The Garden of Dead Dreams (17 page)

Etta moved toward her seat, slid into her chair, and eased her bag onto the floor, avoiding eye contact with the few students who turned at the sound of her footsteps.

“So why are novelists the celebrities? Why are poets considered eccentrics, flakes, lazy slouches who live in their mothers’ basements and can’t hold down real jobs? You might think that the poet has been downgraded, that the poet has taken a backseat to accountants and administrators, because of industrialization, or globalization, or capitalization, or some other reason, that the marketplace and the Internet and greed have stripped the significance from the poet?

Robert North paused, his eyes sweeping across the room. “No. The poet has always been scum. Coleridge, Shakespeare, Poe—luminous observers of the human experience—and bottom feeders. The poet suffers; he loses; he hurts; he bleeds; he peers up at society through the sewer grates and tries to tangle existence together with words. That is the poet. Why would anyone suffer like that?”

Robert North turned his gaze on Etta. “Because he has no choice. If you have a choice, take the other route, take the damn exit. Go home.”

Etta looked at her lap, but could still feel Robert North’s stare. Her hands started to shake.

Robert North cleared his throat. “As you’ve all probably heard, I’m leaving today, heading up north for another stop on my dreadful tour itinerary. Isabella Peña will take over shaping your young minds this morning. I’m sure she’ll be here imminently. Good luck to each of you. If Vincent Buchanan were here, I’m certain he’d be pleased to see a new flock of protégés dwelling in his Shangri-la.”

“Thank you, sir,” someone said. Etta glanced up. The Poet’s Rowers started to clap. Mallory let out a whoop. Someone whistled.

Robert North flung his leather briefcase off the table and clutched his thermos. He strode down the center aisle, his gate long and relaxed, his gaze fixed on the door. Etta felt something on her face, and nearly jumped. It was Maura’s breath on her hair. “Are you feeling better?” she whispered. Robert North’s hand was on the doorknob now.

Etta nodded and jumped from her seat, wrapped her fingers around the strap of her bag, and flung it over her shoulder. Robert North was nearly at the staircase by the time Etta made it out the door. She broke into a jog. “Wait!”

Robert North glanced over his shoulder and continued walking. “You were talking to me,” Etta called.

Robert North spun around and blinked. He ran a hand through his hair.

“Are you trying to intimidate me?” Etta stepped toward him. Her pulse heaved in her ears. She glanced over the railing. The couch and all of the oversized chairs sat empty, but she lowered her voice anyway. “Did you tell Olivia to leave too?” She felt impulsive, like she did as a kid playing penny poker with her brothers, like there were no stakes. Maybe it was because he was leaving in a few hours. She’d never see him again. Maybe it was the hunger eating at her stomach, coiling around her brain.

Robert North ran his tongue over his bottom lip then laughed.

“Do you get off on killing other people’s dreams?” Etta took another step toward him.

“Whose dreams am I killing?”

Etta studied his chiseled features then stared down into the great room. “Olivia’s,” she whispered, because she didn’t want to say, “Mine.”

“Jesus. You’re the one who seems to be conducting a little investigation into her departure. Surely you’ve figured out she didn’t write those freakish stories. Please tell me you’re at least that smart.”

Etta glared at him.

He glanced over the railing. “Maybe I would also want to get to the bottom of things if my roommate disappeared, except I didn’t, which is the only reason I can still show my face around here.”

Etta held her glare.

“Oh Jesus, don’t judge me. It’s not the same. Matt was a troublemaker, not to say Olivia isn’t. But she’s more troubled than troublemaker. Matt was intense. He stayed up all night every night pounding on his typewriter, pacing, smoking, muttering under his breath. I requested a different roommate the first week. So, yeah, when he disappeared, I can’t say I missed living with the guy. I can’t say I put too much thought into where he went off to. Sure, sometimes I feel sorry for that now. But I can’t change it. So I’m going to get on with my life. I suggest you head on back to wherever you came from, Ella, and do the same.”

“Etta.”

Robert North stared at her, his eyes clouding over.

“My name is Etta.”

“Well, Etta, I’ve got a couple hours to kill if you need help packing.”

She studied his face. “Matthew Lowther was your roommate.” She tried to make it sound as though she’d known. “Where did he go?”

The poet laughed, but it was more of a release of air. “Became a pile of bones in the ground somewhere if you ask that crazy fuck Galen. All I know is I don’t want to mess with this anymore and neither should you. Go home. Really, just go home. Stop asking questions.” Robert North started down the stairs. Etta watched his figure float down the spiral.

Etta clutched the banister and raced down the stairs behind him. “I’m not leaving.” She winced at how loud her voice sounded echoing into the great room. “This is my dream.”

Robert North didn’t turn around until he was in the foyer. “Well, I’ll be gone by afternoon.”

“Do you know how hard it is to get into this place?” Etta grazed her hand over the sweat forming on her brow. “The stories, the essay, the interview, the letters of recommendations? I worked on my application for months. I edited it until not one comma was out of place. I cleaned out my savings. I sold everything I owned.” She clenched her fists. What she wanted to say but didn’t was that she had nowhere to go. No home.

Robert North’s laugh was harsh. “Oh Christ, your parents don’t own a townhouse on Carnegie Hill or a villa in Tuscany? Then you’re right, you completed one hell of an application. Has it ever struck you as curious that nearly all of the aspirant writers the admissions board deems the best and brightest each year are children of the richest and most connected? You’ve got to give Buchanan credit—convincing upper crust mommies and daddies you can turn their aimless English major or budding adult into the next Salinger or Fitzgerald is profitable deceit.”

“You’re bitter.”

“No, I just know from whence I speak. My grandfather donated the million that built the theater wing. And my father’s charitable enough to remind me how I got where I am every time the New Yorker buys one of my poems. You really think it was your friend Jordan’s writing sample that wowed the admissions board? It didn’t occur to you that his old man owns half of New England and publishes the most pompous literary journal in creation? Nepotism is built into the woodwork around here.”

“Is that how Galen Vincent Buchanan got in?”

For a moment, she wondered if Robert North had heard her. Then he laughed. “Except Galen has more talent than the rest of us combined. He got your friend Olivia in this place. Talk about a girl who isn’t a chip off the old block. Matt may have been an asshole, but he was a hell of a writer.”

Etta gasped. It felt as though he’d hurled something at her, and she stepped backward. Matthew Lowther was Olivia’s dad. The dad she never knew. The literature professor.

Robert North seemed to realize that he’d revealed something he shouldn’t have. He spun around and darted toward the door. “Matthew Lowther was her father,” Etta said, mostly because she needed to hear the words aloud. Her voice echoed through the foyer.

Robert North spun around. “You want to be a writer? Stop pretending like you’re Nancy Drew and get to work. How’s that critique coming?”

Etta’s cheeks filled with heat.

“One student messed up his first critique when I was here, and he was back home by Christmas. The most impressive application in the world is not going to help you if you mess this up. Especially if your father can’t write the kind of check that sways Hardin. If this is really your dream like you say it is then forget about Matt. Forget about Olivia.”

He spun around and wrapped his fingers around the iron door handle. The sound of the rain swelled into the foyer as the door swung shut. Etta stared at the row of rain coats and umbrellas hanging from the hooks. Water had pooled beneath them.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember Olivia’s voice.

I’m the product of a one-night-stand. My mom slept with her literature professor.

Does he know about you?

My mom got stoned and forgot to tell him . . .

Etta walked into the great room at the same moment Amanda Watson stepped out of the hallway to the kitchen. Amanda smiled, a tight upturn of her lips. “Are you feeling better?”

“Visiting Carl?” Etta cringed at how high pitched and shaky her own voice sounded.

Mandy blinked. “I stopped in for a quick cup of tea. I slept late today. I’m so embarrassed.” She rolled her eyes and pushing her brunette bob behind her ear. “I was up late studying dactylic hexameter. Opal thinks I should write my next work in it instead of anapestic tetrameter. I was originally thinking that I would compose my next work in trochaic octameter, since I love internal rhyme. But I’m starting to think Opal is right. Dactylic hexameter feels grandiose in a way anapestic tetrameter doesn’t. It lends itself to enjambment, you know.” She let out a nervous giggle. “Oh gosh, listen to me rambling on . . .” Mandy stepped past Etta onto the staircase. Etta watched her for a moment then clutched the banister and followed. Mandy glanced over her shoulder. “It’s just so exciting to think about writing something new after working on
After Daisies
for so long. And having Opal as a mentor . . . Anyway, you must be excited for your critique?”

“Thrilled.” Etta murmured.

“I’m still recovering from mine.”

They stepped into the long hallway at the top of the stairs, and Etta glanced at the portrait of Vincent Buchanan, fixating on his hands clasped in his lap—old and withered, speckled with age spots, resting atop a book.

“It’s not so bad. Most people are nice.”

Etta flicked her gaze to Mandy. Mandy was already halfway down the hall, her leather backpack bouncing as she walked. She shot a glance at Etta as she thrust the door open, and Etta thought of Chase Quinn and winced. Had she been too harsh on Amanda’s critique? She could hardly remember it.

Reed shot out of his seat when Etta stepped inside the classroom. He crossed the room and stepped to her side. The room buzzed with talking and laughter. Isabella Peña was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Reed pushed his glasses up with his middle finger. “I have something to report.” Etta stepped toward him to make out the rest of the sentence. “about the mission.”

A giggle escaped from Etta’s chest. “Listen, maybe we should abort the mission.” Another giggle welled through her, like a valve releasing pressure from her chest. Reed pulled the door open and gestured for her to move into the hall. Etta followed him and leaned over, resting her hands on her knees until her laughter subsided. The corners of her mouth ached. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but another bout of laughter surged through her.

The door flung open and Poppy bounded into the hallway. “If something exciting is going on, you guys are in trouble.” She flipped her green scarf around her neck and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m in on this too, remember?”

Etta looked from Reed to Poppy and chortled this time.

“What’s wrong?” Poppy asked.

“Nothing. Except, my critique’s in three days, and I haven’t started my story. And get this, Matthew Lowther is Olivia’s father.” She wiped at her eyes. “He was Robert North’s roommate here in 1985. And he disappeared.”

A strange sound emerged from Reed’s lips. “Like Hans Gretelstien?” he whispered.

Etta met his gaze and then squeezed her eyes shut against the image of Olivia’s face in the stage lights after the play, the way her eyes watered and shifted. She was panicked.

Except Galen has more talent than the rest of us combined. He got your friend Olivia in this place.

“Galen wrote her play,” Etta whispered.

Reed jabbed a book toward Etta. Etta took it and flipped it over. It had no words on the spine or cover.

Reed’s eyes shifted back and forth between Etta and Poppy. “I found it while I was cataloging in the library this morning . . .”

“Wait a minute, I thought theft was in violation of the academy rules.” Poppy giggled.

Etta opened the book. The binding was stiff. The type was typeset crooked on the title page:

Dreams of the Rising Sun: the early imagination of Vincent Buchanan.

Etta dropped her gaze to the middle of the page and gasped.

A Dissertation.

By Matthew Kenneth Lowther.

Presented to the Department of Literature and the Graduate School of Yale University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

June 1981.

Her hands began to tremble.

* * *

Etta read Matthew Lowther’s dissertation during the afternoon mandatory writing session. She’d successfully avoided academic writing since she’d graduated from UM. Fortunately Matthew Lowther’s dissertation read more like a magazine feature than a dissertation. And within pages, Etta realized she’d known almost nothing about the life of the academy’s famous founder.

Vincent Buchanan was born on August 20, 1909 in Buffalo, New York. He was the youngest of five children—three much older brothers: Ambrose, Elias, and William—and a sister, Dorothy, who was born just eleven months before him. He hardly knew Ambrose and Elias. They enlisted in the army the day the United States entered World War I in 1917 when Vincent was just seven. Both perished in Europe’s trenches.

For the first eleven years of his life, Vincent and his family lived in Buffalo as the Buchanan family had for generations. Then in June of 1920, as the first Olympics in eight years got underway in Antwerp, Belgium, Vincent’s father packed up everything the family owned. They boarded the Nickel Plate Road at the train depot in Buffalo, which took them to Chicago, and then they rode the Union and Pacific Portland Rose to Portland, Oregon.