The Gulf

by Belle Boggs

  Occult themes are also popular.

  Know your market. Who reads the type of book you are writing?

  Sell, sell, sell!

  Get it? typed Manfred. It spells e-books.

  Yes, Janine typed back. The bold letters help.

  I’m gonna ask a question now, Manfred wrote.

  “Time for one or two more questions,” Catherine was saying. “About e-books and marketing. Only those subjects.”

  Ms. Powell, can you tell us a little about the marketing of poetry? I believe a third of us here are poets.

  She mouthed Manfred’s question, then said brightly, “Good question! Poetry is a little harder because it doesn’t tell the same story—that’s not how we think of poetry, anyway, but when you think about it, poetry can tell a story, and that story is the story of your life. For example, think of that little boy with cancer! His book was a best seller and it raised, um, a lot of money for other children with cancer! Think about him when you are down about your work and its marketability. Inspiring! Wonderful questions, everyone—it was so great to be with you today. Please don’t forget to complete the brief survey at the end.”

  She had already signed off by the time Janine finished typing and proofing her only question:

  What if you don’t have cancer? What if what you have to say is not about yourself, but about everyone? What if you are signaling through the flames?

  Janine had almost finished the questionnaire—nearly as long and tiresome as the webinar itself—when Beth came into the sunroom with her laptop. Today had not been a workday, and all day she had worn a cropped pink camisole and a thin pair of sweatpants that rode her hipbones. When it was time for bed, she would change into something else, but that did not mean, in her mother’s eyes, that she had not spent the day in pajamas.

  “Look,” she said, and opened the laptop so that Janine could see. “Isn’t that your school?”

  Beth, in her peripatetic weather searching, had stumbled upon on a local Sarasota news channel’s site; the screen was frozen on an image of the Ranch. Janine could see the small wooden sign—Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch—and the familiar white stucco buildings framed behind gnarled live oak limbs.

  “What in the world?” Janine said, using an expression of her mother’s that sometimes surprised her more than the event she was exclaiming over.

  “Watch,” Beth said, clicking the Play button.

  The camera cut from the image of the Ranch to a shot of a group of people, mostly women, holding protest signs and chanting.

  “We’re here at the Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch, a low-residency writing retreat that opened in March. In a few days the Ranch will welcome back its first class of students for a second round of classes. But new questions have arisen over some of the school’s political affiliations,” said the reporter.

  “Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch receives funding from God’s World God’s Word, a network of for-profit schools that has not only received numerous complaints from the Better Business Bureau,” said one of the protesters. “It has also funded a media blitz for a controversial amendment to the state’s constitution declaring the personhood of embryos. That’s why we’re protesting. We’re having a day of action against these for-profit schools and their nefarious and secretive political fund-raising.”

  Janine had seen the commercials, narrated by an urgent and pained female voice, and had received and recycled stacks of glossy postcards. She voted pro-life, would likely vote for this bill—so why did the news story make her heart race? The camera cut to a wide shot of the protesters, then back to the reporter. “The school declined to comment, but we are also joined tonight by Representative Tad Tucker, the sponsor of the controversial personhood amendment.”

  “Hey,” Beth said. “Isn’t that the guy Dad used to listen to on the radio?”

  Janine nodded and held a finger to her lips.

  “Hi y’all,” Tad Tucker said; his twangy voice was familiar from long rides in Rick’s truck, but Janine wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him in person. In his rumpled gray suit, he towered over the petite reporter, and the camera caught the sheen of sweat on his smooth brow. “I don’t have any fancy signs or slogans, I just wanted to come down to say that I have not received a dime from the Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch but I admire, very much, what they do. This is a school for Christian writers to work in a nonjudgmental environment, and I feel like the people behind me, what they are about is an assault on our Christian values and, yes, on our freedom of speech. Why, the students here are so talented. I read a poem today on the school’s website—that’s genesis-writing-ranch-dot-com—about Terri Schiavo, God bless her soul, that brought tears to my eyes.

  “That’s why I’m encouraging our own day of action. Friends, I’m no poet, but I signed up today for a workshop at the school, and I hope you will do the same. This can be our day of action, too—supporting freedom of speech and independent thought.”

  The clip stopped there, and Beth opened a new window and typed in the web address for Genesis Ranch. There, on the front page, was Janine’s poem, right next to her endorsement of the school.

  “Cool,” Beth said. “Mom, you’re published.”

  “Oh my stars,” Janine said. That was another of her mother’s expressions. She felt faint, the way she had when she learned about the woman who had been married to Terri Schiavo’s doctor. She pressed her knuckles into her eye sockets and drew a long breath. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Talking to Tad loves you!” Beth said. “This is huge. Dad will be excited. I’m going to link to your poem on Facebook, okay?”

  Janine didn’t answer. She was thinking about the argument that had started during the webinar, and the starkness of her own poem, alone on the Ranch’s website. There had not been any other work. Had the other students objected? And what about the personhood debate? Janine was pro-life, but Patty Connor, one of the memoirists—a minister’s wife—had posted that she opposed the amendment for medical reasons. If the amendment passed, according to Patty, she might not be able to have children.

  “Mom?” Beth said. “Is that okay?”

  “Okay,” Janine said weakly. “I guess it’s okay.”

  Her family toasted her with their iced tea glasses at dinner. “To Mom,” said Beth. “For standing up for her school.”

  “And standing up for life,” Christine added.

  “I’m proud of you, honey,” said Rick. “I heard some talk about it on the radio, even.”

  “On the radio?” Janine asked.

  “It’s a whole movement, trying to get people to sign up for classes. They’re calling it a Day of Inspiration.”

  Janine was incredulous. “But my class is full. There’s no room—”

  “One-day classes, I think they said. Or internet classes? I heard it on the radio.”

  “It’s all over Facebook, too,” said Christine. “You’re going viral.”

  “Going viral,” Janine repeated. She knew what it meant, but the phrase sounded unpleasant, like a tropical disease. She felt a little ill, in fact—tired and achy, her eyes stinging with exhaustion. Janine had spent the afternoon reading links that Patty Connor posted about embryonic personhood, an idea that went way back to the very day of conception to establish the beginning of life. She’d looked at microscopic images of eight- and sixteen-celled embryos and watched a film of the beautiful, translucent cells dividing and dividing. It was amazing to think that every life began that way, that Beth and Christine, even Janine and Rick, had once been tiny clusters of cells, floating unsuspected or hoped-for inside their mothers. The embryo on her screen was certainly alive, but it reminded her of a flower or a blackberry more than a baby—something singular and unique, but also mysterious and fragile. She wasn’t sure how she felt, politically, about the rights of zygotes (especially considering poor Patty Connor), but she’d written a poem, her first in weeks, and had wept with relief when it was done.


  “What if I went with her?” Beth was saying now. “There’s a tropical storm forming, and if it develops, it has a possibility of landfall between Naples and Tampa. If nothing else, I could get some footage of the controversy. It would be a great opportunity.”

  She pulled out her smartphone—another graduation gift—to show Janine an image of the gathering storm: a whorl of white, out in the Caribbean. Janine did not understand how this counted as a reason to go.

  “You’ll have to ask your mother about that one,” said Rick.

  Beth looked at her pleadingly.

  “Wouldn’t Channel 6 miss you? What about school?”

  “Mom,” Beth said. “They want me to develop my talents. They want me to succeed.” She said this reproachfully—as if her mother had ever been on some other side! As if she hadn’t sacrificed and sacrificed so her girls could succeed. Looking at her two daughters, Janine had the sudden, horrible thought that perhaps a human fascination with zygotes came from their sense of endless, mute possibility, obediently dividing and dividing. This one won’t argue, wheedle, act recklessly.

  “I wish I could go,” said Chrissy.

  “Yes! Let’s all go!” Janine said, standing with her plate, though she hadn’t eaten a thing. “Let’s all drive straight into a hurricane, straight into hell! Great idea!”

  “Honey,” said Rick, though he didn’t get up.

  Scraping ratatouille and chicken into the trash, she heard her younger daughter explaining to him: “Don’t worry, Dad. Poetry just makes Mom a little crazy.”

  15

  It looked like good news, at first.

  The protesters were gone, after their hours of sign waving and tedious chanting. Marianne had come up with a few choice chants herself, but had not had the opportunity to share them. The Channel 13 News van had come and gone, and in the wake of the controversy the Ranch’s website received a record number of hits. The low-residency application was downloaded more than four hundred times in a single day, and already the online classes and seminars Marianne had considered canceling for poor enrollment were overflowing.

  Up since dawn, Marianne had it all worked out. These people—these talk radio listeners, these fetal champions, these Tad Tucker minions—would be the Christians she would fleece. She got out a calculator and did some quick sums, pacing her office with a cup of strong coffee while she considered the ramifications of better cash flow. With their money in hand, she could pay back everything they’d borrowed from GWGW and become independent again. They could build a real library and pay Lorraine and Tom tidy bonuses to make up for any distasteful associations. Maybe she could pay off her own student loans.

  “What do you think about scholarships?” she asked Eric, when he called to apologize for his absence. He explained, without answering, that he’d finally finished the first half of Davonte’s manuscript, and they were awaiting word from publishers. There was talk of an auction, a six-figure advance.

  “Wow, six figures.” Marianne blew into the phone, trying to whistle. She did not ask how much of the advance would go to Eric, but she imagined that it would be more than his own two-book deal. “When are you coming back to the Ranch? And what do you think about the scholarship idea?”

  “Merit or need-based?”

  “Both? One of each? What about the diversity fellowships we talked about?”

  Eric cautioned her: she’d been overly optimistic about their numbers before, and there was still a lot of uncertainty. Who knew if the people who downloaded the applications would apply, or if the rate of applications would continue? Plus they’d have to hire someone to read them all, unless she wanted to go blind or crazy doing it herself.

  “There’s a question on the application—how did you hear about us?” Marianne pointed out. “I’ll just look at that.”

  “And throw them out?” Eric said. She didn’t answer. “There’s one more thing. Tad Tucker, the man himself, plans to take a class.”

  “Tell him to get in line, then,” she said. “All the webinars and online classes are full. Or did he already register?”

  “That’s just it,” Eric said. “He doesn’t want to take an online class. He wants to join a workshop, he wants to come in person.”

  “You’re not asking me to give that man an advantage, are you?” Marianne was not sure she could say “Tad Tucker” without adding “that fucker.” And automatic admission certainly would not be fair to the other Day of Inspiration applicants, destined for the paper shredder.

  “The thing is, he wants to start right away,” Eric said. “He wants to come for this session, actually, with the other students.”

  “He wants to get here on Monday?”

  “Not Monday, actually. He says he can come on Wednesday.”

  “Well, that’s impossible. The classes are full. Plus classes start Monday, not Wednesday.”

  “Not impossible,” Eric said judiciously. “My workshop is smaller than the others. He wants to do fiction.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” said Marianne. “He has plenty of experience doing fiction. More than you, even!” When Eric didn’t respond, she argued, “Your classroom is tiny. Also, there is the question of balance and community and fairness. And the fact that classes start Monday. No, it is impossible.” She sipped her coffee.

  “It isn’t impossible, Marianne. It’s done. He’s coming, he’s registered. It was part of the deal.”

  “Part of what deal?”

  “The deal you’re so excited about—signing up new students, getting out from under GWGW’s … influence,” he said. Then, more firmly: “It’s done, Marianne. I will email my students. I will teach him. I will handle it. It’s not your concern.”

  Never in the history of their relationship had Eric been so decisive, so assertive. Even his proposal, she remembered, had been pleading—please say yes—and as then, Marianne was too taken aback to argue with him.

  “Where are you now?”

  “Orlando,” he said, without pleasure. “At the School of Hospitality and Travel Services. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” she said, but Eric had already hung up. She was about to dial him back when Davonte came in, breathless, but not from a run. He was still wearing his pajamas, loose drawstring pants printed with cartoon penguins and a thin gray tank that showed off his newly defined delts. “Have you seen the Weather Channel today? Have you read the paper yet, Marianne?”

  “Tad Tucker was on the Weather Channel?”

  “Who’s Tad Tucker?” he said. “I’m talking about the storm. Way out there, but look.” He opened a weather map on Marianne’s computer and clicked through the spaghetti model possibilities: to New Orleans, to Pensacola, to Tampa. One of them had the storm headed straight for Sarasota. “I’m just glad I got my book done,” he said, as if the storm’s arrival were a sure thing.

  Maybe it was the smugness of his tone, the fact that he was wearing pajamas midmorning, or the definition of his gleaming deltoids, but Marianne exploded.

  “Davonte, your book is not done! It isn’t done, and you didn’t get it done, anyway. You had someone else write it for you, which is lazy and dishonest, not to mention a complete waste of the education we are supposedly providing you. The storm is not coming here. Okay? It’s not!”

  He turned around and blinked, the color rising in his cheeks as if she’d slapped him. She would have liked to slap him, or throw water in his face, or do something else dramatic and hurtful.

  “Just thought you’d want to know,” he said, closing down the screen and getting up.

  “Well, I don’t!” Marianne called after him. “I don’t want to know!”

  He left the door open behind him. Outside it was hot and still, the sky a flat, cloudless blue. Marianne slammed the door shut and sat down at her chair, still warm from Davonte’s body. Her email was filled with notifications of new webinar registrations, a few dozen questions from prospective and current students. So many of the subject lines were accompanied
by multiple question marks, or the emails themselves marked urgent, that she could not imagine sorting through each confusion, each urgency. There was one from Janine Gray (subject line: POEM?), and Marianne hovered her cursor over the email, but did not click to open it.

  16

  Janine stood at the check-in table, scanning the list of readings and seminars for something that might be of interest to her daughter. It was the first day of their second session, and all kinds of new seminars were now offered during the afternoon hours they used to spend writing, swimming, or playing croquet. There would be a class tomorrow on “Optimizing the Internet Marketing Experience for Artists” and one on “Expanding Your Circle of Influence.” In the days that followed, there would be “Publicity Strategies for the Christian Marketplace,” “Capitalizing on Current Events,” “Cross-Promotional Tie-Ins,” “Giving Your Work Away,” and even “Film and Television for Christian Writers.” Janine went down the list, starring the ones she thought Beth would like. She starred almost all of them.

  The day was cloudless and hot, no sign of a storm, but Beth was back in their darkened shared room, sulkily refreshing her internet weather maps and jotting numbers in a notebook. Janine hadn’t expected the Ranch’s administrators to agree to Beth’s visit. She kept asking, Are you sure it won’t be any trouble?, hoping to suggest that it would be. But Marianne had sounded distracted, and she probably was, by the all the attention the school had received. Janine had been distracted herself by the publication of her poem—whenever she got near a computer, she found herself checking to see that her work was still there. Someone had posted it to the Ranch’s Facebook page as well, and that was an even more compelling place to visit—every time Janine looked, someone else had “liked” or “shared” it. Janine felt sheepish about all of this, and had even emailed Marianne to ask if someone else’s work might be highlighted instead, but she had not received a response. Probably Marianne was too busy, getting ready for all of these seminars. Handing over Janine’s familiar key—room 7B—she looked as if she had not slept in days.