Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [35]
Without any real purpose, I reread the Things to Do Before Thirty list. My progress had not been good. I had read all of Austen’s novels, but found it unsettling that I’d assigned her name to a list as if she was or could ever have been a chore. No, had not yet skinny-dipped in the ocean.Yes, had kept my own apartment, which had been nice while it lasted, but I was too broke to live alone, much less tour Rome. I didn’t care to take further stock of the remaining ambitions.
Why the urgency to achieve my life’s goals before thirty anyway?
And why was marriage at the end, as if globe-trotting served only as prelude to romance?
My mother had always instructed me to live life before settling down, settling down requiring a seismic shift in one’s energy, from adventure to nurture. The fault in her admonition was the assumption that meeting a man marked the end of the journey. I grew up thinking the single life was the rising action and marriage the climax. Every writer knows climax is followed by dénouement: in other words, it’s all downhill after the wedding
Maybe I would never marry or have children. For the very first time, this future struck me as entirely plausible, if not inevitable. Many women lived alone. I was no more entitled to marriage than the next person. Maybe I belonged to the world of the celibate saint, granted a life of solitude and free to explore the inner world of my imagination while inspiring young minds to greater intellectual and spiritual heights in introductory composition. I thought of my students and was overcome with a feeling of affection. It was very easy to like them when they were miles away.
Yes. To serve the students was my mission, and writing my love.
I thought vaguely of Adam, but didn’t dwell on him. He was like any other of my endless infatuations: the product of too much romanticism stirred by restlessness and indulged to remedy boredom. So much for real men. Men in books were so much more fun.
I picked up a pen; I began to write.
7
“What are you doing?” Zoë asked.
I had wedged myself behind my bedroom dresser and was attempting to unscrew the television cable cord.
“I’ve made a New Year’s resolution,” I said. “No more television.”
“None?”
“None.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
I stood triumphant, the dismembered cable in my hand.
Zoë gave me a disbelieving frown. “What will you do with yourself?”
I lifted the television from its stand and toddled toward the hall closet. “Stop wasting my life,” I managed.
“You’re really getting rid of it.”
“Yes, Zoë. I’m serious.”
“Then can I have it?”
“I thought you didn’t watch TV.”
“I like watching the news,” she said defensively.
We swiped a spot clear on her desk and set the television on top.
“Turn it to the right.” She bounded to her bed. Sitting crosslegged, she made a window frame of her forefingers and thumbs. She squinted an eye at the screen. “Perfectamundo. Thank you, dear.”
“Enjoy.”
I spent my first week back in Copenhagen dedicating the hours typically spent on television to writing. I’d hoped for a short story and instead found myself experimenting with the relativity of time. Thirty minutes in front of Friends is no time at all. Thirty minutes in front of a blank laptop screen lasts approximately four hours and six minutes.
Zoë was enthralled by my new diligence. If she found me writing, she wrote too. Though we both had laptops and were mobile, we remained in our separate rooms for some semblance of privacy. Through her open door I could hear her typing, which meant she could hear that I was not.
I resorted to copying out old stories from my Great American Short Stories collection. An author once told me she copied one of Chekhov’s stories every morning so she could feel what it was like to write the story of a master.
Zoë came to check on me around ten. “How’s it going?” she asked.
“Fine.” I smiled.
“I brought cookies. A midnight snack.”
The “cookies” were made with honey, whole grain, and raisins.