One great lie, p.1
One Great Lie, page 1
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For Charlie Zephyr
Chapter One
Lucchesia Sbarra, poet.
Published Rime, and possibly another volume, both lost.
(1576–unknown)
Picture it—the exact coordinates where Charlotte’s life will change and never change back: a table in the Seattle Public Library. On it—the book Biographical Encyclopedia of Literature: Sixteenth Century. Above—an angled ceiling of enormous glass panes, which makes the library feel like a space colony of the future. Just ahead—yellow escalators and green elevators, shades of disco-era neon that sometimes give Charlotte a migraine.
Now picture Charlotte herself—her long dark braid is over one shoulder. She’s wearing a sweatshirt, zipped all the way up, which looks kind of goofy, but who cares—she’s always cold. She’s trying to write a report on a long-ago female Renaissance poet Isabella di Angelo but can only find information about the guy everyone already knows about, Antonio Tasso. There’s tons and tons of stuff about Tasso and his poetry. But all she’s been able to unearth about Isabella di Angelo is this one fact, repeated again and again. Charlotte’s brown eyes stare down at it: Tasso’s longtime paramour. Paramour: old-fashioned word for someone Tasso had sex with.
Charlotte’s good friend Yasmin is across from her, studying for her macroeconomics test and sucking on sour apple Jolly Ranchers. Yas loves those. Whenever she leans over to talk to Charlotte, her breath is a great burst of fake-apple sweet. Charlotte’s boyfriend, Adam, is there too. He sits to her right, his knees touching hers under the table, the sleeves of his hoodie pushed up to his elbows. He’s always touching her like this, like she’s his lucky rock, or like he’s worried she’ll run off if he doesn’t hang on.
Nate sprawls in the chair next to Yasmin. They’ve been together since sophomore year, and Nate has stopped working out, and he has a little splootch of belly over his stomach, and he’s on his third day in that Kurt Cobain T-shirt, and this bothers Yasmin because he doesn’t seem to be trying anymore. Also, his pits have a slightly tangy odor, which is a constant problem for Yas. It’s the end of spring quarter, right before break, and Charlotte and Yasmin have serious stuff to do, because they’re perpetual overachievers with lots of AP classes, and graduation is coming. Charlotte’s got this term paper, which is going nowhere, and Yasmin’s final is going to be brutal.
Adam and Nate are just fucking around, though. Nate made a triangle football out of a note card, and Adam has his hands up like goalposts, and they’re flicking it back and forth and making whoops of victory and Aw!s of defeat, and they’re basically being way too loud for a library. A guy with a big beard and a backpack scowls at them. A little kid stares, wide-eyed, like they’re a riveting puppet show, maybe wishing he could get away with stuff like that.
“Guys, stop,” Yasmin says. “Show some maturity.” She sounds like her mother right then, Charlotte thinks. Yasmin’s mom is very serious, and always on her case about her grades even though she gets straight As. But Charlotte wants them to knock it off too. She and Yas are both the polite, anxious sort of people who worry about getting in trouble. She wishes she weren’t, but she can’t help it.
Nate tries to grab Yasmin’s butt, and she pulls away, annoyed. Charlotte looks up to see if the librarian is watching.
And that’s when it happens: Charlotte’s eyes scoot in a fateful arc, from Nate’s hand on Yasmin’s butt, across the space of the library, stopping just short of the librarian’s desk, because there it is, that flyer. It’s posted on a noticeboard hanging on the wall by the bank of escalators. She’s not sure why she didn’t see it before, because the words practically call out to her now, which is a cliché, but true.
Anything about writing calls out to her, though. Short-story contests, ads in the Stranger for writing classes, articles online. New notebooks, packages of pens, fat blocks of printer paper. Anything that has to do with writing has drawn her since she wrote her first story, “The Land of the Mixed-Up Animals,” when she was seven. Wait, no. Anything about writing has pulled her in probably since she was five and read this line in Where the Wild Things Are: That very night in Max’s room a forest grew. Is that beautiful or what? Words were forests to explore in your very own room, warm tents to hide in, and magic cloaks that transformed you. I’LL EAT YOU UP! Max shouts to his mother, so words also let you be what you wished you could be—impolite and bold, someone who could talk back and get into trouble and not care.
After that book, even when she was that little, Charlotte would run to her room to madly scratch out some idea, and since then, piles of stories grew, her own forest where she could be wild. Her mind started to be a writer’s mind, with ideas constantly falling forward like an annoying wisp of hair you have to keep pushing aside. She stumbled on a secret: writing was a place she could be honest in ways she couldn’t in real life. And after that incredible discovery, all the sentences were roads leading to something meant, and all the ideas she’d urriedly scratch down were doorways to her future. She never wanted to be a veterinarian, then an astronaut, then a scientist, like most kids. Only a writer. And that report she’s working on, about that poet from way back in the 1500s? Isabella di Angelo was a great-great-great-(too many greats to count)-grandmother on her mother’s side, so, see? Isabella’s existence is proof that writing is in Charlotte’s blood.
A lot of people (okay, her father) don’t take her and her writing seriously. He acts like she’s making pictures with macaroni and glitter. But she has the will and intention of an artist already, even if she’s young and has a lot to learn. She’s making art right now, like you do when you’re an apprentice, and so is her friend Rebecca (photography), and Dara (painting), and if you don’t think so, you’re wrong, Charlotte’s sure. Her biggest dream: to say something that says something. How great would it be, to be one of those young writers you hear about, published ridiculously young? Her own photo in an artistic black-and-white on a jacket flap—can you even imagine it? She can. She does. She believes it can happen. She wants it. She can feel that want like a fire inside. No, that’s a cliché, too, and you’re supposed to avoid those, if you’re a writer. But the point is, it burns like a passion does.
Charlotte rises from her chair. “Hey,” Adam says. He reaches out to tug the tail of her sweatshirt to bring her back to him. He thinks she’s mad at him for being obnoxious in the library. But she just wants to see that flyer. From there, she can only read the words Aspiring Writers.
Up close now… Wow. It’s advertising a new summer study abroad program, one you have to apply for. It looks expensive. Very. So, no way. It’s in Italy, on a private island, La Calamita, across the water from Venice. She’s never even heard of that island, and Italy feels like a planet in another cosmos. There’s a photo of a villa. Her family could never afford that.
But wait.
In smaller print: Scholarships Available.
Her heart actually speeds up with thrill-fear. But then, she sees another daunting phrase: College Students. She isn’t one now, but she will be in the fall. Does that even count? She’ll be enrolled. Technically, she’ll be one, right? There’s nothing about age, but, God, she’d probably be the youngest one there. This gives her an anxious whoosh of intimidation. She spins the rings on her fingers like she does when she gets nervous.
There’s also a romantic, grainy photo of a Venetian canal, with a gondolier guiding his boat under a bridge. It’s a basic shout of Venice, but who cares. It’s not corny or unoriginal to her. Not at all. It feels like fate. She’s in that library right this minute studying Isabella di Angelo, and Isabella di Angelo lived and died in Venice way back in the 1500s. Her mother’s side of the family was there for eons until her grandma moved to the US as a little girl. What are the odds? It feels like an offering, meant just for her.
Charlotte’s never even been on an airplane. A place like Venice is so hard to imagine, it almost doesn’t seem real—a postcard place. But now, look. She’s actually touching the glossy paper.
She removes the pushpin and takes the pamphlet down to examine it more closely. And that’s when something even more stunning and astonishing and terrifying and marvelous occurs, because inside the fold is Luca Bruni’s photo. She knows this photo; of course she does. It’s the one where he’s straddling a chair, his thin shoulders leaning toward the camera, his long arms folded. His hair is kind of a mess, and his nose is a mountain on his narrow face, but his dark eyes look right at you, into you.
Luca Bruni! Holy shit, Luca Bruni has a summer abroad writing program in Venice!
It’s incredible. God. God! He’s one of her favorite writers ever. Just the thought of him gives Charlotte that very particular reader’s pleasure, a sigh mixed with a thrill. Just the thought of him also gives her that particular writer’s pleasure, a sigh mixed with awe. Under his image, there’s a small paragraph with his bio, but who needs it? Who doesn’t know him? He’s known all over the world, a celebrity, the way only the tiniest handful of authors are.
As she stands in the library holding the pamphlet, Charlotte’s heart begins to thump i n double-espresso time. Above her is the futuristic ceiling, and all around her are words, old words, new words, words from when Isabella di Angelo walked the stone streets of Venice in 1573. But more importantly, Luca Bruni stares up at her from that pamphlet, and two shelves over and four shelves up are some of the most beautiful words she’s ever read. She can lead you right to it, Luca Bruni’s shelf.
The words inside A Mile of Faces are so beautiful. The words inside Under the Sudden Sky, The Tide of Years, The Forever King, and The Glass Ship (oh, especially that one) are beautiful too. All of Luca Bruni’s work is beautiful, and powerful, and meaningful, and raging, and funny, and soul-crushing, and life-changing, full of blood and bone shards and heartbeats. And in his interviews, Luca Bruni himself is powerful, and meaningful, and raging, and funny; arrogant, and tender, but sometimes cruel, too, full of blood and bone shards and heartbeats.
This is what she knows more than anything else as she stands there, clutching the pamphlet, her chest filling with hope. She knows this without a doubt: Luca Bruni’s words—they will shatter you.
There’s something she doesn’t know, though. Not yet.
His words will shatter you, but so might he.
Chapter Two
Amedea Aleardi, poet.
Little is known of her life, and most of her work is lost.
(Dates unknown)
Charlotte feels some sort of determination, an iron core of it, rise in her body. A challenge, petrifying but exhilarating. This is what a dream feels like. An engine cranking up, a sky that stretches on and on. She replaces the pushpin, but not the pamphlet. It’s wrong to take it; she should just write down the information, but she’s already feeling proprietary and competitive. The fewer people that apply, the better.
Yasmin raises one eyebrow. They stare at each other, a meaningful stare full of paragraphs. Charlotte has looked into Yasmin’s eyes since they sat next to each other in that horrible algebra class in the ninth grade, when Mr. Shattuck would scream and throw the whiteboard eraser at anyone who talked. Charlotte would get bad, bad stomachaches in that class because she can’t stand it when anyone yells. It scares her, when you’re as good as you can be but still get screamed at. After that, she and Yas were forever friends, same as two soldiers in a trench.
Charlotte flashes Yas the pamphlet before tucking it into her backpack and zipping it up tight. Yasmin gives a slow nod of acknowledgment and grins. They know each other so well. Besides, Yas understands going for the impossible. She’s trying for a summer internship at NASA.
“Totally,” Yasmin says. It’s an entire pep talk in a single word. Sometimes all you need is just one other person to believe along with you.
“Score!” Nate shouts, and pounds the table with his fists.
* * *
It’s the kind of beautiful Seattle day that makes people wear shorts and take the tops down on their convertibles even though it’s too cold, if anyone’s honest. Which also means it’s a day where everyone in the city heads to Green Lake. After they leave the library, Charlotte sits on a blanket with Adam at their favorite spot on the grass, near the boat rentals. Yasmin and Nate run across the street to Starbucks. She and Adam are alone, aside from a million people at the park, so they kiss, and Adam sneaks his hand up her shirt.
They’ve been together since the fall when Adam and his dad moved here from Portland. Right away, she was drawn to the moody, brooding loner-ness about him, like she was light and he was dark, so together they were a full rotation of the Earth. He was so different from Owen Burke, her boyfriend during sophomore year, student body treasurer, tennis team captain, someone who would never step on a crack, just in case. Nope, Adam had shadings of her first serious crush, Jake Kerchek, eighth grade—the same piercing eyes and mop of hair, only Jake was slightly cruel (he made fun of her for being in orchestra) and mostly ignored her, except for when they were lab partners, where she did most of the work.
Charlotte probably has some messed-up draw to darkness, who knows, but Adam plays the guitar and he’s really good, and she loves that. He has that curly brown hair, and he’s thin, and she likes that, too, or rather, she likes the way his jeans just lay on his hips as if they’re balanced on a hanger. She was attracted to Adam in ways she was never attracted to Owen Burke, and when she had sex for the first time in Adam’s bed when his dad wasn’t home, she didn’t feel like she’d lost her virginity or anything else. She felt like she’d gained something: a secret, like the hidden, zippered compartment of a suitcase that makes it larger.
Now Adam’s tongue is slipping into the corners of her mouth, and his fingers are wriggling under the elastic of her bra. Usually, Charlotte loves kissing him, loves her skin on his skin, but she’s distracted. She’s thinking about what story she should write to submit with that application. Something strong, something Luca Bruni will relate to. Most people probably know him from that TV series they did of his book One Great Lie, but then again, A Mile of Faces is the one everyone studies in high school or college, the one that his fans always name as their favorite. It isn’t Charlotte’s favorite, though. It’s great, but The Glass Ship is hers. She feels ownership about it like that. Same as you do when you love a song from a band that no one’s really heard of yet.
She’s pretty sure The Glass Ship is Luca Bruni’s most personal and biographical book too. It’s just a guess, but a lot of details match the ones from his childhood—a sad, silent mother; an abusive, absent father who left them alone and poor in the village of Arquà Petrarca to go work in the US. Luca Bruni’s depression and mood swings, present forever after that.
Charlotte has the (ridiculous, childish, okay, but so what) feeling that if he knows The Glass Ship is her favorite, he’ll be pleased with her, like she can see something about him that other people don’t usually see. Maybe she should write about her own loneliness, since the ache of it drips off the pages in The Glass Ship, or about her silent, absent father and angry mother. He’ll feel a connection to her maybe, like she feels to him.
“Char?” Adam pulls away and looks at her. Ugh! This sounds awful, since his hands were up her shirt, but she sort of forgot he was there, and now he’s noticed. That pamphlet in her bag is what she feels desire for right then, not Adam. She just wants to get home and get started.
“Yas and Nate are coming.” It’s true, thank goodness—Nate’s holding the cardboard tray, and Yas pretends to stick a finger down her throat from seeing them make out. It’s a good excuse—Charlotte doesn’t want Adam to see the secret plan in her eyes. He’s always worried she’s about to break up with him. It’s like she’s his whole world, and she doesn’t want to be a world. She wants to be in a world. She wants to tromp around in it, explore it, own it. Plus, darkness is tiring sometimes. In her mind, her life has already changed, gone beyond Adam; she’s somewhere in another country, and the sun is hot, and boats slide through the waters of a canal, and words are everywhere. Written, spoken, taught; genius words, beautiful words, hanging like ripe lemons from a tree.
* * *
That night before dinner, Charlotte has her laptop open. She should be working on her report, but she isn’t. One: That report is becoming impossible and frustrating beyond belief, because Isabella di Angelo seems to be forgotten by everyone but her mother’s family. Two: Well, on one tab, there’s the website for Luca Bruni’s program. A hundred times already, she’s looked at the images of his villa on La Calamita, the words La Calamita a lyric in her head. On another tab, there’s the application for the scholarship, and on another, the blank page of a new document. It’s utterly empty except for her name and address in the upper left corner, and a blinking cursor.
That cursor insists. Hurry up, hurry up. I’m waiting, it says, again and again, and Charlotte kind of hates that cursor, but she kind of loves it too. It has the tick of a clock. Clocks are pressure, but they also say, You better get going and make the most of life.
A warm and buttery smell comes upstairs from the kitchen. Her mother, Adele, is back from work at Dr. Denton, DDS’s, where she scrapes and sprays and peers into the dark caverns of mouths, handing tools to Dr. Denton before he asks, anticipating his every fucking need. Those are Adele’s words. All the dirty work of the dentist for a fraction of the pay! Downstairs, she bangs pans around. The pans sound mad. Adele sounds mad a lot, even when she’s not talking. Charlotte feels guilty at that sound, really guilty. She’s gotten so good at guilt that she feels it whenever anyone is displeased or upset, or when she’s been a disappointment, or hasn’t given someone what they want. She should go down and help, but mad isn’t exactly inviting.
