Page 38 of Endless Summer: Stories
“Like the bean?”
“Yes, and like the horse.” Darla Kay sits heavily on the thin mattress, made up with what Vivi sees are threadbare white sheets and a pilled, dun-colored blanket. A quick glance to the other side of the room confirms that, unfortunately, Vivi’s bed has identical linens. “I left Tallahassee at five this morning, so it’s been only ten hours without him but I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
Vivi isn’t sure what this means. Will Darla Kay… expire? Or will she toss the seven hundred and fifty dollars she paid in the trash and go home?
Vivi says, “I don’t have a baby but I do have a cute fiancé who I miss a ton.” This is an exaggeration; Vivi hasn’t started to miss JP yet. “So I definitely know how you feel. I think this will be just like summer camp. The homesickness will go away.”
Vivi sets her yellow Pierre Deux duffel on her bed (the bag was a present from Lucinda last Christmas). “Are you a fiction writer or a poet or a memoirist?” Vivi asks. Darla Kay has a wan, nearly jaundiced complexion. She looks like she’s been living in a meerkat burrow. Her hair is dyed a flat yellow and she has a pointy nose. She’s wearing a brown tank top and black genie pants that billow out before tapering above her Birkenstocks.
If Vivi had to guess… no, she’s at a loss; she can’t guess. Darla Kay doesn’t look like a writer. She looks like a sad mother and housewife from Tallahassee.
“Fiction,” Darla Kay says. “I’m studying with Grady Coyle.”
Vivi’s first reaction is relief that Darla Kay won’t be in the workshop with Vivi. Her second reaction is pity. Grady Coyle is the only genre writer on the faculty at Bread Loaf this year. He writes horror, gore. Darla Kay must have signed up late, and Grady Coyle was the only instructor with room left in his class.
“Was that your… first choice?” Vivi asks.
“Oh, yes,” Darla Kay says. “I have this idea for a series of books set in purgatory. It’s called the Gruesome Goth series.”
Vivi’s eyes widen.Thisis certainly unexpected! Vivi wonders if Darla Kay has met the vampire girl in the long black coat and death-mask face paint. Vivi starts to unpack her things. She supposes they’ll find each other soon enough.
“So, how is it?” JP asks.
It’s the morning of the third day and Vivi has just gotten back from her run. She is the sole runner here at Bread Loaf, and she appears to be the only early riser as well. The past two mornings, she has tiptoed out of her room at five thirty, tied her shoes, and hit the winding mountain roads before the sun burned off the mist.
“Vermont is beautiful,” Vivi says.
“I’ve been to Vermont,” JP says. “I’m curious about the program. What’s it like?”
“It’s…”
“Come on, Vivi, you’re the writer. Describe it.”
“It’s intense,” Vivi says. “I thought it would be nurturing, but there’s a pervasive sense of competition. There’s a pecking order. For example, we’re served in the dining hall by waitstaff who were selected to attend the conference for free. They’re the elite talent.” Vivi drops her voice because she’s on one of the pay phones outside the dining hall and people have finally started to show up (in their pajamas), searching for coffee. “One of the waiters, this guy named Mike, goes toIowa.”
JP gasps melodramatically. “NotIowa!”
“The best pieces from the conference are being published in theBread Loaf Review,” Vivi says. “So everyone is acting quite cutthroat about being chosen.”
“Have you gotten any writing done?” JP asks.
Vivi has claimed one of the Adirondack chairs as her own (it’s not as comfortable as it appears), but she’s been doing more editing than actual writing. The first story she’s submitting for the workshop is an incarnation of a short story she started writing back in high school, “Coney Island Baby.” Her original story was about a woman who thinks her husband is having an affair but discovers he’s attending rehearsals for a barbershop quartet. In this new draft, the protagonist is a teenage girl, Deneen, whose father commits suicide. Their regular breakfast waitress, Cindy, comes to the funeral and tells Deneen that shehadbeen having an affair with the father (Vivi deleted all the barbershop-quartet references). Then Deneen and Cindy forge a friendship that is comforting to them both.
The new title is “Meeting Cindy.”
Vivi worries about the ending. Should Deneen and Cindy become friends, or should the relationship be fraught in some way? Vivi tries to imagine how she would feel if she learned that her father and the real Cindy-from-Perkins were having an affair and Cindy was every bit as devastated by his suicide as Vivi.
Yes, they would be friends. Friends forever.
“I go to my workshop for two hours every morning,” Vivi says, “then there are seminars and lectures in the afternoons, and they offer activities like hiking and fly-fishing, but I don’t do any of that.”
“Fly-fishing, though,” JP says. “I should have come!”
“There are readings at night. We all pack into a small theater and the instructors read and some of the waitstaff do as well.” Vivi pauses. “Everyone is so good, JP.”
“How is Caroline Corrigan?” JP asks. “I bet you’re her favorite student.”
Vivi laughs because this is so far from the truth. The most unsettling thing about Bread Loaf has been the two workshops with Caroline. She’s a… bitch. There’s just no other way to phrase it. This is profoundly upsetting because Viviadoresher work.Cleaning Houseis Vivi’s all-time favorite book, andBy Myself in a Treeis in her top five.
