Staff Spotlight: Elliot Northlake

Interview

What do you write?

I write char­ac­ter-driven fiction. I don’t know if there’s a term for stories about unhappy people trying to not be so unhappy, but that’s basi­cal­ly my bread and butter.

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

My current work has def­i­nite­ly been influ­enced most by Jonathan Franzen. His prose is so complex and funny, making it such a joy to read these long, dense, novels he insists on writing. I try to be a little more col­lo­qui­al than he is, but still have that com­plex­i­ty in my char­ac­ters that he does so well.

Why did you choose Stonecoast?

I applied to schools mostly based on their loca­tion. I’d never been to Maine, so I figured, why not Maine?

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

Summer 2017 was my first res­i­den­cy at Stonecoast, and I was super nervous about the entire expe­ri­ence. I was going to a place I’d never been with people I hadn’t met doing things I’d never done before. I can’t place exactly where or when this was, but my favorite memory was when I real­ized I was with people who were all so pas­sion­ate about the same things I was, and that I had made the right choice in attending.

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

I’d love to teach and publish, but another dream of mine is to be a guy who gets sent to cover weird or little-known events, sort of like the non­fic­tion pieces David Foster Wallace wrote about the Illi­nois State Fair or his expe­ri­ence on a cruise ship. I’d love to be paid to go down to Bike Week in Daytona Beach, Florida and write about that. Seems fun and scary.

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

The Amazing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay by Michael Chabon. I like to read the first and last para­graph of the book to moti­vate and inspire myself. It’s just good stuff, man.

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Featured Work

The Tallest Building in Florida

The fol­low­ing is a work of fiction exclu­sive­ly for Stonecoast Review.

Tal­la­has­see wasn’t much to look at, and nobody knew that more than Jackie Thompson.

Her dad had only been a one-term Gov­er­nor due to the undi­ag­nosed heart con­di­tion that killed him a year and a half into his tenure, but one of Jackie’s favorite mem­o­ries was when they’d have lunch on the top floor of the capitol build­ing. It wasn’t a place people typ­i­cal­ly ate, but secu­ri­ty would shut it down once a week during the summer so they could have grilled cheese sand­wich­es at the top of the tallest build­ing in Florida. The secu­ri­ty part wasn’t true, of course, but Jackie liked to hear him say it. Lis­ten­ing to her dad speak on those days was similar to lis­ten­ing to Christ­mas music at the shop­ping mall. You’d get sick of it after a while, then you’d realize how much you missed it when it came back the next year. Looking out the windows on those bril­liant summer after­noons, Jackie felt like she was waiting for a mag­nif­i­cent future to roll in over the horizon .Now, as an adult, she won­dered if it that future had come and gone.

Jackie stood in the same spot she’d once spilled tomato soup on her Street Sharks T‑shirt and admired the view. That is, she admired as much as she could. Jackie walked along the windows of the room, finding nothing of worth among the trees and people until she’d nearly com­plet­ed her circle. Her eyes fell on Florida State Uni­ver­si­ty, where most of her friends had attend­ed. Its red brick build­ings spread through the trees in all sorts of dif­fer­ent direc­tions, like the earth had split open and bled through the forest. She’d chosen to attend college in central Illi­nois, a state equally flat and starved for attention.

Jackie was back in town to cel­e­brate a branch of the Leon County Public Library being named after her dad. The Michael P. Thomp­son Public Library. The unveil­ing had been unevent­ful, bor­der­ing on dis­ap­point­ing. Her dad didn’t read much, and when he did, it was always non­fic­tion. Whether or not this was the truth—or just some­thing he did to attempt to appear charming—Michael P. Thomp­son claimed he didn’t read fiction because he didn’t like being lied to. If it wasn’t real, what busi­ness did he have spend­ing his time on it?

Jackie folded her jean jacket over her arms and walked back toward her boyfriend. Shane was afraid of heights, and had chosen to remain close to the center of the room, reread­ing the lit­er­a­ture on the Old Capitol.

“Hey,” Jackie said. “I’m ready to get on outta here.”

Shane looked up and let out a sharp sigh. “Thank god.” His voice was deep as the Grand Canyon. “I didn’t want to say any­thing, but this has been awful for me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Thank you,” she said, while flat­ten­ing out his eye­brows. He had a face like a Muppet, all blocky fea­tures and bright red cheeks.

“Fifteen years is a long time,” he said.

“I guess.”

“It is. If I go a week without talking to my dad, I feel like garbage. So, if I were you, I mean…god.” He stopped talking, and frowned like he just stepped in dog shit. “Sorry, that’s rude to say.”

Jackie shrugged. “It’s fine.” She turned away from him and walked toward the ele­va­tor. She was afraid he could read her face too well.

They took the ele­va­tor back down to a more com­fort­able level. The inte­ri­or of the build­ing was all Old Government—like how people said Old Hollywood—and was exactly the same as she remem­bered. Maybe a hallway turned left when she remem­bered it turning right, but oth­er­wise it was iden­ti­cal. It was like she’d woken up in a buried time capsule. Yet it was all new to Shane. He didn’t grow up the only child of a some­what-high-profile public official—and he cer­tain­ly didn’t grow up minus one parent—so he was eager to soak it all in. He was a nice enough guy, but she’d planned on cutting him loose after grad­u­a­tion and taking him to the farm upstate where he’d roam the fields with all her other ex-boyfriends. She had that Groucho Marx con­di­tion, the one where she didn’t want to be a part of any club that would accept her. Rela­tion­ships were fun to Jackie only at the begin­ning. The hunt. Every­thing after was a letdown.

But there Shane had been, walking by her side through the court­yard toward Monroe Street. Jackie had tried as hard as she could to keep the whole thing causal. She wouldn’t speak to him for days. One time they ran into each other at a Star­bucks, and she greeted him like an old cowork­er whose name she couldn’t remem­ber. Surely, she thought, he must think things are going okay at best.

At a party, he intro­duced her as his girl­friend, and, in a par­a­lyz­ing panic, she didn’t correct him. She blinked, and sud­den­ly he’d met her mother and stepdad, gone to her grad­u­a­tion, and found a place to stay in town. Jackie had told both Shane and her mother that the other was old-fash­ioned. Shane and her mother, both wanting to do nothing more than to make Jackie happy, rushed to voice how okay they were with Shane booking a hotel room fifteen minutes from Jackie’s child­hood bedroom.

Back in the car, Jackie turned on the AC and tossed her purse into the back­seat. “I’m going to take you back to your hotel, if that’s cool.”

Shane buckled his seat­belt. “Yeah, that’s fine. I just, uh…”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, while flick­ing almond crumbs off the seat. “It feels like we aren’t spend­ing any time together.”

“We spent all day together.”

“I know.”

“I’m tired,” she said.

He let a few seconds slide by before admit­ting defeat. “I get it.”

Shane seemed to under­stand every thought and feeling that Jackie expressed, except for her excep­tion­al­ly strong and increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to hide desire for him to just get the hell out of her life. Jackie knew she hadn’t been clear enough, and, upon further intro­spec­tion, sup­posed that for a time she had wanted Shane around. He was nice to waiters, he brushed crumbs into his hand instead of onto the floor, and once, without any prod­ding from Jackie, cleaned her bath­room, even washing the bathmat. Bath­room clean­ing was gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be a thought­ful and thank­less act of kind­ness, but it pro­duced a fury in Jackie so red hot the fire alarm prac­ti­cal­ly went off.

“Shane, I don’t see my mom all the time. I see you every day. Can you let me have some time without you? Please?”

“Okay.”

She knew there was a fat sen­tence crammed into that “okay,” but she refused to engage with Shane. She was ready to be done with him. Jackie pulled into a parking spot near Shane’s first-floor room. She didn’t turn the car off. He pulled the door handle and stuck one leg out. He looked back at Jackie and opened his mouth, breathed in, then said nothing.

“Okay, well, I’ll call you later,” she said, hoping to get away with it.

He sighed. “Do you even want to date me? I mean, you just…god, you look miserable.”

Well, now it was unavoid­able. “I don’t want to have this con­ver­sa­tion again,” she said.

“See, the fact that we have done this more than once is kinda fucked up. Jackie, I love you. Don’t you love me?”

Def­i­nite­ly not, but she would say any­thing to get him out of the car. “Yes,” she said. Not even a second later, she real­ized how self-inflict­ed their rela­tion­ship was.

Shane stared direct­ly out the window. “How come it doesn’t feel like it?”

“Just get out of the car,” she said. “I want you to leave.”

“Jackie.”

“I want to see my mom.”

Shane sniffed and wiped his nose before slam­ming the door behind him. Jackie watched him sulk through the auto­mat­ic doors. She felt nothing. As far as she was con­cerned, Shane was a modern art piece she just didn’t understand.

#

Jackie’s mother Vikki was in the living room watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the 2008 Summer Olympics. Pat, Vikki’s second husband and Jackie’s occa­sion­al father figure, sat next to her playing mahjong on an iPad. Her parents showed no desire to do any­thing beyond the bare minimum of sub­ur­ban exis­tence. Jackie felt that maybe life here had stopped when she was nine years old, give or take a few details, and that she’d grown up while every­one else stayed the same. A curse had been placed on Tal­la­has­see, and Jackie was the only one unaf­fect­ed.
Vikki turned around at the sound of Jackie’s heavy boots and dra­mat­i­cal­ly flailed her arms in all sorts of direc­tions before hoist­ing herself off the couch and into Jackie’s per­son­al space.

“My sweet girl,” she said between kisses. “How was your day?”

It seemed ridicu­lous to com­plain about being loved by your mother, but Jackie had a serious problem with the way her mom spoke to her. Jackie often felt like a beloved and atten­tion-stuffed dog, in that she had no real way of express­ing whether she wanted the kisses or not.

“It was fine. Went to the top of the capitol build­ing,” Jackie said.

“Oh, great. Did Shane like it? Is he here?”

Jackie hes­i­tat­ed for a moment. “No, mom. He wasn’t feeling well. He doesn’t like heights. Made his stomach feel weird or something.”

Pat, dis­play­ing his talent for always being around but not quite being there, said, “Tell him to look toward the horizon.”

“No, honey,” Vikki said. “That’s for sea­sick­ness. That’ll help him not lose it on a boat.”

“The horizon is the same in a build­ing as on a boat. Same rules apply.”

“Pat, how could the same rules pos­si­bly apply? The build­ing isn’t moving.”

“Build­ings are always moving. They’re designed to sway.”

Pat and Vikki’s con­ver­sa­tions remind­ed Jackie of going bowling. The ball would roll down the lane, hit the pins, roll back up, hit the pins again. It was the same until it was over. Then, a week later—same time, same place—the game would pick up again. Jackie didn’t really care for sitting in front of the tele­vi­sion all night. Her mom would say that they were enjoy­ing a healthy dose of quality time, and any­thing they did togeth­er should be cherished—even watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the 2008 Summer Olympics. But Jackie would have none of that tonight, or ever for that matter. Knowing it would make her mom unhappy, Jackie decided to leave.

“I think I’m gonna head out,” Jackie said.

Vikki shot her head back and looked at Jackie as if she’d just be slapped. “You just got home.”

“I know.”

“Stay for dinner. C’mon. Are you serious?”

“Mom.”

“I mean, Jackie, how often do I get to see you?”

“We see each other a lot.”

“You move a thou­sand miles away, and every time you come home, all you want to do is go back.”

“That’s not true,” Jackie said, her hand rubbing her eyes. “I just love you so much. You know? And I feel like you never want to be around me.”

It always ended the same. Jackie would succumb to the suf­fo­cat­ing guilt and sit crossed-legged on the couch next to her mom all night. Pat would even­tu­al­ly leave the room and head to bed without saying any­thing. An hour after Pat went to bed, Vikki would com­plain that Pat was always leaving, and how much it pissed her off. Jackie would stay up as late as Vikki in order to max­i­mize the quality time her mother craved so much. They’d barely talk, but it would be enough for Vikki. This time around, Jackie decided she’d had just about enough of the routine.

“I’m sorry. I just think I wanna visit dad.” Vis­it­ing dad was the pothole that always broke Vikki down.

“Of course, of course, yes, of course,” Vikki said. Her head hung low and her hands raised up in defeat.

Jackie had no inten­tion of vis­it­ing her dad’s grave. She got in her car and headed toward I‑10. She had made a show of going to the ceme­tery with her mother, crying, doing the whole griev­ing-kid thing. This lasted a year or so before Vikki stopped going. Before she went to college, Jackie had put a bouquet down on her dad’s grave, real­iz­ing she didn’t have a single memory of him ever receiv­ing flowers, let alone express­ing any desire for them. Then it occurred to her that she couldn’t remem­ber the last thing she’d said to him. His body had surely crum­bled into a pile of dust, bones, and frag­ments of his favorite navy-blue suit. Finding no ounce of comfort in con­vers­ing with thin air, Jackie hadn’t been to see her dad since.

Avoid­ing his tomb­stone led her down Old Bain­bridge Road, where the newly minted Michael P. Thomp­son Public Library had opened its doors the day before. Jackie parked in the lot, which was empty except for one Volvo station wagon. She got out of the car and leaned against the driver’s side door. Jackie always envi­sioned libraries as grand cathe­drals, houses of great knowl­edge, temples of worship that com­mand­ed atten­tion. The Michael P. Thomp­son Library was in a strip mall sand­wiched between a Subway and an aban­doned David’s Bridal.

An older woman stepped out of the library doors and locked them behind her. She fiddled with her keys while glanc­ing over at Jackie. Finally, as she passed Jackie and the car, she said, “The branch is closed for the day.”

Jackie smiled. “No. I’m just here to see it. That was my dad.” She pointed at the beige let­ter­ing above the doors. “Michael P. Thompson.”

The woman turned back to look at the sign, the same way she might have turned if Jackie had pointed out that the grass was green. “Huh,” she said. Then she got into her car and drove out of the parking lot.

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