Etta tried to breathe despite the tightness in her chest. She should be the one asking for help. Olivia had already won a contest. The students wrote a play during their first month at the academy, and the resident authors chose the best one to be produced for the Autumnal Equinox celebration. Olivia’s play would be performed for the entire academy in a couple of nights. Etta, on the other hand, could barely thread two sentences together lately. She’d always dreamed of writing something that didn’t help people escape reality, but held it up to the light and exposed the rawness and wonder of it in a way no one ever had.
But her bag contained the drivel she’d completed since she’d arrived at the academy—one awful play, two unfinished short stories, and the start of a very bad novel. None of it was all that interesting or marketable. The more she tried to write about important things, the more drab and insular her work became. Etta imagined all of it in the flames, the pages curling and blackening—the embers rising into the heavens.
* * *
Clamor resounded in the dining hall—conversation, laughter, glasses clinking, silverware scraping against porcelain. Etta made a beeline for her table. Vincent Buchanan had encouraged students to mix and mingle in the dining hall. As the brochure for the academy reported, meals allowed the novice writers to chat with literary luminaries and fellow apprentices. However, within a week, the students had formed cliques and started eating with the same people. Most of the resident and visiting authors rotated, sitting with different students at each meal.
Etta slid into her seat next to Poppy Everson and tried to mask her disappointment that Petra Atwell, everyone’s least favorite resident author and literary luminary, sat across the table next to Jordan complaining about her tomato bisque.
Petra held up a piece of her sourdough bread. “Where’s the damn mayo? What is this, Weight Watchers?”
Etta managed a smile and turned to Jordan. “Where’s Liv?”
Etta’s question evaporated into a burst of commotion at a nearby table. She bit into her turkey sandwich, and the sourdough melted into the roof of her mouth.
“Ms. Atwell, can I ask you a question?” Poppy asked.
“As long as it’s not my age.” Petra tapped her fingernails against her chin. “Or anything about marriage, divorce, money, or sex.”
Poppy giggled.
Etta set down her sandwich and pulled her soup toward her. A heart. The chef had drizzled the white cream on her tomato bisque in the distinct form of a heart. Etta smiled and glanced at the stainless steel door that led to the kitchen. She plucked her spoon off the table.
“Does your dad still speak to you?” Poppy asked.
Etta dropped her spoon with a clank.
Petra Atwell’s 1990 memoir Wintersong had shot to the top of the bestseller list, not exactly for its literary qualities. Petra had revealed the details of an incestuous relationship she’d had with her father during her teenage years. Gordon Atwell was a newly elected congressman in the United States House of Representatives when his daughter’s tell-all hit the bookstores. The six-foot-five, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound representative stepped down from Congress, but only after falling to his knees in a press conference and bellowing that his daughter was a temptress. Neither of Petra’s two subsequent memoirs had garnered the same attention as Wintersong.
Etta glanced at Jordan, sure he’d be shocked by Poppy’s brazenness. But Jordan was gazing into the distance. Had he even heard Poppy’s question?
Petra jabbed a burgundy-painted fingernail in Poppy’s direction. “I’ll tell you something about men. Whether it’s your father, your lover, or your damned minister: they all think they’re smarter than you until you prove them wrong. You can either write, or you can keep everyone happy. You can’t do both.” Petra fixed her dark eyes on Etta. “Isn’t that right, Loretta?”
“It’s Etta.”
Petra didn’t break her gaze.
“My name. It’s Etta.”
“Oh. Well, Etta, you can either write or you can please people. You can’t do both. Isn’t that so?”
Poppy raised one of her pencil-thin eyebrows and bit her bottom lip.
“I guess so,” Etta murmured, shifting in her chair. She ladled a spoonful of soup into her mouth. When she looked up, Petra was thankfully distracted, picking the lettuce from her sandwich. For the first time, Etta wondered if the resident author might be attractive beneath her caked-on foundation and hair-sprayed, black-dyed bouffant, but she shifted her gaze away at the risk that the resident author might want to continue their conversation.
That’s when she saw what Jordan was so fixated on.
Everyone called the long rectangular table across the west wall “Poet’s Row,” because the ten aspiring poets at the academy sat there gabbling about climbing rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter, quatrains, sestinas, polysyndeton, and other topics that made Etta want to take a nap.
There sat Olivia.
Jordan’s girlfriend was huddled at the end of the table next to Robert North. Less than an inch of space separated their cheeks.
Chapter Three
Later that afternoon, Etta slid into her seat gripping her critique of Chase Quinn’s story, still warm from the laser printer. She admired her first sentence: “Ancient Soldier is a tale about torture. Unfortunately after a riveting opening, it rambles, becoming torturous to read.” Not bad for a critique she’d dashed off over lunch.
Their first week at the academy, the students had gotten a week-long intensive in criticism. A famous New Yorker critic visited and made a plea for tough love in the literary community. He called on the students to “resurrect the disappearing art of professional criticism.” At first Etta had struggled to say anything unfavorable—she’d been on the other side too many times—but she’d noticed a heightened ability to help others improve their work lately. Critiques came easily, snappy sentences zipping onto the page.
The classroom still buzzed with students talking. Walker Ryan was nowhere to be seen. The author’s Monday critique sessions dissecting plot and story structure were her favorites. He liked to stop talking mid-sentence, point to a student, and say, “Tell me a story.” If the student managed to spin a coherent tale, Walker boomed, “See, that’s all it takes. A beginning, a middle, and an end.” When Walker was in the room, Etta almost believed it was that easy, and once it had been. Lately, however . . .
Etta glanced toward the door just as Olivia raced through. Her angular cheekbones were flushed a deep red. She slid into her seat at the back of the room, leaned over, and shuffled through her bag.
“Forgive me for my tardiness.” Robert North appeared in the doorway a second later. “I’ll be filling Mr. Ryan’s shoes this afternoon.”
The visiting author strolled to the front of the room and dropped his soft leather briefcase on the oversized oak desk. He frowned. “Trying to in any case. The man has monster feet.” He spread his hands wide in front of him, exaggerating the size of Walker’s feet. A murmur of laughter rippled across the room. Robert North dropped his hands. “Seriously, he’s a giant. A literary giant.” The poet spun around and grabbed some papers from his bag.
“Ah, now, critiques. Isn’t this the paradox of the writing academy?” He strolled halfway down the center aisle then swirled around, striding back to the desk. “We force you—the writer, the creator, the inventor—to become your own foe, the smiling mortician of your own well being: a critic. We can only guess at the world’s oldest profession, but critiquing was invariably the second. The moment someone did anything, a detractor appeared to rip him to shreds.
“Back in 400 B.C., the Greek painter Zeuxis said, ‘Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.’ I wish someone would explain that to Truman Scott of Pen & Poet, who called Portages . . .” Robert North plucked a scrap of glossy paper from his bag, and held it up to the light. “‘North’s most self-absorbed and listless verse yet.’” He crumbled the paper and threw it down. “Only a worthless critic can discount a lifetime of work with
a blasé string of adjectives. Never forget, we are the noble ones. Reviewers cling like vultures to the peripheries of the literary world waiting for us to stumble so that they can tear at our flesh and lap up our blood. They are literary backwash.”
Robert North rifled through his briefcase again, this time producing a silver thermos. He unscrewed the cap and took a drink. His forehead glistened. He set the thermos on the edge of the desk. “So how are we to become what we hate the most? How are hopeful new writers to tear apart their classmates’ livelihood like that heartless bastard Truman Scott, who wields his pen like a machete? I’m afraid I don’t have any answers. But let’s get to it now, shall we? I suppose the residents have you form a circle or some New Age garbage like that. We’ll skip the pretence today and get right to the assault.” He picked up the papers from his desk and ran a hand through his waves. “‘Ancient Soldier’ by Chase Quinn. Who will read a critique before we divide into groups to mutilate this one?”
Etta slumped into her chair and stared at the papers on her desk, skimming the first sentence. Under the track lights, it looked considerably less constructive and more . . . savage. Why on earth had she been so cruel? It only got worse. She’d written that the story got “as tedious as spending a fortnight in a hanging cage,” and that the “climax was as predictable as death resulting from an executioner’s axe,” phrases that had sounded decidedly more clever when she’d written them.
Etta snuck a glance at Chase Quinn sitting a few desks away. A tuft of coppery hair fell across his forehead. He wiped his palms against his slacks and leaned forward in his seat, his brown eyes shifting behind his thick square-framed glasses.
Where was Walker Ryan? Until today the four resident authors had always overseen the afternoon workshops, which were dedicated to the critiquing process. The Buchanan Academy was notorious for the grueling weeklong formal critique. The resident authors represented four different forms of writing: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and screenplay. And the students focused on critiquing corresponding aspects of a story with each one. They dissected plot on Mondays with Walker, the novelist. They assessed character development with the memoirist Petra Atwell on Tuesdays. They analyzed dialogue with the playwright Winston Goss on Wednesdays. And they scrutinized language with the poet Opal Waters on Thursdays. On Fridays, the resident authors conducted the afternoon workshop together, and the students assessed the merits of a story in its entirety.
“Come on now, it may be a sadistic exercise.” Robert North strode down the center aisle. “But you’re joining the literary community. When you’re not writing, you’ll be criticizing other writers. Just ask Truman Scott, who incidentally was once a classmate of mine in this very room. Yes, take a look around. Your enemy may be sitting next to you. Of course, with friends in this business, who needs enemies?” Robert North’s voice faded, and his blue gaze went to the back of the room again.
Etta glanced over her shoulder, and a chill zipped up her spine. Robert North and Olivia were staring at each other, and Olivia’s dark eyes were glossy and bloodshot, her mouth curling down at the corners.
“Now will you kindly read your critique for us … what’s your name?” Etta swirled around and exhaled when she saw that Robert North was pointing at Pari Daswani, not her. Pari bounced to her feet and said her name for Robert North, the words rolling off her tongue in her Indian accent. The class had critiqued Pari’s short story a few weeks before. It was set in New Delhi, and Etta’s classmates had called it exotic and alluring, adjectives Etta was certain no one would ever use to describe her prose. Pari glided to the front of the room, her yellow and red printed skirt swishing behind her.
Etta flinched, and it took her several seconds to register that the door at the back of the classroom had slammed shut. She spun around. Olivia’s desk was empty.
When the workshop ended, Etta stuffed Chase’s critique in her notebook. Perhaps she would revise some of her more pointed remarks and give it to him during the evening mandatory writing session.
“Isn’t that for me?”
Chase stood over her. His pale, freckled fingers reached toward Etta’s notebook, and a messy pile of critiques stuck out from under his other arm.
“Oh right.” Etta retrieved her critique and handed it over, averting her eyes from Chase’s. Maybe he’d appreciate her honesty.
She slipped past a group of students talking in the doorway, hurried down the hallway past the framed oil portrait of Vincent Buchanan, and jogged down the spiral stairs. It was her favorite time of the day—the three hours Vincent Buchanan had appointed as “unstructured time,” He’d encouraged the students to fill it with non-writing activities. The author had recommended that they spend at least part of it doing some form of physical exercise: walking along the nature trails near the lodge, playing tennis or badminton, working in the organic vegetable gardens, tending the orchids in the greenhouse. For the rest he recommended a non-literary creative activity. Some students drew, painted, worked with clay, and did other handicrafts in the art studio on the lower level of the Lodge. A few women knitted on the couches in the great room several days a week. Other students practiced musical instruments or sung in the old stables, which had been converted into a soundproof music studio years before. A dozen students spent their unstructured time in the theater rehearsing Olivia’s play, which would be part of the autumnal equinox festivities on Wednesday.
“Loretta.” The voice was shrill. Etta halted and gripped the handrail even though her foot was hovering above the last step.
“Did I scare you?” Petra Atwell sat on one of the couches, her dark eyes reflecting the fire. She held a paperback in one hand and a mug in the other. Etta stepped off the stairs. “No. It’s just, I told you, that’s not my name.”
“Well it certainly gets your attention.” Petra sipped from the mug. It looked out of place in her manicured hand—misshapen with a lopsided handle, like a child had made it. “I asked that Texan for a shot of Irish whiskey. I think he used a thimble.” Petra’s laugh sounded like two pieces of sandpaper scraping against each other. “Etta’s not short for anything? Did your mother stammer? Sounds like a stutter, not a name.”
Etta forced a tight smile and started toward the entryway.
“Don’t tell me you’re stupid enough to go on one of your little excursions today. Fog like this, you’re liable to vanish out there.”
Etta turned around. “How did you know?” She paused. She was going to ask Petra how she knew that Etta went running during her unstructured time. But it wasn’t as though Etta’s runs were a secret, even if she usually steered toward the lesser-traveled trails to the west of the Lodge to avoid seeing anyone.
“You’d be surprised at all the things you know when you pay attention.” Petra rested the mug and the paperback on the arm of the couch and examined her fingernails. “Like your friend sitting with the poets today.” Another gravelly laugh. “She a Robert North fan?”
Etta glanced toward the door. “He’s helping her with a story.”
Petra’s laugh was louder this time. She ran a hand along her stiff curls, which didn’t budge beneath her fingers. “Robert doesn’t know shit about stories. The man writes lyric poems.”
Etta blinked. For some reason that fact hadn’t occurred to her before. “Well maybe he’s helping her with her word choice.” Etta avoided Petra’s gaze, annoyed at how defensive her own voice sounded.
“Yes, well, I suppose she wouldn’t be the first girl Robert helped with word choice. Frankly, I’m not sure it would be wise to take his advice.”
“He writes beautiful poems,” Etta said and then blushed, realizing Petra wasn’t talking about writing.
“You should tell your friend to be careful.” Petra lifted the paperback to block her face.
Heat flooded from Etta’s body. Swirling red rose border. Gothic typeface. A half-clad, red-haired model. It’s the last place Etta had imagined she’d see a Courtesan romance. At least she didn’t recognize the cove
r art. She twirled around, made a beeline for the door, and pushed her way outside.
An ocean of fog swam before her.
Etta edged down the porch steps. She glimpsed a movement in front of her and halted.
“Is someone there?” The fog swallowed her voice.
She glanced behind her at the double doors to the lodge. She couldn’t bear the thought of another conversation with Petra. She took hesitant steps forward, the bark underfoot reassuring her that she was on the trail.
The fog silenced the usual forest symphony: bluebird and thrush songs, woodpeckers drumming their beaks against hollow trees, squirrels jetting through the undergrowth. Etta could only hear her own footsteps and her breath moving in and out.
She rounded the bend and stepped into the clearing. The fog thinned slightly, and she made out the women’s residences: two rows of ten small cabins facing each other. She jogged toward her cabin, digging in her pocket for the key.
Etta glimpsed the person sitting in the wooden chair next to the front door as she stepped onto the porch. She let out a sound halfway between a gasp and a scream and jumped backward even as she recognized him. She laughed. “Jeez Jordan, you scared me.”
His blonde hair fell across his face as he shifted forward in his chair.
“Was that you on the trail ahead of me?” Her voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched, and she eked out a laugh as she poked at the lock with her key. “Where’s Liv?”
“You tell me.”
“You okay?” Etta pushed the door open, flicked on the light, and sighed at the usual disarray. Olivia’s blankets and down comforter were twisted into a clump on the bed, her sweaters and jeans scattered in piles across the floor, her desk mounded with papers, empty soda cans, and a pair of socks. Etta stepped inside. “I’d invite you in, but you know the rules.” Etta laughed. The “Carnal Code” forbade male and female students from socializing alone in cabins, but the students universally ignored that stipulation.
The Garden of Dead Dreams Page 2