The Garden of Dead Dreams

by Quillen, Abby

  “Etta.”

  “Oh, yes. My mistake.”

  Silence hung in the room. Petra blew on her drink again, an audible hiss, and the aroma of her coffee wafted to Etta’s nose, a burnt smell. “You’re right, you know? Most of it is a waste of time. You can’t teach talent. It’s the only forgivable thing we get from our parents. It almost makes the emotional baggage endurable.”

  Etta had the sensation something was crawling up her neck. She knew nothing was there, but she lifted her hand and rested her fingers on her collarbone.

  “So your friend couldn’t handle the pressure. She always seemed more interested in flirting than writing, wouldn’t you say?”

  “She was . . .” Etta almost said a great writer, but then thought of Jordan’s words: a plagiarizer. Heat flashed through her face. “No, I, I wouldn’t say,” she finally stammered, but only because she didn’t want to leave another sentence hanging in the space between her and Petra. Olivia was a flirt, but she was the kind who didn’t differentiate between men or women, friends or enemies. Olivia turned her charms on everyone in her presence; she drew people in, flattered them, and made them love her.

  “Tell me something. Why did you come here?” Petra wasn’t asking; she was demanding an answer.

  Etta had a well-rehearsed answer for that question, but she shifted her gaze to the windows, surprised that the afternoon light was growing dusky, the trees a thick swath of shadows against the whitish gray sky. Were Carl and Robert North on their way to Jackson already or still in Etta’s cabin? Etta had no sense of how much time had passed since she’d spoken to them. She’d read the story through once then half-way through again. Had she been sitting an hour? Two?

  “Look at that,” Petra said.

  Etta glanced at her, trying to keep her expression even, and then she followed Petra’s gaze to the trees. She didn’t want to appear too interested in anything Petra found worthwhile.

  “I thought I saw a fox,” Petra said. She smiled at Etta and spun around, her long skirt feathering out around her. Her footsteps hardly made a sound as she crossed the room. Etta didn’t bother to look out the window; she knew exactly what Petra had meant. A fox. Loretta Ann Fox.

  Etta frowned and stared at her lap. Petra knew. And if Petra knew, who else knew? They weren’t going to award the Buchanan Prize to Loretta Ann Fox.

  Etta smoothed the papers on her lap, trying to put Petra out of her mind. She read the first line of the page that had ended up on top of the pile. It was the last page, the final scene of the story where Peter Morrison and Yumi meet up again in an unnamed American city, which seems a lot like San Francisco. The couple know they can’t be together. A war between the U.S. and Japan is inevitable. Peter no longer feels safe in Kyoto. Yumi is scared to live in the United States. So they spend one final night together. Their encounter was fevered and brief. In a hotel room on South Market Street, Yumi showed him that it is impermanence that gives the monotony of breathing its radiance.

  Beneath the typed text, the author had signed M.K. Lowther, October 1985, Oregon in fading ink. Etta ran her finger over the loose, cursive letters. She wanted to lose herself in the story again, wanted to become the story. To disappear in it.

  * * *

  Although Etta visited the library often, she’d never had a reason to knock on Uriah Winston Mills’ office door, or step into “Major Mills’ Quarters,” as the embossed plaque beside the librarian’s door read. His office was a closet-sized room next to the archives room. The window in the door revealed his barren desk and shelves to everyone who visited the library, but he usually wasn’t there. Students weren’t required to check books out in the traditional way; they just had to leave placeholders with their names where they withdrew books.

  The major, as students referred to him, was tall and wiry, over six feet, Etta would guess, although she was too short to be a good judge of height. His head was nearly hairless except for a stripe of gray bristles near the nape of his neck. His angular cheeks and bulbous nose were a permanent crimson, which Etta thought may have been the result of too many years in the sun. Jordan was convinced that he drank too much. Mallory Chambers, found it endlessly humorous to compare him to the prim stereotype of a librarian. “If Major Bookworm had more hair, do you think he’d pull it into a bun?”

  As his nickname suggested, Major Mills had been a military librarian. When Etta had met him at orientation, she’d asked, in a moment of nervous babbling, if soldiers were allowed to check out books on the front lines. She’d gathered from his curt reply that he was not someone who tolerated stupid questions. Thus, when she sat down at the computer, located the catalog icon, double-clicked on it, and the message Ask a librarian for assistance popped onto the screen, she had to muster a lot of courage to walk to the major’s office door and gently tap.

  The librarian’s face was illuminated by the green banker’s lamp on the corner of his desk. He looked up from some papers and eyed Etta over the wire-framed spectacles on the end of his nose, which looked too delicate for his weathered face. He frowned. Was that Etta’s cue to come in? She swallowed down a breath, twisted the brass doorknob, and prodded the door open enough to squeeze through, wincing at the squeak of the hinges.

  A wall of cologne met her. Etta’s eyes watered. She heard a rattling and was startled to see that it was the papers in her hand. She shoved the story behind her back. The major frowned at her.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for anything by an author. Matt Lowther. Or, um, M.K. Lowther.”

  Etta watched the major’s reaction and wished she could grab her words from the air.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Major Mills took his spectacles off, folded them, and slid them into the breast pocket of his white short-sleeved shirt. The outline of his glasses showed through the thin material. He leaned back in his chair. His expression became unreadable as silence settled between them. Maybe Etta had imagined the flash of anger.

  Her eyes and nose were running. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “The catalog isn’t working, so I just wondered if maybe, I’m looking for books by an author named M.K. Lowther, Matt Lowther I think . . . I’m just curious. Maybe he’s written a novel?” She hated the chirpy quality of her voice when she was nervous. She wiped at her eyes again.

  Major Mills stared at her. A thin scar, which Etta had never noticed before, ran from his right eye to his ear. It was all she could look at.

  “Just curious?”

  Etta nodded. The acrid air filled her throat. She coughed and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve.

  “You’d do well to invest your time in more worthwhile reading pursuits. The classics, for instance.” He rocked from side to side. His movement cast a fan of shadows on the empty bookshelves behind him.

  “I don’t know.” Etta regretted the words as she watched the major’s cold eyes draw close together. “I mean yes, the classics are good and important and all, but there are other worthwhile books too.”

  The major drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Most books aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.”

  “I don’t . . .” Etta swallowed her words, realizing she was only being defensive about her own writing. Besides her head felt too loose and watery from the cologne to carry on a debate with anyone, especially Uriah Winston Mills, whose thin lips turned down in a scowl when he wasn’t talking. She wiped at her eyes again.

  Major Mills continued his lecture about the classics. Etta glanced out the window behind her at the last slants of sunlight coming into the library and lost track of what he was saying. How long would she need to stand there politely nodding before she left? “The Western Defense is the only book anyone needs. We could burn the rest. ”

  “I don’t know.” Etta regretted the words instantly, mostly because of the major’s sharp intake of air, but also because she felt strange and light headed, with all of her orifices full of cologne. Why was she arguing with him? “I mean, it’s a good novel, great reall
y.” Etta’s voice was rising, building into the annoying girlish chatter again. She glanced over her shoulder into the shadows in the library.

  “What’s your name?” The radiators clicked under the windows in the library. “Just curious,” the major said in falsetto, mimicking Etta’s use of the same words a few minutes before. She mumbled her name and reached for the door knob.

  “Ms. Lawrence, I can see you’re pleased with yourself. You think you’re smart and just curious. Listen, those old guys going to bingo games at vets’ clubs on Friday nights, the ones who ride on parade floats on the Fourth of July, they’re the ones who shot without asking questions. The curious ones are rotting in the jungle.”

  Etta gave the major a tight-lipped smile as she did when she disagreed with someone but didn’t feel comfortable saying so or when she suspected someone may be mentally ill. She wasn’t sure which category the major fit into at that moment, but she knew that she wanted to leave. She stared at the major’s angular face, his porous nose, his silken scar. He rolled his chair toward his desk, picked up a file folder sitting atop a pile of papers, and turned it over, resting his hands on it.

  Etta spun around, pushed the door open, and raced through the library, gulping in the stale, dusty air.

  She ran down the spiral staircase then stopped and watched the reflection of the great room in the windows across from her. A fire had been lit in the hearth. A few students sat on the couch in front of it. She could only see the backs of their heads in the reflection. Their voices swirled to her, slow and distorted, as though she were under water. Somebody else sat reading in a chair facing the window. A wave of nausea hit her when she saw her own reflection. She looked small and pallid, like a ghost.

  Either her eyes had deceived her or the type-written label on the major’s file folder had said, “Lowther, Matthew.”

  * * *

  Etta skipped dinner, went to her cabin, and tried to put the pages of M.K. Lowther’s story back in order. She sat down at her desk and skimmed the story again. Olivia had a typed manuscript by someone named M.K. Lowther. Someone Robert North knew of. Someone the librarian had a file folder on and was rude when questioned about. Etta stared at his signature on the last page of the manuscript. M.K. Lowther, October 1985, Oregon. She tucked the pages into the bottom drawer of her desk and crossed the room. Olivia’s side of the room was empty except for five red plastic clothes hangers that were scattered across the bare mattress. They looked bright and garish.

  Etta slid her closet door open and waved her hand around in the darkness. The string for the overhead light bulb feathered across her fingers, and she yanked on it. White light illuminated the shadows.

  Air rushed from her chest. She dropped to her knees. The box with Olivia’s papers—it was gone. A single sheet of white paper lay on the floor where the box had been. Etta swiped it off the floor then released it. It fluttered to the ground, but Etta could still see the words. They swam off the page then snapped into focus. You’re in trouble. Go home. She stared at them for so long that they didn’t make sense. Home. What was home? She plucked it the paper off the floor and crumpled it. Then she smoothed it and stared at the words again.

  Go home.

  “I don’t have a home.” Etta folded the paper into a square, pushed herself to her feet, and squeezed it into her pocket. She spun around and stared at the place where Robert North had stood rifling through Olivia’s things. How dare he open her closet? Her heartbeat hammered in her ears. She grabbed her rain jacket and threw her door open, flinching at the icy air that flooded into the room.

  When she pulled open the door of Roosevelt Lodge, she was met by the muffled commotion of dinner time—voices, laughter, dishes clinking. A pungent scent hung in the air. It smelled like Candy’s spaghetti. The thought of the intern’s briny tomato sauce made Etta’s stomach turn sour.

  She made a beeline to the staircase and jogged up the spiral steps until she was on the third floor landing, standing face-to-face with an oil portrait of Vincent Buchanan. It was like the one outside of the classroom on the second-floor landing, except it hung in the shadows, lit only by a beaded lamp on a round table nearby.

  Etta stepped closer, trying to make out Buchanan’s features. He was older than in most of the portraits in the Lodge. His once-black hair was white. His boyish face had become jowly. Even in his old age, though, Buchanan’s eyes were youthful—dark and shiny.

  How dare Robert North open her closet, go through her stuff, and tell her to go home? “I don’t have a home,” Etta wanted to shout at him. She peeled her gaze from the portrait and spun around. She’d never been on the third floor before. The ceiling was low and two dimly-lit narrow hallways stretched out perpendicular to each other. Etta’s heartbeat pulsed in her ears.

  She moved down one of the halls. Wall sconces—orange light bulbs shaped like candle flames—lit circles on the plush burgundy carpet. If she did find Robert North, the damned prodigy poet, she’d yell at him. What right did he have to take her things—or Olivia’s things, but what did that matter? They certainly weren’t his things. Or maybe Etta would just slip the stupid note under his door. You go home, Robert.

  The carpet swallowed Etta’s footsteps. She stared at the dark brown doors, each with small shiny gold numbers. It hadn’t occurred to her that she’d have no way of knowing which room was his. She stopped halfway down the corridor. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea anyway. She could keep the note and show the director, tell him that Robert North—a man who was supposed to teach, to encourage, to mentor—had told Etta to pack up and leave her dreams behind.

  Etta heard a voice. It was so familiar that Etta moved toward it without thinking. She was almost to the narrow window at the end of the hallway when she realized whose voice she’d been drawn toward. She froze. She was standing between the last two doors—numbers six and seven—and Jordan Waterhouse sounded as though he was standing right next to her.

  The door for room number six flung open, and Etta stood face-to-face with Olivia’s ex-boyfriend. Jordan looked over his shoulder, a strand of his blonde hair falling across his cheek. Etta followed his gaze and met Opal Waters’ pale, gray eyes.

  “Oh.” Etta glanced down the hall. “I was . . .”

  “What? What are you doing?” Jordan’s voice was sharp. Etta took another step backward. She gestured toward herself and tried to think of something to say, but all Etta could do was stare into the aquamarine eyes of one of the only people at the academy she had considered a close friend just a week before.

  “You’re the one who followed me up here, Etta. The one who seems to be following me everywhere I go. Are you spying on me?”

  “Jor, no. I was . . .” Etta’s words died in her throat. She could feel Opal’s gray eyes on her. The author’s quarters were off limits to students. Buchanan had designated the third floor as a writer’s retreat, a refuge for authors to live and work separate from their lecturing and teaching duties.

  “If you must know what I’m doing at every second, why don’t you just ask me?”

  Etta tried to shake her head, but she felt paralyzed.

  “My father asked if I would give Opal a copy of his latest collection. I didn’t want to make an ordeal of it with everyone around, so I came up here to leave it next to her door. Opal heard me in the hallway, and insisted on writing Dad a thank-you note while I waited. Is that okay with you, Etta?” He thrust a pink envelope toward Etta, but Etta’s gaze went to Opal’s room instead. It was awash in soft, yellow light. A gossamer curtain encircled a four-poster bed. Behind it, an open laptop sat perched in the middle of a downy white comforter. Had Jordan interrupted Opal while she was composing one of her painstaking poems?

  “Just stop following me. You’re creeping me out.” Jordan brushed past Etta. His hair flapped across his collar as he glided toward the stairwell. It didn’t occur to Etta until he was at the other end of the hall that he was a student too, and thus just as prohibited from trespassing on the third floor as she w
as. Of course rules had never seemed to concern Jordan much.

  A sound made Etta jerk her head back to the room. Opal was just a foot away. She rested her slim fingers on the side of the door, and for a moment Etta was sure Opal was going to push the door closed, but the poet stood gazing at Etta. Her blonde hair was loose, and it was the first time Etta had seen her silky whitish locks, kinky from being in a twist all day, hanging around her slender face. “I think he’s upset about Olivia,” Etta whispered.

  Opal’s gray gaze didn’t falter. “Of course. We all are,” Opal’s voice sounded exactly as it did in class—dignified, reserved, and distant. “She had so much talent. For her to throw it away—it’s a tragedy.”

  “Jordan thinks she was plagiarizing.”

  Opal’s pupils dilated instantly, as though she was hearing the news for the first time, and guilt washed through Etta. Why had she said it? Had she been jealous of Opal’s compliment? She wished she could take the words back. “That’s a rather serious charge.” Opal said. “Do you agree with him?”

  “No.” Etta glanced down the hall. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I don’t think it wise to spend time worrying about another writer’s work. It’s best to focus on one’s own, and I’m glad you’re here, because I’ve been meaning to talk to you about yours. You’re up for critique soon. Isn’t that right?”

  Etta nodded and tried to smile although she wasn’t sure she managed it.

  “Can I give you some advice? I’ve been teaching at the Buchanan Academy on and off for nearly thirty years. Do you know that within a week, I can usually predict who will be a writer and who won’t? Some students are just hungry for it. Do you think you are?”

  Etta stared at her. Was that advice? “I guess so.”

  “The first critique is your unveiling, your debut. I don’t . . ”

  “You predicted I would fail?” Etta interrupted.

  Opal stared at her. The poet’s lips formed a taut smile. “Oh my. It’s not that easy to hurt your feelings, is it? Sensitivity is not an author’s ally, which brings me to my advice.” Opal stepped closer to Etta, and Etta noticed the poet’s long nearly invisible whitish-blonde eyelashes for the first time. “Don’t kid yourself if you think the literary world is different from any other business. It’s a paternalistic boy’s club run by a bunch of ass-slapping, locker room buffoons. To succeed at this game as a woman, no matter how brilliant or lackluster your prose is, you must discard every distraction from your life—hurt feelings and romantic amusements and, in your case, worrying about your roommate, who obviously couldn’t hack it here, plagiarizer or not. You’ll find out, it requires a ruthless amount of focus for a woman to succeed. If you don’t have it, you may as well go home.”