Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [57]
I asked Eli to drop me off at the front door in the future.
Unfortunately, Eli had less and less time to taxi me to campus. He had been assigned a few shifts at the T-shirt press to help supplement his meager income at The Brewery. I was left entirely dependent on Zoë to get around town.
Zoë’s schedule was as unpredictable as Eli’s, and she’d grown uncharacteristically penurious with her time. Thursday I had to limp directly from my third-story office to the parking lot where she sat waiting in my car, painting her fingernails to placate boredom she made no effort to hide. Friday I was forced to linger at the office as late as seven, more and more frustrated every time she called to say one more thing had come up, could I give her five seconds.
Saturday she informed me we had two hours in which to complete my day’s errands, a list that had grown typically long as the week dragged on:
To (MUST) Do
SCHOOL
grade AT LEAST 10 papers
lesson plans
photocopy orders for ENG 101
upload new grades
read creative writing stories for Monday
HOUSE/ MISC.
grocery: essentials, plus tampons (not cardboard kind)
post office: mail new submissions, book of stamps, postmark bills
shower
FINANCES
balance checkbook
file bill invoices
FUN
shower
I always scrambled on the weekends to keep up with class and complete piling lists of chores, which I listed by priority from most important to least. Generally speaking, school took precedence over finances (as it was the means by which I had finances) and finances over house. Everything took precedence over leisure.
“Where are we going first?” Zoë slid the key into the ignition and clicked her seat belt into place. I’d insisted that she wear it.
“First the store, then the office, and we’ll swing around the coffee shop on the way back,” I said.
She took the piece of paper I was holding. “What is this?”
“A list,” I said innocently. It had continued to grow.
“Amy! This is thirty things long.”
“It is not.”
“We are not going to all these places.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“We only have two hours.”
“I don’t have to get it all done. Just the things underlined in red—those are priority.”
She looked at me in disbelief. Or disgust. It was difficult to tell.
“You color-code these?”
“If you’re going to make fun, I’ll have Everett help me.”
“No,” she said, taking the list from me with barely restrained resentment. “I’ll help you.”
She couldn’t stand the thought of being a bad Samaritan. She would drive me if I needed it, she would do the chores that usually fell to me (meaning all of them), and she would wait on me hand and sprained foot. She had admirable motivations, but inadequate compassion. In her resolve to be of Christian help, she became a tyrant.
I didn’t blame her; you couldn’t help the personality you were born with. But I hated that my schedule was contingent upon her goodwill and availability. I hated that suddenly everything I did annoyed her.
While waiting for me to finish dressing Monday morning so she could drop me off at school, she surveyed the many to-do lists scattered about my desk. “Have you ever thought about living one day in your life without plotting it all out beforehand?”
“Zoë, I told you. If I don’t write things down, I forget.”
She snatched a sticky note off the wall. “Quiet time—5:20.You schedule prayer?”
“You make appointments for dates, don’t you? Why not schedule prayer?”
The argument did not appeal to her.
Added to the burden of helping me around town, her writing wasn’t going well. She was constantly locked in her room either talking to her parents or writing. She typed all night, only to delete everything first thing in the morning. She would never admit to writer’s block. It was all I could do not to gloat.
At night I peered around her door. “Can I get you anything?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said without looking up from her laptop.
“I can make coffee,” I added sweetly. “Some caffeine might help your thoughts flow.”
We both knew I was rubbing it in.
“Is the power out?” Everett asked when he