“The question is, if she didn’t write those stories, who did?” It was Pari again.
“Maybe it was Galen,” someone called out
Etta’s pen bounced onto the floor with a clatter.
“Aha! Yes, the mad man as our golden girl’s ventriloquist,” Mallory called out.
“All right now, that’s enough.” Hardin’s voice sounded fatigued, and Mallory’s laughter overwhelmed it.
Hillary Chambers’ slender arm floated into the air. “According to the “Academic Integrity Code” in the handbook, accusations of plagiarism must be written, and they must be followed by a formal hearing. Until those two things happen, this sort of speculation is improper.”
The director gazed at the back of the room, his eyes motionless behind his glasses. Etta expected him to say something, at least to acknowledge Hillary’s words with a nod. But it was Walker Ryan who spoke, resting his long fingers on the director’s shoulder.
“Let’s not waste all this imagination on chin-wagging. Let’s get down to the business of storytelling. Raise your hand if you’re one of the few poor souls who will be critiqued in the next month.” Etta hoisted her arm, as did three other students.
“Good, good. Listen, here’s the thing, it might not seem like it, but you’re the lucky ones. Your classmates know how to critique now. They know how to excavate your challenges.” He brought his hand down and hit the podium with it. “Now, I’ve had my suspicions that a few of you brought old work, stuff you’ve workshopped before. Listen, that’s not the point, the point is to challenge ourselves, to get better. We want fresh stories. Not something you wrote last year. Prove it’s current. Drop references, make me a character, make the lodge your setting, whatever. Show us it’s new. Remember, this is your debut, your unveiling. Make it count.” Walker waved his hand through the air again. “Why doesn’t someone tell us a story right now?” His index finger descended on Katie Randolph.
Katie’s eyelashes fluttered.
“You have five minutes to come up with one,” Walker said. “The rest of you, write a five minute story starting with the sentence ‘Since I saw you last . . .” See where those words take you.” He put his hand on Hardin’s back and guided him down the aisle toward the door, whispering to him as they walked. Etta stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of her and tried to stop her hands from trembling.
* * *
“Jordan, stop!” Etta jogged to catch her friend, who was striding down the trail east of the Lodge. By the time Jordan spun around, Etta was only inches from him. Jordan swiped a long blonde lock from in front of his eye. Etta had always been mesmerized by the blue color of Jordan’s eyes—a deep turquoise, like she imagined the Caribbean would look. “Why?” The word tumbled out of Etta’s mouth, although she wasn’t sure what to follow it with.
Jordan took a step backward. “Why what? Why did my girlfriend dump me? Good fucking question, Etta. Maybe you can tell me.” He pressed his lips into a tight line.
Etta frowned and searched for words, but she couldn’t find any.
Jordan slapped his bare forearm and flicked a limp insect off of it. It left a speck of red on his tanned skin. “Tell me Etta, do you think Zelda loved Scott?”
“Who?” Etta whispered, meeting his gaze.
“Fitzgerald. Zelda Fitzgerald. Do you think she loved him?”
Etta stared at him. “I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s just great. Do you think Daisy loved Gatsby?”
“Jor, why . . .”
“Why did I tell on her? I don’t know. She didn’t write that creepy shit. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t Olivia.”
“Well, did you have to make a public announcement?” Etta glanced behind her, realizing how loud their voices were. She lowered her voice. “Couldn’t you have told Hardin in private?”
Jordan laughed, but it was a harsh sound, almost a cough. “Jilted lovers are desperate creatures, Etta. We can’t be trusted. Just ask Tom Buchanan.” Jordan spun around. His blonde hair whipped around his head.
Before Etta could think of a reply, he was gone.
Etta reversed direction and hurried back toward the Lodge. The morning writing session started in less than five minutes. But Etta turned down a slender path that looked like it may be a shortcut to the women’s cabins. At least it led in the right direction. She broke into a jog. The air was cool on her arms beneath her sweater. She quickened her pace, her gaze glued to the narrow slit of dirt. Then she heard something behind her and whirled around. A deer stood several yards away, staring at her, as surprised by the encounter as she was.
Etta laughed. “Galen,” she whispered. She could barely catch her breath. “Are you Galen?”
* * *
Etta was in such a hurry to get inside her cabin that she didn’t see the bundle until her foot was hovering just above it. She smelled the buttery richness of Carl’s biscuits, even before she unwrapped the napkin. She unscrewed the lid of the stainless steel thermos next to it: Carl’s chicken soup.
Etta sat cross-legged on her floor, devoured the three biscuits, and drank the chicken soup straight from the thermos, hardly breathing between gulps. She picked every crumb off of the napkin then she moved toward the largest of the boxes she’d packed the day before. She emptied it, strewing its contents onto the floor then moved to the next box, and the next until the room was piled with Olivia’s things again. She filled the boxes again, but this time she pulled out every scrap of paper—every notebook, binder, letter, and book—and stacked them in a separate box.
Perhaps Etta had known all along that Olivia didn’t write the dark fairy tales, that someone as flirtatious and girly as Olivia, someone who knitted pink hats and wore purple nail polish on her toes and listened to old Sarah McLachlan songs over and over again and gushed about how sweet her boyfriend was, did not produce such a bleak story and play. They were dark, but hilarious. Etta had sat for a long time after she’d read the story, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, a sensation she liked. The precariousness of it made her almost dizzy. And she liked the stories themselves. They were well-written. Witty. Ironic. Things Etta always wanted her novels to be described as. Instead Etta’s classmates and teachers would scoff off her entire body of work as saccharine drivel for overweight housewives—if they knew about it.
But Etta had known that she and Olivia had more in common than Olivia’s work suggested, known it the way you know when someone’s watching you from across a crowded room. Etta stared at the piles of Olivia’s notebooks, the pink and purple folders, and the peach cloth-bound journal. But who did write Olivia’s story and play?
Etta pulled the box of papers toward her and flipped through some loose letters from Olivia’s aunt. She’d drawn line illustrations of wildflowers and goats and her farmhouse along the edges. They were beautiful, but revealed little.
Etta flipped through a notebook. Olivia had started a letter to someone named Sam, which wasn’t revealing in any way. The rest of the notebook was filled with blank pages.
Etta blew a strand of hair off her forehead and set the notebook on the floor next to the box. She pulled some books from the box and scanned the covers. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible. She stacked them back in the box and pulled out another notebook. It was filled with doodles. Etta put it back and pulled out a manila envelope with a round brown stain on the lower corner. She unfastened it, and a pile of thin papers slid out.
It was a story, typed on a typewriter. Jordan’s typewriter?
“Cherry Blossom” by M.K. Lowther.
Etta read until a rumbling interrupted her thoughts. Was it Carl’s truck? She glanced at the story, surprised that she’d already read four pages. It was riveting. She flipped back to the first page again, and read the first line: I was only a child when I knew that America would become a sore that would ooze and fester until it bled.
In the story, Peter Morrison, a twenty-year old from Seattle, discouraged by what he sees happeni
ng in the United States after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, travels to Japan. He visits Kyoto, the Katsura River, Mount Arashiyama, Nijo Castle, and the Golden Pavilion, and wanders around in a frenzy of bicycles, cars, trucks, streetcars, and rickshaws that weave through the wide streets. He starts watching “a merchant’s daughter with a porcelain face and a head of ebony silk” in a marketplace each afternoon, and finally works up the courage to ask her name. She whispers, “Yumi,” and then disappears into the crowd.
The truck was louder. Etta lifted her gaze from the paper. Was it pulling into the clearing in front of her cabin? Etta dropped the papers onto the floor and pushed herself to her feet as the truck’s engine died outside. She bent down, gripped the sides of the tattered box she’d filled with Olivia’s papers and pushed all of her weight into it, sliding it across the floor into her closet. She slammed the door shut.
Etta threw the front door open just as Carl raised his fist to knock. He took a step backward.
“What are you doing here?” Etta asked then realized how rude she sounded. “I mean, thanks,” she tried to say, but her voice betrayed her. She cleared her throat. “Thanks for the soup.”
“Haven’t seen you in the dining hall. Didn’t want you to starve.”
Etta looked over her shoulder at the boxes of Olivia’s things and tried to swallow. Most of them were overflowing; a red sweater sleeve hung over the side of one.
“Did Hardin tell you I was coming?”
She turned back to Carl. Taste of Austin, the white letters on his black T-shirt read. “Oh right.” Etta stepped backward to let him inside. He strode past her to the center of the room. She followed him. “I tried to pack Liv’s stuff, but I . . .” She let the words die.
“You all right?” Carl’s voice was almost a whisper. He rested his hand on her back, and a prickle of heat raced up Etta’s spine.
Carl wrapped his other arm around her and pressed her cheek to his chest. She breathed in the clean scent of his T-shirt, like towels dried on a clothesline. His heartbeat pulsed against her cheek. His breath tangled in her hair. They stood like that for a long time then Carl pulled away. Etta reached for his hand. He leaned over and his lips feathered across hers, his tongue flicking against her teeth. Etta’s pulse quickened, swelling into her chest and wrists. Their lips didn’t fit together at first then they shifted.
Carl tugged on her shoulders, and Etta pressed herself closer, letting her body sink against his.
Then Carl stepped backward, and an ocean of space swelled between them.
“Hi,” he said.
Etta hung suspended in air, floating. She searched for Carl’s eyes. But he was looking at something behind her. She whirled around.
Robert North leaned on the door frame, his arms folded across his chest. He smiled then pushed his weight off the doorway and sauntered into the room.
Chapter Thirteen
“Ah, love, the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.” Robert North crouched and lifted a crumpled button-down shirt from the top of a box, stared at it then dropped it back on the pile. He rose to his feet. “Of course, I’m just a washed up old poet. What would I know about love?”
Etta’s cheeks filled with heat.
“Thought I might be able to lend a hand.” He moved to another box, crouched, and ruffled through it. He pulled out Olivia’s digital clock and set it back in the box. “Is this all of her things?”
Etta nodded, stealing a glance at her closet.
Robert North laughed. “You have your own cabin now.” He held up a cord, which Etta guessed went to Olivia’s laptop. “Just like me,” he mumbled.
“Don’t you have a room in the lodge?” Etta felt dizzy. She’d stared at Robert North’s photo so many times, and now he was just inches from her. But all she really wanted was for him to leave her and Carl alone again.
He pulled a taper candle from a box and stared at it, twirling it between his fingers. “Oh yes, even we visitors get a room—a desk, an adequate view, a bathroom down the hall. Buchanan didn’t want to make things too comfortable for the drifters, of course. But I’ve never envied the poor bastard residents with their fancy suites, stuck in the drizzle for a year. I’ll only be here a few more days. It’s hunger that feeds the artist’s soul, not a paycheck.” He laughed and the skin around his eyes pinched into their familiar creases. “Hate to break it to you, but that’s the only lesson you need, and you didn’t have to pay twenty-five thousand dollars to frolic in Buchanan’s little Writerland to learn it. Spend every second of your life hungry—esurient.”
“Esurient,” Etta repeated. She had no idea what it meant, but she liked the sound of it on her lips. A poet’s word. Robert North didn’t look like he’d ever been hungry. He looked like he’d always had money and good looks and talent. A boarding school education. A mother who played bridge at a country club. A father who yachted. Fans who spent hours staring at his picture.
“Maybe they like teaching.” It was Carl’s voice, husky and twanging. Etta had almost forgotten he was in the room, and her pulse hammered into her chest at the memory of his breath in her hair, his lips on hers.
Robert North laughed again, but this time it was like an afterthought. “Oh right, that’s why people do the things they do. They enjoy them. Silly me.” He dropped the candle into the box, and picked up a framed black-and-white photo that Etta had found in one of Olivia’s desk drawers. She had long dark hair and dark eyes like Olivia’s. Olivia’s mother?
A sound came from Robert North’s mouth. Etta stepped closer. Had he said something?
Carl stepped between them and strode toward a box next to the door, his gait long and relaxed. “I reckon I should get started here if I want to make it to Jackson and back before the sun sets.” He knelt, clutched the bottom of a box, and heaved it to his chest.
“Can I keep you company?” Robert North didn’t lift his gaze from the photo. “On the drive.”
“All right.” Carl stepped outside, his figure long in the doorway. “Long as I can pick the music.”
“As long we can stop at that dark joint on the way back for some whisky and companionship.” He looked up and his dark eyes flashed with sunlight as he met Etta’s gaze. “Not everyone’s lucky enough to find love out here.”
Etta’s cheeks flashed with heat again. Robert North dropped his gaze to the floor. He was staring at the story by M.K. Lowther, which was splayed across the floor next to Etta’s bed. “Mat,” he whispered. “Where did you get this?” He reached for the papers.
“I’ve got to go.” Etta lunged toward the papers and plucked them off the floor, hugging them to her chest as she retrieved her bag from next to the door. They felt delicate crushed against her bare arm, tenuous.
Etta jogged down the stairs and around the truck. Halfway across the clearing, she spun around and called goodbye to Carl, who was sliding a box into the pickup bed. She wasn’t sure if he heard.
“Mat,” Etta said aloud as she rounded the curve toward the lodge. No, not mat. Matt. Etta broke into a jog. M. must stand for Matt. But who was Matt Lowther?
* * *
The air in the great room was cool, and it sparkled with beams of sunlight and dust particles. Etta stood next to the fireplace in the same spot where she’d stood listening to the raspy moans of Rodney’s cello two nights before. Everything from the equinox party was gone now—the long tables, the confetti, the streamers, the balloons. Perhaps she’d dreamt the party, the entire macabre night, invented it as she would a novel. Except if that were the case, Olivia would be sitting upstairs in the classroom. And she wasn’t. She was . . . where? At a hospital? At her mother’s house?
Etta crossed the room and dropped into one of the oversized chairs that faced the windows. She smoothed the papers in her lap and glared at them. The story was a distraction. Was it really going to tell her anything about Olivia plagiarizing or about where Olivia was or why she’d left? Etta should be writing the story for her critique. She remembered Olivia’s
eyes two nights ago—so watery—Olivia, beautiful Olivia—Where was she now?—and Carl, Carl’s lips, his breath in her hair, the salty taste of his mouth.
Robert North obviously knew who Matt Lowther was, and there was something about the way he’d looked at the story that made Etta shiver. Maybe M.K. Lowther was famous. But why hadn’t Etta heard of him? She couldn’t stop herself from reading, starting from the beginning again, the first two words: “Cherry Blossom,” by M.K. Lowther.
* * *
“Ah, a truant.”
Etta was so immersed in M.K. Lowther’s world that it took her a moment to realize someone was speaking, and a few more seconds to raise her head. Petra Atwell stood clutching her misshapen mug in her crimson-tipped claws. She pursed her waxy lips, blowing on whatever was in the cup. A puff of steam floated up and disappeared in front of her.
Etta rose to her feet, and the papers slipped from her lap, fanned out, and slid in all directions. A few of them disappeared beneath Etta’s chair and she stooped to retrieve them, sitting back on her heels to steady herself. She peered up at Petra, who was smiling down at her. The resident author had a smudge of lipstick on one of her teeth.
“Jesus, you scared me,” Etta said.
“Thank you, but you don’t need to call me Jesus. So you’ve decided you’re too good a writer to bother with pesky lessons and workshops?”
Etta shook her head. “No, I . . .” She glanced down at the papers and leaned forward to scoop them up. “I . . .” She let the sentence die in the air between them and concentrated on stacking the thin pages into a pile.
“Well, you certainly are good at creating fiction, I’ll give you that,” Petra said.
Etta felt some of the heat drain from her face. Petra was staring out the window, her expression concealed somewhere beneath her layers of makeup. “What do you mean by that?”
“You don’t like compliments, do you Loretta?”
The Garden of Dead Dreams Page 9