The Gulf

by Belle Boggs

  Not that these people are angels (ha, another metaphor). They are, after all, the reason I’m so exhausted—I think I talked to every single one of them today about some problem or fear or complaint. But that’s just it, I realized, talking to a woman at the beach tonight (you’d like her, she’s working on this series of poems about the fight to keep a brain-dead woman alive, I guess you’d say it’s pro-life?). They’re coming to me, instead of keeping everything hidden. They’re not afraid (as I always was) of being judged. There’s something honest and on the surface about them and the fact that they know everyone is here for the same purpose. But also, they’re different: we have a preacher’s wife, an R&B singer (I won’t say who, but he’s pretty famous), a veteran, former teachers, housewives, moms, dads, grandparents, a few younger people (no one as young as you).

  It’s my job to take care of their needs while they’re here, though I’m not teaching them. I suppose I’m a little like you in that way, a behind-the-scenes preparer and organizer—that hadn’t occurred to me until tonight, when I sat down to write. I meant to write a poem—I had an idea about the green light, this flash of light that appears green as the sun goes down—but wound up with more things to say to you. Starting with: I know I haven’t tried very hard to understand you or your recent choices, you as an adult. I am working on it. I promise. I think this place may help.

  I spent a lot of time alone this winter. Eric (no, we are not getting married, so please don’t ask) was still in Dubai, so I was by myself. I know, I lived in New York by myself but this felt different. Like being in a monastery. I went days—days, Ruth!—without talking to anyone. The news was horrible most of the time. (We may have different definitions of horrible and different sources for our news but I think we’d both agree that things are not good.) Sometimes I’d call Dad, and he’d tell me about whatever new indignity he was suffering in his department, thanks to budget cuts and overcrowding. Do you know he’s teaching five classes this semester? Three of them are intro, with a writing requirement, so all he does is grade papers. I remember when he had three classes in the spring—he grew asparagus and zinnias and built bookshelves for all our neighbors, because he was worried people weren’t reading books anymore (like the lack of a place to put them was the cause). Anyway, I think he’s lonely, overworked. Maybe you and Darryl could take him supper one night? One of those casseroles you specialize in? Or maybe you already do that. He hasn’t mentioned it, though.

  But I wanted to talk about us, that’s why I’m writing. When you got married, Ruth, it was like a gut punch to me. Not because I’m not married, but because you were so young. There was so much out there—going to college, living on your own, dating—that you hadn’t experienced, that I know Mom would have wanted for you. That I wanted for you. I mean, your first apartment! Being completely alone and free to do whatever you want—to eat ice cream sandwiches for dinner, lie on the floor and think, sleep as late as you want or not at all. I know I moved away, didn’t come home enough. I know I didn’t call enough. I know I wasn’t the sister Mom wanted me to be to you, and I’m sorry.

  So I’m asking now: what was it like, living at home with just Dad? Was it okay? It’s seemed for a while now like you’re mad at both of us, but Dad really did his best. I could have done better. You don’t have to let me off the hook (another cliché). Reel me in. Rake me over the coals. Let me have it.

  Love,

  Marianne

  P.S. Sarasota really is a pleasant place to be. We’re a little north of Sarasota, but it’s still pretty, maybe a little down-at-the-heels. The weather is almost always better than it is everywhere else (I watch the Weather Channel when the news stresses me out too much), and there’s a beach just a short walk from my doorstep. No waves, just gentle lapping water, white smooth sand. And the green light. I’ve never seen it, but maybe you’d get lucky. You should visit.

  To: MarianneStuart@gmail.com

  From: RuthandDarrylBoyette@healingwaters.org

  Subject: Re: Dear RUTH

  Dear Marianne,

  You asked what it was like, living with Dad. You can probably imagine it. We had frozen dinners when he remembered to stock the freezer, and peanut butter and jelly when he didn’t. It was quiet. Dad was in his study a lot, grading papers or reading. There was that time he was dating Noreen and went out more, but other than that it was quiet. We talked twice a day, in the morning before school and at night while we ate our sandwiches or our reheated burritos or pizza from Sal’s. I asked him if I should get some cookbooks and learn to cook. He said no. He said he liked this just fine. One time I asked him if he was one of those people who’d take a pill instead of eating, and he looked at me like I had two heads. Of course, he told me.

  That’s what I fell in love with about the church. I love feeling needed and necessary and part of a community. I think that’s what Mom loved about teaching. You’re more like Dad, you don’t need other people. But I do.

  All those things you say I missed out on? You make them sound really great, Marianne. (“Living in a monastery”? Lying on the floor and thinking—about what? Not sleeping? Waiting for some weird green light?) You said not to ask about Eric, but I liked him. You can’t wait forever to get married, Marianne. That isn’t what Mom would have wanted for you either.

  Darryl doesn’t even check this account. He’s too busy for email. If something comes to him, I just print it out and give it to him.

  Your sister,

  Ruth

  P.S. Dad did tell me about your school. And I saw that you’re run by a group that helps us with fund-raisers, GWGW?

  To: RuthandDarrylBoyette@healingwaters.org

  From: MarianneStuart@gmail.com

  Subject: Re: Dear RUTH

  That wasn’t exactly a raking over the coals.

  Can you send me the link to the story you found, about us and GWGW? They don’t run us, by the way. They’re funders.

  xMarianne

  P.S. Mom didn’t love teaching. She loved art.

  To: MarianneStuart@gmail.com

  From: RuthandDarrylBoyette@healingwaters.org

  Subject: Re: Dear RUTH

  It wasn’t a story, just a newsletter in my email. It wasn’t just about your school, but about a lot of different campuses. They’re expanding pretty quickly. Can’t find it now.

  About Mom: what’s the difference?

  Though the omission worried Eric, Marianne decided not to warn the other workshop leaders before GWGW’s visit, just three days into the residency. She remembered the stern warnings about visitors from her school’s administrators in Brownsville, and the flurry of bad feelings and recriminations kicked down the line from principal to teacher to student, especially those students—the biters and scratchers and Tourette’s swearers—who were corralled in the assistant principal’s office. There was so little you could control, after all—nothing she could say would keep Manfred from drinking or Lorraine from passing out poems by Amiri Baraka or Tom from forgetting his students’ names. To warn them would only make it more likely that they would exhibit their troublesome behaviors, she reasoned. And besides, hadn’t Eric agreed that the tour was up to her to coordinate?

  He acquiesced, grateful that Marianne was willing to lead the tour. He didn’t comment on her last-minute preparations—straightening the office, removing one or two nymphs from the sculpture garden, ironing her clothes, and gathering her hair in a neat, low chignon. Probably he didn’t notice.

  The visitors arrived in a black SUV, like Secret Service agents or the FBI, and emerged wearing identical pale blue polo shirts, the GWGW logo emblazoned on their chests. There were three of them, two identical tall men and a woman, attractive but hard-faced and a little frightening, like a politician, or a politician’s wife. They introduced themselves and offered firm handshakes and a tote bag full of tchotchkes.

  “Thank you,” said Marianne, peering inside the bag. There were notepads and bumper stickers, water bottles and pens. She escorted them to her n
ewly straightened office, which felt somewhat too small for the four of them. Marianne offered chairs, but no one wanted to sit.

  “We have shirts for you in the car, too,” said the woman brightly. Her name, Regina, was spelled out in cursive above the logo on her polo shirt, which she’d tucked in to a trim pencil skirt. Despite the casual quality of her shirt, she wore nylons and heels. “Different sizes and colors. White and pale blue.”

  “Oh good,” Marianne said, pulling a pale blue and white Rubik’s-style cube out of the bag. It was printed, on one face, with GWGW’s logo, but along the side it also read “School of Law.”

  “That’s from one of our partners,” said Regina. “We’re partnered with a law school.”

  “And a nursing school,” said Matt, the taller of the two tall men. “And a library science school, a digital arts school, an academy for hairstylists and aestheticians, and a school for social work.” He ticked them off across his fingers cheerfully.

  “And a school for medical billing,” said the other guy, who had introduced himself as Christopher. “That’s in development.”

  “A Christian medical billing school?” Marianne asked, spinning the cube into disarray. Now it read S_oGl df WL_w.

  “We’ve found that our students—” began Christopher.

  “Our clients,” Regina corrected.

  “Our clients prefer a Christian learning environment,” he said. “They want to know that their peers and teachers are also Christian.”

  “They want to know that what they are learning strengthens their values,” Regina added, “instead of damages them. They want to feel comfortable in a learning environment that is part of their faith journey.”

  “Wow,” said Marianne. She rotated the cube three times, then held it up. “This Rubik’s Cube is very easy to solve.”

  “You are a quick study, I can tell,” Regina said. She winked at Marianne. “I understand the Ranch was all your idea.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it was,” Marianne said, still examining the cube. How could a Rubik’s Cube be only two colors? And why did the two colors mean it would be so easy to put back together, especially if many of the squares were marked with letters? But it was true—she scrambled the cube again, making five quick twists, and was able to return it to the start again in no time.

  “Mark tells me that you were dismayed by your own fine arts training,” she said.

  “There was dismay,” said Marianne, still studying the cube. “And it was also difficult to get a job once it was over.”

  “The value you are bringing to these writers is immeasurable,” said Regina. “Giving them a place to express themselves without judgment.”

  Marianne looked up. “Not entirely without judgment,” she said. “It is, after all, a place to learn.”

  “Of course,” said Regina. “A place of supportive learning that will help them refine their talents. And part of it online, yes?”

  “Yes,” confirmed Marianne. From beneath a stack of new manuscripts, she unearthed the schedule for the current cohort. “They have twelve days here in session, with a half-day optional field trip tomorrow. Then they return in August. In between, they’re in email contact with their professors, working on drafts and revisions.”

  “This is an essential part of our strategy,” said Regina, tapping the page. “Our clients want a Christian experience, and they also want part of it to be online.”

  “They’re busy folks,” Matt said. “Moms and dads, working people. They have church responsibilities, family responsibilities. They are soccer coaches and baseball coaches and Sunday school teachers.”

  “They don’t have time to mess around,” Christopher said, somewhat angrily, as if Marianne herself were trying to rob these hardworking Christians of their civic and family-minded time.

  “They want a school experience that fits into their faith and their life,” Regina said, more gently.

  “Like the Rubik’s Cube,” Marianne said, holding it aloft, like an evil queen with an apple. “They don’t want it to be too hard.”

  “Exactly,” said Regina. “I think we understand each other exactly.”

  The tour went less than well. All three workshops met concurrently, and with so little else to see—they dispensed quickly with the pool, the beach, the dining hall, and the common spaces, though all three visitors dutifully admired the sculpture garden—they had no choice but to open the door on each classroom, where the business of education was taking place.

  In Tom’s workshop, Patty Connor, author of a six-hundred-page manuscript about her eight miscarriages, was pressing tissues underneath her eyes and shaking her head vigorously. “But that’s exactly how it happened,” she was saying, or rather sobbing, while someone patted her arm and another woman handed her tissue after tissue, pulling them from the box one after the other as if that would somehow stop her crying. At the head of the long workshop table, Tom, dressed in his usual jeans, T-shirt, and safari jacket, leaned back in his chair. He looked helpless and stricken.

  “Memoir,” whispered Marianne to Regina, backing them out of the room. “It brings up a lot of feelings.”

  In their classroom, the poets were doing some kind of exercise, all of them bent over their notebooks in the obedient posture of schoolchildren. Lorraine had not devoted any class time to workshopping the students’ poems yet, but had introduced the idea of the “generative workshop,” in which the goal was to collect not praise or suggestions but ideas and material. Now they were each sketching something intently. On the board, there were two stick figures locked in some sort of combat, one labeled “T.K.,” the other “L.K.” Lorraine was smoking. She had propped a small fan, facing outward, in the open window, and was considerately blowing her smoke in its direction. “Your worst sexual memory,” she was saying, between puffs. “Any age.”

  Marianne held her breath and looked at the ceiling while Regina made notes with a stylus on a black, shiny tablet. Marianne wondered where else they could find investors. She wondered if she’d have to give her phone back—already she’d gotten used to sending emails and reading the news on its small, glowing screen. Matt and Christopher, who did not have tablets to hold, circled the room, peeking rudely at the students’ open pages, their faces registering expressions of confusion, concern, and disgust.

  “Professor Kominski won the Yale Younger Poets prize,” Marianne offered as they left. “She is really an inspiring teacher. She’s been through a lot,” she added.

  “Kominski,” Regina mused. “Is that a Polish name?”

  Thinking that Eric had the best control over his students and likely the most conventional teaching style, Marianne had saved his class for last. When planning the Ranch, months ago, she’d given him the best classroom, too: a cabana and game room steps from the beach. Though the seating was cramped—eleven people fit snugly, elbow to elbow, around the small table—the gulf views were incredible, and Marianne thought the ocean smell, the sounds of the waves and the gulls, would be invigorating and inspiring. But she could hear voices arguing even over the sound of the waves as they approached. She thought of turning around, heading back to the office to dial up Mark on speakerphone, but Regina stepped powerfully ahead, her heels crunching into the sand.

  Davonte leaned forward across the table, obviously exercised, his forearms propped up on a pile of papers. “Why don’t you just say his name? Come on. Don’t play dumb with us. We all know who you’re talking about.”

  The author of the work, a placid-looking retiree with a snow-white beard and snow-white sneakers, was reddening slightly around the temples.

  “As I stated before, this is a work of speculative fiction. None of the characters are intended to resemble any individual living person.”

  “Oh, come on,” Davonte groaned. “America’s first president of Lebanese descent … everyone votes for him because of his one-word slogan, ‘Trust’ … he negotiates a global arms control treaty and brings about world peace … and then in chapter five it t
urns out he’s the Antichrist.”

  “Again, this is not a work of political commentary. My novel clearly takes place in the future, as indicated by its title, ‘2016: The Final Battle.’”

  The other students looked uncomfortable. “Help me out here, Eric,” Davonte said.

  Marianne willed Eric to say something diplomatic, to soothe with vague praise and move on, but it was too late.

  “I understand that this is speculative fiction, Louis, but in order for those of us still living in the present to relate to it, your premise has to be believable.”

  Matt snorted, apparently finding Louis’s premise quite believable.

  “So, in the year 2016,” Eric continued. “A world peace treaty is a bad thing?”

  “It is when it leads to one-world government.”

  “And just playing devil’s advocate here, ha-ha, but that is a bad thing because …”

  “Because once the Antichrist controls all of the governments of the world, he will be able to turn their power against the Church. The Church is his ultimate adversary. You’ll understand once you reach chapter fourteen … or once you reread your Book of Revelation.”

  This answer seemed to mollify Davonte. “Well, I do remember that in Revelation, the mark of the beast and such.” He shuffled his papers, his voice softening. “All I’m asking is why it’s gotta be Obama, though.”

  “Young man, I do not intend to state or imply that President Obama is the Antichrist,” Louis offered.