Amy Inspired

by Bethany Pierce

  “He’s just a friend.”

  “Yeah.” He closed his eyes again, leaned his head against the wall and nodded back and forth slowly. “Whatever.”

  For one absurd moment I was actually tempted to ask him if he thought I had a chance.

  Back in my office I gave him the campus dance recital tickets one of the professors had passed off to me. I’d been holding on to them in the hopes I would have someone to go with.

  “Listen, Lonnie. I want you to find a nice girl and take her to this concert, and I want you to do it for fun, okay? She doesn’t have to be your soul mate to be a nice date.”

  He turned the envelope in his hands, studying it as if it were a complicated piece of machinery.

  “What if I ask a girl and she says no?”

  I genuinely hurt for him. Of all the students I’d befriended, of all the aspiring writers I’d coached, it was when looking at Lonnie— Lonnie of the Battlerstar Galactica T-shirts and the cherry berry ChapStick—that I saw myself.

  “Then you smile, shrug your shoulders, and ask someone else,” I replied. “And, Lonnie—no poems. Not right away. Your readership may not be ready for them just yet.”

  “Okay,” he said, stuffing the envelope in his backpack. “I promise, Ms. Gallagher.”

  As soon as he left, I returned to my office and dug through the trash until I found the postcard Eli had sent. I folded it in half, slipped it in my jacket pocket.

  From the office window I watched until Lonnie appeared on the sidewalk below. Maybe the next object of his love would return the interest. Maybe she would even be his age. But what can you do with a romantic, really? They’re called hopeless for good reason.

  “This is just like the last one; his work’s not even on here,” Zoë said. She handed the postcard back to me. “That’s not a good sign. They always put the best stuff on the card.”

  She carried the dishes I’d stacked to the sink. “You know, the problem with Eli is that he waits too long and farts around and doesn’t get the big projects done. It’s the lack of discipline that most hurts his work.”

  When her criticism of his procrastination didn’t cheer me up, she went on, “I’ve been thinking that it’s a good thing you and Eli didn’t work out.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He’s not the settling type.”

  The phrase sent bells off in my head. I heard Adam breaking up with me all over again. “You were born settled.”

  She left the room complaining about e-mails. I stayed in the kitchen and copied recipes from Vegetarian Weekly. I lay in my bed and tried to read. I did a Luna Lady face peel. I reorganized my closet. I put my sweaters in the boxes I used to store journals and organized the journals by date on top of the shelf where my sweaters had been.

  When I tried to throw one last notebook on top of an already too heavy pile, the rest fell down on my head. I hollered some unnecessary obscenity before throwing myself backward on the bed.

  Zoë tapped on the door.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Mmm-mmm.”

  She peered in the closet. “What happened in there?”

  I had my eyes closed. I waved my hand dismissively. “Something fell.”

  “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

  I shook my head.

  She lay down on the bed beside me. “I got my work schedule for next week. Did you know it’s already the twenty-first? I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since we moved in together.”

  She said this with a strangely nostalgic tone. It annoyed me. I couldn’t think of a single excuse she had to remember this year fondly. Because I was exhausted and because I was anxious, I said as much to her aloud.

  “I don’t know. It had its moments.” She cracked up. “Remember when you set the fire alarm off? When Eli was first here? I think he nearly peed his pants.”

  I laughed in spite of myself.

  “Who knows what he thought of us,” she said. “Fighting over checklists, over that stupid magazine.”

  For no good reason we both got the giggles. Then we started to laugh, really laugh, until our sides hurt. When we’d recovered, she sidled up to me, skin sticky with sweat, and laid her head on my shoulder. When her wig brushed my skin I shuddered.

  “Zoë, how long are you going to wear those things?”

  “As long as I need to. They smell like her, you know.”

  “You could just keep her clothes,” I said. “I’m sure they smell as good.”

  “But that would be so much less interesting.”

  A cool breeze rustled the curtain. Two blocks away a car rumbled by on the cobblestones. Kathryn’s wind chimes jangled in that discordant way that always sounded so lonely to me.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve been thinking about Eli. I know you miss him.”

  I started to protest, but she stopped me.

  “You’d think losing a parent would be all the hurt a body could handle. But there are still nights when I think of Michael. I miss him, too, in all his stupid ways.”

  I put my arm around her shoulder, forcing myself to not mind the wig and how alarmingly real it felt. “He did have a way of reducing the collective intelligence in a way that was entertaining,” I agreed.

  “What I said about Eli—I didn’t mean for that to upset you. It’s just that I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “It’s all right, Zoë,” I said. “In a weird way, you said exactly what I needed to hear.”

  “So can I go to bed now without worrying about you?”

  The irony of her question was almost funny. If she had any idea how many sleepless nights I lay in bed waiting for her to wake from nightmares and call my name: I’d never been so worried for anyone in my life.

  “You can go to bed,” I reassured her.

  But she was asleep before either of us found the motivation to get up.

  I kissed her brow, relieved. The narrow bed was a ship in the night and sleep the safest passage to morning. I thought of Jesus in the boat with His disciples as they tried to cross the sea in a nighttime storm. Whenever ministers preached from that story, they always focused on the disciples’ unbelief: If only they had truly trusted the Lord, they wouldn’t have been so afraid of the waves and lightning.

  What struck me, however, was that Jesus was asleep despite the violence of the storm. I was taken by the thought of a Savior who could be so utterly exhausted.

  Because she was in my bed, it took me twice as long to pack. Every drawer I opened creaked too loudly. Every light was too bright. I didn’t want to wake her, because I didn’t want to explain.

  At two in the morning, a small duffel bag in hand, I gently clicked the bedroom door shut. I studied the directions I’d printed out, memorizing the route. I set my alarm for five. I lay down on the futon fully dressed. In my head I did the math: The exhibition was from seven to ten. If I left by six, if I only took three half-hour breaks, and if there were absolutely no traffic jams, accidents, or unexpected breakdowns, I would arrive in time to get dinner and freshen up before the show.

  The night dragged on. I held my eyes tightly shut, but like a child on Christmas Eve I was too excited to sleep. At the very first hint of birdsong, I threw off the blanket and reached for my shoes.

  Before leaving, I stood a while in the hallway, ear pressed against my bedroom door, listening for sounds of weeping. But there was only the steady hum of the ceiling fan rhythmically stirring the air.

  26

  The last city (significantly smaller than the previous one) passed and it was still another hour and a half before I saw a sign for Pendleton. I nearly cried with relief. My head throbbed from ten hours of highway and a day’s diet of Pepsi and Circus Peanuts. I stopped at the next gas station. In the eerie green light of the bathroom I changed out of my jeans and into the slacks I’d kept on a hanger in the back of the car; I’d hung them th
e way my mother taught me, mindful of the seams, fully aware that this was the kind of detail Eli never noticed. I rinsed my face, pinched my cheeks, slipped on the earrings he had given me for my birthday, then decided that would be a bit much and replaced them with inconspicuous silver hoops.

  Off the exit ramp I passed an old grocery and a Wal-Mart.There was a strip of pastel-colored historical downtown. Twenty minutes past the last light, up a winding bit of country road, I arrived at the Pendleton Residency campus. It was just as the photographs depicted: a secluded, sprawling landscape boasting four closely built studio complexes, an old barn, and, upon the farthest hill, a compact, modern building of cement and glass. My destination for the night. A shallow, decorative pool framed the perimeter of the building, reflecting its minimalist facade as flawlessly as a polished mirror. Like a moat surrounding an impenetrable castle.

  I was barely in time to catch the end of the show, but I sat in the car five minutes gathering the courage to go inside. I actually thought about turning around, worried that my unexpected appearance would not come as a pleasant surprise for him. Until that moment I hadn’t even considered the horrible thought that Eli’d met someone during the residency. I turned off the ignition. Too late now.

  The gallery was as warm and inviting inside as its exterior had been cold and intimidating. The exhibition filled two rooms joined at center by a foyer. The tables had been spread with real linens, with mushroom tarts and manicured fruits speared on skewers. Women in black poured red wine into plastic cups. I walked through the show slowly, pretending to examine each piece in turn while furtively searching for napkins pinned to walls or framed lithographs in rows. I expected to see Eli every time I turned a corner, but I walked through each room twice without even a glimpse of his work.

  My heart sank with the possibility that I had somehow misread the card or the calendar, that in my hurry to see him and by some gross miscalculation I had ended up at the wrong show.

  A binder containing the résumés of the various artists had been propped on a white pedestal near the dessert table. I loitered there, reading the long list of accolades behind each name. Someone bumped into me, and when I turned to acknowledge the man’s apology, my eyes crossed a small sign posted beside the door, all but obstructed by the viewers crowded around the desserts. It read Sculpture above an arrow pointing to the right.

  I followed the sign out the back doors and into the courtyard.

  I was met by a field of lights.

  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the diffuse light gained clarity and became not a blanket of white but row after row of glowing globes standing knee-high in the grass. Though each bubble of blown glass varied in size, they were uniform in shape, tapering to a narrow neck. They stood on stems translucent as glass, some straight, some bent. Beneath the individual lamps, tucked in shadow and barely visible, a web of black cords like roots filled the twin patches of perfectly square lawn. A narrow sidewalk passed between.

  I followed the path, feeling, foolishly, like a bride on the aisle, suffused in white and deliberating her steps amidst the hush of a summertime garden. I was so taken by the delicacy of the sculpture I did not at first notice that every other globe illuminated a phrase printed on its interior.

  A strange sense of déjà vu washed over me as I read the first: It had been taken from them.

  I walked to the next and read: leave leaf palms open.

  And the next: happiness like a blush to the cheeks.

  The familiarity deepened with each phrase. At first, I tried to make sentences of the neighboring fragments, but I only came up with nonsense. The words jostled in my mind nonetheless, puzzle pieces that wanted to fit into a single, cohesive thought.

  I read: muscle, puppeteer of bone, and it struck me. My stories.

  These were my phrases, bits of sentences I had cobbled together taken from their context and planted in haphazard rows like crops for some magical harvest.

  When I reached the end of the garden I stooped down to examine a sign propped in the corner. It stood in a five-inch pool of light, illuminated by the smallest of the glass lights, which hung over the bit of paper like a miniature streetlight. The label listed six artists who had collaborated on the installation. Above the other artists listed, the name Eli Morretti, and above his name, the title:

  Amy (Inspired)

  I stared at our names printed together, as surprised by my reaction as I was astonished by the extravagance of the installation. Where I should have felt ownership over these words and some indignation at their being taken from me without my permission, I only felt a childlike wonder. I had stepped through the looking glass into a bizarre dream world. Everywhere I turned I found my own thoughts winking back at me, full of mystery. Something I’d said, something I’d done had in a way created this. No one had ever paid me a higher compliment.

  I don’t know how long Eli stood watching me before he said my name.

  Startled, I turned to find him walking down the aisle toward me.

  “I didn’t expect you to come,” he said.

  “I’m here.”

  I threw my arms out, let them fall back to my sides; I crossed them to hide the kick of nerves rioting in my stomach. Here he was in all the detail my memory and imagination combined had tried and failed to reproduce to satisfaction: the exact flecking of color in his eyes, the fringe of his beard grown thick and curly in the humidity, his skin dark and redolent from hours soaked in sun.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He asked without pleasure and without judgment—he almost looked worried. I didn’t know how to interpret his reaction so I answered matter-of-factly, “I got your postcard. I wanted to see the show.”

  “Did you fly?”

  “I drove.”

  His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “It’s nine hours.”

  “Eleven if you drive like a grandma and pee like a racehorse.”

  It was as awkward as a meeting between two people who’d once felt something for each other could possibly be.

  “Amy Inspired?” I asked, trying to sound playful. I quickly scanned the courtyard for another watching woman, for the date he’d brought and was now hiding.

  “It’s a working title,” he replied, bowing his head almost bashfully, running his hand through his hair. “It was Punjab’s doing, the lights—I’ll have to introduce you to him—but the idea was mine. Well, yours of course. Remember what you’d said about inspiration? Like light bulbs going off? That stuck with me for some reason.”

  I’d never seen him self-conscious about his work before, and the work I’d seen to date had been amateur at best. Now he was awkward to the point of embarrassment.

  “I’m just so shocked that you’re here,” he fumbled on. “I feel like I owe you an apology. I didn’t think you’d come, not that that’s an excuse. I should’ve asked you. I thought about calling you a hundred times.”

  “Eli,” I said, “it’s stunning.”

  He glanced up. “You think so?”

  “Of course. I can’t believe a person could put something like this together in only six weeks.”

  “It felt like a lot longer than six weeks.”

  “Good,” I replied quickly, “because it felt like about twelve for me.”

  His anxiety seemed to vanish. He laughed, a nervous, hopeful laugh.

  “Show me the rest of the work,” I said.

  We walked through and around the garden. He explained the mechanics of the sculpture, knelt with me to examine each handcrafted lamp closely. We lay belly flat on the sidewalk to peer through the forest of wires, not caring that everyone had to step over us to walk the path.

  As he continued the tour through the emptying galleries, the awkwardness between us vanished. How many times had we walked through campus this way, to class or to the coffee shop or to our apartment, talking about nothing in particular while seeming to connect on everything? As the hour went on, he became more and more talkative, but he avoided my eyes unt
il it became apparent that the time and distance between us had mattered to him, that he’d taught himself to feel for me what he should have felt: I was a good friend, nothing more. He wanted me to know this, communicated it in the way he stood two feet from me, the way he introduced me to his friends. But I had difficulty remembering their names; I was too busy building a secret resolve.

  When we’d formally met every contributing artist, when we’d exhausted every room and every topic, we took the one remaining tray of cheese and fruit and carried the picnic to the front stoop to sit and eat. Only a few people remained, idling in conversation before their cars. I sat on one end of the steps, facing the lot. He sat leaning against the wall of the building, facing me, his long legs spread lanky behind my back and folded ankle over ankle. He’d made an effort with his clothes: all black, though two very different shades between shirt and slacks, and the cuffs of his pant legs were still dirty and flecked with something white.

  “I haven’t asked about Zoë,” he said.

  “She’s Zoë. She’s taking things day by day.”

  I told him about the wig heads and the long nights. He expressed sympathy, appropriate and kind.

  The gallery lights went off behind us, a warning that this night had to end.

  “We’ve missed you,” I said. Gathering all my courage, I added, “I’ve missed you.”

  I met his eyes, tried to communicate there what I didn’t know how to put into words.

  He set the platter we’d emptied aside, brushed his hands clean, then scooted himself over to sit right next to me.

  “Eleven hours,” he said. “You came eleven hours to see some art that might not have been very good and you haven’t yelled at me or tried to hit me, so I’m assuming you don’t hate me.”

  I assured him that what I felt for him was the furthest thing from hatred. I wanted to tell him how every day I’d thought of him to the point of distraction, but I interrupted myself, lost track of what I was supposed to say, and ended up asking him if he’d ever thought of me.

  “See that barn up there?” He asked.