Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [63]
Whether it was my failure to inquire after her mother or my failure to stiff-arm Michael’s new, ridiculous flirtation, I’d taken her affection for granted and by virtue of my nonchalance, and without a single conscious intention to do so, I’d lost it.
“I’m sorry,” I said without knowing for sure which offense I was apologizing for.
Zoë’s mom was violently ill. She couldn’t eat without agony. A sip of chicken soup left her in bed for hours. A bite of fish sent her retching in the toilet. Walking from the bathroom back to her bed required all the energy she had.
As bad as Fay’s health was, it was Zoë’s appetite I worried about. She couldn’t eat a slice of fruit without feeling guilty that she could so readily enjoy a pleasure that had been robbed from her mother. For the first time I noticed the rings beneath her eyes, how her once tightest pants were now falling down at the waist.
Eli offered to drive her home for the weekend, but she didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. She took the first available bus to Chicago.
“You’ll be all right?” she asked as she tossed makeup from her vanity into her suitcase.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“I mean you two. You’re not going to be weird about being left alone with him?” She eyed Eli as he walked by the open doorway. He was pacing. Jillian had called two hours ago and he was still on the phone, a new record.
“Of course not,” I said.
He glanced in the room and grimaced. I grimaced back. I’d never spoken to Jillian, but I imagined her voice shrill and piercing like the sound of his phone and its incessant ringing.
Zoë called the next night. “Inflammation of the bowel,” she said. “I think it’s a tumor.”
“Did they say ‘tumor’?” Eli asked, leaning unnecessarily toward the speaker on my phone.
“They didn’t have to. What else could it be?”
“What can they do?” I asked.
“Surgery.”
We only spoke for a few minutes. When I hung up, Eli ran his hand over his mouth. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
I nodded. The fear in her voice had been unmistakable: She was terrified of what they might find if they opened her mother up.
The only thing that cheered Zoë was the prospect of a party. Her UrbanStyle article was set to print the first of March, one day before my thirtieth birthday. Eli decided that as soon as she got back we should have one big party to celebrate both. The way Zoë beamed at the idea, I wished I’d thought of it.
I tried to drum up excitement, for Zoë’s sake and in gratitude to Eli, but I wasn’t thrilled about turning thirty. I made my mother promise she wouldn’t do anything extravagant for my birthday. She mailed gifts anyway, a sunlamp to counteract my seasonal affective disorder and a Luna Lady Pro X1000 Hair Straightener. There was a note taped to the box:
I know you have no luck with your hair, but this is a brand new, top of the line product and it works! You can see a demonstration on Internet! TRY IT!! It will make your hair smooth like Lindsay Johnson’s! Love XOXOX–Mom.
“What is this, to iron your sleeves?” Eli asked. He clamped the flat iron on his shirt cuff.
“To iron your hair,” I explained.
“What’s wrong with your hair?”
While I tried the Straightener, Eli sat on the bathtub ledge to watch with equal parts fascination and horror.
“Will it go back?” he asked.
“It’s not permanent,” I said. “You just wash your hair and it goes curly again.”
I pressed the iron down on a plait of hair. There was a sizzling sound, like steaks on a griddle. Eli winced.
“Can’t you burn your hair?”
“Of course not,” I said, worried that I would.
While I worked my way slowly from one side of my scalp to the other, he worked on talking me out of it. He said my hair reminded him of a Pre-Raphaelite muse. He also, for a fact, knew plenty of girls who worked hard to have hair half as wild as mine.
This was the first time I’d heard the word wild applied to my hair in