But there’s also this lingering whisper that makes me wonder if Chris is right. Maybe I am getting in my own head about this, comparing my success to Tara’s and everyone else’s. It feels like I’ve got this ball of ambition inside me that’s begging to get out and bounce along the streets but it can’t escape. There’s no opening.
It’ll get out someday, though, I know it. I have this feeling that I won’t be someone who makes it big till later in life, but that will position me well. I’ll be fresh in the public’s memory when I die and they’ll levy a tax on the rich to build the EJ Museum. Not that I’d want a museum. I’d much rather have some street mural, but it would still be flattering having so many people bunched aroundmy artifacts, celebrating my contributions to the Women’s Liberation Movement. Piecing together chunks of my life, trying to trace back to the root of my genius and coming up short.
“Have you tried a writing workshop?” Chris asks, and I can tell he’s really racking his brain to try to help. If I were in a better mood, I’d find it nice, but right now it’s just annoying. “One of Olivia’s friends does one every week,” he says.
Just the vibration of Olivia’s name in the air makes me sink even lower. “Those things are Ponzi schemes for amateurs,” I say dismissively. “They make youpayso they can tell you what’s wrong with your writing and they force you to submit a certain number of pages by specific deadlines. It’s all about quantity over quality, just for people who’ve got no confidence or no discipline. I’ve got both. I’m just in an ebb phase of the ebb and flow right now, that’s all.”
Chris says maybe I need a vacation, a change of scenery, and I laugh at that and say my whole life is a vacation. “That’s the way life should be,” I declare. “If you need an escape from your life, you’re living wrong.”
I go on to explain to Chris how I could sell my scripts in two seconds flat if I sold out and conformed to the industry’s bad taste, but I’d rather never be remembered than be remembered as a sellout. He looks uncomfortable at that, like it’s triggering his own introspection.
“For clarification, I don’t think you’re a sellout even though you do work for an evil capitalistic corporation,” I say. “You’ve just leased your soul for a while, not sold it. You’ll get it back eventually. I’ve got a good feeling.”
“High praise,” Chris deadpans. His soft brown eyes twinkle with embers that look like they’d have potential to catch fire if he let them. I always like it when I have that illuminating effect on Chris.
He looks happy, like he had a great weekend. This makes me kind of bitter but I’m also glad he enjoyed himself. He needs a break from all those people who send urgent emails with too manyASAPs. He’s a manager at his accounting firm, but he’s told me he still feels like he’s far down on the totem pole and the stress really gets to him. He confides in me like that.
“Glad to hear it,” I mutter. Dropping his eye contact like a hot potato, I kiss Arnie and then scurry out of there, walking east along the cobblestones toward Delancey Street. I need to find my rhythm again and there’s nothing like the Williamsburg Bridge for that, stretching over the East River with complete grace and authority. It’s a piece of art with purpose, and that’s all I aspire to be, really.
The walking and cycling path is a level above the cars, between the purple-pink beams of the bridge. There’s all this graffiti there that I like to read. Graffiti poetry is the only decent poetry there is because it’s not trying to be anything it’s not. This bridge always gives me exactly the words I didn’t know I needed. Today it’s this:Whatever happened to slow, slow dancing?
There’s something so simple but piercing about it. It rises and then falls inside me and makes me want to slow-dance right now—just stop and rest my head on someone’s shoulder and sway to an old-fashioned symphony, both of us bundled up in sweaters and coats, cozy clothing only. I want Chris to be the one I’m dancing with, but then I remember how ridiculous that is. We live on two different sides of the bridge, which might as well be two different sides of the world. Also, I don’t even like slow dancing. It’s too boring.
As I keep walking, my mind bounces all around but doesn’t land on a new plotline long enough for me to jot it down in the notepad on my phone. I think about how constricting it is to plaster ideas onto the page where they can never move around again. The most beautiful stories are the ones that have never been written. The ones that are still floating to their own bohemian beat, never speared by a pen, never captured by a keyboard.
Maybe I’m not supposed to write stories after all. Maybe I’m just supposed to dream them up and launch them into the universeand then they’ll fall back down to Earth as cosmic energy. Land as stardust in a woman’s coffee mug, be the inspiration she needs to break free of an abusive relationship, to trust the power in her own legs and run away. Follow her wild and never look back.
But I’m not spiritual enough to believe in that. There’s no divine justice in this universe; just look at the news headlines. And even if my stories did make it into the ether, I wouldn’t like how no one would know that I was the one to create them in the first place. My own greatness wouldn’t be attributed to me. I wouldn’t even get a footnote in the history books, so what’s the point really?
Chapter 9
Fall comes to an end and December arrives, that clichéd time of the year when the city is choked in garlands and there are all these dehydrated Christmas trees being sold at every other street corner. The Redstockings never get a tree; we don’t support deforestation. But this year Hal drags one back to the Inn one night.
It’s a Charlie Brown situation. The tree isn’t actually a tree; it’s a shrub that’s basically scraped clean of needles. Apparently it was being thrown into the dumpster because it was such a sorry sight, but Hal took pity on it and rescued it at the last second. It’s got Hal thinking about starting a company that finds homes for rejected Christmas trees. It could expand to rejected groceries and clothes and stuff, too, so the revenue wouldn’t be so seasonally dependent. Not only would it be good for the planet, but it would help low-income neighborhoods too.
“Show me a more progressive business model,” Hal says, then tunes out Tara when she starts explaining a new law she read about, proposed in one of the socialist countries in Europe—Sweden, or maybe it was Spain.
“The law would insist that in order for billionaires to purchase a second or third piece of property, they have to build affordable housing structures on the land,” Tara says as we take the tree into the garden, hauling it by its little stump.
“That’s politics, not business,” Hal says. “Business is a more efficient agent of change, not mired in all the bureaucracy.”
“Business can be bureaucratic too,” Jenni says. “Remember that think tank I worked for? Completely allergic to innovation.”
“Everything is tainted when there’s commercial value attached to it,” I say. “Business, politics, even art. Especially art.”
“Which is why you’re opting out of participation altogether?” Hal asks.
“I’m not opting out,” I say. “I’m just honoring my own creative process, not cramming myself into the industry’s rigid little box in order to be chosen.”
Tara speaks up. “Like I’ve done, you mean?” she asks, jawline even stronger than usual. She only ever provokes things with us when she’s looking for an excuse to be mean to herself.
“Of course not,” I say. “You’ve managed to achieve success and stay authentic. A unicorn, you are.”
We all agree and Tara looks relieved though unconvinced. She sets about hanging her most flamboyant earrings as ornaments on the tree while Jenni drapes it with lights as if nothing were wrong with it, as if it were the damn Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. The branches sag nearly to the ground, but they don’t snap. They’re resilient like that.
I make some spiked hot chocolate for us as we sit out there and exchange gag gifts. We never buy anything for each other—that’s against the rules—but we have this tradition of regifting things from around the Inn. The point is to make it ironic.
Tara raises a mug to the four of us. “To the best platonic soulmates out there,” she says.
