Endless Summer, page 21
“Vermont is beautiful,” Vivi says.
“I’ve been to Vermont,” JP says. “I’m curious about the program. What’s it like?”
“It’s…”
“Come on, Vivi, you’re the writer. Describe it.”
“It’s intense,” Vivi says. “I thought it would be nurturing, but there’s a pervasive sense of competition. There’s a pecking order. For example, we’re served in the dining hall by waitstaff who were selected to attend the conference for free. They’re the elite talent.” Vivi drops her voice because she’s on one of the pay phones outside the dining hall and people have finally started to show up (in their pajamas), searching for coffee. “One of the waiters, this guy named Mike, goes to Iowa.”
JP gasps melodramatically. “Not Iowa!”
“The best pieces from the conference are being published in the Bread Loaf Review,” Vivi says. “So everyone is acting quite cutthroat about being chosen.”
“Have you gotten any writing done?” JP asks.
Vivi has claimed one of the Adirondack chairs as her own (it’s not as comfortable as it appears), but she’s been doing more editing than actual writing. The first story she’s submitting for the workshop is an incarnation of a short story she started writing back in high school, “Coney Island Baby.” Her original story was about a woman who thinks her husband is having an affair but discovers he’s attending rehearsals for a barbershop quartet. In this new draft, the protagonist is a teenage girl, Deneen, whose father commits suicide. Their regular breakfast waitress, Cindy, comes to the funeral and tells Deneen that she had been having an affair with the father (Vivi deleted all the barbershop-quartet references). Then Deneen and Cindy forge a friendship that is comforting to them both.
The new title is “Meeting Cindy.”
Vivi worries about the ending. Should Deneen and Cindy become friends, or should the relationship be fraught in some way? Vivi tries to imagine how she would feel if she learned that her father and the real Cindy-from-Perkins were having an affair and Cindy was every bit as devastated by his suicide as Vivi.
Yes, they would be friends. Friends forever.
“I go to my workshop for two hours every morning,” Vivi says, “then there are seminars and lectures in the afternoons, and they offer activities like hiking and fly-fishing, but I don’t do any of that.”
“Fly-fishing, though,” JP says. “I should have come!”
“There are readings at night. We all pack into a small theater and the instructors read and some of the waitstaff do as well.” Vivi pauses. “Everyone is so good, JP.”
“How is Caroline Corrigan?” JP asks. “I bet you’re her favorite student.”
Vivi laughs because this is so far from the truth. The most unsettling thing about Bread Loaf has been the two workshops with Caroline. She’s a… bitch. There’s just no other way to phrase it. This is profoundly upsetting because Vivi adores her work. Cleaning House is Vivi’s all-time favorite book, and By Myself in a Tree is in her top five.
But how does the old saying go? Never meet your heroes, lest they be found to have feet of clay.
Or just otherwise suck, Vivi thinks.
Caroline Corrigan looks exactly like the picture on her book jacket. She has long silver-blond hair that she wears loose around her face like an aging folk-rock star. Despite the heat of the summer mornings, she wears jeans and white blouses that are as crisp as paper. She unbuttons the blouses to reveal the barest hint of cleavage. (Vivi can’t decide if this is alluring or slutty.) Caroline Corrigan has a raspy edge to her voice. Out of class, she is always smoking. What makes her such a bitch is the way she delivers her scathing criticisms with a huge smile. She’s like some kind of evil queen, the Marie Antoinette of writing workshops. The one time she offered praise, she appeared abjectly miserable.
“She doesn’t know me from Adam,” Vivi says. Caroline’s manner is so severe and her comments so unflinchingly cruel (yet intelligent and spot-on) that Vivi hasn’t once summoned the courage to raise her hand to offer her own thoughts. “I count that as a good thing.”
It’s Darla Kay’s idea to read each other’s stories the night before they will be respectively workshopped. Vivi can’t bring herself to say no—and besides, she has little else in the way of friends. Both the vampire girl—whose name is Katelyn—and the Bon Jovi woman, Beth, are in Vivi’s workshop, but Katelyn is a sex-obsessed whiner and Beth is a Caroline Corrigan kiss-ass who says things like, I just didn’t feel any sense of narrative tension. What’s at stake? Why should I care about these people?
Reluctantly, Vivi hands Darla Kay “Meeting Cindy” and accepts a copy of Darla Kay’s story, “The Stairwell,” in return.
“The Stairwell,” by D. K. Bolt (Darla Kay says that in horror writing, androgyny is best), is, essentially, unreadable. The language is overwrought, cartoonishly Victorian. Two characters named Elgin and Piccolo are vying for control of the staircase that leads to the underworld, which Darla Kay has described in vivid, horrific detail. Vivi has to press her eyes closed against the language; if she continues, she’ll be sure to have nightmares about skinned… no, stop. She can’t believe that sad, mousy Darla Kay writes this stuff (although Darla Kay has seemed less sad recently, Vivi notes. She has two male buddies from her workshop and she’s been hanging out in their room until well past midnight). Vivi skims the story to the end, then says, “Wow, Darla Kay.”
Darla Kay is crying again—forget what Vivi said about her seeming less sad—and she clutches Vivi’s story to her chest. “This is just… beautiful. What a moving story about a girl and her father. The details are so… well curated. You didn’t fall back on cliché even once. And the ending is poignant. It’s pitch-perfect, Vivi.” She blinks. “I can’t believe I’m your roommate. You’re going to be famous.”
“And you…” Vivi says, trying to muster up matching enthusiasm for “The Stairwell,” even though it’s so creepy and awful that Vivi can’t wait to hand it back. (Is that maybe the point? Would Darla Kay take this as a compliment?) “This is remarkable.”
“Maybe we’ll both be famous someday,” Darla Kay says.
“Wouldn’t that be crazy?” Vivi says.
The feedback from Darla Kay gives Vivi the moxie she so badly needs. (It does occur to Vivi that maybe Darla Kay was flattering her, maybe she found “Meeting Cindy” as offensive to her sensibilities as Vivi found “The Stairwell” to hers and was pretending to like it only to preserve Vivi’s feelings. But Darla Kay had been crying real tears, so Vivi dismisses these doubts.)
To workshop, Vivi wears a red sundress. Red is the color of confidence.
By now, Vivi has allies in the class—John, Jay, and Ray. The three of them have a little bromance going and Vivi has somehow been included as “one of the guys.” John hails from the Chicago area, where he’s a pharmaceutical rep; Jay is a high-school principal from Lafayette, Louisiana; and Ray is divorced from his college sweetheart and lives somewhere in New Jersey, where he’s some kind of foreman. (Vivi has to keep Ray at a distance because he’s single and stares at Vivi all through workshop.)
First up in the day’s workshop is John’s story, which is about a baseball game at a juvenile detention center. It’s a bit predictable—a Christian youth group of (white) kids come to play baseball with the (predominantly Black) kids in juvie and there’s a lot of tediously technical baseball-driven plot, and at the end of the game, it’s a tie until one of the most problematic juvie kids hits a home run and becomes the hero and is celebrated for the first time in his life.
The story gets generally praised, and Vivi, frankly, can’t believe it. She’s shocked that Bon Jovi Beth hasn’t mentioned the blatant racial stereotypes. Neither has Jay, who is Black himself. But Vivi likes John, so she doesn’t mention them either. She doesn’t want to be the only naysayer, especially not when her story is up next.
Will Caroline Corrigan drop the guillotine blade on the story, as she always does? Apparently not. She offers an indifferent shrug and says, “Okay, good discussion. Let’s move on. ‘Meeting Cindy’ by Vivian Howe. Who would like to start?”
John starts by saying he “really admired the palpable sense of grief” in the story, but then vampire girl Katelyn pipes up to say she found the characterization of the breakfast waitress “classist.”
“The author is sneering at her because she’s in the service industry.”
“Agree,” Caroline says. She’s beaming. “It does real damage to the story. The elitist, pitying tone when describing Cindy has to go. But then again, this story is so flawed, it’s hard to say what the biggest problem is.”
Other people chime in, and not one positive word is uttered. The class is a pack of jackals feasting on the pinned prey that is Vivi’s story. Ray, who Vivi was so sure was in love with her, delivers the death blow.
“The author treats her characters with such contempt, they might as well be cockroaches. The girl’s father dies and she goes right up to the point with her boyfriend and loses her virginity?”
“That part felt authentic to me, actually,” Katelyn says. “Sex and death are always connected.”
“Agree,” Caroline says. “If there’s anything to be salvaged from this story, it’s the protagonist’s relationship with the boyfriend. It felt a bit like it was cribbed from a Springsteen song, teenagers out driving around at night and all that.” The class titters. “But there are glimmers of some actual human emotion. The ensuing relationship between the protagonist and the breakfast waitress is… blech, treacly regurgitation of a dozen mindless sitcoms.” Caroline beams at the class as though she has just learned she’s won the Pulitzer. “Beth and Ray are up tomorrow, yes? Until then, ta.”
The rest of the class slide their annotated copies of Vivi’s stories across the table like they’re dealing her a losing hand, and she stacks them in a nice, neat deck as though she plans to read through them, take suggestions, and glean ideas for a future revision—instead of throwing them all in the dumpster outside the dining hall.
She’s numb. She can see her arms, see that they end in hands, but she can’t feel them. Red is the color of the bloodbath she just endured.
John, Jay, and Ray are waiting outside the classroom for her.
“Are you coming with us to the How to Get an Agent seminar?” Jay asks. Jay offered no opinion during the workshop of her story. He had been parented well.
“No.”
“Oh, come on,” Ray says, thumping her shoulder. “You survived your first workshop. And you’ll need an agent if you want to be published someday. Just come with us.”
“I’ll take a pass,” she says. “I’m going to call my fiancé.”
And pack my bags, she thinks.
JP picks up on the first ring. “How’d it go?” he asks. “Did she love it? Are you going to be in the literary magazine?”
Vivi bursts into tears. The pain she’s feeling is so… foreign. She’s used to doing well in school, being celebrated for her intelligence. She won the creative writing award at Duke! She feels like she’s been kicked in the gut, the teeth. The class hated it, and because it was a story so close to her heart—about her father!—it feels like they hate her.
Vivi is crying so hard she can’t breathe. She can hear JP on the other end of the line trying to soothe her, but surely he can sense she’s beyond being consoled by him telling her he loves her, that she’s his shining star. She needs more than that right now. Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she should just give up and go home.
“Talk to me about something else for a minute,” she says. “Tell me what’s happening there.”
“Here?” JP says. He’s been working all summer for a real estate agency as a glorified gofer, but he likes it, and, as everyone knows, real estate is where the money is. “Well, Mattie met me for a swim after work yesterday and then we went down to the Rope Walk for dinner, sat on the deck, had steamers and beers, and then Mattie went to the Muse to see the Radiators, but I didn’t have a ticket, so I went home.”
“What are you doing over the weekend?” Vivi asks, snuffling.
“I’ll probably sail on Saturday, maybe drive out to Madequecham for a beach party on Sunday. My mother is having some people for cocktails tonight, so I’ll swing by. And I have to get fitted for my tuxedo at Murray’s.” He pauses. “I’m getting married to this really hot chick in October.”
Vivi can’t even smile. “I wish I were there.”
“Me too, Vivi,” JP says. “I know that all sounds like fun, but the truth is, I miss you like crazy.”
Vivi hangs up the phone. Through the door to the dining hall, she sees the waitstaff setting up for lunch and Vivi tries not to hate them. They are the ones who will be published in the literary magazine, and, ten years from now, theirs will be the novels on the front pages of the New York Times Book Review. She trudges back to her room, where she finds Darla Kay and two of her workshop cronies—Vivi thinks their names are Matt and Max; they look like slightly older versions of the boys back at Parma High who were obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons—popping open a bottle of sparkling wine. (Where did that come from?)
“Hey,” Vivi says. She would like to liquefy and seep through the floorboards. “I take it your workshop went well?”
All Darla Kay can do is squeal.
“It was complete domination,” Matt/Max says. “Grady loved DK’s story.”
“He’s hooking me up with his publisher!” Darla Kay says.
Don’t sound bitter or surprised or jealous, Vivi thinks, though she is experiencing all three emotions in abundance. “Yahoo!” Vivi says. “Amazing! And so well deserved, Darla Kay!” Behind Darla Kay, one of Pinto’s baby pictures is crooked, clinging to the wall by only one corner. Vivi can’t believe Darla Kay hasn’t noticed this.
Darla Kay says, “I wish we’d brought an extra cup so you could have some bubbly.”
Vivi waves away the suggestion. “You enjoy. This is your celebration.”
Darla Kay gasps. “I’m so thoughtless. How did your workshop go?”
“Mine?” Vivi says. She pauses long enough that Darla Kay and Matt/Max turn back to the task at hand—toasting DK’s success!—and Vivi doesn’t have to answer.
My fiancé’s mother is sick is the excuse Vivi comes up with. If the timing works out, she might be able to slip away without anyone noticing. She will call a private taxi to take her back to the airport. Who will even notice she’s gone? Well, Darla Kay and John, Jay, and Ray. Darla Kay will, most likely, alert the office—but there are deserters all the time, people who can’t handle the pressure or the criticism.
Vivi will be one more person who quit.
How will she ever become a writer if she quits now? She won’t, she surmises. If she leaves Bread Loaf, she can just forget the idea of ever finishing a book, because that requires discipline, grit. Doesn’t Vivi have both of these things? Yes! So she had a bad workshop—who cares? She will stay and fight. She won’t go home to Nantucket.
She will bring Nantucket here.
For the next four days, Vivi writes like a fiend. Every morning after her run, she grabs a banana from the dining hall and claims her Adirondack chair. She leaves only to go to workshop. In workshop, she starts sharing her honest opinion. Sometimes Caroline Corrigan agrees with Vivi, sometimes she doesn’t, but at least she learns Vivi’s name.
Vivi is so focused on her work that it takes her a little while to realize that her industriousness is garnering attention. One of the women in the fringed shawls from New York City who were in the share van with Vivi introduces herself. Her name is Annabelle and she and her roommate, Loredana (peasant blouse, wide-brimmed felt hat), were wondering if Vivi wanted to come over that evening after the readings for some wine.
Vivi smiles gratefully at Annabelle. “No, thank you,” she says.
Vivi’s second story for workshop is entitled “The Powder Room.” It’s about a young woman who thinks she’s spending the summer at her best friend’s home on Nantucket until she realizes her friend’s parents have other ideas.
Vivi is savvy enough this time to go into workshop expecting the worst. The class is going to trash her story, tear it to messy shreds, and, being prepared for this, Vivi feels lighter, nearly nonchalant. It’s just her heart and soul on the page, no big deal. By criticizing her writing, the class is, essentially, disapproving of her very being, but that’s the risk that every writer in the history of the world has taken. Vivi isn’t special.
Jay starts off by running his hands lovingly over the first page and saying, “I felt this story.”
“Me too,” Bon Jovi Beth says. “The sublimated loneliness was palpable when the protagonist was in the powder room surrounded by pictures of her best friend’s family.”
“Agree,” Caroline Corrigan says. “Powerful imagery, the use of that powder room. Our protagonist is masterfully positioned as the other—an outsider without a family history of her own to claim. And yet it’s clear the protagonist has a soul, whereas the family—it’s a brilliant portrayal of her best friend’s mother, by the way—might have been more troubled than they appear.”
“Those parents seem like the kind who never have sex,” Katelyn says.
“I loved the dog,” John says. “And how the dog followed the protagonist everywhere. It’s a subtle way to let the reader know whom to root for.”
“Disagree,” Caroline Corrigan says, and her expression is gleeful. Finally, a bone of contention! “Children and animals in fiction smack of an easy device. The dog was the only element of this story I objected to. I say euthanize the dog.”
The class is quiet. This is not a popular opinion.
“I have questions about her decision to stay at the end,” Ray says. “How is she going to make it work?”
“You’re supposed to have questions,” Jay says. “I like that not everything is spelled out for us.”
