The Gulf

by Belle Boggs

  So she called around, made some appointments in New York, bought a train ticket and packed a suitcase. She called Mark, guilt and fear churning in her stomach, and asked him for a reference. He didn’t sound angry or even surprised to hear from her. He caught her up on the latest news.

  The Ranch was reopened on an existing GWGW campus, an Orlando-based school of mass communications and social media. Mark and his partners had, in his words, exited the investment opportunity. It was unclear how much his share of the take would be, but he said he’d set some aside for Eric and Marianne: a finder’s fee, he called it. Eric was rewarded with a full-time GWGW job, with a real salary and benefits and a 401(k). He and Regina had just left for a trip to the British Isles—no hurricanes there, after all. He was taking her to the James Joyce House of the Dead, to Frank O’Connor’s birthplace. Real romantic stuff, Mark told Marianne. She could tell he was trying to spare her feelings.

  After reading Lorraine’s student evaluations, they kept her on as poetry faculty. Tom said he’d had enough—he picked up a visiting writer gig in California. Frances was happy, for her part, to collect the insurance money. “Nobody lost out,” Mark said. “Except, well, maybe you.”

  “What about the students?”

  “We’re overenrolled! They love the Ranch.”

  “No—the individual students. Like, what about Patty? And Davonte? And Janine Gray?”

  “Davonte’s doing great—didn’t you see him on Good Morning America? I don’t know about everybody else, but we were very generous with the people who went through the storm.”

  “Mark, did we have to do it this way? Did you have to have GWGW’s help?”

  He snorted. “Nobody gets anywhere on their own, Marianne. Not anywhere worthwhile.”

  Marianne thought that this was most truthful thing she’d ever heard Mark say.

  “Can I call them? Email them?”

  “Who—GWGW? I don’t think—”

  “No, Mark. The students.”

  “Marianne, like I said, I’m glad to give you a glowing reference. I’m glad to send the money—it’s enough to get you into a new apartment, get you on your feet again. But don’t you think it would be better to make a clean break? Start over? That’s what I’m thinking would be best for everyone.”

  She gave him her dad’s address and hung up. In her suitcase she’d packed the new clothes she’d bought, some notebooks, the snow globe from her mother. The water in the globe was now half-evaporated; it looked like there’d been a flood.

  I love you, Janine had said, planting a kiss on her forehead. I forgive you.

  23

  Marianne’s favorite time of day: four o’clock in the afternoon, blue-gray light filtering through her classroom’s grimy windows, new tempera paintings hanging from the ceiling or drying on the racks near the radiator. Everything put back in order: the math manipulatives in their bins, books reshelved, brushes washed, paint jars lidded and rinsed. Desks wiped down, papers stickered with glitter stars. Halls quiet. Time to leave.

  Today it snowed, one of those wet, early-December snows that usually stops as quickly as it starts. But the snow kept falling into the afternoon, and when twenty-five restless first-graders wouldn’t turn their gaze from the windows, couldn’t focus on the too-complicated fractions lesson, Marianne leaned toward them conspiratorially and whispered, “Do you want to hear the best words ever written about snow?”

  “Yes!” they mostly screamed.

  And she recited the last stanza of Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”

  “Ms. Stuart, how do you know that, without looking at a paper?” Sabrina, a favorite, asked without raising her hand.

  None of Marianne’s students were particularly good at raising their hands, but they all loved poetry. Marianne recited it again:

  It was evening all afternoon.

  It was snowing

  And it was going to snow.

  The blackbird sat

  In the cedar-limbs.

  “That’s called reciting,” she said. “If you say something enough, it gets stuck in your brain. It’s the same as learning a song. Want to hear the rest?”

  They did, and spent the afternoon working on their own poems, inventing the spelling or dictating their lines to Marianne, who copied them in a large hand onto gray loose-leaf. Thirteen Ways of Looking at P.S. 150. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Ms. Stuart. Fifteen Ways of Looking at My Shoes. Ten Ways of Looking at a Subway Rat.

  Marianne has been teaching under a provisional license since September, when she moved back to the city and enrolled, using the money Mark sent, in a teacher certification program. Usually she has one good teaching idea a day, one moment when all the students are actually paying attention not because she threatened them or raised her voice or was on the verge of crying but because of her own enthusiasm and energy. Hardly any of these ideas have been planned ahead of time, and most of them are what the principal calls “off task.” Her class celebration after Obama’s reelection, their Panama City pen pal project, the time they wandered the halls with rulers, measuring doorways, floor tiles, the water fountain: this was not what they were supposed to be doing at the time. And certainly the principal would have noticed this off-task poetry writing, but it was snowing, and half the teachers hadn’t even come to work, and because of that there were kids from the second grade crowding Marianne’s classroom, and now they all know some of the words to a famous poem.

  It was evening all afternoon.

  It was snowing

  And it was going to snow.

  Thick flakes cover her hair and coat and backpack as she makes her way to the elevated train stop, largely deserted. She is headed to the city—a shorter commute than back to her neighborhood, but still an hour’s train ride, maybe more with weather delays.

  Are you sure you can make it? Janine texted her, earlier that day.

  Yes, she texted back. You?

  Of course!

  Marianne is nervous about seeing Janine, and she wouldn’t mind canceling their date at a coffee shop, well known for its eight-dollar hot cocoa, near her Midtown hotel. But she isn’t going to be the one to back out—not after Janine made the flight from Florida. She is here with her daughter—Beth has an interview with the local NBC affiliate—and wants to see Marianne in person.

  They’d started talking again not long ago. Marianne heard that Janine had not returned to school, and she was worried. So she called, she emailed, she texted. Finally, in late October, Janine wrote back—there was a hurricane set to make landfall in New York; would Marianne take shelter, please? Marianne was struck by how reckless she still must seem, how careless of her own life, when that wasn’t how she felt at all. Not that there was much she could do about Sandy, other than wait in her fourth-floor apartment for the water to recede and the power to be restored. Things are fine, she texted after the worst was over. I’m safe.

  Praise God! Janine replied, followed by a long email about how she thought, after their storm, that she’d give up poetry forever. It worked for a while—she was made department chair at school, and Beth was applying for jobs in faraway places; her husband’s job was busy, and her younger daughter was raising money for orphans. They turned the writing room her husband built for her into an entertainment room, with a big-screen TV and surround sound, and at night they watched reality programs: Ice Road Truckers, Pawn Stars, America’s Got Talent. But she said she just felt empty and unanchored, like a part of her was missing or dead.

  Marianne wrote back to her right away. You are a poet, she told Janine, and that is something you just can’t help, like a disease or a birth defect, but if you accept it, it can make things better, can at least help you understand things. She sent a poem she’d written about Ruth and asked Janine if she wanted to exchange work—not a teacher-student relationship, nothing formal. Just an even exchange. Work for work, thoughts for thoughts.

  So they write, they email, they talk on the phone. Sometimes they
Skype after school in the very classrooms that have exhausted them, or else at home, after supper. Marianne sits at her kitchen table and Janine sits in a closet she’s rigged up for writing, much better, she says, than the big glass room her husband built. They talk about poetry—Janine has become a big reader of the Beats, but also the Black Arts writers and the Imagists. Marianne has been reading old favorites: Plath and Sexton and Dickinson, Rilke and Neruda and Szymborska and Levertov and Rich and Olds. They have arguments about writing. Janine doesn’t understand how Marianne can write if she doesn’t believe in God, and Marianne doesn’t understand why she would write if she does. What’s the point, they both wonder? Neither one can explain it to the other.

  But in person, that’s different, Marianne thinks, when her train finally screeches to its stop. It’s possible Janine has saved some recriminations for this meeting—why wouldn’t she? Or else they’ll be awkwardly silent around the things that have gone unsaid: how Marianne could have started an entire school under false pretenses, why she allowed Janine and her work to be used by GWGW, why she went to the press and not to her students.

  She gets up anyway, climbs the stairs, and walks through stinging sideways-blown snow to the coffee shop crowded with tourists clutching shopping bags. Christmas music playing. A quick scan around the over-warm room—maybe Janine isn’t here, she thinks—but then she recognizes her friend, seated with two mugs at a small table near the window.

  “You made it!” Janine cries, standing. She embraces Marianne, even though her heavy coat is wet with snow. “The line was so long, I got you some too. I hope it’s still warm.”

  “How was Beth’s interview?”

  “Fingers crossed, but I think it went well. That’s an amazing thing to come out of the storm—the Weather Channel footage has brought in so many opportunities.”

  “That’s great, Janine. She deserves it.” Marianne sips the intensely sweet, thick cocoa.

  “Do you think she’d be okay? If she lived here? She’s never lived away from home. And New York City …”

  “She’ll love it,” Marianne says. “She’s tough and smart. She’ll do great, and the storm—” Marianne doesn’t know why she’s bringing up Sandy, when it has taken such enormous effort not to read a message into this second, destructive storm. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t on Janine’s mind. “We don’t usually have weather like that. If we do, I’ll help—she can call me anytime. Or maybe I’ll call her?” She says this last part as lightly as she can.

  Janine shakes her head in wonderment. “You see? So many blessings. I’m reminded all the time that God has a plan for every trial He puts in front of us.”

  “It was definitely a trial, wasn’t it?” Marianne hopes she is opening up a place for Janine to let her have it.

  “Look,” Janine says, reaching into her bag. She brings out Davonte’s book, Shelter from da Storm, and slides it toward Marianne. “I went to a reading at our Barnes & Noble and got it autographed for you. Did you know there’s a whole character inspired by me? I think you’re in it too.”

  “Thank you.” Marianne already has a copy, sent by Eric, whose name is prominently featured in the acknowledgments pages. She has yet to read it.

  “Did you know he actually wrote most of it himself?” Janine asks. “He decided, halfway through, that he actually liked writing. Plus he told me he didn’t think Eric had a very good handle on the redemption part.”

  Marianne laughs. “That’s probably accurate,” she says, running her fingers over the glossy book jacket. “I’m glad he did it on his own. Eric didn’t tell me that.”

  “Do you still talk to him?”

  “Not much.”

  Janine tells her how if she just lived in Panama City, she’d have so many single men to introduce her to—good men from church, and a couple of guys in a writing group she found online. They’ve started meeting once a month, reading their work aloud. Marianne feels a little stab of jealousy over the fact that Janine has a writing group without her.

  “Do you talk about school—the Ranch? Do they know about it?”

  “That’s behind me,” Janine says firmly. “It wasn’t what I expected, or maybe even what I hoped, but it wasn’t all bad. I think that it was God’s plan. I hope you believe me.”

  Marianne nods.

  “I took your advice,” Janine says. “I sent those poems to Terri Schiavo’s parents, telling them I wouldn’t publish another one or even keep writing about their daughter if they didn’t want me to. I was so worried, waiting to hear back—maybe I wouldn’t hear anything, I thought, and that would be the worst. But they wrote back, a really nice note. They thanked me. So I wanted to thank you. Because I’ve been writing more.”

  Janine reaches across the table, takes Marianne’s hand in hers, squeezes. “You know, you deserve good things too. You deserve to finish your book and call it anything you like. That’s what Terri’s parents told me. And it’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  Marianne sits back, a little stunned, but does not let go of Janine’s hand. On her computer, the folder of poems—slowly but steadily growing—is still named “The Ugly Bear List,” but she thinks of that title as temporary, a placeholder until she finds something better. It may be a while before she finishes this book, but she’s not in a hurry.

  “Thank you,” Marianne says. She doesn’t know what else to say, so she starts naming the good things in her life. “I’m so glad to see you. I had a good teaching day today. And my sister called last week—I missed the gender reveal party, but she’s having a girl.”

  “A girl!” Janine squeals. People at nearby tables turn to look at them, and Marianne realizes that they probably think it’s her news, this baby girl. But that’s okay—it is her news, isn’t it?

  “And good teaching days,” Janine says. “You have to hang on to those. It’s such a dream to be here—can you believe this is my first time in New York? And it snows? Think you’ll get out of school tomorrow?”

  Marianne looks outside, where fine white flakes dance and swirl, illuminated by the streetlights and the headlights of slow-moving traffic. It’s close to her own childhood image of the city, the one she learned about in the books she read with her mother. But school here is never closed, and she knows which kids will be there tomorrow, sleepy-eyed and warming themselves by the radiator. She’ll read The Snowy Day with them, do cutpaper collage, heat paper cups of chocolate milk in the microwave.

  “Probably not,” she says. “But that’s okay.”

  “Every day is a gift,” Janine says. “A gift from God.”

  Marianne doesn’t believe that, but she is glad to be alive. For months now, at random times of day, gratitude has washed over her in waves—for Janine’s friendship, for her father and Ruth and the baby. For the warmth of sun on her face in December, a child leaning against her knees at story time. The lift of finishing a poem or starting a new one. She hopes it lasts.

  Riding the subway home, she allows herself to remember the feeling, as she went underwater, of desperately wanting to live. She remembers letting go, then being knocked into a post and grabbing hold before climbing onto the flimsy shed roof. She doesn’t know how Davonte or Janine had the courage to wait for her in the rising waters, or how she had the courage to jump.

  Tonight there will be an early holiday party in her building—they put off the condo sale, and no one, except Marianne, even bothered to move out. Still, her neighbors have been gone so much on their own various journeys that they hardly noticed she was away for a whole year. She’ll put off her lesson plans, get dressed up, drink bourbon cocktails that burn her throat pleasantly.

  Marianne! Her neighbors will say. What have you been up to?

  And she’ll be tempted to tell them everything. She can picture herself making light of it all, exaggerating for effect, portraying herself as the victim or the hero. It’s just the kind of story they’d be into.

  But then she’ll think about Janine, and she’ll feel guilty. She’s res
olved not to betray anyone again, and not to lie.

  Maybe she’ll say she had a teaching job down in Florida.

  Maybe, just to mess with them, she’ll tell them she got saved.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Katie Dublinski, for your vast patience as I worked on this novel, and your wisdom and thoughtfulness as you helped me shape it. Thank you, in fact, to everyone at Graywolf—especially Fiona McCrae, Susannah Sharpless, Marisa Atkinson, Caroline Nitz, and Casey O’Neil. And to Kimberly Glyder for another beautiful cover! I continue to feel so proud and lucky to be a member of the Graywolf family.

  And thank you to my other wolfpack—my many friends at North Carolina State University. I’m especially grateful to Wilton Barnhardt for his sharp notes and ideas, and to John Kessel, Shervon Cassim, Dorianne Laux, and Eduardo Corral for being such excellent colleagues. Thanks to my students for asking after the novel, and for being so inspiring in the classroom and beyond.

  Thank you to Dan Kois, Meaghan Mulholland, Krista Bremer, and Jon Mozes for your enormously helpful feedback and encouragement.

  Thank you to Jill McCorkle, who supported and cheered this book from its beginning.

  And to Maria Massie, my wonderful agent.

  I’m also grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Durham Arts Council, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Squaw Valley Writers’ Conference, and the Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference, for support and inspiration while I worked on the book. And also to Edna “Diddie” Parrish, for your Florida hospitality.

  Finally, I’m grateful to my family for your steadfast support—to Buttons and Terry Boggs, who have always believed that you can live a good and useful life as an artist.

  To Beatrice and Harriet, who each arrived at just the right time.

  And to Richard—I’m so lucky to have you as a first, best, and last reader, and a partner in all things.

  Belle Boggs is the author of The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood and Mattaponi Queen, a collection of linked stories set along Virginia’s Mattaponi River. The Art of Waiting was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and was named a best book of the year by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, the Globe and Mail, Buzzfeed, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Mattaponi Queen won the Bakeless Prize and the Library of Virginia Literary Award and was a finalist for the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Boggs has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences, and her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, the Paris Review, Harper’s, Orion, Guernica, and other publications. She teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.