Dream Girl(29)

He is frozen. He must be back in the dream from which he thought he woke, one of those nightmares where you can’t move, can’t make a sound. It takes him a moment to realize that he can turn on the light, all he has to do is turn on the light, and he will see who is torturing him, although the woman’s back is still to him.

Instead, he watches in wonder as the woman turns from the window and heads into the kitchen area. It turns out she is wearing a veil, sort of a black beekeeper effect, so he can’t make out her face. She could be anyone. It could be anything. He hears the click of the back door, which leads to the stairwell.

Then, and only then, he begins screaming his head off.





2012




Syllabus for Advanced Creative Writing

Suggested Reading

The Speed Queen, Stewart O’Nan Zuckerman Unbound, Philip Roth Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser Bury Me Deep, Megan Abbott Red Baker, Robert Ward Ghost Story, Peter Straub The Getaway, Jim Thompson The Godfather, Mario Puzo

Suggested Viewing

Misery (1990)

The King of Comedy (1982) A Place in the Sun (1951) I Want to Live! (1958) The Wire, season 2

Ghost Story (1981)

The Getaway (1972)

The Godfather (1972)



GERRY DISTRIBUTED his syllabus among a baker’s dozen of students. Although Goucher had been coed for three decades, the school was still overwhelmingly female, as were those admitted to this class. There were three boys and ten girls, two of whom were distractingly beautiful. He had not chosen the students himself, not wanting the chore of reading dozens of submissions. He had trusted the English department to vet the candidates carefully and send him the best, and they had pressured him to take thirteen instead of the twelve he had requested. So this should be the cream of the crop. Should be. He wasn’t so convinced after he read the work that had gained them entrance.

“Although we will be working on short stories in this class—anyone who wants to attempt a novel must have prior approval, please see me during office hours before this week is out—the reading and viewing list is key. I will schedule viewings during a to-be-agreed-upon time that works for the majority of students. You may, of course, watch the films on your own.”

A thin girl, not one of the knockouts, raised a nervous hand. “What do you mean by ‘suggested’?”

“Suggested,” Gerry repeated. “Encouraged. Recommended. Not compulsory, but something that will enhance your experience.” Blank stares. “Not part of your grade.” Happy smiles.

“Here’s what will affect your grade. Turning your work in on time. Providing comprehensive critiques on others’ work. Finally, it is important that you show up. Attendance is literally thirty percent of the grade in this class. You can’t be successful in a fiction workshop if you don’t show up. You can’t be successful at anything if you don’t show up.”

He had not taught for almost fifteen years, but it was like muscle memory. The words rolled out, familiar and yet new. He was energized in a way he had not been for a long time. Goucher might not have Hopkins’s rep, but what it did have was an alum who had donated a ridiculously wonderful amount of money for a visiting professorship. He would receive $150,000 and a living stipend as the first Eileen Harriman Creative Writing Fellow. It would have been foolish to say no, even if it meant returning to Baltimore, tricky because his mother assumed he would move back into his boyhood bedroom. He did not. He took a sterile short-term lease behind the Towson mall, telling his mother he had to be within walking distance of campus. She accepted this lie readily, which made him feel guilty. Hadn’t his mother endured enough lies from men? But the house on Berwick was like something out of a ghost story—only not Peter Straub, more Shirley Jackson. He worried that if he went back in, he would never get out.

Besides, he was a newlywed of sorts, married less than a year to Sarah, and he would be boarding the train to New York every Friday to return to her.

He had taught this class before, more or less. The Abbott book was new; he recognized that he needed some women in his syllabus. He expected the students to assume he would be Team Novel all the way, and he generally was, but there was some subtlety to his method. Obviously, The Godfather (film) trumped The Godfather (book). Ghost Story (book) defeated Ghost Story (film) handily. The Getaway was the best one-on-one matchup because novel and film both had their merits, but the book was an existential nightmare whereas the film was a straight-up love story.

The Red Baker–Wire bracket, as he thought of it, was interesting because the novel was working on a human level, whereas The Wire had bigger fish to fry. Gerry preferred the former, but he understood why others argued for the latter. The idea was to shake the students up, to get them to form their own ideas. The novel had been changed forever by film and television; there was no going back. The question was how to go forward.

Their own short stories, the ones they had submitted—they were more scenarios than stories, but so it goes, that’s why they needed a class—were clearly shaped by cinema. The nonlinear ones owed much to Pulp Fiction and maybe the TV show Lost, not that he had ever watched the latter. Then there were the zombies. So. Many. Zombies. What was the appeal of zombies? He really didn’t get it. They weren’t even a good horror device; he had hoped Shaun of the Dead would kill the zombie motif forever. But zombies, being zombies, kept coming back.