CHAPTER 18
Marly Prentis hated poets. She also hated dancers, spoken-word performers, abstract artists, novelists obsessed with their alcoholic parents and/or bisexuality, science fiction writers, and people who made things out of found objects. But she particularly hated poets. For one thing, they were moody. And they always seemed to be vegans, even the men. Also, they were allergic to everything. The one on the phone at the moment had adverse reactions to dust, wheat, animal dander, sulfites, plastics, grass, synthetic fibers, most cleaning products, artificial sweeteners, paint, paprika, and any shampoo that contained papaya extracts.
“Oh, and latex condoms,” he added, giving a little laugh.
That was another thing she hated about poets—they were always horny. Probably because no one in their right mind would sleep with a poet, she thought wearily.
“Okay then,” she said chirpily. “I think I’ve got everything. We’ll see you on Friday.”
She hung up, crumpled up the paper she’d been writing on, and dropped the poet’s list into the trash. He was going to complain anyway, so why bother?
After seven years as the director of the Arts House, she knew the routine. Every summer they invited a dozen artists from various fields to the center for summer artist-in-residence appointments. Theoretically, the invitees represented the best in their genres. The Arts House provided them with small cottages to live in, three meals a day, and the opportunity to feel more important than most of them really were. In exchange, they taught classes and workshops, for which the Arts House charged students more than they should and thus raised the money to pay their guests.
It was a perfect system. The students were happy to be able to spend time with people they admired and thought could teach them something, the artists were happy to have adoring audiences and more food than most of them ever saw at home, and the Arts House was happy because they continued to thrive as a popular benefactor of the creative community. Year after year, books, plays, dances, and artworks of every shape, size, and design were created “with thanks to the generous support of the Arts House, Provincetown, MA.” Marly herself had been listed on the acknowledgments pages of more novels and programs than she could remember.
The only one who wasn’t happy about the system was Marly. She had been happy about it once, when she’d first come to Provincetown fresh off a three-year stint as the assistant director of the Glimmerglass Opera House in Cooperstown, New York. She’d been twenty-nine then, just on the cusp of the milestone she’d always thought thirty would be. She’d had a husband, a two-year-old daughter, and all the enthusiasm in the world.
Now, seven years later, she had a twelve-year-old marriage, a nine-year-old daughter, and a throbbing headache. She still liked her job, at least on some days, but frankly the artists were starting to get on her nerves. She’d endured one too many requests for soy lattes, more than enough complaints about the draftiness of the beach cottages in which residents were housed, and if she had to listen to one more weepy creative-type boo-hoo over a failed relationship she was going to drop dead on the spot. She’d taken the job because of her commitment to providing opportunities and support for established artists and to helping new artists get started. But somewhere along the line it had all become tiresome.
Not that there weren’t bright spots. She was excited, for instance, about the imminent arrival of Brody Nicholson. She’d loved his work since discovering his first collection of short stories, After Twilight, when another visiting artist (a choreographer with bad breath and a seemingly unquenchable desire for cherry yogurt, as she recalled) left it behind in her cottage one summer. Since then Nicholson had published two novels, The Tin Box and Made by Hand, to glowing critical reviews, if not commercial success. Marly had offered him a residency three years in a row, and three times he had turned her down. This year, however, he had readily accepted. Marly, having steeled herself for yet another rejection, had been so shocked and delighted by the surprise of his announcement—sent via letter—that he would be happy to come that she hadn’t had time to wonder what might have caused him to change his mind.
There were others she was pleased to have with them for the summer as well. Nellie Sa, for example, a video artist whose specialty was convincing people to dress up as the children they wished they’d been, and the composer Randi Colburn, whose work blended traditional African rhythms with the music of the Appalachian Mountains that Colburn called home. Surely Colburn, Sa, and Nicholson would make up for the fact that she would have to endure three months with the likes of Perry Lawrence, the poet who had earlier presented her with his endless list of demands, which included wanting only blue linens on his bed, chamomile soap in his bathroom, and white, not red, grapes on his table.
Then there were the unknown quantities, the names Marly recognized but about whom she knew very little. There were always a handful of these among the invited, generally people who had been recommended by friends or thrust upon her by insistent board members, and they were the ones with the power to make her summer either a good one or a living hell. This year’s list of potential spoilers included Rebecca Wilmont, whose memoir about her life among a small religious sect in West Virginia who used bee venom to induce religious ecstasy had gotten her a full page in the Times and a National Book Award nomination; Parker Ashbury, a thin, pale girl whose Martha Graham–in-spired dances involved the performers undulating beneath red silk sheets and were meant to reflect either the pain of female adolescence or the ongoing war in the Middle East (Marly couldn’t remember which); and the singer/songwriter Taney Fuller, whose album Spirit Gum Marly played often while working in her own studio but who she’d heard sometimes drank too much and asked whatever woman was nearby if she would like to jerk him off.
And then there was Garth Ambrose. Of all the summer’s resident artists, it was Ambrose she was most unsure of. He was a photographer, which in itself was fine. Photographers were generally fairly low-maintenance. But Ambrose wasn’t just a photographer, he was a rock-and-roll photographer. She’d seen his pictures first in a copy of Spin magazine that Chloe, her daughter, had left lying on her bedroom floor. Marly had opened it to a page featuring a picture of Alanis Morissette, and had been fascinated by the way Ambrose had managed to capture the singer’s peculiar combination of beyond-her-years wisdom and childlike sense of wonder.
She’d then looked for more of his work, finding it in many different pop culture periodicals. Unlike most of the photographers whose subjects were the rock-and-roll darlings of the moment, Ambrose seemed genuinely interested in documenting the real people behind the music. A photo of veteran Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler reaching out to an audience filled with teenagers one-fourth his age became a comment on the enduring power of classic rock, while a seemingly candid shot catching bubblegum diva Britney Spears in her dressing room attempting to apply an impossibly long false eyelash revealed both the girl beneath the image and the industry that created stars out of makeup, hairspray, and glitter.
Marly hadn’t expected Ambrose to accept. After all, summer was the busiest concert season of the year, and she assumed that he would be on the road documenting the exploits of America’s favorite musicians. However, he had welcomed the idea, saying he needed a break from the music world for a few months. He had, he told her, a project he’d been wanting to work on for some time, and would use his time at the Arts House to make some headway on it.
He’d seemed affable enough on the phone, but Marly was still wary. Often the friendliest artists turned out to be the ones with the deepest stores of emotional unwellness, the ones who agreed to everything and then suddenly came unglued over nothing at all, requiring hours of soothing and, on occasion, the application of medical attention. So until she had actually met Mr. Garth Ambrose in person, she wasn’t putting any gold stars next to his name.
She turned her attention to the matter of classes. The first ones would begin on Monday, June 2. Most of the artists had arrived already, and the rest would be there by the weekend. They taught in weeklong segments, thereby accommodating students who could only get a week off from work to come to the Arts House. Most of the classes filled up early, but there were always some that seemed to repel students rather than draw them in. Her particular problem this summer was a sculpture class being offered by a man whose claim to fame was having created a twelve-foot replica of the AIDS virus out of used, dried condoms. She’d hoped the controversy surrounding his work would make him a magnet for hopeful sculptors with $450 to spend on a week with him, but so far only six had plunked down checks. Why was it, she wondered, that sculptors were always so poor?
“Excuse me.”
Marly looked up. A young man was standing in the doorway of her office, a schedule for the Arts House clutched in his hand.
“Can I help you?” Marly asked him.
“Um, maybe,” he answered. “I was wondering if this writing class is full?”
“The one with Brody Nicholson,” Marly said, nodding. “It was, but I had a cancellation yesterday. Something about a cat swallowing some Prozac and needing to be in intensive care for a while.”
“Poor thing,” the man remarked.
“I’m not so sure,” Marly told him. “Its owner lives in a lesbian communal household. I think it might have been trying to commit suicide.”
The man nodded. “Death by consensus,” he said.
Marly looked at him, not quite understanding.
“I’m sorry,” said the man. “It’s something I came up with once to describe a group of lesbians. You know, like there are herds of buffalo and parliaments of owls. A consensus of lesbians. It’s a plural.”
Marly laughed loudly.
“Oh, shit,” the man said, covering his mouth. “I hope that wasn’t offensive or anything. I mean, if you’re a dyke . . .”
Marly held up her hand, still laughing. “I’m not,” she reassured him. “But even if I were, it would still be hysterical.”
The man grinned. “Well, it does sort of fit. So does this mean I can get into the class?”
“Well, technically you were supposed to apply and send in a writing sample for the instructor to judge you on,” Marly told him. “But I think a man who came up with a consensus of lesbians will probably be able to hold his own. What’s your name?”
“Josh Felling,” the man answered. “Joshua, actually, but no one calls me that except my mother.”
“Josh it is then,” said Marly, adding Josh’s name to the list for Nicholson’s class. “Now all we need to take care of is the class fee.”
Josh gave her his credit card. As she was running it through the machine Marly questioned Josh.
“So you’re a writer?”
Josh shrugged. “Technically, yes,” he told her. “I write ad copy.”
“That’s being a writer,” Marly said.
“I suppose,” replied Josh. “The same way being Adam Sandler is being an actor.”
“You mean you want to write a novel,” Marly said, smiling at Josh’s self-effacing remark.
“I know,” Josh told her, sounding embarrassed. “So does everyone else.”
“It doesn’t matter what everyone else wants,” said Marly, handing Josh his credit card slip and a pen. “It matters what you want.”
“Right now I just want to see if I can write a book,” Josh said as he signed. “I figured this class will give me a little push.”
“Have you read Nicholson’s books?” asked Marly.
Josh shook his head. “I am a cultural wasteland,” he answered. “To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of the guy until I picked up your schedule.”
“You should get acquainted with him then,” said Marly. She turned to the stacks of books sitting on the floor beside her desk and pulled three volumes out. “Here you go,” she said as she handed them to Josh. “No charge. I figure I’m going to use your consensus of lesbians line for the rest of my life without attribution, so consider this your royalty payment.”
“Thanks,” Josh said. “Now at least I won’t be completely in the dark on Monday. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Marly Prentis.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Josh said. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Probably,” Marly told him. “I run the place.”
“Great job,” Josh commented.
Marly nodded. “Most of the time,” she said, wishing she were really as convinced of that as she sounded.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to work,” said Josh. “Bye.”
Marly waved farewell as Josh left. He seemed like a nice guy, she thought. Of course, the writing classes at the Arts House were filled with nice guys—and nice girls—who all wanted to be the next Andrew Hollerans and Dorothy Allisons. Probably he’d end up like most of them, stuck on page 120 and facing a cast of characters he’d come to despise. But that wasn’t her problem.
Her phone rang and she picked it up.
“Hey, hon.” It was Drew, her husband.
“Hey,” she said back. “What’s going on?”
“Not much,” he told her. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to have to be in New York all next week.”
Marly was used to such announcements from Drew. Her husband was a financial planner. His clients included many wealthy people, and he was frequently away in one city or another, having meetings to discuss stocks and long-term goals and other monetary matters that Marly found incomprehensible but which she appreciated because her husband’s knowledge of them allowed them to live in Provincetown during the summers and then, when it got colder, in their brownstone on Boston’s Beacon Hill.
Only lately Marly had been spending more and more time in Provincetown, first extending her stay into the previous fall for a month after Drew and Chloe returned to Boston for the start of the new school year, then, that spring, beginning it a month before Memorial Day. While Chloe had been unhappy at losing her mother for those weeks, Drew had seemed perfectly content with the situation. So had Marly, and that troubled her.
“Okay,” she told her husband. “We’ll have girls’ week.”
Drew laughed. “Just don’t let Chloe guilt you into that piercing she wants,” he said.
After a few more minutes of conversation, Marly hung up. She loved Drew. But more and more she felt as if something was missing from her life. It wasn’t that they fought, or even that she wasn’t attracted to him anymore. She was. But something about her life, like her job, wasn’t giving her the satisfaction that it once had.
Maybe you need to have an affair, she told herself. She laughed at the idea. She was four years away from the midlife crisis she’d been planning since she was twenty. She’d always assumed that when she hit forty she would do something drastic, perhaps run away to Italy for a few months or maybe learn how to ski or scuba dive. Just a little something to make herself feel alive.
But four years was a long time to wait, she realized. She needed something now. The question was what.
“Marly Prentis?”
Two visitors in one morning, Marly thought. It must be my lucky day. “Yes,” she said. “Can I help you?”
Her newest visitor was holding several bags, which he set down. “I’m Garth Ambrose,” he said, stepping forward and offering her his hand.
“Oh,” Marly exclaimed. She hadn’t been expecting him until Thursday. “Nice to meet you.”
“I know I’m early,” Garth said. “But I was in New York shooting Pink for Rolling Stone and finished early, so instead of flying home and then back again I thought I’d come up and hang out for a few days.”
“That’s fine,” Marly told him. She couldn’t help staring at Garth Ambrose. He wasn’t at all what she’d expected. She’d pictured a twenty-something kid with lots of tattoos and a shaved head. Instead what she saw in front of her was a fortyish man in khakis and a green plaid shirt, whose eyes sported lines at the corners and whose brown hair was rapidly going gray. He looks like a schoolteacher, she thought. For some reason, the idea delighted her. It was an unexpected contrast: the rock photographer who looked like he could just as easily be walking the dog or taking the kids to the park.
“Is something wrong?” Garth asked her.
Marly realized that she’d been staring. “No,” she said quickly. “Not at all. Have you had lunch?”
Garth shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “I just got in.”
“Good,” Marly said. “I’ll take you. Then I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.”
She picked up her keys and her purse and prepared to go. As she led Garth Ambrose out of her office she thought maybe the summer wouldn’t be as bad as she’d feared. This one definitely gets a gold star, she told herself. Now if I could just get rid of the poet.