The place my mother had in mind was her sister’s artists’ residency in Bennington, Vermont. My first instinct—as we sat on a park bench, Brooklyn a spinning top whirring around us—was to recoil.

Why would I go there? I said. I had only met my Aunt Evie a handful of times. My mother would say they were estranged. Evie was a character, an eccentric woman, fabled—a weird woman. It was my mother who called her sister bizarre and unreliable, always moving about, never really solidifying anything in her life, always wearing something linen irrespective of the season. Why did she have anything to do with assuaging my misery? What did she know about helping a girl—all twenty-four years of me—define her purpose in the world?

Sometimes you remind me of her, my mother said. I’ve heard her place changes lives, transports people, seriously. Didn’t you say you thought you were an artist?

A boomerang of early summer honey soused light swallowed half my mother’s face as she spoke, so I couldn’t make out the seriousness of her expression. Was she merely trying to get rid of me, her own daughter? And was that a lilt of sarcasm in her voice? Lately, my mother tended toward me with the impression of insouciance. She was focused on other things—like her new boyfriend and her job and her new skin regimen and the thousands of errands that occupied her days—and so she did not consider my case of “millennial agitation” to be her plight.

One morning, weeks before the episode in the park, we stood in the kitchen and each prepared to set out for our respective days in cubicles. I had been working a normal job my mother forced me into because she was sick of shouldering the financial burden of my torpor. I stalled at our espresso machine, the prospect of the eight-hour day looming over me like a terribly long flight, my clenched face reflecting back at me in the contraption’s laminated façade. I told my mother I thought I had it in me to be an artist, an artist like Evie, because surely Evie was an artist, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she? My mother choked on a tangerine vesicle, gasping, an artist?

The park continued its dizzying pirouette around us—was that the same rollerblader again? On at least her fifth circuit? Just go, my mother said. And anyway, Evie always seems happy to have guests. I would go because going anywhere felt protective and safe, away from the city where everyone vibrated ceaselessly with the sense that they were doing something important with their lives. Everyone but me. I was determined to find my something important. I was determined to escape, take a break, get away.

Vermont was hot in the summer, the air thick with humidity that slicked your face in an earthy sap serum. Evie had told me to pack light and I mostly capitulated; I stood on the verdant lawn with a duffel bag filled with jean shorts and tank tops and sun cream and a few books. I looked at The Seminary before me, all the crocuses sprouting up in the grass like rings around a planet. It smelled like pine and chalky, dry soil. The Green Mountains humblebragged in the distance.When was the last time I saw Aunt Evie? I tried to remember as I stood looking at the white Colonial, its rows of front-facing windows—six up top and four with a door below—opening out at me, each its own portal.

It was at my university graduation in the city; that was the last time I saw Evie. She had made a cameo appearance en route from Europe to places she owns in The Berkshires or Hudson Valley. She swanned across the campus lawn in a stone-hued kaftan and huge, sculptural earrings that caught the light with little pops of electricity. She looked much different from my mother who wore tailored slacks and a blazer that day—just their outfits alone spoke volumes about the kinds of roles they assumed in the world. My mother judged Evie for her bohemian otherworldliness, she judged Evie’s decisions about her half of their inheritance. My mother had stayed back in the city, bought an apartment in a co-op, had me, kept down a highfalutin job in a bank. Evie had travelled, shrugged off children, bought up properties in remote places she restored with gusto. The Seminary was her latest endeavour. You should go and help, live with Evie and her artist friends for a while, my mother had said, her voice affected with a sniff of God forbid you end up like her. Was she testing my ability to live differently from how she herself had lived? I got the feeling my mother was jealous about the way Evie chose to live. Did Evie judge my mother’s decisions? Was envy a two-way street?

There was a plaque on the façade of the white building—MT. ANTHONY SEMINARY 1829—beside the front door left a little ajar. Inside, a fuzzy biblical light shone into the foyer. A man in a painting smock hunkered down the staircase, wooden treads with worn patinas and rasping under foot like a hearty voice scraped with stones. Evie won’t be long, he said. She told me to tell you to make yourself at home upstairs. Second door on the left. That room isn’t done yet, he added. But it’s still nice.

The man passed me at the bottom of the stairs, plucked a cigarette from behind his ear, and let himself out the front door leaving a strange occult sensation in his wake. Had I been here before? Perhapsit was déjà vu. Was that Charlie? I wondered. Charlie was the man Evie had married once, though now they were divorced but still amicable according to my mother. The only woman to ever remain friends with an ex, was one of her sotto voce remarks. I didn’t remember what Charlie looked like.

I went upstairs, regretting momentarily my decision to come here, the air of arty solitude intimidating—the tang of paint and clay and wet wood and eerie silence. I told myself to buck up. I was here seeking something, some greater purpose, an escape from my unshaped existence. I was here to test the waters of being an artist. I wasn’t going to fail in my odyssey like my mother had intended, careening me right back to some soulless office full of people typing with perfunctory looks on their faces knotted up like balls of wool.

The bedroom Evie had assigned to me was small but ample, a single wooden bed pushed up against a window with a view of the driveway—the Bennington Battle Monument a saber at the foreground of the horizon, its top piercing a diaphanous cloud—walls covered in Lily of the valley printed paper. This would be fine, I told myself, unpacking my duffel bag on the end of the bed, placing my books and notebook on the bedside table made from—oak, was it?—that was most certainly decades older than me. What did you, you table, know that I didn’t? That’s how I was practically always feeling then, at the beginning of that summer—everyone and everything seemed to know something about living that I didn’t. In the city, strangers had blithely and determinedly walked by—postures stately and faces unmoved—like they always knew exactly where they were going and always had somewhere precise to be. Their denotative way to live seemed at times the only way to live. Then there was me, recently graduated with a degree I only completed in a subject I only chose because everyone else seemed to choose it. Anyway, I liked the way my books and the empty notebook looked there on the oak table, the small tower of books beside the bed proof that someone with deep, artistic thoughts slept there. I tried not to think about the people who slept in the bed before me, tried to temper the creepiness of the musing. Maybe some brilliant artist slept there once. Maybe I would absorb their assuredness via osmosis.

Evie pulled into the drive in an old Land Rover, red and dusty like maraschino cherries parched by the sun. From the window, I watched her get out of the car, brown paper bags—vegetables, presumably—hanging by her side, linen kaftan loose and lapping in the hot mountain breeze. She moved to the front door, glacially. Everything about her was different from my mother, her clipped hurried stride.

Halloo, Evie cooed from downstairs.

I made my way down the hallway—an antique runner’s soft bristles against the soles of my feet—through rooms, soon discovering everywhere else in the place felt profoundly lived-in and full of objects that had each seemed to arrive there from its own forgone era: a Japanese vase, chairs with needlepoint cushions, a landscape painting. Each room was a different color too, robin’s egg blue, pink soft and ethereal as a French lady’s peignoir, deep red. I imagined each room bearing its own soul, each room its own body.

I found Evie downstairs in the kitchen at the back of The Seminary, which she later told me used to be a school for boys. Thinkers were here! she said. She unloaded carrots and apples and—were those paint brushes?—from bags onto a maple island. She arranged the apples in a bone china bowl that looked more like a garden sculpture. Her greyish hair appeared liquid in that limpid light streaming into the place, even holier now. I don’t know why Evie doesn’t die her hair, my mother had said, but I liked it, the way Evie wore her age and wisdom with contented peace. Surrendered to time.

You made it, look at you, Evie said, gliding toward me, taking my face in her hands which smelled like vegetable dirt and wet plaster. Did Cosmo show you to your room? I nodded, thinking, ah the man in the painting smock wasn’t Charlie. What do you think of the place? It’s still a work in progress, but really your room is the last nook left. I thought I’d leave it to you to finish this summer, when you find time amidst your other artistic endeavours that is, she said. Your mother said you’re writing?

I nodded again, a little sheepish. I hadn’t really been writing. Not yet. Writing terrified me. Did I really have things to say people might care about? Didn’t writing require a consciousness richer and more developed than mine?

That’s great, really lovely. You’ll find good company in the others here. We have a sculptor, a painter, a poet, a furniture maker. Some developed their work at the nearby university before arriving here, Evie said.

I had heard of the university Evie alluded to, the famous one where artistic kids went to create their own degrees, mould, and cast their own paths. The one I had wanted to go to. No way, my mother had said, that place is for a special breed. Evie gathered a few paint brushes in a pile and passed them toward me. I just looked at them, unsure what to do, unsure again why I was here. I didn’t know how to paint, let alone write.

The only chore I’ll ask of you is breakfast duty. Nothing complex; you can do simple things. European continental. There are six of us including you and me, Evie said.

Breakfast duty. I contemplated breakfast duty. It reaffirmed my mother’s intentions. She most certainly wanted me to discover that the grass wasn’t always greener, that life with a normal job and prescribed path in the city would suit me just fine. Using my brain was better than flipping a skillet.

How’s your mom? Evie said. Last time I saw her she looked so tired, so worn out. She’s good. Working, I said. Always working. Such a martyr! Evie said, sticking carrots under the running tap. You get yourself settled and we’ll convene for dinner. I expect the others would love to see what you’re workingon in a few days.

The prospect of my existence at The Seminary that summer became increasingly petrifying. Not least because I didn’t know how to make a Continental European breakfast. Evie insisted I share something I wrote, and it filled me with dread—a slow inertia coursing through my body—tempting me back to my shrouded city existence.

Those first days and nights were a struggle, and not because much (apart from breakfast) was demanded of me in the way of creation but because nothing was demanded of me. Days and nights spread out before me like dormant plains. You must find ways to fill your own days, Evie had said. Trust those ways are right. I laid on the grass with my empty notebook, shielding the sun from my face, blades poking at the back of my neck until day became evening and fireflies blinked on and off in the air around me like a painter’s little pointillist dots of yellow.

There was nobody to tell me what to do and how, the other artists walked by my bedroom and occasionally peered in, encouraging pinched smiles on their faces, one tanner than the others from working outdoors, one stroked with bits of dry paint and sawdust, all exuding this fey zeal like they were from another time. What did they do all day? How did they do it? Who told them how to do it right? They all lived as though propelled by the same God shot of espresso, according to some great conspiratorial secret lying between the walls of The Seminary, one that lacked structure or sameness, one that I couldn’t decipher or denotate if I tried.

At first sleep was impossible. I felt like an imposter. Other strangers had inhabited this room. Things had happened in this room. Maybe someone had died in this room. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I watched the shadows from the leaves outside gambol across the ceiling. Maybe my mother was right.

Making things was hard, but eventually my thoughts would drift to the story slowly taking shape in the journal beside me. I’d be thinking of rivers or ghosts or my mother or my first love. There would be chitchat coming from the other artists out in the hallway. I’d hear them mutter things about rivers or ghosts or mothers or loves. The soundbites I picked up on from their conversations sometimes seemed to resonate so exactly with what I was thinking. Like when you’re walking in the park alone and thinking about something and strangers pass mid-chat, leaving words in their wake to suggest they were thinking about it too. It was as if there was some kind of communal energy between us all. Maybe, even despite my fear of making art, I was joining in on The Seminary’s collective consciousness. The place teetered between inspiring terror and magic.

You can do with it what you want! Just don’t do nothing! Evie had said one morning when I asked her about my bedroom, her lips fawning over a petite espresso cup she alternated sips from with a petite glass of sparkling water. I stood over the stove and fried eggs in a pan. Wasn’t exactly Continental but the others, I learned, didn’t seem to mind as my garlicky cooking fumes steamed up the Shaker style kitchen—Cosmo told me that’s what it was called: a Shaker kitchen. I was learning things by the day, slowly falling into the syncopated rhythms of those creating around me, the clock on the wall in the kitchen beating like the place’s heartbeat—a bozzetto is a small terracotta sketch of a sculpture, antiquing the process of making wood or fabric look old and used, enjambment when a line of poetry runs straight into the next without punctuation. The pages of my journal slowly filled too. I was still reluctant to share my words, however. Sharing my own words felt unnerving, like tipping open a part of my soul. I had no idea if my soul was any good, if I had it in me to be like these people.

You must remain open to being misunderstood, Evie said. If you want to be an artist.

Is that how Evie felt? Did she feel misunderstood? My mother’s voice echoed back at me. All the things she had said about Evie. While I disagreed with most of it, I did note something profound about Evie’s presence. Like water, she evanesced, vanished, and reappeared before vanishing again.

At The Seminary, time had a certain texture to it. Almost like a viscosity; it was stretchy and soft like the velvet couch against the backs of my thighs. I lost track of how many days had gone, how close we were to the end of the summer. Perhaps it was the negronis. Cosmo’s speciality.

The evening was cool—late summer humidity zapped from the air with the dawn of night like lemonade fizz on ice—and the window was propped open. Evie and the other artists and I, like we would on most evenings, sat around a fire lit low and unthreatening, cracking like little pops of hail against pavement. Cesária Evora’s Sodade spun on a pink Dansette record player at the corner of the room, her voice frisking occasionally over shrapnel of dust on the vinyl.

Evie sat remarkably still for a woman who did not remain in one place for very long, shoulders dropped and palms cupped around her knees. Why do you always move around to different places? I said.

She looked at me, contemplative eyes bursting wrinkles like rays out from their corners. Places change people, she said, a smirk on her face like she had some marvellous trick up her sleeve. Then Evie launched into a story about once when she was at her place in Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard. There was a photographer there who would go on to inspire generations. An artist like each of us. As she spoke, her voice an incantation, the walls of The Seminary waned.

Then suddenly there we were in a sprawling mid-century compound, the fire—albeit a different fire—still cracking and the velvet couch touching the backs of my thighs swapped out for faded blue corduroy. There were vaulted ceilings and slanted windows that let light dive into the room. Acres of brush and a swimming pool glistering out the window. There were people. Different people. A man with a giant film camera in one hand—a dinosaur of a contraption, really—and a pipe in the other. People smoked inside. Smoke fumes clouded our vision and beckoned back The Seminary. I’ve heard her place changes lives, transports people, seriously, my mother said. Did she mean it literally? Evie handled all the artists here and there like they were her orphaned children and sometimes over the course of that summer I wondered if Evie would have liked children of her own, a spouse (though I did suspect she and Cosmo were lovers), some place to call a permanent home. She retorted. Art was as good as children to her, and she would move on from this place, too, because after a certain point The Seminary would become its own living and breathing thing that persisted and evolved with those who lived and worked inside it. Oh, I don’t know, she said. Maybe I’ll go to Marfa. Eventually, I would muster the courage and read aloud from the pages of my journal. Those sat around me would watch with doughy faced pride as I let my own words work their leisurely way around my tongue.

My bedroom had circumnavigated its own metamorphosis by the time I left The Seminary. With my own hands and the help of Cosmo, I had peeled back the old Lily of the valley wallpaper, scoring it with a scraper, replacing it with toile. I found rolls of fabric in the garage, tilting against the wall beside a sign that said Prada Marfa. I upholstered the bed frame and made a headboard with puckered linen. I draped tapestries over the oak bedside tables.

I never really left The Seminary. The Seminary was a feeling—a nostalgia, a well-worn warmth, an artistic soul, an intuition—that I would carry with me asI walked back down the verdant lawn with my duffel bag carrying the jean shorts, and the sun cream, and the books, and my notebook, and the certain feeling that I had transformed, affirmed my commitment to something else.

There I was on the park bench in Brooklyn again. There was the rollerblader. What was she on—her fifteenth, maybe twentieth, circuit now? I couldn’t tell. Nostalgia crept over me like the evening glow encroaching. Life buzzed, each person and sound its own fetching story, the journal in my lap filled up to its very last page.

You should go, my mother said, though I felt I already had.



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