Roses and Rot (5 page)

“I’d like to meet about every two weeks, I think. But I don’t want to show you my writing until it’s done. I hate getting feedback on an unfinished project, and I don’t want to waste your time on problems I can figure out myself.”

“I’m here to have my time wasted in precisely that fashion, but if it won’t help you to discuss your work directly, we’ll talk about other things.” Beth’s knitting needles clicked against each other. The yarn was thick and lavender-colored, but I couldn’t see enough to tell what she was making.

“But if you change your mind, and you need to talk about writing, or show me pages, or change any of our meetings, don’t be afraid to speak up, whether that means getting together less frequently or more. Every day, if that’s what you want. You’re here for your art, so put it first.”

“I will, thanks.” I set down my cup, thinking that the meeting was over, glad I had made it through without embarrassing myself.

“Now, I’m going to indulge my curiosity for a moment. Your sister is here also, yes?”

I leaned back into the couch, feeling the seams of the cushions
press against me. “She is, and we’re living in the same house, which is great. It was Marin’s idea to apply. I wouldn’t be here if not for her.”

The sound of knitting needles reminded me of the clatter of typewriter keys. “I don’t think there has ever been a sibling pair here at the same time before. It’s such a fascinating dynamic. Having two artists in the family doesn’t cause friction? No professional jealousy or sibling rivalry?”

“Our dad died when we were young, so it’s pretty much always been just the two of us. It’s never even occurred to me to think of Marin as a rival, someone who I ought to be competing against.”

Though our mother hadn’t seen things that way. Having a daughter who was a dancer was a reflected spotlight for the mother backstage, and our mother hoarded that reflection, clutching it to her heart. She basked in Marin’s applause, and told herself that she had earned it, too. Having a daughter who was a writer was a flashlight shone into corners that ought to be kept dark so that no one saw the monsters tucked away in them. She wanted that light turned off.

I tucked my hand under my thigh, out of sight. “We work in different fields, so it’s not like we’ll ever be in direct competition. I actually think it’s made us more secure as artists, having someone else close who knows what it means to work this hard. I mean, we’re sisters, so we haven’t always gotten along, but even when things have been difficult between us, we’ve always supported each other’s art.”

“That’s good.” Beth nodded. “To have that sort of support, and to have someone close who knows what it’s like to have a life that doesn’t look like everyone else’s. So many people don’t understand that. It’s one of the things I love about coming back here—working with people who do.

“Well, unless there’s anything else, I should let you get back to
settling in, and to your work. I’m happy to be working with you, Imogen.”

“I’m happy to be working with you, too.”

I scrubbed the heel of my hand over my heart as I walked back home, almost light-headed with relief at how well the meeting had gone.

Late summer’s lazy wind blew through the rose garden I had passed before, bending blossom-heavy heads like dancers’ arms. The long afternoon shadows followed them, twisting and turning. A ballet of thorns and velvet petals and cold, perfumed darkness. I stepped off the path and into the thick of the flowers.

The wind blew sharper then, tearing the petals from their stems, sending them spinning in a red-black whirlwind. Melete’s noise fell away, and I felt seasick, sideways, as if I had been shoved partially out of my own skin.

A woman stood in the center of the whirlwind, sharp-boned and long-haired, her dress like petals sewn with silk, and for an instant, it looked like her eyes were entirely black.

Then the light shifted, and they weren’t. The tornado of rose petals was gone, and all the bustle of Melete filled the air. She smiled at me, long red dress rippling in the breeze. I waved and turned back to the path.

Stress, I told myself. Stress from the anxiety around meeting Beth, and maybe I was more light-headed with relief than I had thought. Over my shoulder, the rose garden was no more or less than it was, fragrant beauty in the late afternoon sun, tended by a woman in a sundress. That was all.

The third night we were officially in residence, I wandered into the kitchen to pick up my dinner and found Marin and Ariel
already there. “You should join us,” Ariel said, setting out another glass.

“Thanks.” I set the bento-style box my dinner was packed in on the table with the two others. Two. Shit. “I’m going to go upstairs and see if Helena wants to eat with us.”

“She’s kind of horrible,” Ariel said.

“Aggressively rude. Like she’s feral, and doesn’t know how to be a person,” Marin added.

“Then she’ll probably say no. But I still feel like I should ask. Unless she’s really that bad?” Maybe I was luckier than I knew, living on a different floor than they did.

Ariel sighed. “The Catholic guilt has kicked in. Ask.”

I knocked on Helena’s door, waited, then knocked again. Feeling relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of being polite, I turned to go.

“What?” Helena stood in the mostly closed doorway.

“The three of us were going to eat dinner together. Want to join us?”

She narrowed her eyes, gnawed on her bottom lip.

“If you’re busy or something”—feral, I substituted internally— “you don’t have to.”

“Fine.” She burst through the door, pulling it immediately shut behind her. “We’re supposed to take opportunities to bond as artists while we’re here, right?”

Right.

Marin and Ariel both looked surprised to see Helena join us, but recovered and set her a place. Ariel poured wine, then raised her glass. “To us, and to art.” Her exaggerated pose erased any hint of pretension from the words, making them a welcome, a celebration. Marin and I toasted, and, after a second, Helena did, too.

It’s the little things that break the ice. Helena and Marin both
hated roasted red peppers, and pulled them out of their salads. Ariel stole them off their plates—they were her favorite. She and I had both worked as baristas, and shared the same contempt for people who ordered nonfat no-foam decaf like it was a sacrament. “Like, what is the actual point? Everything that is delicious in the drink is gone.” Ariel shook her head. Helena didn’t want to talk about her childhood, either. The air in the room relaxed as the meal progressed, our voices became less cautiously polite.

Then, rolling the red liquid around the bottom of her glass, Helena asked, “What would you trade for guaranteed success?”

“Like, ‘I have one hit record and can retire comfortably on my royalties’ success, or like ‘I am become Beyoncé, destroyer of worlds’ success?” Ariel asked.

“The latter. Everything you’ve ever wanted. All your dreams come true, even the ones you won’t admit to having.”

“I wouldn’t sell my soul. I might sell my younger brother.” Ariel grinned, making it clear she wouldn’t.

“If we can trade other people, I’d trade in our mother in a heartbeat,” Marin said. “Though I suppose that doesn’t count as a sacrifice, considering how horrid Mommy Dearest is.”

“Is she really that bad?” Ariel asked.

“Worse,” Marin said, tucking her burned hand out of sight beneath the table. Her scars were barely visible, even if you knew to look, but old habits linger.

“Like growing up in hell,” I said, my own hand aching in sympathy.

“I doubt that,” Helena said, her face hard. “But even if it was, what would you trade to show her you’d made it? That would be worth something big, right?”

The quick answer would be to say that I would have stayed. Lived the extra two years at home, in the hell that my mother made
it. But I couldn’t say that in front of Marin, wouldn’t make her feel like she was part of the hell that life had been, not when she was the thing that made it bearable.

“I’m starting to feel like you’re asking me to sign my name in blood at a crossroads, Helena. What about you, what would you give up?” I asked.

“Everything. Anything. Whatever it takes.”

It’s a thing that’s easy to say when you’re sure no one will ever offer you that trade, because it’s an impossible deal to make. But looking at Helena’s face, I believed her.

“If only it were that easy,” Marin said. “No bleeding feet and aching muscles. No auditions where you get passed over for a worse dancer because you don’t look right for the part, whatever that means that day. No endless hours of rehearsal sabotaged by injury. Selling your soul sounds like the easy way out to me.”

“I’m just glad my only option is to kick ass the usual way, so I’ll never have to find out what I’d really give up,” Ariel said. “Seems like a good way to learn some really uncomfortable things about yourself.”

“I don’t understand any of you,” Helena said. “If it matters enough, you say yes. You take the deal. You don’t look back. If you aren’t prepared to do that, what are you doing here, anyway?” She put her dishes on the sideboard, and went back upstairs. Her door slammed shut.

“Oddly enough, dinner went better than I thought it would,” Ariel said, pouring the rest of the wine into the three remaining glasses.

“You never did answer her, Imogen,” Marin said as we cleared the table.

“I know.” I had been afraid. Afraid that I would answer like Helena: Anything.

It had rained the night before, a torrential late-summer storm. The air was soup-thick with humidity as I drank my coffee on the porch. Marin came out and sat next to me.

“Did you sleep okay?” I asked. Our mother hated thunderstorms, and so she would put on noise-canceling headphones and drink herself into oblivion. Those nights, I knew I would be safe, and so I craved them. Marin, however, hated the howl of the wind, the roar of the thunder, and more often than not would crawl into bed with me during storms.

“No, but it wasn’t the thunder that kept me awake. I had the weirdest dreams.” She hunched over her own mug of coffee, breathing in the steam.

“Weird how?”

“Like, women’s voices. Singing. Not with words or anything, just like they were singing along with the storm. Then I’d wake up, and think that I could see them outside my window, or in the river.”

I leaned back against the smooth wood of the railings. “Wow. You’re not rehearsing
Giselle
, are you?” It was one of the creepiest ballets I knew, complete with a graveyard full of vengeful Wilis, heartbroken women who returned from the dead to dance unfaithful men to death. I loved it, but if any ballet would make you think you were being haunted in a storm, it was that one.

“No, but maybe we should. Myrtha would make a good showcase
role for me.” Marin sipped her coffee. “Seriously, though, you didn’t hear anything?”

“I did, Marin. I heard the storm. Which sounded like women’s voices because of the wind in the trees. We’re not being haunted.”

“But you heard them.” She was insistent.

I set my mug down. “Are you okay? Did something else happen?”

She drank, shuddered. “It’s gone bitter. No, I’m sure you’re right. Just the storm, and not being used to how things sound in a strange place. I’m fine.”

She stood up, shook herself loose. “I’ll see you later?”

“Did we settle on four or four thirty?” I asked. We were meeting Gavin for a drink.

“Four, if that still works.”

“It does. I’ll see you then.”

One of the buildings ringing the Commons was a bar. The kind of place that sold burgers and salads made of things that mostly weren’t greens, where you could get out of the house and get your french fry fix all at once. It was made of old, smoke-tinged wood and thick plastered walls, one of which was painted with a surrealist fantasy of liquid clocks and a mechanized forest and a battalion of flaming horses—a gift from an earlier year’s visual arts contingent. The bar had also been gifted with the astoundingly creative name of “There.” As in, “Are we going There for drinks again?” Because the personalized meal service that was part of the residency was so good, There was the only other option at Melete, so indeed, we were: Marin, me, and Gavin.