Amy Inspired (22 page)

Everett stared.

Lonnie pressed his nose to his knee.

“That’s impressive,” I managed.

“Very impressive,” I said.

“You’d better get up now,” I practically pleaded.

Lonnie got up from the floor and calmly took his seat as if nothing had happened.

“I’m a little out of shape,” he said. “But I practice in the dorm when my roommate’s gone. It keeps me limber.”

“I’ll bet,” Everett said, grinning.

“What the heck are you guys doing in here?” Michael stood in the doorway. “I can hear you all the way down the hall.”

I introduced Lonnie to Michael, who waved his hand, perhaps to say hello, though it was the same gesture a person might use to swat away a bothersome fly. “Are you ready to get out of here? Zoë sent me to get you.”

Lonnie’s eyes darted from Michael to me. His face fell.

“Maybe we can finish later?” I asked.

He nodded and silently gathered his recorder and papers.

“That one of your special-needs kids?” Michael asked as he helped me down the sidewalk to the car he’d left running at the curb.

“Don’t make fun,” I said.

“Let me carry that.”

He took my bag and slung it over his shoulder, then opened the car door and helped me inside, his hand lingering on mine just two seconds too long. In the months I’d known Michael, he’d shown me about the level of affection due a punching bag. I was someone he could playfully abuse with an occasional kick off the couch or a swift slug to the arm. Since the afternoon he’d carried me out of the woods, his attitude had changed entirely. If we happened to touch, the contact was gentle. He held my arm to steady my balance. He set ice on my ankle. His hand brushed mine. These moments were too frequent to be accidental.

I would have to put an end to it eventually, but for now it was harmless. It felt good to be noticed, however fleeting the attention.

Lonnie’s story appeared in that week’s edition of the
Copenhagen Campus Chronicler
. The only good thing about the article was that it ran on the lesser-read Community Life page, tucked neatly beneath “Dorm Kitchen: Recipes for Microwavable Rice Krispies Treats.”

INJURY SLOWS PROFESSOR

by Lonnie Weis, Assistant Editor

    
AMY GALLAGHER, SELF-PROCLAIMED tree lover, was of late felled herself by a tree root of insidious intent. Running along the unkempt trails outside Leonard Chapel, unsuspecting, Professor Gallagher’s foot caught beneath an invisible root strewn across her path. The accident resulted in a serious sprain that has left the professor handicapped by a cumbersome cast for a minimum of six weeks. The injury has significantly hindered her ability to function on campus. “I can’t walk, I can’t drive,” she says.

    
Article 2b ii of the Copenhagen University Grounds Keeping Manual states that “all grounds must be kept in prime condition, including but not limited to the trails and parks within a two mile radius of the academic lawns.”

    
Is Professor Gallagher’s accident proof of violation?

    
Professor Gallagher is decidedly humble. She had great plans of being an astronaut or a ballerina. Instead, she has sacrificed these dreams to become a lowly instructor of freshmen minds. It seems unfair that she should be repaid with injury. Particularly when it becomes evident the university does little to provide her with health insurance. “Out of pocket” she laughs good-naturedly, though there is a tinge of regret in her voice. Now she can thank heaven it was only a mild injury which she can afford. What if the root had pierced an aorta? You cannot put a price on an aorta.

    
When questioned about the accident, Professor Gallagher admits “it was like tripping over a taut rope.” Though highly doubtful that professor Gallagher has any real enemies, the suspicion in her statement cannot be denied: she implies that someone laid the rope to trap her. Someone failed to care for the grounds and as a result a beloved teacher has been dangerously wounded.

    
Did the grounds people lay a trap for this unsuspecting professor? Of course not. But an act of inattention makes a party guilty. Is not one bolt out of place enough to explode the Challenger? I ask you, are there not sins of omission? Inaction is as much a crime as action. If the people of Copenhagen do not demand better grounds keeping we can expect to hear more where this came from.

When I arrived in my office Friday, I found a bouquet of flowers waiting on my desk. The card read
Get Well Soon
and was signed
The Grounds Committee
. This was followed by four e-mails from the president for the Board for Student Rights, who wanted to know if I would come speak at a lecture on their weekend conference devoted to the Health Care Crisis on Campus.

Everett encouraged me to milk the incident for all it was worth.

“These are just flowers,” he said. “Think what you could get if you actually pressed charges. There’s money in litigation.”

“ ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’,” I recited.

“No, the root is evil,” he said. “Actually, I believe
insidious
was the word.”

11

February took its time. The clouds promised snow but delivered ice. The days blurred together like watercolor brushstrokes bleeding into one pale stain. Though I hated Ohio winters, I was a veteran. Zoë suffered from the lack of color; she dyed twin skunk streaks of fluorescent pink in her hair to compensate.

Her mood as the month went on gave new meaning to the phrase
under the weather
. She hadn’t written a successful page in weeks, and as a result the energy that she usually channeled into writing had no outlet. She stayed up until five in the morning baking four dozen whole grain, almond raisin granola bars she never ate. She painted our kitchen yellow. She ran seven, eight, even ten miles a day, until her shins throbbed in protest. Michael recommended total rest. At night he played nurse, rotating Ziploc bags of ice from my ankle to her shins and back again.

Though Eli, Zoë, and I spent almost every night together in the small apartment, I gravitated away from Zoë’s company and toward Eli’s as a plant naturally strains for sunlight, grateful that at least one of us remained immune to the ubiquitous gray.

He was applying to artist residency programs on the coast, filling out applications that piled in disorderly stacks. He sometimes talked of moving out. Though the traffic of artists through our apartment had dwindled with the inclement weather, Kevin, the ever-shy sculptor, still appeared every now and again and lingered, a quiet shadow in the background of our busy days. The money he’d poured into his graduate thesis exhibition had left him struggling with rent payments. He lived in a loft over the Chinese restaurant on Main Street and had all the room we lacked. His kitchen consisted of a microwave, a coffee maker, and a hot plate set up on a folding table, his living room of a flower-print velvet couch and a halogen lamp arranged in the corner. He used the rest of the single open room for making and showing artwork.

I told Eli I thought his moving in would be a good thing for both him and Kevin, inwardly surprised by the disappointment I felt at the prospect of his leaving. But it was only talk. There was always one or another reason why this weekend wasn’t ideal or the next weekend wouldn’t work. Every night he was in our living room, sitting at his desk preoccupied with another project.

The desk was an old drafting table he’d found discarded on the curb and talked Zoë into helping him carry to our living room. In the last week he’d entertained himself by dissecting and reassembling into collage the twenty-five
People
magazines he’d bought by the crateful at the used bookstore.

The collages were expertly detailed and unpredictably bizarre. They featured whimsical landscapes populated by strange little people, segmented celebrities reassembled into disproportionate figures. There was a young man and young woman holding hands against a hot-pink striped wallpaper backdrop. In the next a preacher atop a skyscraper-high pulpit shaking his red tight fist at the city grotesques shopping below. And (his favorite motif) an old man on a bicycle riding through blue skies and puff paint clouds.

Since spraining my ankle I’d gained seven pounds. I blamed Michael, who felt personally responsible for my accident and apologized with ice cream. I accepted each gift with more resignation than appetite. Apparently, injury is the shortest route to love handles.

Saturday he arrived with two pints of Ben & Jerry’s.

“Scoot,” he demanded.

I made room for him on the couch. He handed me the Chunky Monkey and a spoon. We took turns eating from the ice cream and the leftover oatmeal cookie crumbs Grandma had sent. His temples pulsed while he chewed. Ironic that the more muscle a man has, the more energy he seems to exert for even the slightest exercise.

“Let me have a look at your ankle.” He rubbed his hands together to brush the cookie crumbs from his palms.

“But I’m all mummified.”

“I want to make sure it’s all right.”

He sat on the hassock, facing me, his legs straddling mine. He propped my sprained ankle on his lap. Unlatching the Velcro that held the boot in place, he gently slid it from my foot.

“Looks a lot better,” he murmured. “Are you still icing it?”

I thought of my toes decorated in fondant and chocolate. I nodded. The slight pressure of his hands on the arch of my foot made me feel somehow undressed, a Victorian lady scandalized by her own exposed ankles.

“So how’s Zoë holding up?” he asked.

“She’s been icing her legs every night. I think she feels better. I don’t know, she hasn’t talked to me much.”

He reached for the brace. “I mean how’s she holding up about her mom.”

“What do you mean about her mom?”

“She’s back on the drip.”

I was stunned. (And annoyed.
On the drip
. Only Michael could make chemotherapy sound like a street drug.)

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

He looked as surprised as I felt. “I just assumed you were the first to know.”

When Zoë walked in the room my ankle was still on Michael’s lap. Her eyes flashed. I quickly put my foot down.

“Was just checking for swelling,” Michael said.

But I saw his ears go red.