose a compelling fragment and go with it.”

  This time, white nodules like snowfall—afterglow from the recessed ceiling lights—organized themselves into rows. They became fish, swimming in a choreographed school. It was warm in the water, and I found a whiskered bottom-dwelling creature that was large enough to ride. I rested on its scales as it took me through shadowed pockets. It rose to the water’s lambent surface, then dove again into the murk. Finally, a last burst to the surface, and my eyes opened to the powerful beam of the sun atop a hill. The sun became the white house from my dreams, and I was in the blue lake below.

  “You may be experiencing water imagery,” Tello chimed in. “That’s very common.”

  I ignored him and climbed the hill to the house. The door was blue, with a bronze knocker in the shape of a head. On either side of the head, where the ears should be, were wings. The children were there in the parlor, perched on the gilded couch and pink damask wing chairs. They smiled at me in recognition, and my heart swelled.