Page 57 of The Deepest Lake

One, scenes should be shorter. Condense.

“Two, no habitual actions reduced to boring summary. Not ‘we used to get drunk every day by three P.M.’ Not ‘my husband and I would always fight to use the last of the heroin.’ I want you to show me one time. A single occurrence, fully dramatized. In real-time.

“Example: Not, ‘Every day, as my nameless husband and I both got more addicted and desperate, we’d compete for the last bit of some nameless drug that one of us had managed to score.’

“Instead: ‘Joe pulled the needle away from me just before I was about to stick it between my toes. BEAT. He backed up against the wall, tightened the rubber ligature, and plunged the needle into his own arm. BEAT. Ten minutes later, he passed out, but I was still awake. I pulled on my wool coat, hands shaking so much I couldn’t button it. I stumbled out the door, leaving it unlocked behind me. I had Tim’s phone number. I knew I could find heroin, without Joe. BEAT.’”

Rachel’s husband wasn’t even named Joe, and no dealer named Tim had been mentioned, and for all Rose knew, Rachel didn’t own a wool coat, but none of that was the point.

Someone behind Rose whispers, “Jesus. Wow.”

Eva scans the room. “We all get that? One time that stands for many times she did the same thing. It can be seen. It could be filmed, should she be so lucky to have this memoir optioned. Basic stuff. Do you understand, Rachel?

“Okay, that’s point two. Point number three, because we can’t spend all day on this: dialogue. Hello? I want to hear your voices, and your husband’s, and your kids’, and of course, they all need names. Stop saying ‘my daughter.’ For god’s sake, she’s a person. Give her a name. Give her a voice, especially that moment when she comes in the door and sees you lying on the floor and thinks you’re dying. Obviously, she said something. Don’t make me slow down for every sensory impression of the vomit and then fly into fast-forward when there are other human beings in the room. I care about people. People break our hearts. And people speak, Rachel—goddammit. Let me see. Let me hear.”

Rose can’t tell how Rachel is taking all of these critical notes. Unlike Diane, with her bobbing head, Rachel is sitting erect, her head of tight gray curls motionless.

“But here’s the problem,” Eva says. “Like I told the class, it’s not the writing. No, the problem is Rachel herself. You ready for this, Rachel?”

Eva retreats back to her stool and leans against it. The rest of them are scrunched down into their chairs, cocooned in their shawls. Eva is the only active one, made warm by her ceaseless motion. Her bare shoulders glow.

Now, she pulls the stool closer to Rachel, closing the distance between them by half, then places her palms on the knees of her linen pants, anchoring herself for a hard truth.

“Rachel, you are a horrible person.”

Next to Rose, Noelani is in the process of unwrapping the crinkly wrapper of a cough drop. Noelani stops, the lozenge still half-wrapped, her gaze meeting Rose’s. Rose tries to give her a look that means, Is this normal? Is this really okay? Noelani’s eyes flick away.

“I’m sorry,” Eva says. “That’s what the reader will think. Selfish, addicted mother almost kills her own children. Readers won’t forgive that. It’s unconscionable. I don’t have time for it. Do any of you?”

Diane whispers, “I don’t.”

“Good!” Eva says. “And you? Noelani?”

Noelani drops the end of the long black braid she was nervously fingering. “Child abuse is pretty hard to take.”

Eva locks eyes with Rose. “And you? As a mother, what do you think?”

Rose swallows hard. “I’m not a mother.”

“Sorry?”

Rose clears her throat. “I said, I’m not a mother. I don’t have children. So I can’t really judge from that perspective.”

Rose fixes her eyes on her notebook, head swimming with the words she’s just uttered. Not a mother. She waits to feel something—either guilt or triumph for managing such a bald lie. She feels only sick.

Maybe that’s why time is dilating. It feels like Eva pauses a peculiarly long time. No one else seems to notice.

Eva snaps her fingers, like she’s just thought of something. “Simple question for you, Rachel. Have you seen your children since the court assigned custody to your husband?”

Rachel’s mouth opens but nothing comes out. She seems to give up on speaking, shaking her head instead.

“Even though he was an addict, too. There’s got to be a reason even the judge thinks you’re a worse parent than he is.”

Rose’s chest aches from the tension, her own insecurities roused, hearing another person attacked for their parenting. Rachel may have been a bad parent, but worse than her husband? Why are women always the ones judged more harshly?

Eva shrugs, moving on. “Who in this room is ready to forgive Rachel?”

Rachel’s face is frozen, her colorless lips pressed together, awaiting the verdict.

---