Hellgoing by Lynn Coady Page B

front page accosted her whenever she walked up and down the street. There was no avoiding anything.
    She had a brother in Duncan who, like her, was no longer in the family. They argued on the phone. Wayne always seemed to think it was natural and okay for he himself to have left, but scandalous and obscene for her. Plus, he didn’t mind the bombs. “It’s about time they started bombing   something ,” he opined. He called Sara a hippie, since he couldn’t convincingly use words like harlot and jezebel now that they were equally damned.
    They rolled along in Terry’s big white van. The landscape was just like the abstract painting in the brochure, only endless and on every side. Just when she was starting to feel panicky about it, hills appeared on either side of the highway, and then they were descending into a picturesque — there was no other word for it — valley. Terry gestured to one of the hills, and she and Herb looked. A crucifix loomed; a sprawling, one-storey building crouched behind it as if for protection.
    â€œThere it is,” said Terry.
    â€œOh no, ” said Sara.
    Herb was sitting in the front seat. He had talked all the way from the airport, which would have bothered her if he wasn’t so likeable and engaging. A publisher’s dream — that’s the kind of writer Herb was. Now he turned and flashed his teeth at her.
    â€œEverything all right?”
    In the rear-view mirror, Terry glanced and squinted. He was thinking — Ten days with this person, morning, noon and night — and so she laughed.
    â€œI forgot about the   God  thing,” she explained. “The crucifix up there.” She grimaced and shuddered comically for them. Terry and Herb both knew about Sara — how she had made her name. She had been briefly famous, as a teenager. They laughed and nodded.
    THE FIRST MORNING of the retreat, her toilet backed up. It was the worst thing that could happen. She had used it, was the problem. She had used it right after breakfast.
    She flushed the thing as many times as she dared before slinking to Terry’s office. At the grim look on her face, he jerked himself to his feet and pulled the door shut — expecting maybe news of an unwanted grope from Herb, a veiled threat from a born-again student.
    â€œNo, no, nothing bad,” Sara assured him. Cringing, she explained.
    â€œWe’ll just call in the maintenance man,” Terry told her, managing to wink and look jolly.
    I shit , she had basically walked up to Terry and announced.  Hello, strange man. There is something I’d like you to know about me and here it is.  Sara floundered at the thought of the maintenance man. Would she have to encounter this maintenance man at any point? Look him in the eye afterward?
    â€œI don’t know what you were planning on doing this morning,” said Terry. “The groups don’t meet until after lunch. You could go for a little walk maybe, while he’s working.”
    Sara had been planning on having a shower — she hadn’t bothered when she arrived the night before. Her hair was pulled back tight and neat so that none of its greasy strands would be noted.
    She went for a walk. She went to see the labyrinth. Last night Terry told them how much visitors enjoyed walking the labyrinth, and she and Herb and Betty, the poet, and Marguerite, the children’s writer, were welcome to do the same. It helped the students move forward with their writing, he said. Helped them to commit, to let go of whatever might be holding them back. They carried some object into the labyrinth with them that was meant to represent their problem, their block. They meditated as they walked and once they got to the middle, left the object there on the makeshift pedestal. Sara had walked straight through the labyrinth, stepping over its stone borders, to examine the pile of crap left on the pedestal, while everyone else