Amy Inspired

by Bethany Pierce

  I recognized The Lady of Shalott from a print framed and hanging in my aunt’s living room, but the other images were only familiar inasmuch as they alluded to classical stories and mythology. My favorite was Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In the painting, a tall woman wearing pale green robes stands before a square shaft of blurred light. Her dark hair falls in heavy plaits down her back.There’s an almost masculine strength to her brow. Or maybe it’s her stern gaze, shaded with mourning, that lends her face the appearance of a man’s hardened features. She looks down and into the distance. In one hand she holds a pomegranate. Her other hand clasps the wrist of the first, as if she is torn between taking a second bite of the fruit or leaving it to drop to the ground. In her indecision, she reminded me of Eve, sorrowfully cradling the remnants of a forbidden fruit.

  According to one source on classical mythology, Proserpine was the daughter of Zeus, king of the gods, and Ceres, goddess of agriculture. Struck by Cupid’s arrow, Hades fell in love with Proserpine and carried her to the underworld to be his wife. When Ceres learned that Zeus had conspired to marry his daughter to Hades, she stopped the growth of all crops. She searched for her daughter, leaving deserts as footprints. Finally, Zeus intervened. He and Hades reached an agreement: Proserpine was free to go providing she had not eaten during her captivity, for those who ate the food of the dead cannot return to the land of the living. Unfortunately for Proserpine, she had eaten the nectar of four pomegranate seeds. Abiding by the terms of the bargain, she was condemned to the underworld four months of every year, to serve as the wife of Hades. The painting portrayed a period of her captivity.

  More interesting: According to historians, Rossetti was in love with his model, Jane Morris, who was already married to a fellow artist. It was left for debate, then, whether he’d painted Proserpine’s sorrow or his own.

  As a character, the woman in the painting was the beautiful daughter of a powerful goddess; as a model, she was merely a pretty, married woman. In both, a marriage held her captive.

  12

  It snowed the night of the Happy Birthday Publication Party. We piled coats by the doorway until they formed a formidable barricade on the stairs. People arrived pink from the cold, then flushed red in the warmth. The air was heady from the singed oil of jalapeños and the breathing of wine. Zoë had outdone herself in the kitchen. We had spicy pot stickers and vegetable kabobs and pitas spread with fresh hummus. Everett brought music. A very pregnant Valerie brought cake.

  Amber and Lynn, Jillian’s housemates, brought a pervading sense of Jillian’s presence.

  “You remember Amber?” Eli asked. She had been to the apartment to see him several times so it was more than a little unnecessary that I set down the drink I was pouring to offer a handshake.

  She accepted, quickly looking me up and down. Her appraisal made me self-conscious of the efforts I’d taken that night. I was wearing blush and had carefully chosen a tighter than usual sweater. I’d taken similar care in not touching my hair. It billowed on my shoulders in haphazard curls. Amber’s hair was neatly gelled in place, a shiny implacable helmet.

  Eli took her coat—a formidable ankle-length red velvet—but she remained planted at my side.

  “You know you don’t look at all thirty,” was the first thing she said to me. “You don’t have a light, do you?” was the second.

  I gestured to the matches we kept in a jam jar beside the stove. She kept her cigarettes in a hot pink handbag. I didn’t have the courage to tell her not to light one in the apartment.

  “So you guys are pretty good to let Eli stay here like this.” She cupped the palm of her hand around the flame, waiting for the cigarette to light.

  “We don’t mind having him around.”

  “I know, right.” She was watching him. “He’s adorable.”

  Amber wore a black dress with cobweb-patterned lace sleeves. While she told me at length about Jillian and Eli and the minutiae of their seemingly complicated love life, I wondered if her arms didn’t itch terribly. In the seventh grade I’d been accosted every morning on the school bus by a Larissa Spregg, who invited herself to sit with me and then spent the fifteen-minute ride to school detailing how she’d spent the previous night debating whether or not to kill herself. She knew I was a Christian and confessed to me in the hopes I would entertain her by attempting to witness. I spent all of junior high and high school desperately uncomfortable around people who dressed Goth.

  “Do you think they’re pretty serious?” I asked when she stopped talking long enough to light a second cigarette.

  “Jillian doesn’t do relationships that aren’t serious. She’s one of those woman who was just born for serial monogamy.”

  I turned the oxymoron serial monogamy over in my mind, adding it to the brief list of things I knew about Jillian.

  “Unfortunately for her, she’s like a magnet for the desperate and the loser,” Amber said. “Eli’s the first guy she’s had in a while who treats her right. She’s been in relationships—serious ones—since she was in like the sixth grade, but she never realizes how much it weighs on her, the problems, the resolutions, the constant need to give and take. It’s existential for her; she gets like really large with it when it’s actually really—” she tapped the ash of her cigarette into a plastic cup left on the counter—“micro,” she finished with satisfaction.

  Jillian deserved a good man. She had issues with men, mostly with her father, issues that had spawned new problems, bulimia for one. She and Eli both planned to move to New York when she returned.

  My head ached. I found it difficult to focus on a thing Amber was saying. In the living room someone accidentally broke a glass on the hardwood floor. At the sound of the splintering glass, I gratefully begged off to help clean up the mess. I did my best to avoid Amber the rest of the night, but she kept appearing within arm’s reach, her conversations bleeding into mine. Or maybe it was the unchecked volume of her voice, the fact that I could hear her across the entire apartment that made her seem omnipresent.

  Late in the evening a copy of Zoë’s story finally began to circulate. People sat on the couch in a tight-wedged row to read the magazine over each other’s shoulders. Zoë couldn’t hide her pleasure at the attention. I worried I would be as unable to hide my jealousy. I took myself out to sit on the roof, just to be on the safe side.

  Down below, Valerie and Everett were sitting side by side on the old picnic table that sank a little more into the lawn each month. At least Everett had the decency to smoke outside. They were arguing good-naturedly about constellations. Valerie’s husband was too softspoken and passive for argument. She liked to disagree with Everett once in a while to get the fight out of her system.

  “There’s no Orion’s Oxen,” Valerie said.

  “It’s right there. By his belt.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  He leaned over until his head was aligned with hers and pointed with the burning butt of his cigarette. “Follow the left star there, over five degrees, and you’re at the tip of the horn of the giant water buffalo, otherwise known as Orion’s Oxen. Why would he have that belt if not to whip his beast of labor into submission?”

  Valerie asked if he was on crack.

  I sat on one of the lawn chairs scattered on the porch and leaned back to consider the stars. I closed my eyes, rubbed them vigorously until constellations of red blossomed on the backs of my eyelids. I should take an Advil for the headache. I felt irritable and tired. Maybe I just felt thirty.

  “Forget something?” Eli handed me my coat.

  “Thanks.”

  “You all right?”

  I sat up. “I’m fine. Why?”

  “You’ve been quiet all night.”

  “I just need some air. It’s so crowded and loud. I guess I got a little claustrophobic.”

  Below us, Valerie was laughing. No one could make her laugh like Everett. For a moment I entertained the idea that Eli and I could be comfortable with each other like t
hat. There wasn’t anything wrong with his having a friend outside of Jillian. I had to tell myself this quite often.

  “Amber’s talkative,” I said.

  “She’s something.” He pulled up a lawn chair, unfolded it, examined its torn and frayed underside, and set it aside in exchange for another. “I shouldn’t have left you alone with her. Sorry about that.” He sat down with a quiet, contented sigh. “Jillian’s girlfriends are very vocal.”

  “She was worried about Jillian.”

  “Amber doesn’t worry about anybody. She likes drama; it makes parties more interesting.”

  “She doesn’t have to open her mouth to make things more interesting—she could just walk in a room.”

  “I’m glad I caught you alone,” he said to change the subject. “I haven’t had a chance to wish you an official happy birthday yet.” He reached in his pocket and produced a small gift wrapped in baby blue paper, tied neatly with a delicate white bow.

  “You’re not supposed to get me a gift.”

  “It’s not much, but when I saw it I thought of you.”

  Inside the blue wrapping paper was a jewelry box, and inside the jewelry box, on a bed of cotton, lay a pair of glass earrings shaped like flowers. The pit of each had been made of tiny, golden beads that together resembled a sunflower’s eye.

  “Kevin’s ex makes jewelry,” he explained. “Do you like them?”

  “They’re gorgeous. But they’re almost too pretty. I usually don’t wear things like this.”

  “Put them on.”

  The earrings were heavy. I tilted my head to model. The way he looked at my hair, eyes following a ring of curls from my brow to the nape of my neck to my chest, it was as though he’d reached across and touched me ever so gently.

  I hurried to take the earrings off.

  “Thank you,” I said. “These are the nicest thing anyone’s given me in a long time.”

  The screen door flew open. Amber shouted, “Eli Morretti, what are you doing! We are bored to death in here without you!”

  “So come out here.” He folded the blue wrapping paper and hid it in his pocket.

  Amber came and sat right in Eli’s lap. He allowed it, but kept his hands on the armrests of his chair.

  “Lynn and I have been having a little discussion,” Amber said. “And we’ve come to the conclusion that in light of your work and ambitions and the very length of your body, you are in need of a larger bedroom.”

  “Or a bedroom at all,” Lynn volunteered.

  “So … maybe—if it’s okay with Amy—you could come live with us!”

  “And make us cappuccinos!”

  “And T-shirts!”

  “But there’s one condition.” Amber raised her finger and waited for Eli to focus his eyes on it. “Under no circumstances are you to fall in love with us.”

  I excused myself. In the kitchen I opened the freezer door and stuck my face inside. The heat sloughed off my cheeks in waves.

  Zoë’s manager from The Brewery was leaning against the counter, reading Zoë’s UrbanStyle article. She slapped the magazine against my hip playfully.

  “It was good of you to let her write about this,” she said.

  “Write about what?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you read it?” she asked.

  “No, we just got it today.Why?”

  “Well, you might not be having much luck as an author, but I think you may have found work as a muse.”

  No luck as an author. It surprised me how abrasive the woman could be.

  “It’s good.” She handed me the magazine and began skirting her way around me to return to the party. “Something every woman should read.”

  I flipped back to the first page of Zoë’s essay. In boldface the heading read: Making a List, Checking It Twice. Beneath ran a subtitle: Getting to the Bottom of the Modern Woman’s Obsession.

  Under the two-page heading, a woman sat at a white desk in a white room. Thousands of identical yellow sticky notes plastered the walls, the chair, the nondescript desk—even the woman. She sat at a table with her legs primly pressed together, her back straight, and her eyes staring upward at the enormous pile of chores littered about her head. In her left hand she held a smartphone and in the right a red pen poised over the Franklin Day Planner lying open on the desk.

  At the bottom of the page, the article began:

  A few weeks ago, while scavenging for a working pen (an abnormally rare commodity in an apartment of aspiring authors), I found a rather telling scrap of paper beside my housemate’s computer. Or, I should say, several rather telling scraps of paper. In piles around her desk, hung from the bulletin board over her bed, lining her computer screen in sticky notes were to-do lists. Not one, but many.

  These to-do lists were categorized in various ways, the chores organized by location, by day, or by priority. For example, there was one list of things to do while in the downtown area (drop off laundry, buy stamps, pick up library books) and another for things to do by 5:00. She had taken pains to carve out ten-minute slots for eating and even a twenty-minute slot for showering.

  My housemate is a textbook addict of multitasking productivity: the belief that the worth of one’s life can be measured in the efficiency with which one completes the highest number of chores. But is this any real way to live? Are we killing ourselves with our need to be productive?

  My friends and co-workers keep checklists. So did my mother—until the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Standing before my housemate’s extensive collage of chores, and thinking of these women I know who’ve struggled in one way or another with the same compulsion, I began to wonder if it’s possible that in spending our days in the systematic elimination of perceived obligations, we are actually missing out on living itself… .

  “Do you have more ice?” Everett asked. He held two empty cups in his hands. “Rations low.”

  “Up there.” I gestured toward the freezer absentmindedly, excusing myself through the crowd to my bedroom. I locked the door and turned to page 223, where the article went on to explain that checklists were symptomatic of a woman’s need to feel productive. It then delved into a brief lesson on history, tracking the evolution of the Franklin Day Planner to the present-day smartphone, detailing how digital calendars had only increased the dependence on a false sense of productivity.

  Throughout the essay Zoë used “we” and “our,” lumping all women, career-driven and homemaker alike, into one homogeneous, guilt-tripped class of multitasking do-gooders. Despite her best efforts to maintain a consistently plural and sympathetic voice, I did not hear “we” in my head as I read. I heard “you.” You, Amy Gallagher, are killing yourself with your need to Get Things Done. You, my poor Ms. Gallagher, believe your life’s worth can be measured by the efficiency with which you complete the greatest number of chores.

  Though I was more or less aware of this compulsion, I’ve never considered how visible it was. I kept grocery lists tacked to the fridge; people to e-mail lists stuck to my computer screen; Books to Read and Books Read piled in ratty notebooks on the living room shelves. And she didn’t even know about the lists from childhood: Potential Careers, Boys Kissed, Stories Written, Things to Do Before Thirty.

  I forced myself to read to the conclusion:

  The opportunities we have today are still somewhat new for the female sex (and I am grateful for them. God bless the 14th Amendment, the tampon, and Title IX!). It seems, however, that the knowledge of all these opportunities leaves us feeling as though our independence and self-sufficiency are precarious. We are always striving to be the best at home, at school, and at work, trying to prove we can do it all. Sooner or later we have to admit that “it all” is too tall an order.

  I’m not trying to depreciate the value of hard work. But I am a firm believer in “all good things in moderation.” We must learn when to put the lists away—when to stop and watch a sunset, enjoy a bubble bath, laugh with a friend, take a walk without the need for a destinatio
n.

  The first thing my mother did on getting her breast cancer diagnosis was burn her Day Planner. Has she missed appointments? Yes. Has she bowed out of more than one potentially career propelling opportunity? Yes. Has she lived every day as fully as possible? Most definitely yes. Her cancer has come back in sundry and vile ways, but every time it does, she’s prepared with an arsenal of freshly lived memories to give her strength and to remind her that life is worth fighting for. Watching her struggle for even the smallest pleasures the healthy take for granted, I’ve learned the hard way that life is too short and the world too varied to fit into carefully drafted rows of check-boxes.

  So at the risk of being trite, I say: Ladies, burn the checklist, and smell the roses.

  I was insulted by the unrelenting optimism of women’s magazines, by the willing suspension of self-respect required to read such nonsense. I stared at the photograph of the young woman and her sticky notes. It was one thing to see your weaknesses brought to light by a loving friend, but to be exposed in a national publication? I was so angry my hands trembled. It was ten minutes before I trusted myself enough to the party.

  “There she is! Miss America,” Everett sang. He put his arm around me. “We were just going to cut the cake without you.”

  “I had to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  He patted me on the back. “Well, we hope it all came out okay.”

  He led me to the kitchen, where everyone had gathered around the cake that read Happy B and P Day! beneath a haze of lit and quickly melting blue-white candles.

  Zoë stood at the center of the circle, a birthday hat on her head. Valerie held the glowing sheet cake, beckoning me to help blow out the candles before the wax ruined the icing. Eli and Amber and Lynn were not in the room.

  “Hurry!” Zoë cried, strapping a paper birthday hat on my head; it sat lopsided on my curls.

  “On three!” she said and took my hand. “One, two—”

  Together we shot out all thirty of the flickering lights.