The Anatomy of Curiosity

by Brenna Yovanoff

“Introspective,” countered Geraldine.

  “No,” Petra argued, “it’s dire because of her story. She was so shy that she stayed away in her house, and she got shyer and shyer as she went on, and so eventually she just never left her house. So this ‘a not admitting of the wound until it grew so wide that all my Life had entered it’ is terrible. It’s when she realizes that she’s thrown herself away because she’s locked herself away.”

  Geraldine said, “You didn’t say ‘uh.’”

  They looked at each other. Petra thought about it. She had not said “uh.” She was also still standing straight.

  Petra said, “I was declaiming.”

  Geraldine said, “Yes, you were.”

  • • •

  The portrait would never be done. Petra took to wearing the same coat each time so that Geraldine could spend hours just painting the reflections on buttons.

  “Why didn’t you like the underpainting?” Petra asked.

  “It’s so messy,” Geraldine replied. She tapped her brush against a painted button. “I like things in their place.”

  Petra wondered if that cage was in its place.

  • • •

  “I think we should move your times up an hour, or even two,” Frances said. Frances was Marla’s younger sister. She was clearly composed of the same stuff as Marla—the same tiny nose, the same square jaw—only everything seemed to be fashioned on a smaller scale. Even her fancy clothing was more delicate than Marla’s. Her fingers shook in the breeze, and her hair trembled when she moved. Her words were like little birds in a tree, fluttering for only a moment before they flickered off to a safer branch. “Now that it’s getting later in the year and we’re losing so much sunlight.”

  I’m generally pleased with my current authorial style, but I wasn’t always. For starters, I didn’t begin with one—no one does. No matter how specific your way of seeing the world is, until you’ve learned to control the raw tools of crafting a story, your specific stylistic tics will generally be buried by the other writerly noise that comes from trying to simply get the story out. As you get better, you tend to borrow and copy bits and bobs of other styles that you like. There’s nothing wrong with this as a practice device. Aspiring artists are often set loose in museums with brushes and canvases—their mission is to copy famous paintings to learn their tricks. It’s important to know, though, when you’re borrowing, so that you can decide when to set off on your own path. I don’t think a good style is artificially imposed. A good style is just you—as much you as you can manage.

  Petra tried to think of everything she wanted to say before she said it. “This timing works really well with me, though, because of school. And, uh, the bus schedule.”

  “One of us could drive you,” Frances said. Her words darted to a higher branch as she considered the logistics. “Or we could pay for a taxi.”

  “I don’t mind going home in the dark.”

  “Well, we do worry so.” Frances’s fingers frantically built themselves an invisible nest and then took it apart. “You’ve become so important to Geraldine, and we wouldn’t want your discomfort to get in the way of that.”

  This struck Petra as ridiculous. She’d just said that she wasn’t uncomfortable, hadn’t she?

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well. Just. Think about it?”

  “Okay,” Petra said. She put her hand on the handle for the door. Behind it was the eternal staircase, and at the end of it, Geraldine. “Are you headed up?”

  “Oh, no,” said Frances. “No, no. Those stairs! Tell her I will call. Give her my love.”

  What sort of love, Petra thought, wouldn’t climb the stairs?

  • • •

  There was a third daughter-not-daughter whom Petra had not met. Edith. Lawyer Edith. Both Marla and Frances spoke of her in a hushed tone; the dramatic side of Petra who appreciated long words and the possibility of bloodstains also liked to spend time imagining why Edith might be spoken of sotto voce. Perhaps she was ill, and they feared she would die if they spoke too loudly. Perhaps she was hidden away—a very Victorian sort of thing to do—because she was insane, or perhaps she was serving prison time for a grievous crime. Perhaps they had been estranged and longed for her to return to them.

  Now that Petra knew Geraldine better—well? No, not well. Did anyone know Geraldine well?—she wanted badly to ask her what her relationship was to Marla, Frances, and Edith, but it wasn’t as if Petra could just ask her directly. After several days, she struck upon a sneaky possibility.

  So it was December, and Petra climbed the stairs. Petra was growing better at the ascent, but the December stairs were far more annoying than the October stairs because in December one made the ascent in a coat. The coat was apropos for the first four hours of the climb, but by the time Petra had passed all of the tiny villages and the trees that had grown small because of the thinness of the mountain air, the exertion had coated the intrepid mountain climber’s body with a thin film of sweat. One could not remove the coat, however, because the climber was using all muscle and mind-power just to place a foot on the next stair. There was none left over to imagine pulling the coat from the body and carrying it over one arm.

  Petra ascended. She knocked on the door, loudly, to be heard over the aspirational sounds of the Peer Gynt Suite.

  “Petra,” Geraldine said warmly.

  “I’m disgusting,” Petra warned.

  “We all are,” Geraldine said, “but that’s why we have manners, to make us bearable. Come in.”

  Geraldine made tea while Petra took off her coat and walked in circles, flapping her hands in the direction of her armpits.

  “Shall we paint first?” Geraldine handed her the tea.

  “Oh, uh, can we read first? I’m still sticky.”

  She was pleased to deliver this line with only the slightest bit of blushing, partially from discomfort at making a direct request and partly from a surfeit of strategy swelling within her. She was thrilled and guilty with anticipation.

  As Geraldine settled herself on a chaise, transforming into an attentive audience, Petra collected her poem. As she got ready to throw her shoulders back into her oratory pose, she realized with a bit of surprise that they already were mostly back. She’d been simply standing around halfway to her oratory pose. Perhaps, she thought, she had been building muscles from posing for Geraldine. Somehow, a tiny rope bridge had been thrown across from ordinary Petra to oratory Petra. Rickety, but connected nonetheless.

  “Tell me a story,” Geraldine said grandly.

  “This poem is from Ann Taylor,” Petra said. “Not the clothing designer, but the sister of Jane Taylor, who wrote ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ The two of them were frequently confused with each other, as they published works together. Jane died young, and so she was remembered more than Ann—O! To die young and live forever in the minds of the people.”

  Now that she’d said that line out loud, Petra suspected that was probably overwrought, even for an audience of Geraldines, but it had seemed fine when she tried it out to the mirror the night before. Oh well. O! well.

  “I haven’t heard any Ann Taylor,” Geraldine mused. “Which piece are you reading?”

  “ ‘My Mother,’ ” Petra replied, feeling even more deceptive and crafty. Now her ears went red. But she pressed on, beginning with,

  Who fed me from her gentle breast,

  And hush’d me in her arms to rest,

  And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?

  My Mother.

  She eyed Geraldine for signs of telltale emotion, but she was merely observing in the same way she always did: eyes half-closed, chin tilted, a sunflower turned toward the light.

  Petra persisted—it was a very long poem, and exceedingly saccharine, if she was being honest, but the best she could do with only thirty minutes of allotted computer time after homework. There were far worse things on the Internet when one typed in “poetry about mothers.”

  Who ran to help me when
I fell,

  And would some pretty story tell,

  Or kiss the place to make it well?

  My Mother.

  It was precisely what one would expect from the sister of the author of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” A few stanzas in, one of Geraldine’s eyebrows lifted slightly, but it was hard to tell if it was because of the maternal content or because of the predictably easy rhyme of gay and play in one of the stanzas in the interminable middle.

  Petra finally concluded:

  When thou art feeble, old, and gray,

  My healthy arm shall be thy stay,

  And I will soothe thy pains away,

  My Mother.

  And when I see thee hang thy head,

  ’Twill be my turn to watch thy bed.

  And tears of sweet affection shed,

  My Mother.

  Geraldine said, “My.”

  “It’s used on Mother’s Day cards sometimes,” Petra said.

  “Shocking.” Geraldine wasn’t often sarcastic, and so this single word caused both of them more mirth than it otherwise might. But then her face turned more thoughtful. “Is that how you feel about your mother?”

  Barbara Tantalo, Petra’s mother, was the sort of woman who would be fond of this poem, which was also the reason why she and Petra didn’t always see eye to eye. It wasn’t that Petra didn’t like melodrama (O Melodrama!), it just was a very different sort of melodrama. It was perhaps just that Petra liked fancy words, and her mother liked fancy feelings. Petra liked Geraldine’s impossibly slender plants; Petra’s mom liked photographs of joggers with words like STRIVE printed beneath them. An ode to Petra’s love for her mother would more likely begin with Who is scented with hair spray and toothpaste / and taught me to get takeaway with great haste?

  “Not exactly,” Petra said. “I think she feels that way about me, though.” Then she realized that the poem was working exactly as she’d intended. Quite casually, she asked, “Is it how you feel about your mother?”

  Geraldine looked suddenly remote, just then, looking up toward the ceiling. Not at all emotional. Merely nonpresent. “Hm. No. No, I didn’t know my mother. It wasn’t our culture to know our mothers.”

  Petra opened her mouth with a burning and probably rude question, and then closed it, and then opened it with another less burning but probably still rude question, and then closed it again. Finally, she went with the rather ambiguous, “And what do you think about Marla?”

  “Marla?” Geraldine’s note of surprise alone confirmed that Marla wasn’t her daughter: she didn’t understand why Marla was being inserted into the maternal conversation. “She seems brisk, but she’s not as ferocious as she seems. I know she still holidays with her mother every year.”

  In the face of Geraldine’s ever-polite honesty, Petra felt suddenly foolish. Deceptive. All of this felt ridiculous. She should have just asked Geraldine all along, she realized. Geraldine was polite, not coy. Studying her feet, she admitted, “I thought Marla and Edith and Frances were your daughters.”

  There was no response, and Petra went redder than she had gone in weeks. She felt the blush in the curls of her guts. She had really put her foot in it now. Geraldine was possibly childless and barren and sorrowful, or was a dear aunt after her sister had died messily, or some other terrible scenario dramatic Petra had yet to concoct.

  The silence went on forever, and then Petra looked up and saw that Geraldine was looking upon her in a rather … tender way.

  “What a kind thing,” Geraldine said. “What a very kind thing. No, I’m not their mother, Petra, but I’m so touched that you would draw that conclusion.”

  Her lip was doing the thing that Petra’s mother’s sometimes did as she cried over something touching, but Geraldine did not cry.

  Petra went red again, but it didn’t feel terrible, for once. It felt appropriate, which she had not thought was possible. She suggested, “Shall we paint?”

  “Oh, yes,” Geraldine replied. “Let’s attack these buttons.”

  And they fell into companionable fussing over pigmented glints of light. After some space, the phone rang. Petra had not heard it ring before. It was a proper, old-fashioned phone, and the ring sounded like a real bell.

  Geraldine excused herself to answer. Petra’s guilt over finagling mother stories out of Geraldine earlier sadly did not prevent her from eavesdropping as best she could, especially when she realized that it was Edith, and that Geraldine was displeased.

  “Don’t be tedious, Edith, of course not. No, you insult me by suggesting that I would let my own appetite get in the way of my courtesy. Do you not think I would have let you know if it was an issue?”

  Petra abruptly remembered how Frances had asked her to move her appointment time forward. Was it because she was treading clumsily, the great troll once again, over appointed dinners?

  “Yes, fine. You would like to speak to Petra? Of course I sound strident, Edith; I’m terribly offended.” Geraldine paused. Her voice called out from behind a peacock-painted screen, “Petra, Edith would like to speak to you.”

  Petra felt she had accidently invoked Edith by spending so much time obsessing over her, by bringing up mothers. She joined Geraldine in a room composed of old mirrors. A single claw-footed table held a satisfyingly old-fashioned telephone.

  “Hello, this is Petra?” Then she repeated “Petra” because she had mumbled it.

  “Excellent. This is Edith, Marla and Frances’s sister. I wanted to make sure that Frances had spoken to you about moving your time up.” Edith’s voice was not brisk at all; it was rather more musical than Marla’s. But there was a sense of surety to it that gave it more iron than Marla’s.

  “Oh, yes,” Petra said, “but it wasn’t, uh, necessary, because I don’t mind traveling after dark.” She didn’t look at Geraldine. Instead she watched the streetlights out the window, yellow in the blue evening.

  “It’s just a question of timing and dining,” Edith said smoothly. “It would really be so much better if you could come earlier. Or perhaps we can just end the sessions an hour or so earlier?”

  Petra felt an unexpected pang at the thought of losing an hour.

  She got herself together. Using Geraldine’s precise intonation, she managed, “I don’t want to impose.”

  She darted a glance to Geraldine in one of the mirrors. She wore a curious expression. It was remote, like before, but her eyes were narrowed. Her face was more intent than Petra had ever seen. She was a sharper, darker thing; it made her younger and less like someone Petra knew.

  “It will be better this way. We’ll have a taxi get you before it gets dark from now on. Wonderful. Thanks so much for understanding,” Edith said.

  “Do you need to speak to Geraldine again?”

  “Oh, no. We’re fine,” Edith said. “Give her my love.”

  • • •

  There aren’t any chapters in this story, but these section breaks are close enough for my purposes. Chapters used to perplex me (okay, fine, I’ll admit it: sometimes they still do). I’d notice that I had written a massive chunk of text— usually all taking place over the course of a single day, because of my inability to figure out “show, don’t tell,” as previously noted—and I’d throw in some chapter breaks. This, Stiefvater, is not the way to chapter! If it helps, imagine your story or novel as a playlist or a music album. A great playlist isn’t just thrown together, a dozen songs that all sound the same. Instead, it includes several songs tied together thematically, arranged in such a way as to pull the listener through without boredom. You wouldn’t group all the slow songs together in a playlist; don’t clump together slow chapters, either. Likewise, if you put a bunch of fast songs back to back, they stop being exciting. I frequently read back over my work in order to make sure the story is flowing well. Sort of like listening to the playlist you’ve just made before you send it to your editor with an e-mail that says LISTEN TO THIS IT’S LIFE-CHANGING.

  The bus that took Petra home headed do
wn a street newly strung with Christmas lights; Petra could see the breaths of the pedestrians hurrying along the sidewalk. She considered what she might get Geraldine for Christmas. She didn’t think about losing an hour with her.

  As she stepped off the bus, the homeless man at her bus stop called, “Show me your tits!”

  Petra started to duck her head, but stopped. Turning, she said, “That was singularly unkind.”

  He stared at her. Her ears were only flushing a little. She couldn’t believe herself. Part of her was already reliving her words, trying to decide if she’d really had the courage to say them out loud. She had. She really had.

  In that moment, Petra decided that she would do anything to keep from losing an hour with Geraldine.

  When she arrived home, her mother was taping metallic wrapping paper on their front door to make it look like a holiday package. She asked Petra, “How’s my fairy princess today? Did you see the carolers?”

  “I’m quitting the Oratory Club,” Petra said.

  Her mother immediately lowered her arms. “Oh! Did something happen?”

  Petra considered her words carefully before she said them, leaning to get a piece of tape to buy herself yet more time. She secured a drooping corner of the metallic paper, and then she said grandly, “I decided it was time to officially take my declaiming out of a club and into the world.”

  Her mother looked at her. The Santa on her sweatshirt looked at Petra too. Her mother blinked. The Santa did not.

  Petra said, “I need that hour for something else.”

  “Oh, that makes sense,” her mother said.

  • • •

  There was someone else in the apartment when Petra hiked the stairs the Thursday before Christmas. The presence of a third entity was so unexpected that at first she thought she had turned a shadow into a person, the way you scan past a shrub and think dog before a second look returns everything to inanimate objects.

  It was a coat hung strangely, an easel moved, a shadow cast from a curtain fallen askew. But it was none of those things: it was a real, live man. Maybe a young man. Older than Petra, certainly, but also not old. Petra couldn’t tell at first what he looked like, or if he was handsome, or what his facial expression was, because it was a rule of Petra’s that unless a member of the opposite sex was very young or very old, she could not look at him straight on without going red, no matter how revolting he was. The only possible way to avoid her ears going red was to avoid eye contact for as long as possible.