Amy Inspired (3 page)

The apartment was cozy with hardwood floors, built-in white bookshelves, and a kitchen so narrow it took considerable maneuvering for both of us to make breakfast in the morning. Kathryn’s property was situated one block from Main Street. It was a ten-minute walk to the coffee shop where Zoë worked, a fifteen-minute walk to the first edge of campus. Best of all, the roof of the adjoining shed constituted a porch off of our breakfast nook. From our vantage point on the roof we observed the comings and goings of college life. We watched packs of girls in high heels and low-cut blouses tripping their way home from weekend bar hops. We watched the numbered 5K runners pacing uniformly by like schools of fish. It was a little like having a private parade every day.

“There’s always so much going on!” my mother would exclaim. “It’s like living in The City, all these people all the time, and all of them so well dressed—even the young men.” And she would swell with pride and declare it was all so “fashionable,” her highest praise. She’d spent most of her professional life as a teacher, and still she thought I had a very glamorous job. No matter how many times I told her my title was Visiting Faculty or Adjunct, she insisted to everyone at church that I was a university professor: professor sounded better.

My mother had a peculiar way with language. She called her ob/ gyn a “genealogist” and thought a filibuster was a dust vacuum. My obsession with words evaded her. She considered language a common tool with which to get common things done, and she rather liked it when people laughed at her way of mixing things up.

I was never so amiable. As a child I struggled with my S’s and found bizarre ways to mix up my consonants. My mother’s friends loved my unintelligible blabber. They would ask me what I was doing in school or what I learned in Sunday school, and I would unwittingly prattle away. When I finally understood that they did this to amuse themselves, I clammed up.

I spent the first grade in speech therapy. Outside of speech class I refused to talk. Silently, I listened to my father as he explained he wasn’t going to be sleeping at home anymore. Silently, I listened to my mother weeping into her pillow every night for the first year after he left. And silently, I entertained my baby brother with Tinkertoys and Matchbox cars while she showered or cooked or mowed the lawn.

When free of the obligation to watch Brian, I preferred books to playmates. I spent recess sitting on the detention wall reading Nancy Drew mysteries and
Anne of Green Gables
. I kept a journal of vocabulary words to learn and quotes to memorize.

By the third grade my lisp was gone, the familiarity of my father’s presence leaving with it. The books stayed.

Zoë hollered for me the moment she heard the back door open.

“Amy
?
Is that you? Come here!”

“Hold on,” I said, throwing my bag to the floor and gratefully shaking off my winter coat.

“Amy!” Zoë yelled.

“
Coming
.”

She stood on tiptoe in the kitchen, patting her hand blindly among the vast array of spices in the top cupboard. Her blond hair was pulled into two short pigtails, uneven and coarse as broom bristles. She was wearing the same red-checkered apron she used when she painted furniture. When cooking, she preferred to wear aprons stained with a worker’s toil. It was her way of reclaiming the traditional symbol of the domesticated woman.

At the sight of me, she gave up her search for the elusive spice. “I have news!” She sang, pivoting her hips back and forth in a little two-step dance.

“What is this?” I asked, lifting the lid off the skillet.

“Curry with potatoes and tofu,” she answered. “Sit down.”

“Can I try it?”

“No, sit.”

Placing her hands on my hips, she led me toward the table.

“Okay.” Obediently, I sat. “What’s the big news?”

She stood in front of me, hands behind her back. “Guess.”

“You got a raise.”

“No.”

“Your parents are coming to visit.”

“No.”

“Youuu … are getting married.”

“Um, no.” She rolled her eyes.

I found this response annoying considering the uncensored schoolgirl manner in which she’d gone on lately about her boyfriend’s many admirable attributes. She’d told me twice in the last week that she and Michael were “getting serious.”

“You’re leaving The Brewery.”

“I love my job and you know it. You’re not even trying.”

“I give up.”

She pulled a magazine from behind her back and held it forward happily.

“You bought an
UrbanStyle
magazine,” I stated, confused.

“I’m going to be
in
the
UrbanStyle
magazine,” she announced.

“You’re what?”

“They bought my essay.”

I let this sink in. “Zoë, that’s amazing.”

“I know!” She squeezed her eyes shut and did a giddy hop. “I sent in that article—the one about career women in academia. They loved it, but said it wasn’t quite right for their reader base, so, whatever … that was that. But then they wrote me this week and said they had an opening in the March publication for general women’s interest and would I be interested in submitting another essay for the issue.” She flipped through the magazine, stretching its spine open to show me the spread where she would be featured. “It’ll be for this column—four pages with illustrations and everything.”

I took the magazine from her. Zoë was always publishing articles in local papers and stories in online journals. But
UrbanStyl
e was a national publication, a Bible-thick magazine shelved between
O
and
Self.
This magazine was a household name.

“But you’ve never worked in the university,” I said. “How did you write a paper about women and academia?”

“You don’t have to experience a thing to write about it. I watched you.”

She had taken a bite of curry and was fanning her open mouth so that it sounded more like
I wa oo.
She preferred foods that could make her sweat.

“And I talked to some women on campus.” She stuffed a piece of bread in her mouth to soak up the heat. “It was all informal— just a random conversation here and there. It was incredibly easy to write, actually.” She tapped the spoon against the corner of the skillet and dropped it into the sink. “I have to get dressed. Michael’s on his way over to celebrate.”

I drew myself up from the chair slowly, feeling my mood sink as her excitement increased. That she was commissioned the same week I was rejected: The irony was almost literary.

I followed Zoë to her bedroom, resolving to tell her about Adam later. I leaned on the doorframe while she dressed.

“How was class today?” she asked.

“All right,” I said. “They weren’t very interested.”

“Nothing unusual.” She pulled her sweatshirt over her head and stepped out of her pants.

Her underwear was cut like a boy’s. The word
Touchdown!
ran across the butt in green glitter. She had a narrow waist and small breasts neatly tucked into her matching green bra. Her freckles tapered as they ran the length of her body so that her shoulders were speckled but her stomach and legs were fair, flawless. Tonight she chose a pleated wool skirt with a pink T-shirt, knee socks, and plastic yellow barrettes shaped like ribbons. Zoë had the body of an athlete and the fashion sense of a five-year-old.

“When’s Meatball coming over?” I asked.

“He’s on his way now.” She held a pair of boots up for my inspection. “Do you think these are okay?”

“To be honest, I think they’re a little excessive.”

“Is that possible? Doesn’t the very word
excessive
demand that a thing not be little at all?” She reconsidered the boots, now on her feet. “I don’t know. I think they look good.”

“They’re very noticeable.”

“Good.” She pointed to the pimple on her chin. “I need face diversion.”

I was on the couch eating a bowl of curry watching television when Michael arrived, the smell of his cologne preceding him up the stairs. He stared at the screen: an infomercial for a hands-off can opener.

“What are you watching?” he asked, taking off his coat. He wore a blue muscle shirt ineffectual against the winter temperatures, though perfect for showing off the geometric perfection of his pectorals. Michael had been a medalist for the university swim team; what I’d seen of his body (and, Michael being an exhibitionist, I’d seen enough) was conspicuously hairless, though it had been two years since he’d competed.

“I don’t know,” I said testily. “You lost my remote.”

He laughed, pretending to be offended. “
I
lost it? Zoë winged it at me.” He looked at the TV, looked at me. “Why don’t you just get up and change the button over there?”

“Too much work,” I said over a mouthful of curry.

“
La
-zy.”

“You shouldn’t be watching that junk anyway,” Zoë said, tiptapping into the kitchen for her purse. I’d only seen her pick up the remote control once, and that was to hold her novel open while she ate.

“I have one vice.” I poked at the potatoes with my fork. “I’m going to enjoy it.”

I noticed Michael noticing Zoë’s legs. Her legs were beautiful, the product of rigorous work. She trained for a marathon every year, circling the indoor track when the weather prevented her from running on campus. She’d met Michael at the gym. He’d introduced himself, but Zoë had been the one to suggest dinner.

Before meeting Michael, Zoë went through men faster than she went through clothes. When they started dating, I’d assumed he was a fling, a diversion from the emotional exhaustion of seeing her mother through the latest round of cancer treatments. But the months passed, Fay stabilized, and Michael stayed. His inability to speak more than five minutes on any subject of substance wasn’t half as annoying as the fact that some primordial urge left me inexplicably tempted to flirt with him every time he came over.

He sat on the coffee table so that his back blocked my view of the television. I nudged him with my foot. He batted it away.

“We’ll be back late,” Zoë said.

“Adiós,” Michael added with a two-finger salute.

In the shower I stared at my thighs with a routine and vague disapproval. Facing the mirror, I twisted my wet hair into a bun at the nape of my neck, debating a haircut. I worried I was growing a mustache.

All my life I’d mocked commercials for wrinkle reducers and hair dye, believing that if I remained optimistic and ate more vegetables than chocolates, I would age gracefully and one day wake up a welldressed, fit woman of composure and grace. Studying my reflection, I knew I wasn’t miraculously going to be anything at thirty that I hadn’t struggled to become in my twenties. In other words, I was off to a very bad start.

2

When I gave up my predictable nine-to-five job to study writing, people were, by and large, bewildered.

“Oh, like for newspapers and such?”

“I didn’t know people still studied that.” (As if English were a dead language.)

“Can you make a living?”

And my personal favorite, “I was never any good at calligraphy,” from my mother’s best friend, Sandy Baldwin, who thought I was going to graduate school to perfect my cursive.