Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [80]
In a freshmen dorm, weekends determined social status: If you braved every weekend on campus, you passed the litmus test. Those who went home frequently to medicate homesickness or to be with high school sweethearts were eventually looked down upon for their confused loyalties. Added to her frequent trips home, Ashley was quiet, a personality trait frequently mistaken for snobbery in pretty girls. Unfortunately, it was not hard to imagine her roommates disliking her on every count.
“Do you have other siblings?” I asked, wincing to hear myself say “other.”
“I have an older brother and an older sister.They’re both married and have kids. They come home for Christmas and summer breaks, but we’re not real close. Mostly it’s just Dad and me.”
I decided not to ask about the unmentioned mother.
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s okay. He works a lot. Do you think we could maybe not talk about this?” she said. “I came to talk about my story.”
“Of course. Let’s talk about the story.”
I was grateful to get back on a subject on which I was proficient. I couldn’t tell Ashley how to alleviate her depression, but I could tell her how to make the imagery of a metaphor fit its emotional context. I could teach her how to organize sentences for improved rhythm. I could show her how to take the mess of emotions in her head and create a work of art, a thing she could control and craft, though the grief itself remained unyielding.
We read through the story aloud, discussing my suggestions for revision page by page. At first, I worried that certain sections would surface emotions neither of us would know how to handle, but she remained the aloof and divested artist, picking at the presentation of emotion while completely divorced—at least momentarily—from the emotion itself.
“Why don’t you rework it as we’ve talked about,” I said when we’d finished. “Then we can meet again before you submit the application. I’ll e-mail you the guidelines for the competition; you can fill all that information out yourself.”
“Thanks, Ms. Gallagher.” She buttoned up her coat, picked up her bag.
“Ashley …” I hesitated. “I don’t mean to catch you off guard with this, but if you ever want a place to get away, to find people to talk to, I go to this church—the one across from the local library. We’d be happy to have you.”
She said she’d think about it. She didn’t seem at all surprised by the invitation.
It had shocked me.
I dreamed about Eli. We were walking along campus. He asked me to come to his place. “What about Jillian?” I asked. “Oh,” he said. “She died.” I went to the visitation with him, but the person in the casket was not Jillian at all: It was my father. “I wasn’t ready for this,” I told Eli. He was juggling bowling pins. I was angry with him for not caring more. “Nobody is,” he said.
Oddly, I felt no sorrow at seeing my father in a casket. I only felt a slight twinge of regret. How sad for someone else; his girlfriend, I knew, would miss him.
Outside of my conversations with Ashley, I took efforts to avoid my students. I made myself scarce in the office. I graded at home and did my lesson plans at The Brewery. If I needed copies, I sent my work orders through Everett to keep from interacting with Lonnie. Since the fateful Copenhagen Campus Chronicler interview, he’d begun leaving things in my mailbox: copies of the newspaper, fliers announcing student activities in which he participated, Hershey’s kisses. These gifts came with the fifty handouts I’d requested for ENG 102 or with the Greenberg story I’d needed copied for my creative writers. Eventually, they came of their own accord. One day a pack of Orbit gum, another day a follow-up installment of Neil C. Barker. I took the gifts without saying thank you or even acknowledging their presence. It was like being courted by Boo Radley.
So Friday when I checked my mailbox and found a manila envelope merely marked Amy I was more horrified than pleased. I picked it up with forefinger and thumb, threw it in my bag, and returned to my office to open it in the dark.
To my surprise, the envelope contained