Amy Inspired (9 page)

“He’s shaved his mustache. He’s much less scary-looking now— he’s actually almost handsome. Anyway, he’s taking me to dinner tomorrow night.”

Mom boomeranged back to the wedding colors, describing in detail the impossibility of finding a dress that properly matched the day’s festivities without being a total imitation of the bridesmaid gowns.

“They’re doing this greenish color. Something ‘don.’ Celadon, I think. It really is hideous in the right light. Almost sickly. It’ll never do for my complexion.”

“So buy a pink dress.”

“You’ll never believe what Marie said. I’m trying to help her pick out her makeup for the day, showing her the new Luna boysenberry line, which would look perfect with her complexion—she has that dark Indian skin you know, which is just beautiful—and she says to me, ‘I don’t think I’m going to wear makeup, Pam.’” Mom paused for dramatic effect. “I mean, can you
believe
that? Who doesn’t wear makeup for their wedding!”

“Remind me to elope,” I said to Zoë when I got off the phone.

She was curled up in her red reading chair, halfway through
Birds of America
and a Tootsie Roll Pop. Tootsie Pops were her dietary sin of choice. She said, “Do you know how many children you could feed with the money we pour annually into weddings?”

“How many?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, not turning her attention from the book. “A lot.”

Zoë’s parents had married on a beach at sunset, her mom in a blue dress she’d found at a local vendor’s booth that morning. At the reception the in-laws coerced them into a month later, they requested that guests donate money to charity in place of gifts. She raised her Tootsie Pop in the air, gesturing with it to emphasize each word: “What Would Jesus Do, Amy? What Would Jesus Do?”

5

Rinaldi told Roseanne that she looked breathtaking, because she is.

“I want to run my fingers through your hair,” he said. “I’m always taken by the urge.”

Roseanne breathed hard. “I don’t think we should.” She said. “It would be wrong. It would be against everything we have been told.”

“Please, Roseanne,” he pleaded. “Please.”

Rinaldi and Roseanne danced together. The burning suns of Remus set behind them, globes as hot and on fire as Roseanne’s bossom. At first she pulled away, but he got the better of her.

Both were exquisitely ready for it to happen. It did happen; Rinaldi and Roseanne were experiencing ecstasy.

In my office, I struggled through Lonnie’s story for the third time. We were critiquing “Rinaldi” in the next class and I had yet to write my response. With one last glance at the handwritten comments I’d made in the margins of his paper, I set the pages aside and cautiously began to type.

Lonnie,

Here we have, in a mere nine pages, a story of epic proportions: two lovers, destined to be together, whose happiness is thwarted by interfering parties (much in the manner of Romeo and Juliet). I appreciate the sweeping scope of the tale, and your attempt, in so few pages, to explore such complex relationships amidst an intergalactic war between the humans and the Zorgath. As a reader who spent the better part of her childhood and junior high years obsessed with science fiction, I particularly enjoyed the creative setting.

I do have to say that the brevity of the piece is, in this case, a handicap. The pacing of the story feels strained, as if too many plot points have been crammed into too few pages. Perhaps focusing on a more specific moment or scene would give the story a better sense of balance.

“Hey, Amy.” Everett had entered the room. “Don’t say hey back: I don’t want to interrupt, I just want you to know that I’m not ignoring you.”

“Actually, I have a question for you,” I said, spinning around in my chair.

“Is it a long question or a short question?” He raised his forefinger. “Clarification: Is it an involved question requiring a long answer, or is it a simple question necessitating merely a brief, perhaps monosyllabic response?”

I cringed. “The former.”

He looked at his watch. “I have a lecture to attend in twenty minutes, three e-mails to write, one to read in the meantime. You have two minutes. Go.”

“What would you do if a student wrote a story and featured you as a main character?”

Everett smiled, a wicked, teasing smile. “You’ve got a student stalker, haven’t you?”

“No,” I moaned. “I don’t know. Here, read this. Page three, paragraph two.”

He scanned over the section quickly.

“Well?” I asked when he handed the story back.

“She certainly bears an uncanny resemblance.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s just coincidence.”

“I’m sure that’s all it is.”

“Yes, he probably had no intention of writing a character who looks
exactly
like you.” He took his seat and pitched a tepee with his forefingers, tapping them against one another. “
Intention
being the operative word. He could have—unwittingly, mind you—written this—what’s her name? Roseanne?—in order to purge his mind and body of his sexual obsession with you.” He leaned back in his chair, clearly enjoying himself. “Yes?”

“Let’s hope not,” I sighed. “Or my love life has hit a new and abysmal low.”

I returned to my computer and allowed Everett time to do the same, but he couldn’t resist picking up the story again fifteen minutes later.

“Is this Lonnie Weis, that kid who works in the copy room?”

“That’s him.”

“Did you ever think maybe he noticed you before he signed up for your class?”

“Everett. This is not helping.”

He scanned the story. “That’s one heck of a Freudian slip,” he said, dropping the story back on my desk. “Good luck with it.”

By this point I had reached the conclusion of my review. I paused, unsure of how to continue. I’d once written a story about a short, balding widower who came to the door selling Girl Scout cookies for his daughter. Having prided myself on my originality, I was crushed when my mother read the story and said, “Oh, you’ve written about Mr. Tilney. What a peculiar man he was.” The line between reality and fiction is a thin one for most writers—one better left unaddressed.

I finished typing:

In terms of character development, the descriptions of Roseanne were quite detailed but did not delve beyond the purely physical. She was easy to visualize, yet her motivation remains mysterious. Did she or did she not really wish to be with Rinaldi? This reader is inclined to think not.

All in all, an interesting extrapolation of Shakespeare’s timeless plot.

Amy

On Monday the students were polite in their critique, but it quickly became apparent that they found nothing of merit in Lonnie’s story. He spent the entire half hour writing in his notebook. I wondered if he was even listening. Inevitably, it was time to move on to the second story, which was about a sophomore in college who didn’t know whether to stay in school and get married or break up with her boyfriend and pursue the life of the stage. The character pitched back and forth for twenty pages. It was unreadable, but as it did not take place in space or involve ray guns and burning suns, the students were much kinder. They liked accessible, familiar settings: This was the most disappointing failure of their imaginations.

When the class ended I handed Lonnie the copy I had personally marked up, my typed comments pinned to the top. He accepted both and fled.

When I returned to my office two hours later, I was surprised to find Lonnie standing outside my door, his story in hand. He was beaming.

“Lonnie, how long have you been here?” I asked.

“Not long,” he said. “Just an hour and a half.”

“You should have made an appointment.”

“I was just leaving work. I work down the hall, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Anyway, I just had to say thank you, Ms. Gallagher. This is great—this is so great.”

“I’m glad I could be helpful,” I replied.

“I mean, usually just my mom reads my stories. She has to like them because I’m her son.”

I smiled. “My mom always did the same.”

He kept his eyes carefully trained to the right of my head. It gave me the uncomfortable feeling of trying to meet the gaze of someone who was cross-eyed.

“So you like science fiction?” he asked.

“I adore science fiction,” I said. “It was all I read in high school.”

“I read science fiction like voraciously.”

“I thought you might be a fan.”

“I’m so into it.” He folded his arms across his chest, fingers tucked tight in his armpits. He briefly caught my eyes before lowering his gaze. “So who do you like?”

“Who do I like?” I leaned back into the wall. “Where to start … Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Madeleine L’Engle, Jules Verne … Oh, and of course George Orwell and Margaret Atwood.”

“You ever read Neil C. Barker?”

“I haven’t, no. Would you recommend him?”

“Barker is good stuff, premium.”

“I have a pretty long reading list as it is,” I replied, “but I’ll be sure to write it down. What’s the title?”

“It’s not one book, it’s seven,” he said, almost impatiently. He ripped a scrap of paper off the corner of the response I’d taken such pains to type up the day before. Using his knee as a flat surface, he wrote down a list of titles in his indecipherable chicken scratch. “
Land of Doom
is the first, but you can read
The Flaming Arrow of Night
and
Brother of the Begotten
without it.”

He handed me the paper. His hand trembled ever so slightly.

“Thanks.” I slipped the notebook scrap into my coat pocket.

Simultaneously, we realized that he had used up all he had planned to say. He licked his lips; they were shiny up top from the cherry ChapStick.

The strap of my bag was digging painfully into my shoulder. “You want to come in?” I asked. “I’m on my way home, but we can talk about your story for a few minutes if you like.”

“I can’t,” he said, stepping back from the open door as if it were a trap. “I have to go—a thing—it’s mandatory, so I have to … I’ll see you next week.”

He turned and hurried down the hall, backpack flapping against his pointed shoulder blades.

I was surprised that Lonnie had taken my critique as so overly positive. I’d been afraid it was too harsh. Now I chastised myself for inciting false hope.

I sometimes worried that my writing was bad and that no one would tell me. I imagined editors in New York offices passing my story around, laughing until they were teary-eyed. I imagined them photocopying my manuscript and reading it aloud at corporate Christmas parties for entertainment. It was all very disconcerting.

The first week with Eli passed and I did not get bedbugs. I got the flu instead.

The annual Campus Plague descended the week before finals, crippling the student body with high fevers, running noses, and violent coughing fits. Though I swabbed my hands with Purell every hour on the hour, I was too sick to even attend the last day of class for which I’d bought three-dozen donuts and four gallons of offbrand cherry berry juice. Begrudgingly, Everett agreed to stand in my classrooms to collect portfolios and distribute Krispy Kremes.