Peterborough, New Hampshire We get lost and it’s my fault. I think I know a shortcut. Mary knows only the long way around. I have an appointment for a man to look into my mouth and tell me my…
I arrived for my 2018 MacDowell residency with a dull ache in my mouth that I was determined to ignore. As I walked in to dinner that first night, I saw one of my favorite poets at the end of the table. I had met Mary Ruefle before—here at MacDowell, actually, years before. But back then I’d been too intimidated to talk to her.
Mary is one of those rare people who are completely present in the moment while also seeming to have one foot in a parallel, mystical realm. She’s funny, a good storyteller, and a great asker of questions. One night during dessert, snow began to fall from a mostly sunny sky. People took videos and photos. Mary? Mary let out what I can only describe as a shriek of delight. It was stunning: the sun was setting violet and gold over the field as fat flakes fell from a pink sky.
At this point, my cheek was visibly swollen. It was time to bite (ouch) the bullet and get help. I got an emergency appointment at an endodontist in town. Mary insisted on dropping me off.
Mary didn’t have a cell phone or use email. She wrote on a typewriter. It struck me as absurd that someone that close to the divine would also drive a car; it seemed right that she didn’t know the direct route to town despite having been to MacDowell seven times.
I wrote the first draft of this piece in the waiting room of that endodontist in Peterborough. I had a lot on my mind: the cost of emergency treatment, the precious time I was losing to work in my studio, how I wanted my life to look in the coming years. I thought about how tempting it is to mythologize our favorite artists; to demand they become oracles or transport us someplace sacred.
For years I left the draft alone out of a deep suspicion that anything I wrote about MacDowell would read like sentimental crap. The place is full of magic, uncanny coincidences, and strange ecstasies. It felt embarrassing to try to describe it in plain old words. When I returned to it in 2024, I had enough distance to see what was drivel and what was interesting.
KELLY LUCE is the author of the story collection Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail and the novel Pull Me Under, a Book of the Month Club selection and one of Elle’s Best Books of 2017. She is a three-time MacDowell fellow and has also received fellowships from Yaddo, Ucross Foundation, Ragdale, Art Omi, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Michener Center for Writers, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her digital short story “Between the Lines” (code lit) went viral in 2022. She serves as editor of The Commuter at Electric Literature. Find her on Instagram @kellynluce.
