Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [43]
The first thing Eli did when he got his paycheck was offer to pay his share of February’s rent. He stocked the kitchen with things frozen and dyed, novelties our fridge hadn’t seen since Zoë’s dietary takeover: Tombstone pepperoni pizzas, salami, banana freezer pops. Because he was a guest, she didn’t protest.
Eli was mindful of our space and of our habits. If friends came over, he asked our permission before herding them all out to sit on the roof. Once outside, if he found out Zoë and I were writing, he stopped his friends’ intermittent guitar strumming or hushed their near hysterical tirades against the war. He didn’t mind that I blessed my food before eating it, and bowed his head in respect if not accompaniment. (Zoë had never participated.)
Though he had no interest in seeing the sanctuary of Copenhagen Baptist, he gladly came with us for one of our first of the month Saturday grocery giveaways. We drove together in his van to the edge of town to deliver turkeys and children’s coats to families who couldn’t afford either. I enjoyed seeing the children, but always felt awkward around the parents. Eli talked to them as if he were visiting his own family. He got into a discussion of baseball with Mr. Jones that went on so long we had to leave him behind to get to two other homes. He prayed for five minutes straight with Lawrence Kennedy, the resident alcoholic. And Bertie Lewis adored him. Bertie was a widowed black woman who weighed all of eighty pounds, had been on an oxygen tank for as long as I’d known her, and called me Honey. On seeing Eli with his long hair and beard, she grinned and announced it was like having Jesus come hisself to deliver her milk.
As we were leaving she clasped my hand in hers. Her palms felt dry and fragile as autumn leaves. “You hold on to that one now,” she said. “That’s one of the good Lord’s better creations. Don’t you let him outta your sight.”
Instead, I took to avoiding Eli altogether because I couldn’t talk to him without betraying the fact that I found him incredibly attractive.
Zoë was upset. She wanted to know why I didn’t like Eli.
“Who says I don’t like him?”
“No one says. It’s obvious to anyone who’s in the room when the two of you are forced to share it. You do everything in your power to avoid him. ” She reached into the last of the remaining grocery bags and stacked the leftovers on the shelf with the twenty other cans of peas and kidney beans. “When I asked him what was up, he said he didn’t know how to talk to you; he said you’re a nervous person.”
“I like him fine,” I insisted. “I treat him just like I treat you.”
“No, you treat him like an infestation. He’s our guest.” She slapped the empty bag against her knee to deflate it. “It wouldn’t kill you to treat him like one.”
“He’s not our guest, he’s your guest. And I’ve never treated him any different than I treat you.”
I rotated the cans she’d just put away so their labels faced outward.
“He said I was nervous?” I asked. “That’s a terrible thing to say about a person. Do you think I’m nervous?”
Zoë watched me situate the last can so the Green Giant on the carrots stood identical to the Green Giant on the corn. She answered carefully. “I don’t think you’re a calm person.”
“Eli doesn’t even know me.”
“Right.” She shrugged, already resigned to the fact that he and I would never get along. “So why should you care.”
“Sometimes I worry that people think I worry about what people think of me.”
She’d looked at me plaintively before rolling her eyes and leaving the pantry.
The next night she had to work the closing Sunday shift, leaving Eli and me home alone. I carried my stack of textbooks into the living room. He was sitting on the couch with his legs crossed the way women do, a posture that highlighted the length of his body to admirable effect. His reading glasses were wrong for his face, too square and thin-rimmed and out of decade.
“Mind if I work in here with you?”
“Sure.” He got up to flick on the second lamp. He returned to