Holly

February 12, 2021

Barbara stands outside 70 Ridge Road, one of the smaller Victorians on the smoothly sloping street. The temperature has dropped thirty degrees since the day she saw Professor Harris washing what he had (rather grandiloquently) called his chariot, and today her red winter gear—coat, scarf, hat—are a necessity instead of a fashion statement. She is once more holding her folder of poems, and she’s scared to death.

The woman inside that house is her idol, in Barbara’s opinion the greatest American poet of the last sixty years. She actually knew T.S. Eliot. She corresponded with Ezra Pound when he was in St. Elizabeths Hospital for the criminally insane. Barbara Robinson is just a kid who’s never published anything except for a few boring (and no doubt banal) editorials in the high school newspaper.

What is she doing here? How dare she?

Emily Harris thought the poem she’d looked at was good—quite the load of fear and loathing packed into nineteen lines, she’d said. She’d even suggested a couple of corrections that seemed like good ones, but Emily Harris hadn’t written End for End or Cardiac Street. What Emily Harris had written were two books of literary criticism published by the college press. Barbara checked online.

This morning, after she’d started to believe she would hear nothing, she had gotten an email from Olivia Kingsbury.

I have read your poem. If your schedule permits, please come and visit with me at 2 PM this afternoon. If your schedule does not permit, please reply to my email address. I am sorry about the short notice. It had been signed Olivia.

Barbara reminds herself that she has been invited, and that has to mean something, but what if she makes an ass of herself? What if she can’t even open her mouth, only stare like a complete dummocks? Thank God she didn’t tell her parents or Jerome where she was going this afternoon. Thank God she hadn’t told anyb—

The door of 70 Ridge Road opens, and a fabulously old woman emerges, swaddled in a fur coat that comes down to her ankles and walking on two canes. “Are you just going to stand there, young woman? Come in, come in. I have no tolerance for the cold.”

Feeling outside herself—observing herself—Barbara walks to the porch and mounts the steps. Olivia Kingsbury holds out a frail hand. “Gently, young woman, gently. No squeezing.”

Barbara barely touches the old poet’s fingers, thinking something that’s both absurdly grandiose and very clear: I am touching greatness.

They go inside and down a short wood-paneled hall. As they do, Olivia pats her enormous fur coat. “Faux, faux.”

“Fo?” Barbara says, feeling stupid.

“Faux fur,” Olivia says. “A gift from my grandson. Help me off with it, will you?”

Barbara slips the coat off the old poet’s shoulders and folds it over her arm. She holds it tightly, not wanting it to slip away and fall on the floor.

The living room is small, furnished with straight-backed chairs and a sofa that sits in front of a television with the largest screen Barbara has ever seen. She somehow didn’t expect a TV in a poet’s house.

“Put it on the chair, please,” Olivia says. “Your things as well. Marie will put them away. She’s my girl Friday. Which is fitting, since this is Friday. Sit on the couch, please. The chairs are easier for me to get out of. You are Barbara. The one Emily emailed me about. I am pleased to meet you. Have you been vaccinated?”

“Um, yes. Johnson and Johnson.”

“Good. Moderna for me. Sit, sit.”

Still feeling outside herself, Barbara takes off her outerwear and puts it on the chair, which has already been mostly swallowed by the improbable fur coat. She can’t believe such a tiny woman could wear it without collapsing under its weight.

“Thank you so much for giving me some of your time, Ms. Kingsbury. I love your work, it—”

Olivia holds up one of her hands. “No fangirl remarks necessary, Barbara. In this room we are equals.”

As if, Barbara thinks, and smiles at the absurdity of the idea.

“Yes,” Olivia says. “Yes. We may or may not have fruitful discussions in this room, but if we do, they must be as equals. You’ll call me Olivia. That might be hard for you at first, but you’ll get used to it. And you may take off your mask. If I were to catch the dread disease in spite of our vaccinated state, and die, I would make very old bones.”

Barbara does as she has been told. There’s a button on the table beside Olivia’s chair. She pushes it, and a buzzer sounds deeper in the house. “We’ll have tea and get to know each other.”

At the idea of drinking more tea, Barbara’s heart sinks.

A trim young woman dressed in fawn-colored slacks and a plain white blouse comes in. She’s holding a silver tray with tea things on it and a plate of cookies. Oreos, in fact.

“Marie Duchamp, this is Barbara Robinson.”

“Very nice to meet you, Barbara,” Marie says. Then, to the old poet, “You have ninety minutes, Livvie. Then it’s naptime.”

Olivia sticks out her tongue. Marie returns the favor. Barbara is startled into laughter, and when the two women laugh with her, that sense of otherness mostly slips away. Barbara thinks this could be all right. She will even drink the tea. At least the cups are small, not like the bottomless mug she was faced with in the Harris house.

When Marie leaves, Olivia says, “She’s a boss, but a good boss. Without her, I’d be in assisted living. There is no one else.”

This Barbara knows, from her online research. Olivia Kingsbury had two children by two different lovers, a grandson by one of those children, and she has outlived all of them. The grandson who gave her the enormous fur coat died two years ago. If Olivia lives until the following summer, she will be a hundred years old.

“Peppermint tea,” Olivia says. “I’m allowed caffeine in the morning, but not the rest of the day. Occasional arrhythmia. Will you pour out, Barbara? A plink of cream—it’s the real stuff, not that wretched half and half—plus the veriest pinch of sugar.”

“To make the medicine go down,” Barbara ventures.

“Yes, and in the most delightful way.”

Barbara pours for both of them and at Olivia’s urging takes a couple of Oreos. The tea is good. There’s none of the strong, murky flavor that caused her to sneak most of Professor Harris’s brew down the sink. It’s actually sort of delightful. The word sprightly comes to mind.

They drink their tea and eat their cookies. Olivia munches two, spilling some crumbs down her front which she ignores. She asks Barbara about her family, her school, any sports in which she has participated (Barbara runs track and plays tennis), whether or not she has a boyfriend (not currently). She doesn’t discuss writing at all, and Barbara begins to think she won’t, that she has only been invited here today to break the monotony of another afternoon with no one to talk to but the woman who works for her. This is a disappointment, but not as big a one as Barbara might have expected. Olivia is sharp, gently witty, and current. There’s that big-screen TV, for instance. And Barbara was struck by Olivia’s casual use of the word fangirl, which isn’t one you expected to hear coming from an old lady.

It will only be later, walking home in a daze, that Barbara will realize that Olivia was circling the thing that has brought Barbara here, as if to outline its size and shape. Taking her measure. Listening to her talk. In a gentle and tactful manner, Barbara has been interrogated, as if at a job interview.

Marie comes for the tea things. Olivia and Barbara thank her. As soon as she’s gone, Olivia leans forward and says, “Tell me why you write poetry. Why do you even want to?”

Barbara looks down at her hands, then back up at the old poet sitting across from her. The old poet whose face is little more than a skin-covered skull, who has forgotten or ignored the Oreo crumbs littering the bodice of her dress, who is wearing blocky old-lady shoes and pink support hose, but whose eyes are bright and completely here. Barbara thinks they are fierce eyes. Raging, almost.

“Because I don’t understand the world. I hardly even see the world. It makes me crazy sometimes, and I’m not kidding.”

“All right, and does writing poems make the world more understandable and less crazy?”

Barbara thinks of how Ondowsky’s face changed in the elevator and how everything she thought she understood about reality fell to ruin when that happened. She thinks of stars at the edge of the universe, unseen but burning. Burning. And she laughs.

“No! Less understandable! More crazy! But there’s something about doing it… I can’t explain…”

“I think you can,” the old poet says.

Well, maybe. A little.

“Sometimes I write a line… or more than one… once in awhile a whole poem… and I think, ‘There. I got that right.’ And it satisfies. It’s like when you have an itch in the middle of your back, and you don’t think you’ll be able to reach it, but you can, just barely, and oh man, that… that sense of relief…”

The old poet says, “Destroying the itch brings relief. Doesn’t it?”

“Yes!” Barbara almost shouts it. “Yes! Or even like with an infection, a swelling, and you… you have to…”

“You have to express the pus,” Olivia says. She jerks a thumb like a hitchhiker. “They don’t teach that at the college, do they? No. The idea that the creative impulse is a way to get rid of poison… or a kind of creative defecation… no. They don’t teach that. They don’t dare. It’s too earthy. Too common. Tell me a line you wrote that you still like. That gave you that feeling of finally relieving the itch.”

Barbara thinks it over. She has stopped being nervous. She’s engaged. “Well, there’s a line in the poem Professor Harris sent you that I still like—This is the way birds stitch the sky closed at sunset. It’s not perfect, but—”

Olivia holds up a hand like a traffic cop. “In the poem I read you wrote in how. This is how birds stitch the sky closed at sunset.”

Barbara is amazed. Olivia has quoted the line exactly, although the poem isn’t in front of her. “Yes. It was Professor Harris who suggested the change from this is the way to this is how. So I put it in.”

“Because you thought her version of the line was better?”

Barbara starts to say yes, then pauses. This feels like a trap question. No, that’s not right, this woman doesn’t ask questions to trap (although Barbara thinks Emily Harris might). But it could be a test question.

“I did then, but…”

“But now you’re not so sure. Do you know why?”

Barbara thinks it over and shakes her head. If it’s a test question, she guesses she just failed.

“Could it be because your original version contains words that continue the rhythm of the poem? Could it be this is the way swings and this is how clunks, like a dead key on a piano?”

“It’s just one word… well, two…”

“But in a poem every word counts, doesn’t it? And even in free verse, especially in free verse, the rhythm must always be there. The heartbeat. Your version is poetry. Emily’s is prosy. Did she offer to help you with your work, Barbara?”

“I guess, in a way. She said, I think this was it, that if I didn’t hear back from you, I might consider her as an interested party.”

“Yes. That’s Emily as I’ve come to know her. Emily all over. She’s managerial. She would begin by making suggestions, and eventually your poems would become her poems. At best collaborations. She’s all right at what she does now that she’s semi-retired, going through writing samples for the fiction workshop, but as a teacher, or a mentor, she’s like a driving instructor who always ends up taking the wheel from the student. She can’t help it.”

Barbara bites her lip, considering, and decides to risk taking it a little further. “You don’t like her?”

It’s the old poet’s turn to consider. Finally she says, “We’re collegial.”

That’s not an answer, Barbara thinks. Or maybe it is.

“When I was teaching poetry at Bell many years ago, we were next door neighbors in the English Department, and when she left her door open, I sometimes overheard her student conferences. She never raised her voice, but often there was a… a kind of browbeating going on. Most adults can stand up to that sort of thing, but students, especially those who are eager to please, are a different matter. Did you like her?”

“She seemed all right. Willing to talk to a kid who basically just barged in.” But Barbara is thinking of the tea, and how nasty it was.

“Ah. And did you meet her husband, the other half of their storied love match?”

“Briefly. He was washing his car. We didn’t really talk.”

“The man is crazy,” Olivia says. She doesn’t sound angry, and she doesn’t sound like she’s making a joke. It’s just a flat declaration, like the sky is cloudy today. “Don’t take my word for it; before he retired, he was known in Life Sciences as Rowdy Roddy the Mad Nutritionist. For a few years before he finally stepped down—although he may still have lab privileges, I don’t know about that—he had an eight-week seminar called Meat Is Life. Which always made me think of Renfield in Dracula. Have you read it? No? Renfield is the best character. He’s locked in a madhouse, eating flies and repeating ‘the blood is the life’ over and over.

“Fuck me, I’m rambling.”

Barbara’s mouth drops open.

“Don’t be shocked, Barbara. You can’t write well without a grasp of profanity and the ability to look at filth. To sometimes exalt filth. All I’m saying—not out of jealousy, not out of possessiveness—is you would do well to steer clear of the Professors Harris. Her, especially.” She eyes Barbara. “Now if you have me down for a jealous old woman slandering a former colleague, please say so.”

Barbara says, “All I know is her tea is horrible.”

Olivia smiles. “We’ll close the subject with that, shall we? Are those your poems in that folder?”

“Some of them. The shorter ones.”

“Read to me.”

“Are you sure?” Barbara is scared. Barbara is delighted.

“Of course I am.”

Barbara’s hands are shaking as she opens her folder, but Olivia doesn’t see; she has settled back in her chair and closed those fierce eyes. Barbara reads a poem called “Double Image.” She reads one called “The Eye of December.” She reads one called “Grass, Late Afternoon”:

“The storm is finished. The sun returns.

The wind says, When I blow

tell your million shadows

to say ‘Eternity, eternity.’

So that is what they do.”

After that one the old poet opens her eyes and yells for Marie. Her voice is surprisingly strong. Barbara thinks with dismay that she has been found wanting and is going to be escorted out by the woman in the fawn-colored slacks.

“You have another twenty minutes, Livvie,” Marie says.

Olivia ignores that. She’s looking at Barbara. “Are you attending classes in person, or are you Zooming?”

“Zooming for now,” Barbara says. She hopes she won’t cry until she gets out of here. She thought it was going so well, that’s the thing.

“When can you come? Mornings are best for me. I’m fresh then… or as fresh as is possible these days. Are they possible for you? Marie, get the book.”

Marie leaves, giving Barbara just enough time to find her voice. “I have no classes until eleven.”

“Assuming you’re an early riser, that’s perfect.”

As a rule Barbara is far from an early riser, but she thinks that’s about to change.

“Can you come from eight until nine? Or nine-thirty?”

Marie has returned with an appointment book. She says, “Nine. Nine-thirty is too long, Livvie.”

Olivia doesn’t stick out her tongue, but she makes an amusing face, like a child who’s told she must eat her broccoli.

“Eight to nine, then. Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. Wednesdays are for the goddam doctors and Thursdays are for the motherfucking physical therapy chick. The harpy.”

“I can do that,” Barbara says. “Of course I can do that.”

“Leave the poems you brought. Bring more. If you have books of mine you want signed, bring them next time and we’ll get that nonsense out of the way. I’ll see you out.” She gropes for her canes and begins the slow process of getting up. It’s like watching an Erector Set building constructed in slow motion. Marie moves to help her. The old poet waves her away, almost falling back into her chair in the process.

“You don’t have to—” Barbara begins.

“Yes,” Olivia says. She sounds out of breath. “I do. Walk with me. Throw my coat over my shoulders.”

“Faux, faux,” Barbara says, without meaning to. The way she writes some lines—often the best lines—without meaning to.

Olivia doesn’t just laugh at that, she cackles. They move slowly down the short hall, the old poet almost invisible beneath the fur coat. Marie stands watching them. Probably ready to pick up the pieces if she falls and shatters like an old porcelain vase, Barbara thinks.

At the door, one of those frail hands grasps Barbara’s wrist. In a low voice carried on a waft of faintly bad breath, she says, “Did Emily ask you if your poems were about what she likes to call ‘the Black experience’?”

“Well… she did say something…”

“The poem I saw and the ones you read me weren’t about being Black, were they?”

“No.”

The hand on her wrist tightens. “I’m going to ask you a question, young lady, and don’t you lie to me. Don’t you dare. Give me your promise.”

“I promise.”

The old poet leans close, looking up into Barbara’s young face. She whispers: “Do you understand that you are good at this?”

Barbara thinks, On the basis of three or four poems, you know this how?

But she whispers back, “Yes.”

She walks home in a daze, thinking of the last thing Olivia said to her. “Gifts are fragile. You must never entrust yours to people who might break it.”

She doesn’t say who she might be thinking of, and Barbara doesn’t need her to. She has what she needs and doesn’t expect to return to the Harris house again.