Amy Inspired

by Bethany Pierce

  “I still think it’s unsensical.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you and Mr. Moore are going out?”

  “Well, we’re not just holding hands at the park,” she laughed. I had no idea what this was supposed to mean.

  “How’s your ankle?”

  “It’s fine, but I have to wear this ridiculous air cast.”

  “You’re not walking on it,” she stated in disbelief.

  “Not everywhere.”

  “Amy Gallagher! You go tooling around campus on a hurt leg and you’re libel to mess up the other one. Make That Eli drive you.”

  My mother had more or less accepted the fact that Eli was a long-standing guest. She’d recommended we make him sleep in the garage beneath us. I told her that was a great idea, then did nothing to discourage her belief that I’d acquiesced. Despite her erroneous faith that there was now an entire floor between her only daughter and the traveling vagrant, she had not yet given up her right to disapprove. She only referred to him as “That Eli” and only when she’d come up with some new chore he should do for us.

  I promised I would stay off my feet as much as possible. With the air cast I managed a stilted kind of walk. Driving, however, was out of the question since it was my right ankle. The bus that passed down our street went directly to campus, but I still had to make it to the stop some four blocks away and then hobble another ten minutes through campus, the bus stop outside the Humanities Building posing the impossible challenge of a steep hill. When it came to getting to work on time, I was forced to beg rides.

  Eli was the first to volunteer. Wednesday he not only drove me to class, he insisted on walking me all the way to the Humanities Building, even carrying my books up to the classroom where his presence caused no end of excitement. Students love any interruption. One with a tattoo is even better.

  He stood at the front of the room while I set up the day’s PowerPoint. He asked questions about the Spanish verb conjugations left on the board by the previous professor.

  “I thought this was English class,” he said. “Voy, vas, va, vamos, van … You guys know this stuff?”

  Some of the students laughed. A few stared at him skeptically.

  “Dude, who are you?” one of the boys in the front row asked, nervously eyeing Eli’s many bracelets. Today he wore one with spikes.

  “I’m here to observe,” Eli said matter-of-factly.

  Of course, on this day my slide show would not play. I ejected the flash drive and tried again. I tried to reboot the classroom laptop. Eli kept the students entertained by attempting to read the chalkboard dialogue: Para celebrar su aniversario de bodas Juan lleva a su sposa a un restaurant muy elegante. When he learned that one of the students spoke fluent Spanish, he talked her into giving an impromptu translation of the novel in my bag for the entire class. He sat in the front row to listen and seemed frankly impressed.

  “I think that’s enough,” I announced.

  Eli told them they should pay careful attention and not give me a hard time and then walked out the door, leaving me to shut them all up. The girls wanted to know how long had we been together and why had I never said anything before, and the back row fraternity contingency wondered aloud if he belonged to a fight club.

  I asked Eli to drop me off at the front door in the future.

  Unfortunately, Eli had less and less time to taxi me to campus. He had been assigned a few shifts at the T-shirt press to help supplement his meager income at The Brewery. I was left entirely dependent on Zoë to get around town.

  Zoë’s schedule was as unpredictable as Eli’s, and she’d grown uncharacteristically penurious with her time. Thursday I had to limp directly from my third-story office to the parking lot where she sat waiting in my car, painting her fingernails to placate boredom she made no effort to hide. Friday I was forced to linger at the office as late as seven, more and more frustrated every time she called to say one more thing had come up, could I give her five seconds.

  Saturday she informed me we had two hours in which to complete my day’s errands, a list that had grown typically long as the week dragged on:

  To (MUST) Do

  SCHOOL

  grade AT LEAST 10 papers

  lesson plans

  photocopy orders for ENG 101

  upload new grades

  read creative writing stories for Monday

  HOUSE/ MISC.

  grocery: essentials, plus tampons (not cardboard kind)

  post office: mail new submissions, book of stamps, postmark bills

  shower

  FINANCES

  balance checkbook

  file bill invoices

  FUN

  shower

  I always scrambled on the weekends to keep up with class and complete piling lists of chores, which I listed by priority from most important to least. Generally speaking, school took precedence over finances (as it was the means by which I had finances) and finances over house. Everything took precedence over leisure.

  “Where are we going first?” Zoë slid the key into the ignition and clicked her seat belt into place. I’d insisted that she wear it.

  “First the store, then the office, and we’ll swing around the coffee shop on the way back,” I said.

  She took the piece of paper I was holding. “What is this?”

  “A list,” I said innocently. It had continued to grow.

  “Amy! This is thirty things long.”

  “It is not.”

  “We are not going to all these places.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “We only have two hours.”

  “I don’t have to get it all done. Just the things underlined in red—those are priority.”

  She looked at me in disbelief. Or disgust. It was difficult to tell.

  “You color-code these?”

  “If you’re going to make fun, I’ll have Everett help me.”

  “No,” she said, taking the list from me with barely restrained resentment. “I’ll help you.”

  She couldn’t stand the thought of being a bad Samaritan. She would drive me if I needed it, she would do the chores that usually fell to me (meaning all of them), and she would wait on me hand and sprained foot. She had admirable motivations, but inadequate compassion. In her resolve to be of Christian help, she became a tyrant.

  I didn’t blame her; you couldn’t help the personality you were born with. But I hated that my schedule was contingent upon her goodwill and availability. I hated that suddenly everything I did annoyed her.

  While waiting for me to finish dressing Monday morning so she could drop me off at school, she surveyed the many to-do lists scattered about my desk. “Have you ever thought about living one day in your life without plotting it all out beforehand?”

  “Zoë, I told you. If I don’t write things down, I forget.”

  She snatched a sticky note off the wall. “Quiet time—5:20.You schedule prayer?”

  “You make appointments for dates, don’t you? Why not schedule prayer?”

  The argument did not appeal to her.

  Added to the burden of helping me around town, her writing wasn’t going well. She was constantly locked in her room either talking to her parents or writing. She typed all night, only to delete everything first thing in the morning. She would never admit to writer’s block. It was all I could do not to gloat.

  At night I peered around her door. “Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m not hungry,” she said without looking up from her laptop.

  “I can make coffee,” I added sweetly. “Some caffeine might help your thoughts flow.”

  We both knew I was rubbing it in.

  “Is the power out?” Everett asked when he found me alone in our office reading by flashlight. It was nearly five and neither Zoë nor Eli had called to inform me who was picking me up from work. I was busy hating both of them.

  “Shut the door,” I said. “I’m hiding from Lonnie.”

 
; “Amy—honestly.” He wandered in, leaving the door wide open. “The kid’s not there. I just walked by the copy room, and it’s just Mr. Benson today.”

  “Oh, he’s here. He’s waiting. Turn that light back off.”

  It wasn’t half an hour before someone knocked on the open door.

  “Lonnie,” I said, pretending to be pleasantly surprised. “Come in.”

  Lonnie shut the door behind him. I glared at Everett. Everett gaped at me, perfectly baffled.

  “What’s up, Lonnie?” I asked.

  “I was wondering if I could ask a favor, Ms. Gallagher.” He held a clipboard to his chest. “I’m doing an article for the school paper on the dangers of campus life and was wondering if I could interview you about your accident. I e-mailed you three times about it. And I left you notes.”

  I chose to ignore his mention of the unanswered e-mails. “I tripped,” I said. “I hardly think that qualifies for campus danger.”

  “I did some research.” He handed me three stapled photocopies. The print was so fine it was almost illegible. “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.’ It’s in Section 2B ii.” He pointed to the specific line. “Right there, where I underlined the words in red.”

  Everett read over my shoulder. “Amy, you could sue. You could quit your job. Buy a condo in Florida and drink margaritas.”

  I handed the photocopies back to Lonnie. “I’m not suing anybody.”

  “It’s only a small article,” he persisted, his eyes nervously following Everett back to his desk. Lonnie was one of those students who never caught sarcasm in a teacher; he took everything a superior said literally. “It would really help me. No one else has agreed to an interview.”

  “They really asked you to write an article about this?” I asked.

  Bashfully, he replied, “Well, I was supposed to interview Jessica Baily Barts, the girl that broke her femur in that hit and run last year. But she transferred.”

  I hesitated.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll do the interview.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Gallagher, thank you. It will only take ten minutes, I promise—quick and painless. I mean, I wouldn’t want to inflict more pain on you, seeing how you have enough and all.”

  He took a chair and produced an old tape recorder from the nest of crumpled papers in his backpack. I sighed. I hadn’t realized Lonnie meant now.

  “Strictly for the sake of notation,” he informed me. He hit Record, then pitched forward in his chair, notepad balanced against his knee. “Ms. Gallagher, ma’am, could you tell me exactly what happened on that trail that day.”

  I gave him the short version. He scribbled a row of indecipherable hieroglyphics. “Which trail were you on?”

  “I don’t know for sure. We took the trail that starts right outside Leonard Chapel.”

  He nodded. “Tell me about the conditions of the trail that day.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was like any trail. It wound, got narrow in some places.”

  “Were there an excess of protrusions?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Were there roots and rocks and such?” he clarified.

  “Oh, almost everywhere. Pebbles, rocks, some thin roots.”

  “How large was the root you tripped on? Was it blocking the path?”

  “To be honest, I really can’t remember, Lonnie—it all happened so fast.”

  He waited.

  I said, “I think it might have actually been a very thin, wiry root—it was like tripping over a taut rope.”

  He nodded quickly, jotted something down. “What is the extent of your injury?”

  “A bad sprain. I’m in a brace for a month. Maybe longer.”

  “And does the university health-care policy cover this?”

  Everett said “Ha!” so loud that Lonnie jumped.

  “I pay for my health insurance,” I said.

  Flustered, Lonnie ran his pen up and down the list of questions he’d composed beforehand. “Has the injury significantly hindered your ability to perform usual activities?”

  “It’s a hindrance, of course. I can’t drive. I can’t walk. Not well at least. But that seems beside the point once I’m in the classroom.”

  “How did you get into teaching?”

  I frowned. “Is this really pertinent?”

  “Biographical background,” he explained.

  I hesitated, but was anxious to finish this unexpected conference as soon as possible. “I got into teaching by default. I finished my master’s degree here. They offered me a teaching position. I was too worn out from grad school to consider anything else at the time, so I stayed.” I paused. “I like the trees.”

  “You don’t like teaching?”

  “Oh, no, I like teaching just fine. It’s challenging and varied. I enjoy getting to know the students. It’s just not what I expected to do.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “The usual. Flight attendant, ballerina. Astronaut.”

  He tapped his pen at the air, boldly maintaining eye contact for an entire twenty seconds. “Off the record, you could have been a superb ballerina.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “You’re very tall.”

  He looked down again, but he wasn’t taking notes anymore. He crossed his arms. He examined the Garfield on my desk. He asked if I’d ever taken dance lessons. I said no. He replied that he had.

  “Really?”

  “But only until the second grade. Now I do tae kwon do. I was two days from my black belt when I had to leave for college.”

  “So this is recent,” I said.

  “This is now.”

  “Are you going to get your black belt?”

  “I can do these tricks.”

  He stood, braced his hands on his hips, and slid effortlessly into the splits, knocking his chair into the desk and the tape recorder onto the floor.

  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.