The Gulf

by Belle Boggs

  Eric shrugged. “They’re a pretty big organization. Bigger than I realized at first. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  “It’s a big coincidence.”

  Eric fitted the last of the manuscript onto the rings and snapped them closed. “Your dad—he liked me, didn’t he?”

  “Howard is exceptionally hard to read,” Marianne said. “He is kind of a hands-off parent. But yes, I think he liked you.”

  “I always assumed that was what did me in.” He smiled as he said it—kindly, forgivingly—then said, “It’s okay, Marianne. I’m not mad anymore.”

  She looked at him.

  “We’re better as friends. I get it now. It took me a while, even here—when we first got here, I wondered if we could, you know. But I get it now.” He shook his head, as if chiding that foolish, romantic self, and Marianne felt not pain but breathless surprise, as if she’d been lightly stomach-punched. “You should go somewhere, really. Work on your book. You should get out of here before the next session.”

  Eric had his own trip planned, a tour of GWGW’s campuses with Regina, and although he kept calling it a business trip, Marianne wondered. Would their paths cross with the Tour of Life? With Ruth? She’d tried not to think about the long car ride to Georgia, the dinners out, the hotel rooms—surely they’d have two rooms—side by side, or even adjoining, in some middling chain. (She’s a virgin, Eric had recently confided to Marianne. Not a virgin-virgin, he’d clarified, when she asked how that was possible, but the born-again kind.)

  “No, I’ll stay,” Marianne said. Perhaps demonstrating her dedication would show him that she was different from the girl she’d been in New York. Responsible. Worthy. “Someone has to stay. Someone has to manage all the media attention.” She set the article on the small table near the door, but he did not stop to read it.

  Ruth did not return Marianne’s call, but sent a text instead. Very busy preparing for this trip! Will call soon! When Marianne texted back—Are you coming here?—she got an auto reply, which she didn’t know was possible in a text. Maybe her sister was writing to make it look like an auto reply? Ruth Boyette is unavailable at the moment but will be back with you soon. Peace and Blessings!

  There were other notices in her Google Alerts—several of the students were bloggers, and the Ranch was mentioned on their various platforms, in generally flattering terms, its name and website passed around like a recommendation for a dentist or a veterinarian. There was also an article about faith and education, and a brief mention in a national news piece about online learning. After Eric posted something on the NYU listserv, Marianne got some emails from her old classmates. The tone of the emails was jokey and teasing—So you finally did it! Have fun in the Bible Belt!—but a few people asked if she would keep them in mind for future openings, and attached their CVs.

  What really increased their profile, however, was a feature in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The article ran under a large photograph of the Ranch, which had been taken in a flat, ironic style, like a picture by Diane Arbus or William Eggleston. You could see the cracks in the foundation of the buildings, the weeds that persisted around the sculptures, which still looked naked somehow, despite their painted-on clothes. The wooden sign—Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch—looked slapdash and temporary instead of modest and unassuming. All that was missing were the students—their cheerful, dowdy clothing, their eager, note-taking postures. The article described the school’s structure and business model briefly, but most of the piece was an exposé of the Ranch’s connection to GWGW, noted as a “majority stakeholder” in the school. The writer mentioned complaints from GWGW students at other schools to the Better Business Bureau and a class-action lawsuit pending against the organization, brought by a group of sonography students, citing poor training and excessive fees, a breach of contract. GWGW had also contributed funding to a super PAC supporting a controversial amendment establishing the personhood of embryos. Marianne and Eric, named as the school’s founders, were referenced as “a pair of New York City writers.”

  Marianne sat on the steps outside her office, the newspaper bleeding ink onto her bare legs, and thought about what she should do. What did she think would happen when she decided to start the school—when she agreed to start the school, which was not even really her idea? Eric was on his tour of GWGW campuses, but Mark was likely in his office. She decided to Skype him on her GWGW-provided tablet, right there from the stoop.

  “You’re making too much of this,” he told her after she explained, holding up the photograph and reading from the article. “Any publicity is good publicity, you’ve got to remember that.”

  “Mark, our existing students will not be happy about this,” she said. “We’ve got to write a letter to them. Something.”

  “Are you kidding me? I bet they’ll love that—what was it?—personhood amendment. That’s an antiabortion stance. They’ll be all over that.”

  “It’s not just antiabortion, it’s antiscience, antiwoman. It declares that four cells is the same as you or me.”

  “I highly doubt that, Marianne.”

  “And not all of them would support it, Mark. I bet not even half of the students—”

  “Marianne, you can pretend that your students are as open-minded as you want, but we have all kinds of data on them. You want me to send it to you?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I’d rather you didn’t. This was not an issue before GWGW was involved,” she said. “They are a for-profit educational conglomerate, that’s what the article said.”

  “Right,” said Mark. “And are you enjoying that bonus? Are you happy you can pay your teachers, are you happy we’re not already going bankrupt?”

  “I’m not enjoying my bonus,” Marianne said. She held up the tablet and pointed it at the office, the gardens, the empty parking lot. “I am holed up here reading manuscripts, and trying to figure out how this article is not a bad sign about our relationship with an organization I was not crazy about in the first place. How does Frances feel about it?”

  “Who?”

  “Frances, your great-aunt? Who I have never actually met in person. Who thought of this idea? And funded it?”

  “Frances is retired,” Mark said. “She’s on a fixed income. This school, Marianne, it’s her big chance. To have some security, a legacy. Don’t you want that for her?”

  “Well, of course,” Marianne said. It was never clear to her why the phrase fixed income implied hardship—it always sounded kind of luxurious, like something you could count on.

  “Don’t you want her to wind up in a nice home?”

  “I thought she was already in a nice home.”

  “Not if we bankrupt her! Not if we bleed her dry. She’s one fall away from getting booted to a Medicaid facility.”

  “I never said we should bleed her dry,” Marianne said quietly. “Did she have a fall?”

  “Marianne,” said Mark, leaning in to his computer screen. “You need to get out more. Go to St. Augustine, go to the Keys. Don’t do one of those Everglades tours—too many mosquitoes. Stay somewhere nice. They’ve got an orchid-flower massage and facial at the Naples Waldorf Astoria that you would love. You want me to send you some links?”

  Later that day, Regina called from the road to discuss the article and reassure Marianne that everything was fine.

  “There is nothing negative about the school or any of the instructors.” Regina’s telephone voice was so low, smooth, and controlled that Marianne had to strain to hear her. “They didn’t find a single student to say anything bad about the Ranch. Has anyone called you? Did you talk to anyone before the article came out? Even casually?”

  “No,” Marianne said. She thought suddenly of the exchange she’d had with Sophie, and Sophie’s warning that it wouldn’t be hard to figure out the Ranch’s funders. But would Sophie contact the newspaper? Marianne thought of Sophie’s bumper stickers, the things she’d said in passing about Bible bangers. “I didn’t talk to anyon
e.”

  “Good,” said Regina. “Very few people read the newspaper, after all. Though if they do call you, please refer them to me. Is that okay with you, Marianne?”

  “I guess that would be appropriate,” she said. “Since most of the suspicious details are about GWGW.”

  “And you don’t remember talking to anyone about GWGW?” Regina asked. “Maybe call the landscapers. The photograph—”

  “Can you tell me about the personhood thing, Regina? I mean, what does that have to do with your schools? It’s not exactly an issue everyone agrees on.” Marianne hesitated to say where she stood on the idea that zygotes and embryos should have the same rights as people, but then a terrifying thought came to her mind. “Wait, our money didn’t go to that, did it?”

  Regina laughed lightly. “My dear, Genesis Ranch is not exactly contributing to our bottom line. It’s rather the other way around, so no—none of your revenue has influenced anything politically. However,” she continued, her voice quiet and smooth again, “the association with certain political causes does provide an advantage, financially and strategically.”

  “But we’re not that kind of school,” Marianne said. “We’re meant to be inspirational, not political. We never advertised any of this to our students. I don’t think they want to get mixed up in this.”

  Regina dismissed her concerns with a quick snort. Marianne could picture her smoothing back her perfect hair with glossy, candy-colored nails, or scrolling through spreadsheets on her tablet. “It’s not about the students, though it will help them in the long run,” Regina said. “Representative Tucker has an opportunity to do a lot for our campuses, and that means doing a lot for your students, and I promise you that they are deeply invested, also, in the sanctity of life. So it’s win-win. All around.”

  What was she talking about? Marianne asked to speak to Eric, but was told he was on a campus tour. He was taking notes, Regina said, about some of the features and upgrades they might like to have at the Ranch. She tried to imagine what those would be—internet that didn’t cut out with every gulf breeze, perhaps video screens in the classrooms, a new copier and new furniture. A bigger library—it would be nice to have a library instead of the motley collection of weatherworn paperbacks that appeared on and disappeared from the low shelves beneath the window in the dining hall.

  But those things weren’t necessary. They were no more the school than the hand-painted sign, so plaintive and homely in the newspaper photograph, was an invitation to be inspired. Between Marianne’s first and second years at NYU, much of their department had been renovated to look like the banquet room of a Four Seasons—with ornate crown moldings, patterned carpets, arched energy-efficient windows that looked out onto University Place. But her professor, the director of the program, had held on to an office in an older wing. There were exposed, clanking heating pipes, a drafty single-paned window, dingy walls covered with poems, photographs, postcards advertising her students’ upcoming books. It always smelled of black tea and orange rinds. When Marianne thought of school—when she allowed herself to go back to a time when her own writing career and adult life seemed possible, even promising—that was where she took herself.

  “Would you like me to pass on a message to Eric?” asked Regina.

  “Tell him to call me.” It surprised her how much it hurt to hear Regina calling Eric by name.

  Marianne spent the rest of the day googling Tad Tucker, whose political career she had followed in the pages of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and whose voice she knew through the popular radio show Talking to Tad, which she sometimes listened to in the car. Elected two years ago as a state representative, Tucker had once been a college baseball star, a slugger who washed out in the minor leagues, and had emerged from a muddled business career that sought to capitalize on his waning regional fame. Marianne found references to fast food franchises, batting cage operations, and a for-profit scared-straight-style boys’ camp, but he was most known through the radio show. Now that he was a politician, he was officially retired from radio, but he was a guest host so frequently that they’d kept the name. He railed against his opponents, promoted his unconstitutional legislative bills—including fetal personhood—and defended the records of his businesses, which had become the targets, he claimed, of trial lawyers attempting to pay him back for his support of tort reform. On talktotad.net, Marianne listened to clips from the show. The most popular, with more than three hundred thousand views, involved a civil lawsuit brought against one of his batting cage operations. “I mean, let’s get real!” the clip began, in Tad’s outraged southern drawl. “A kid gets beaned in a batting cage and we gotta get lawyers litigating? What’s next? Support groups for spelling bee losers? Are we gonna timidly turn to touch football? I’ll tell you the same thing I told the family that brought the suit, which is that kid is welcome—free of charge—to attend my Time for Toughness boot camp.”

  Marianne appreciated Tad’s commitment to alliteration, and marveled at the way he used one misfortune to promote another of his businesses, but a quick follow-up search revealed more damning details. The beaned child had been severely concussed, and the trial lawyers found that neither the helmets provided nor the pitching machines met federal safety regulations. Doctors claimed that the child might have brain damage and would need months of physical therapy; in any case, he was in no shape for a Time for Toughness camp, and the family had settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

  Tad had recently achieved some national notice through his vigorous pursuit of antiabortion and school reform bills. He opposed abortion in all cases, and through his personhood bill wanted to officially define life as beginning at conception. He also claimed that Florida’s public education system, from kindergarten through university, was wasteful, in-effective, and rife with liberals (who else would accept such low pay but liberals? he radio-ranted). It did not take Marianne long to find out why GWGW was interested in his cause. He wanted to privatize the state’s community colleges, making more funding available to training and vocational schools run by private companies. By backing his personhood efforts—investing millions in ad buys and billboards and robocalls and direct mail—GWGW would later ensure a steadier stream of paying high school graduates for its Florida campuses.

  But Marianne thought Regina was wrong when she said that the students would not be bothered by the politicizing of their campus. They would see right through Regina’s plans and would take a stand for the school they loved—for the rickety folding chairs and long readings, for poetry under the trees and tai chi on the beach. Surely she could count on them for that much.

  She logged on to Facebook to check her Ranch feed and saw nothing out of the ordinary—not yet. Davonte had posted a bathroom shot of his scale along with “27 LBS!!!” and had received a flurry of “likes” and positive comments. Janine had sent messages of encouragement to a few classmates. Manfred had made a few cryptic comments about a visit to his mother. Marianne searched for “Tad Tucker,” and could see that several students “liked” him—some had even posted to his wall, but Marianne could not see their comments unless she “liked” him as well. Perhaps they were arguing with him, or maybe they lived in his district and needed to plea for some sort of assistance or pet project—

  Oops. Hovering over his page on her tablet, Marianne let her finger slip, and now she liked him too.

  Horse trading, Eric called it, when he finally called her back. He explained what she had already figured out—that GWGW had calculated that by supporting personhood today, they would feed funding and students to their cosmetology, medical billing, prelaw, and predentistry schools tomorrow. Shifting funds away from public community colleges gave GWGW a huge advantage in recruitment, Eric said, as their schools accepted anyone with a pulse and a student loan.

  “I thought nonprofits couldn’t donate to political campaigns.”

  “They’re not going to donate to his campaign. They’re going to donate five million dollars to an o
utside group that raises public awareness about social issues, not candidates. They’re going to pour it into TV ads, right before the election.”

  “What I am having trouble understanding is how you can so calmly explain it to me, like there’s nothing wrong with—”

  “I didn’t say I agreed, Marianne. I don’t agree. Tad Tucker is a pious scumbag and a dirty crook. Whatever advantages GWGW provides, it doesn’t make up for association with this guy.”

  “I mean, embryonic personhood!” Marianne said. “It’s not even remotely constitutional. It goes against everything I believe in. And de-funding community colleges? I didn’t mean for a school we started to take things away from anyone.”

  “Money from Christians,” Eric said quietly. “I think you said you wanted to take that away from them.”

  “That was different—that was a joke! And you put me up to it.”

  But he was right. They had cynically and deceptively created these jobs for themselves, almost a year ago, just as GWGW was cynically investing in issues that would lead to better profits. The only difference was the scale of their success.

  “Look,” Eric said. “I’m talking to the GWGW people, and then I’m talking to Mark. If they won’t dissociate themselves from Tucker, I’m getting us out of this. I’ll be back by the weekend, and we can figure it all out then. Okay?”

  “But your aunt—”

  “Frances? What about her?”

  “Mark said something about a fall. Did she fall?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “He said she was one fall away from a Medicare facility—or Medicaid? Basically he said she was poor and old, or about to be poor and old.”

  Eric laughed softly—at her? At his aunt and her impending homelessness? Marianne could feel her blood pressure spiking. “Mark just worries about money, basically it’s all he thinks about. He wants to make sure she’s taken care of in her old age. But she wouldn’t want this. Not Tad Tucker. I’ll take care of it, okay? I promise.”