Roses and Rot (4 page)

“They were more just things for you, not for writing down,” I said. I had, though. My first semester away at Blackstone. When I still thought she wanted me to come home for Christmas. I had been planning on giving them to her then. Instead, nothing but silence from her, and the beginning of our years of separation.

They were packed away, with everything else I had put in storage—I didn’t want them, but couldn’t bring myself to destroy my own work. “They weren’t ever meant to be for publication. And no, I didn’t apply here with Star Princess stories.”

She laughed. “I didn’t think you had. Still, I sort of miss them.”

“Fine. Next time you can’t sleep, you can knock on my door, and I’ll tell you a story.”

She looked up, and smiled, and I almost, almost told her the truth about the stories. It wasn’t that I couldn’t say it. I could. But there are times that you don’t speak, because silence hurts less. There was no need to reopen old wounds when we both wanted them healed. Instead: “Do you want to have dinner tonight?”

“I would, but I’m meeting Gavin.”

Gavin Delacourt was a principal dancer with the National Ballet Theater. Onstage, he moved as if gravity were an option for him, as if the air itself were his partner. Even outside of the dance world, he was a star, regularly appearing in tabloid lists of eligible bachelors and beautiful people and gossiped about as the possible inspiration for one character or another in Hollywood dance fantasy films.

She tucked the finished shoes in her bag. “We’re figuring out the plan for the year.”

“Will you go down and take class with NBT?”

“That’s one of the things we’re going to talk about. How to balance the time here with the need to be in training with a company. Plus, I want an audition with them by the time this year is over. I don’t want to push too hard, but I don’t want to just let it go, either.” She stuffed the finished shoes into the side of her messenger bag, then twisted her long hair into a tidy bun at the nape of her neck.

“Marin? Did you mean it when you said you were terrified to be here?”

She sat back down. It was how I had known the conversation was going to be serious when we were growing up, when my kinetic sister would voluntarily stop moving. “It’s a big risk. Time is never a dancer’s friend, and a year off is a lot. But I needed to get out of where I was, and to do it with enough drama to be talked about, so people don’t forget about me when I’m not onstage. The world’s full of next big things, so it’s not enough to just be good, I have to be good and be the dancer they’re looking for.

“But working with Gavin is a great opportunity, and he chose me, specifically, to work with, which has to mean he thinks I’m worth the time.”

“And that you have the talent,” I said.

“I hope so. He’s such a technically gifted dancer—every movement, every angle is utterly precise. That’s what I’m missing in my work, and if I can get that”—her face set—“if I can get that, I won’t just be good, I’ll be great.

“If I’m lucky, the benefits balance the risks. I’m not thinking about what happens if I’m not lucky. It’s too terrifying. Anyway, I need to go check into my studio.”

I checked my phone. “I’m not sure if I’ll be here when you get back—I have my first appointment with Beth later. But, Marin, if you need anything—”

She cut me off. “I know. That’s why we’re here, too, right?”

Ariel and I were trying to wrestle her trunk up the stairs to her room. It was an actual steamer trunk, leather-strapped and brass-hinged, an heirloom that had belonged to her great-grandmother, and so even though it was less practical than cardboard boxes, she had used it to ship her things to Melete. It was beautiful, but even unpacked it was heavy, and it was currently stuck on the second turn of the stairs.

“Are you going to be done anytime soon? I need to get my lunch out of the kitchen,” Helena said from the landing above us.

“You could help. We’d be done faster,” Ariel said.

“All of my stuff is in my room. Neither of you helped get it there,” Helena said.

“True, but we would have, if you’d asked,” I said.

“Would you really?” The thing was, she sounded genuinely curious, like the idea of asking for help would never have crossed her mind.

Ariel stood up, wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Go get something. Anything. And I swear, I will carry it up and down the stairs as many times as you want later, if you help us move this damn thing now.”

Helena cocked her head. “Okay.”

Ariel looked at me. “What have I just done?”

I shoved my hair out of my eyes and laughed.

Helena snaked herself between the wall and the trunk to help us lift it. “If you have everything out of this, why does it need to be
in your room? Just put it in storage or leave it in the front room or something.”

“Count of three?” I said, and we all heaved on cue.

“Because it’s like home,” Ariel said, yanking up and backward as we finally got the trunk unjammed. “And because my great-grandmother was a nightclub singer, until she got married. She traveled with this. It reminds me of what I come from, of who I want to be.”

“That’s a good reason,” Helena said.

“Glad you approve,” said Ariel.

We wrangled the trunk the rest of the way up the stairs and down the hall to Ariel’s room.

“You can go bring me my lunch,” Helena told Ariel, “but you don’t have to walk anything else up and down the stairs.”

“Thanks for helping,” Ariel said.

Helena nodded, a sharp jerk of her head, then walked off.

“It’s like she spent part of her life being raised by wolves,” Ariel said, watching her go. “She only almost knows how to be a human. Do you want me to bring you anything while I’m carrying my penance, er, Helena’s lunch?”

“No.” I grinned. “I’m good.”

I rechecked the directions my mentor, Beth Edwards, had sent me, then slid my phone into the back pocket of my jeans in case I needed them again as I walked. The mentors lived on the Melete grounds as well, but their houses were grouped on the opposite side of the studios. “Close, but not so close I can read over your shoulder while you’re working,” Beth had emailed.

As I walked, I could see fellows moving into their studios, carrying instrument cases and paint-splattered bags. Somewhere in the
midst of them a piano crashed through a phrase, paused, and then repeated. I felt like I was walking through the opening montage of a movie—everything was just a shade brighter than real.

At some point, I knew, being at Melete would feel settled, normal. I would be used to seeing houses with moats, or constructed with the same impossible geometry as a Dr. Seuss drawing. It would be no big deal for an Oscar-winning actor to smile at me as we passed each other walking, and I wouldn’t blush as I smiled back. Until then, I would revel in the novelty.

Farther out, on the edge of the Commons, was a rose garden. Drowsy with bees and full of late-summer blooms. A riot of color, the surrounding air drunk on the scent.

Just past the roses, I veered left off the path, toward a faded Cape Cod–style cottage so weathered it could have been plucked from some coastal peninsula and then set down in the New Hampshire forest.

It was a weird thing to be standing outside Beth Edwards’s house. She had won the Orange Prize for the book she had begun while at Melete, a novel in stories about the young women at the center of the Salem witch trials, and that had only been the beginning of her success. She was seven books into her career now, all of which had appeared on bestseller and awards lists. She’d been profiled in
The New Yorker
and
Vogue
. And still, she was a writer’s writer, her technique both brilliant and seemingly effortless. I loved the sparse precision of her language and the way that she was unflinching about writing emotion in her work, even when it wasn’t comfortable to read. She was one of my most lasting influences, the reason I had chosen the structure I had for the book I would work on while I was here.

When she visited my college on a signing tour, I had been too
nervous to go, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to do anything other than babble at her. I wasn’t confident I was going to do any better today—my heart was racing, and anxiety surged like electricity through my joints. I rubbed at my hand, stretching the scar tissue, and sucked in a breath. Even if I babbled, working with her was why I was here. Forcing my spine straight, I walked past the rows of tiny purple flowers and knocked.

It’s a clichéd observation to make about a hero, but she was shorter than I expected, the top of her head only coming up to my shoulder. The scents of cinnamon and vanilla floated past her out the door. “You must be Imogen. Come in. I made cinnamon rolls.

“So, are you completely overwhelmed yet? I know I was when I was first here as a fellow. It took me a full two weeks to stop expecting someone to knock on the door and tell me mistakes had been made and I needed to leave. Mugs are in the cupboard to your right, if you want coffee, or I have tea.” She slathered icing across the tops of the cinnamon rolls.

“I prefer coffee, thanks.” I helped myself to a mug. “And I’m too excited to be overwhelmed.”

“Well, that’s good. Here you go.” She slid a plate over to me, and then poured tea into a daisy-patterned cup with gilded edges.

“Let’s go into the other room. I enjoy everything about this house except for the kitchen chairs, which could double as torture devices.”

I followed her down the hall and into a room filled with books. Once we were settled, she said, “Tell me what you’re writing.”

“Actually, I’d rather not.” The words came out of my mouth before I could stop and reframe them into something more polite, before I could consider whether maybe she knew best, and what I wanted didn’t matter. I clutched the fork in my hand so hard I worried it might bend.

Beth set her cup carefully in its saucer and looked at me. The silence stretched and held. That was it, then. Not even fifteen minutes into my first meeting with my literary idol, and I’d fucked it up already. My stomach attempted to turn itself inside out. Then: “Good for you. Good for you. Protect your art. Too many people don’t do that, and nothing—nothing—you do matters as much.”

She sipped her tea again. “Take a breath, Imogen. I won’t hate you for speaking your mind.”

I did, and I ate another bite of a cinnamon roll. Then another. “These are great, by the way.”

Beth smiled and nodded. “I like to eat, so I learned to cook, and I learned to do it well, because I can’t stand half-assing things. Now, you do know what you’re working on while you’re here, yes?”

“Yes. I started writing it my first night in residence. I know what it will be, I just don’t want to talk it to death before I have it written.”

“Good. You don’t have to explain your artistic choices to me, so long as they aren’t sitting around and not writing. I’m picky about my fellows, and I have no tolerance for people who use the opportunity of being here to do nothing. It’s nice to see that I’m not wrong about you. Now, what do you want out of the time you and I will spend together while you’re here? Be honest.”

I sipped my coffee. “I want to know where I’m failing, so I can get better. I want to be able to talk to you and get advice about setbacks, and frustrations, and how to work through those.”

“Not my agent’s number, or a blurb for your book?” She raised a brow.

“No, because if I’m good enough, you’ll give me those without my having to ask for them.”

Another pause, and then she laughed, huge and bawdy. “You’re right. If you’re that good, I absolutely will. That way, I can brag
about discovering you. I think we’ll do well together, Imogen. Let’s talk about the practicalities. How often do you want to meet?” She got up and walked into the hallway.

I scanned the bookcases while I waited for her to come back, looking for some clue to her interests, influences. Something I could file away and use as a tool to make my own writing better. Magic words.

She returned with a yarn-filled bag. “Not being busy makes me itch. About a year ago, I learned to knit. Now I feel lazy if I’m sitting down to do anything other than write and I don’t have yarn in my hands.”