by Belle Boggs
“I think I need to meet Frances,” she told Eric in February. “I think it’s time.”
Eric hesitated so long she was afraid her internet had failed and she’d have to redial. Finally he said he’d never heard Marianne so confident, so productive, so—happy? Was she happy there, in Florida?
Was she? It wasn’t happiness so much as having a purpose. Doing for others—those mysterious and hopeful others who would soon fill the rooms of Genesis Ranch, who would fill the pages of their notebooks and files of their computers, perhaps even the shelves of bookstores and libraries, with their inspirational writing. This was what Frances had asked of her and she’d done it, she was thinking each time she called the Largo Shores Club and asked to be connected with Mrs. Ketterling. But it was hard to reach her. The first time she called, Frances was playing tennis; the next time, she was shopping. There was a weekend trip to Orlando. Finally they spoke by phone. In an unbroken monologue Marianne told her what she’d done.
“Wonderful,” Frances said briskly. Her voice was strong and assured, the consonants sharp. “It sounds remarkable, exactly like my nephew described.”
Before Marianne could thank her, she continued: “And you are pleased with the students you selected?”
“It’s hard to say,” she began, before correcting her uncertainty. “I’m happy with the students. I think we have a good group.”
“Because the mix of students, that’s what will make the school,” Frances began.
“I agree completely. In graduate school—”
“They are pioneers, these students,” Frances said, and then she began her own monologue: how she and Eric and Mark and Marianne were all pioneers too, in this important and generous work they were doing. They would make a space for Christian writers to be taken seriously, to learn and grow and thrive. Anyone could open the kind of writing school that had been opened a thousand times already—what they were doing was new. It could become a model. It would be remembered. Did Marianne know what it was like to be taken not-seriously?
A rhetorical question, apparently, because when Marianne tried to answer Frances kept going. Of course she knew! The school was her idea, after all—the idea of someone who could be mistaken as crazy but was in fact a visionary. She did not answer when Marianne tried to confirm, or reiterate, or otherwise get on the record that the school was Frances’s idea, but kept on going, until suddenly she ran out of words and said she had to go.
A visionary, she’d called her.
Hanging up, Marianne had the unsettled feeling of having just ordered something she wasn’t sure of—a meal from a foreign menu, a large piece of furniture, an expensive trip.
She walked outside into sunshine that felt like it would go on forever. Blue sky reflected on smooth clear water, a tidy pea-gravel path that led from the pool to the guest lodging to the classrooms.
A truck had pulled up with a load of folding chairs—where did she want them? the exhausted-looking driver was asking. He’d already opened the back door, and she could see the cheap but matching chairs—white plastic seats, white metal legs—waiting on the truck bed. She pulled herself onto the truck—she’d learned to do counts and quality control inspections before accepting any order.
“Let’s take them inside,” she said, grabbing four. How small they all were! How light! There were sixty chairs, more than enough for the students and faculty, but it never hurt to have too many chairs, did it? In her Brooklyn apartment she’d only had one. “I’ll show you.”
She carried the first set to the doorway of the library, leaned them against the wall while she fished in her pocket for the keys.
“This a new wedding spot?” the driver asked, waiting with his own armload.
“A school,” she said, surprising herself—just a little—with the confidence and brevity of her answer. Just a month ago she would have hesitated before launching into the whole complicated story: Eric, Mark, Frances, her own writing and teaching career. She found her keys and unlocked the door. “Over here,” she said, walking with her chairs to the far side of the room.
“Right on,” he said, following her. “Education is the most important thing in the world. They can’t take your education away from you, that’s what I tell my son.”
Marianne surveyed the room, took in its fresh-paint-and-paper smell, its stocked shelves, its gleaming new windows. Its stack of slightly used, suitable-for-a-wedding-venue chairs. Its partial gulf view. Its wood-veneer podium and mounted wireless microphone.
“The most important thing,” he repeated. “I’m in school myself. Police academy. Six more weeks!” Just mentioning school—its promise of a different, better life—had brightened the man, who started back for another armload. Marianne began arranging the chairs, making two neat columns that faced the podium.
“You’re a teacher?” he asked when he returned.
“No,” she said, sitting down in a chair she’d just unfolded, leaning back. “I’m in charge.”
Part
Two
4
Donald Goldston, known to his fans as Davonte Gold, settled into his room at a little after one o’clock on an overcast Sunday in March. Even when he was still an opening act, he’d stayed in nicer places than this, a small room with badly patched wall cracks, mismatched wood-veneer furniture, and a window that looked out over some dusty bushes. Craning his neck, he could barely see the water. One of the lamps didn’t work, and the dresser drawers had to be yanked open, revealing pyramidal mounds of fine wood shavings that Davonte gathered with a tissue. What made those little mounds? Was it termites? Could termites eat your clothes? Those were some questions Davonte had never had to ask himself before.
It seemed like only yesterday he had a whole suite of rooms at the Bellagio in Vegas, with a view of the dancing fountains. He’d headlined for a week, then gone on to Los Angeles, San Diego, then back to Vegas and up to Oakland. Along with the band, the sound technician, the lighting people, the roadies, and the dancing girls, he’d traveled with a posse that included a personal trainer, a bodyguard, a personal assistant, and his best friend since third grade, Avis Conway, who’d signed onto the payroll after receiving a dishonorable discharge from the Coast Guard. How fucking hard was it to stay in the Coast Guard? Davonte still wanted to know. Back then there were very few questions that Davonte didn’t have answers for—or people ready to answer them.
But in this room he was alone—there was no space for anyone else—and his life coach, who dropped him off without a car or any access to spending money, had said it was time for Davonte to start asking the questions himself and figuring out the answers on his own. Coach Harris (that was what they’d decided Davonte would call him, after Davonte recollected that his high school football coach was the last person he listened to reliably) had this way of throwing things back at you that made Davonte want to hit him.
How am I supposed to get around without no car?
How do you think you’ll get around?
What’ll I do if I need money? Like, really need it?
What do you think you should do?
How am I supposed to write this book by myself? I never wrote a book before.
Where would be a good place to start?
Davonte hired Harris with some of the last of his tour money, and together they’d formulated a new plan: disappear for a while, lose fifty pounds, write some new songs, and pen a best-selling book. Davonte had made his mark on the world as a sex object, possessed of a smooth golden voice and six-pack abs. A certain scandal involving unpaid taxes (really his manager’s fault), a follow-up record that didn’t sell, and several years of daily pot smoking and delivery pizza had eroded the appeal. Except in his hometown, where people seemed to look at him with pity (like they had ever headlined in Vegas!), Davonte didn’t even get recognized anymore.
You couldn’t make money these days except from touring and making appearances, so now was the perfect time to create a new Davonte Gold. He was going to have a Christ
ian focus and the same six-pack abs. Look-but-don’t-touch, Coach Harris had explained. Ladies dig that, he said, because it meant that no one else would have him either.
Coach was the one to find this place, a writing ranch that would help him get started on his manuscript, a novel about the life of a strayed artist who found the Lord and made a comeback. He had it on good authority that Davonte needed only fifty pages—tops!—to sell the whole thing for a healthy six figures, which would lead to media appearances and opportunities to perform. He’d bought Davonte a handheld voice recorder and a laptop. He’d rented an apartment not far away (its address still undisclosed to Davonte), and he was taking meetings with reality show producers (not one of those celebrity rehab shows, he’d promised, but something more in keeping with Davonte’s talents). How much was all this costing? Davonte asked, and Coach had replied, as usual, with his own question: How much is your comeback worth to you?
Davonte checked himself in the mirror. He’d never hidden his body with baggy T-shirts and sagging jeans, but now he had no choice, as none of the slim-fitting clothes he liked to wear fit him anymore. He still wore a one-carat stud in each ear and kept his hair in neat cornrows, but the weight had softened his once-sharp jawline. “I know you better this way, Donald,” his mother told him after he put on the weight. She lived in the same brick rancher he’d bought her after his first big paycheck, but she’d never liked his new name, and she used every opportunity to call him by the one she’d given him. She refused to watch the video the girls had gone crazy over, in which the camera had focused on Davonte’s naked, sweaty, slowly gyrating abdominals, and seemed to prefer the sweetly smiling, decidedly chubby Donald of the school photos that decorated the hall table and the long-unused upright piano. He’d moved back in with his mother after meeting Coach, who knew that Davonte couldn’t be trusted to live alone. Coach had given her a low-carb cookbook and a stack of Lean Cuisines for the deep freezer, but after a half hour of study she said the whole business was confusing and went back to the same meat-and-potato meals she’d always cooked.
Davonte stood over his suitcase, which he’d opened on the ugly bedspread, and considered where to put his clothes. He started unfolding and shaking out the T-shirts and polo shirts on top. The closet was only two steps away, a narrow space enclosed by flimsy folding doors. On the wooden bar were three measly hangers.
Davonte’s temper was shorter since he’d gone off weed and gluten, and he stalked outside and squinted into the white, overcast afternoon. He was about to go give that woman in the office a piece of his damn mind when his neighbor, a trim white man in running clothes, appeared in his own doorway.
He was the kind of person, Davonte could tell, who was raised on friendliness. He put his hand out right away and introduced himself as Pete. Pete the poet, here from St. Augustine, home of the fountain of youth. Davonte hesitated before giving his own name—should he go by Donald? Or Davonte?—and finally decided on no name at all.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “Looks like I’m a little scarce on supplies.”
“Oh really?” Pete said. “Like what?”
Davonte told him about the hanger situation and the problem with his dresser.
“And I have an abundance of them!” Pete said, like it was the luckiest thing in the world that their two rooms, one with too many hangers, and one with too few, happened to be side by side. He motioned for Davonte to follow him, but Davonte hung back in the doorway, confirming, at least, that his room was no worse than this one. Pete returned with a jumbled armful. Davonte thanked him and took them back to his own room, where he was surprised to find that Pete had followed him. He busied himself arranging the hangers, hoping he would go away.
“Somebody sure loves you!” Pete announced.
Startled, Davonte turned around. “What?”
“A care package,” he said. “Already.”
He pointed, and Davonte saw that nestled into one corner of the suitcase was a package of cookies his mother had baked and packed inside a Ziploc bag, along with a note: In case you get hungry. Love, Mom.
He felt a sudden surge of pride for his mother, a woman who raised him all alone, working a straight forty-hour week as a clerk for the city, and still had time to bake and keep the house neat. Every drawer in her house had a different, specific purpose, and none of them were heaped with wood shavings.
“My mama,” Davonte said, peeling off the note. He unzipped the bag and inhaled: chocolate chip, none of that oatmealy rabbit food shit Coach tried to feed him. “You want one?”
“Oh, no thank you,” Pete said, patting his flat stomach. Davonte could see that he was older than he seemed at first, with a generous sprinkling of gray in his hair and a ropy, strained look about his neck and arms. “I’m about to go for a run. Want to come with?”
In another bag were the unworn running shoes and workout clothes Coach bought him, tags still attached. But there was no way he could keep up with this guy, who looked like he could run a marathon and maybe even win. “I might meet you on the way,” he said.
“Okay,” Pete said. He stood there for a minute, and Davonte could feel himself being recognized: the little hairs on his arms stood up, and a tingly warmth spread from his neck to his earlobes. “I didn’t catch your name. And are you a poet? Or a fiction writer?”
“Donald,” said Davonte. “Fiction. Looking for somebody to help me get my story into shape.”
“Aren’t we all!” said Pete, and turned and jogged away.
A ghostwriter: that was what he was really looking for. Somebody to take his idea—about a handsome but down on his luck, supertalented singer who makes some honest mistakes, then finds God and makes a worldwide comeback—and put it down on paper. Davonte was a big-picture guy, that was what he always said, wasn’t it? He wanted to find this person as soon as possible. Coach hadn’t specifically mentioned ghostwriters, but Davonte was sure that was why he’d brought him here.
He considered the cookies, which had been folded into waxed paper before being tucked into their bag. The chips were a little gooey from riding in the trunk of the car for so many hours. But then he asked himself, as he’d been instructed: Will these cookies taste as good as success feels?
No, he told himself, they won’t, and he dumped the cookies into the same trash can where he’d thrown away the wood shavings.
Feeling lighter already, he picked up his itinerary from the nightstand and checked the schedule. Four o’clock: welcome reception. Five o’clock: dinner. Six thirty: opening reading. He looked at the laptop in its black case, waiting on the dresser. But he knew if he turned it on he’d just wind up googling old articles about himself, and it would only be a matter of time before that little mouse made its way to porn sites. He’d be better off going for a run along the beach.
Lacing up his new running shoes, avoiding prideful habits, and abstaining from pornography made him feel virtuous. And if I’m going to run, I can surely have a cookie, he thought, and fished one, then a second, out of the trash can. It was strange the things you were willing to do when you knew you were completely alone.
In the office, Marianne scanned her list of students and tried matching names with the many faces that had stood expectantly before her desk today. There had been a lot of drop-offs by strangely tearful family members, and that had confused things. Oh well, she thought. She’d have name tags for them later on anyway. Most everyone had arrived early enough to stroll along the beach, tour the sculpture Garden of Eden, and complain about the rooms.
“I don’t mean to complain,” the complaints always began.
Lorraine Kominski had been the worst offender, arriving by taxi in a floppy straw hat, giant sunglasses, and trailing caftan and installing herself next to the telephone in her room, which she used to request a series of things: a different brand of toilet paper, that the television be removed from her room, that the televisions be removed from all the rooms. She wanted to send out for Bloody Mary mix and a copy of Amiri Bar
aka’s Hard Facts (“I could order it,” Eric suggested, his hand held over the receiver. “No,” hissed Marianne). Lorraine didn’t know how to work the internet. She wanted a nonsmoking room that she could smoke in.
Eric was tending to her while Marianne waited for the last students and for Tom Marshall, their nonfiction instructor. He’d been a tough, last-minute hire after their other teacher won a grant (she sounded rather relieved, Marianne thought, to turn down the position). Tom had written a memoir about his years as a war reporter but had been fired from his last job as writer-in-residence at a boys’ boarding school. (“Total bullshit,” he explained during the phone interview.) Marianne had not checked his references but had accommodated his request for a room that could be locked from the outside (“Parasomnia,” he said. “Look it up.”).
From her window she could see out across the mangroves to the beach, where Davonte Gold had been occupied in an elaborate stretching routine for the past half hour. She still had Hurt Songs, his first album, on CD, had played it on her stereo the one night the law professor had come over to her place, votive candles flickering on her windowsill.
“This guy,” the professor had said. “I thought he was in jail.”
“No,” she’d said. Davonte Gold was from Newport News, and Marianne felt obligated to defend him. “It was mismanagement, which happens to a lot of artists. The IRS is really unfair sometimes.”
“Wasn’t there a sex tape too? A perverted video?”
The professor had once had Marianne pee on him, and liked other vaguely scatological things done to him with the lights off. They’d gotten into an argument then about the meaning of the word perverted, and whether it could apply to something that was natural, biologically speaking. It was about social norms, the professor had insisted, and Marianne had remembered how hard it had been to make herself pee on him. Rather as Marianne had expected, even from the moment she lit the candles, the evening had not ended romantically.