Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [62]
I asked, “Do you think you’d be with him if he weren’t so handsome?”
“A person can’t be responsible for good genes any more than responsible for bad ones. It’s such a double standard. Everyone says not to judge a person on their appearance, but they judge goodlooking people all the time. Nice body, handsome face, ipso facto: vapid meathead.”
“Don’t get so defensive. I was just joking.”
“No. You were serious.” She dabbed polka dots on the rock with a detail brush. “If you really got to know Michael you’d see him for what he is. All that macho stuff—he does that because that’s the way he thinks he’s supposed to be. That’s what people expect of him.”
“The fact that he plays to people’s expectations shows just how self-conscious he is. He should be himself.”
“We all play to people’s expectations, Amy.”
“Not like he does.”
“Really?” She twirled her brush in a Mason jar of water. “Why do you pray before all the meals you eat?”
“Because it’s a gesture of gratitude.”
“No,” she said. “You do it because people are watching. You rarely pray for your food at home. You only do it in public.”
I frowned. “So.”
“So, it’s a performance.” She gathered blue on her newly cleaned brush. “You do it because you think that’s what makes people think you’re a good Christian.”
Where was this coming from?
“Zoë, I don’t do it to look like a good Christian,” I countered. “I do it to be a good Christian.”
She groaned in frustration. “That’s my point. You try so hard to be a good Christian. It’s not about being good. It’s not about being Christian.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
She turned to face me. There was a streak of white paint on her eyebrow. I checked the temptation to laugh.
“Everyone’s so obsessed with acting right and saying the right things and praying at the right times and in all the right ways. That’s all surface stuff; it has nothing to do with anything.”
“Are you saying I’m a hypocrite because I don’t pray over all my meals?”
“Actually, that’s a complete misinterpretation of what I’m saying.”
“It would help if you would stop talking so abstractly.”
“I’m not trying to be abstract—” Reaching across the table for the red paint, she’d accidentally tipped over her rinse water. She hastily set the jar aright and ran to the kitchen for something to clean up the mess.
“We need some more napkins,” she said, trying to dab up the blue-stained water with the only two left.
Automatically, I got up and clomped to the kitchen to add napkins to the pad of paper on the fridge.
“What are you doing?” Zoë asked.
“What?”
I knew what, but I said it anyway.
“Don’t write it down.”
I wrote it down. She stormed off to her room.
I waited for the clacking of the laptop keys to stop before knocking on her door. She was belly flat on her bed, earphones on.
“Hey.”
She hit pause on her iPod. “Hey.”
I sat in her office chair. I twirled right and left.
“Sorry about all that,” she said.
“It’s all right.”
She rolled over on her back, laying her arm over her forehead.
“Is it the writing?” I asked.
“Yes. Sort of.” She twisted the earphone cord around her forefinger.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your mom?” I asked.
She didn’t even pause to think. “You didn’t ask.”
“So I’m asking now.”
She sat up. She set her iPod on her Starry Night nightstand. She’d painted the homage to Van Gogh so thick that the paint peaked in custard-soft tips. “She’s on a new chemo regimen and she’s reacting a lot worse than usual. It used to be she could get over the nausea after two or three days, but now she’s doubling over every time she takes a bite of a cracker.”
“Is it a new drug?”
Zoë shook her head. “She’s been on this before.”
I waited for a further explanation. She didn’t offer one. Her silence was a slap in the face. I realized that she wasn’t annoyed with me and she wasn’t just being moody. She was angry.
“I’m tired of feeling like you don’t take us very seriously,” she said. “And that hurts, you know? I know what you think of him.” It took me a moment to understand we were talking