Page 112 of Blush
“Fine. It’s not our business. But what about us? Is our relationship going to end over this, too?”
“Don’t be dramatic, Vivian.”
“Well, then please stop giving me the cold shoulder. Move back into the bedroom.”
“You put me in a terrible position. You putusin a terrible position.”
“What if I didn’t put us in a terrible position? What if this prevented us from taking the easy way out, and although it’s going to be tougher in the short term, we’ll be thankful—”
“No,” Leonard said.
She moved closer to him, looking into his eyes.
“What’s one of the first things you taught me about the plants?”
“I’m in no mood for games, Vivian.”
She held on to his arm, keeping him from moving away. “That the vines that have to struggle for resources ultimately produce the best grapes.”
His eyes softened. “I remember the first time I brought you out here to see the property. Just the empty fields. It was fall, leaves covering the ground. You looked at me like I was crazy.”
“No I did not.”
He nodded sadly. “You did. And I told you, just you wait and see. You trusted me. You gave it a shot. And I let you down. We let each other down.”
She began to protest, to tell him that no one let anyone down—that their struggle, like that of the vines, could make them stronger. But he walked out as abruptly as he had swept in, leaving her alone.
Vivian filled a vase one-third of the way with water, arranging it with flowers. She hoped this bunch would survive.
The English department offices hummed with the particular energy of the first week of classes. Office hours were populated by students wholly optimistic about the start of their new school year. No one hadyet failed an exam, or run late on a paper, or doubted that they would correct any bad habits from the previous semester. No one, it seemed, except for Sadie.
She climbed the stairs to the second floor, gulping the dregs from her nearly empty coffee cup. Dr. Moore’s office door was open.
A call came in from her mother before she settled into her seat. Sadie was already nervous and fumbling; she felt like her entire academic future rested on this meeting—which in a way it did. She sent the call to voicemail.
“Good morning, Sadie,” Dr. Moore said, smiling. She looked stylish as usual, dressed a burnt-orange-colored linen suit with chocolate brown oversize beads around her neck and gold hoop earrings. Sadie, in her baggy jeans and wrinkled V-neck, her unkempt hair pulled back with a bandana, felt like a slob. But the past week had been twenty-four/seven work mode. She didn’t have time to worry about what she looked like.
“So,” Dr. Moore said, flipping through the pages in front of her. “‘The Peak of Literary Camp: Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins, and the Blockbuster Novels of the 1980s.’”
Once Sadie had the idea, writing the paper had been like running downhill. For the first time since she’d begun this agonizing project a year earlier, it formulated in her mind faster than she could type it. But ultimately, all that mattered was Dr. Moore’s opinion.
“I know you struggled to get this off the ground. It’s counter-logical, but I do find that some of my most talented students hit a wall at some point as undergrads, whereas students who have always struggled have a more even-keeled academic experience when they get here.”
Oh, that didn’t sound good. Dr. Moore was trying to let her down easy—as if that were even remotely possible. The coffee churned in her stomach.
“You have a distinct voice, and that’s something that can’t be taught,” Dr. Moore said.
Sadie braced herself for the “but.”
“But with this paper,” Dr. Moore said, “you’ve gone beyond intelligence and voice. You’ve found a point of view.”
“Wait—you like it?”
“I think you’ve got an excellent thesis on your hands. Keep going.”
They were the words she’d wanted to hear for months. She was back on track. She could throw herself into her schoolwork: No writer’s block. No pesky relationship. Nothing but Susan Sontag, Jackie Collins, and Judith Krantz for the foreseeable future.
Her phone chirped with a text from her mother.
