Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [40]
When Zoë failed to respond, I said, “It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around. I don’t give these kids enough credit. I get sucked into this stereotype that they’re spoiled middle-class grade-grubbers, not even thinking what they might have been through in their lives. Hey—are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“Well.” I stared at her profile. The blue then white then yellow light from the television flashed on her cheek. “What do you think I should do?”
“What can you do?” she murmured.
I pinched her arm. “Zoë to the land of the living.”
“What?” she scowled. “It happens, Amy. People die. Her sister will always be gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Michael and I shared a look. While Zoë was generous with her things, she was less generous with her sympathy. The years Zoë’s mother had spent in and out of the hospital had done more damage than good to her capacity for compassion where illness and death were concerned. When confronted with someone in pain, there was always an unspoken competition: had said person suffered more or less than her own family?
Silently, we watched the whale masticate its prey, the blood blossoming beneath the water in a pale pink cloud.
To dispel the tension, Michael asked me, “Did you go to the gym this morning?”
“I went.”
He winked. “Atta girl.”
Atta girl. Michael’s verbal equivalent of a firm slap to the butt.
Zoë squeezed my thigh. “Feel the burn?”
I lifted my leg, considering it as though it were a separate creature from my body. “Nothing yet.”
“What have you been doing?”
“The recliner bike thing.”
“The recumbent,” she corrected.
“Sounds political. The machine you can’t vote out. ”
I was glad to have a name for the thing I despised. It felt perfectly asinine to sit in a chair pedaling ninety miles an hour and going nowhere. Too much like a bad analogy for my life.
“I’m trying to get her to take one of my classes,” Michael said.
“You should take a class,” Zoë said. “It’s more rigorous than just working out by yourself.”
“I don’t think I’m up for that.”
“I’ll take one with you,” she said. “It will be fun. Kind of a roommate bonding thing.”
“What do you think we’re doing here?” It was rather intimate, the way we’d squashed our bodies into her tiny twin bed.
“Being lazy,” she countered.
Combined, Zoë and Michael’s zeal for physical fitness was nothing short of evangelistic. Though they never succeeded in drafting me for group fitness, I finally agreed to train for the spring 5K they were both running for breast cancer research. I could hardly turn down the chance to support Zoë’s mother in some small way. And running seemed the one exercise suited for the writer’s life, the solitude, the pain. (Wo)Man vs. Nature. It always seemed spiritually invigorating on the Gatorade commercials.
Saturday afternoon, Eli found me stretching in the kitchen. He poured a cup of coffee and eyed me curiously over the rim as he drank.
“Joining the madness?”
“Don’t discourage her,” Zoë said. “You really aren’t going to want that.” She tugged on the scarf I’d wrapped twice around my neck. This was in addition to the turtleneck and the Ohio State hoodie I was wearing over my brother’s old Buckeyes T-shirt.
“It’s negative ten degrees,” I said. “It’s freezing.”
“I’m telling you,” she warned, “five minutes and you’ll be burning up. You don’t want to sweat too much anyway.”
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re insulated.”
She wore form-fitting Spandex black pants and a green windbreaker specifically designed for runners. I was the Orphan Annie to her Nike Goddess.
I turned to Eli. I held out my arms. “Do you think I’m overdressed?”
Even when invited to look at my body (however padded and overdressed), he kept his eyes fixed on mine. In a moment of clarity, I realized this marked a defining difference between men like Michael and men like Eli.
“I’ll be on the couch,” he said. “Come join me when you give up.”
Outside, Michael and Zoë were arguing about whether to take me for an interval walk/run or whether to just start out at a slow pace.