by Dan Josefson
He also did his best to prepare us to continue working once we graduated. One Tuesday he told us a kind of parable, about a man visiting family in Texas: The man went with his brother-in-law one evening to feed the cattle at the small ranch where the brother-in-law worked part-time. As the pickup turned into the parking lot, gravel crunching beneath its tires, the cattle began to head toward where the alfalfa hay was kept. Impressed, the visitor asked, “They’re pretty smart, then, the cows?” The brother-in-law thought for a moment, then said, “They’re smart enough to know that when I show up I’m going to feed them. But they’re not smart enough to wonder why I’m feeding them.” In that, Dave suggested, the cattle were like graduate students: they can think, but they don’t think things through.
So I was in school, writing about a school, and plotting, in both senses, an escape. From the Mojave Desert, I made it as far as the Black Sea coast, where I rented a furnished apartment from a woman I called Doamna Rodica. I wrote at the dining room table, surrounded by icons hanging on the walls and glass-fronted display cases filled with Doamna Rodica’s collection of ceramics from around the Eastern Bloc. When I wasn’t writing I’d wander through the old parts of town, past the statue of Ovid and down to the marina, or watch chess games in the park. Sometimes I’d see movies in a cavernous, mostly empty theater—Turkish movies, American movies, German movies, Romanian movies. Most evenings I stood on my small balcony, which overlooked a grape arbor, as the sky darkened and the sun set.
After I’d been in Romania six or seven months, the American military arrived, out of nowhere it seemed, thousands of troops. I’d see them in the restaurants or jogging on the beach. Most were stationed at the airport north of town or had taken over the pastel colored resort hotels on the seashore. They were there to prepare for and participate in the invasion of Iraq. I enjoyed getting to know the few soldiers and airmen I met, but remained as baffled by their sudden appearance as they did to find me in Constanta. Our mutual surprise wasn’t at all allayed by our smug SecDef’s observation that we were, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, in the New Europe.
Doamna Rodica would show up unannounced some mornings, to see how I was doing or to retrieve a frozen chicken from her icebox. It was her apartment I was living in—she had simply moved in with her daughter and grandchildren for a year to make some extra money by renting the place. In her shoes, I would probably have checked on me too. We did our best to make small talk. Once she told me that she had been waiting fifty years for the Americans to arrive. “And now here you are.” It was easier when I had the news on and we could simply watch TV and shake our heads. I remember us both standing slack-jawed as live reports were broadcast from a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, where 1,100 children and adults were being held hostage. My work was slowed somewhat by that rare gift, an idea for another novel. But little by little, in fits and starts, both books progressed, like two cars being driven across the country by one driver.
I returned to the States and to a series of short residencies on couches and in spare bedrooms, including a longer stay in the Berkshires taking care of a large, energetic poodle. The landscape was familiar, and inescapably literary. Edith Wharton’s house and gardens were nearby, as was Melville’s Arrowhead. And Mount Graylock wasn’t far away. Melville had called the mountain his sovereign lord and king, and there, Hawthorne saw through the darkness once the light of a burning kiln that would find its way into his story about Ethan Brand, “who had mused to such strange purpose, in days gone by.” And I found myself close to an odd school where, for a year and a half after graduating college. I had taught English and History and Math. My time at the school was the impetus and catalyst for the novel I was writing. I worked with increasing speed as I realized—with some exasperation and disbelief—that it still wasn’t done.
Caught in Brooklyn’s tractor beam, I moved to the city and wrote until my money ran out, then freelanced until the assignments dried up, and finally found another dubious gift, a day job. The morning commute and lunch break were novelties; this book eventually wound toward its end. I don’t know how much one’s immediate surroundings influence one’s work, or how much they should. Jean Rhys wrote about the Caribbean fifty years after she had left Dominica; Mark Twain wrote about the Mississippi in Hartford, CT. I don’t know how experience is transformed into memory, or memory into remembrance, although it’s a question that arises in this novel. It does seem to me that things impress themselves on my eye and mind more strongly as they’re disappearing. Outside the manager’s office at the apartment complex where I lived in Las Vegas, there were two parking spaces reserved for visitors. In front of each stood a sign that read “If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now.”
READING GROUP GUIDE
1. Early in the book, Benjamin quotes Aubrey as saying of the students, “They all stay except the ones that don’t.” Why do so many stay at Roaring Orchards when it seems so easy to leave? Why did Benjamin stay for so long? What makes him and Tidbit later decide to run away?
2. What words would you use to describe the therapy regimen at Roaring Orchards? Does it make sense? Do you think it benefits the students?
3. Benjamin often describes scenes that he could not have witnessed. How do you account for this?
4. How do the teachers and dorm parents feel about their roles at the school? To what degree do you think they are complicit in treatment that they disapprove of?
5. There are descriptions of many animals in the book, including deer, ducks, a caterpillar, a turkey, an owl, a cat, and Napoleon and Elba, the goat and pig at the Farm. What might be the significance of this?
6. How do things at the school change once Aubrey gets sick? Why does his illness have such an effect on the students and faculty?
7. Do parents play an important role in their children’s therapy regimen at Roaring Orchards? Do you think they should be more involved or less, or does their level of involvement seem appropriate?
8. Over the course of the book, some faculty members grow more critical of the school while others begin to embrace the school’s philosophy. For example, by the end Aaron has left while Ellie seems more committed than ever. What do you think accounts for this difference?
9. What is Benjamin’s attitude toward the school as he is looking back? Has his way of thinking changed since he was a student? Why does he return to the school years after having left?
10. In Aubrey’s monologue during the Cartoon Brunch, he chastises the faculty for laughing at the students. What part does humor play in the various relationships at the school? Who laughs at whom? Is Aubrey right in his criticism?
11. There are several inanimate representations of people or animals in the book: dolls, masks, and puppets. What purpose do these serve? What feeling do you get when they are described?
12. At several points, Tidbit dismisses the idea that Roaring Orchards is an exciting place. How does the form of the book, the pace and development of the plot, support her contention that “everyone thinks … they’re the world’s original badass but it’s just the same tired shit over and over”?