Amy Inspired (33 page)

“If we are known only to those who know us now and are forgotten soon after they too pass away, what do we have to give our lives weight and meaning?

“ ‘I have seen the burden God has laid on men,’ says Solomon in Ecclesiastes.‘He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.’ ”

He returned to the pulpit, shuffled the notes he hadn’t consulted once. “Now, I know you all can’t stand much more of this. ‘Pastor Maddock,’ you want to say, ‘we’ve got dinner in the oven.’ Just hold on to your seats, I’m almost done. And believe it or not, this is a message of hope. Because if you notice, the Scriptures say that
God
has set eternity in the heart of man.”

He braced his hands against either side of the pulpit. “That aching in your body that feels almost like a physical hurt. God has made it so. That passion to be known and loved not as a name or by an accomplishment or by a mistake—that desire to be known as you, yourself, in all your individual thoughts and dreams and worries and hopes and foibles—God has made it so. That need to wrap yourself around Time, to defeat death, to outlive this life—God has made it so. He has made it so that you will find recognition in Him.”

The pianist began to play. In automatic unison, we stood to sing the closing hymn. I was deeply stirred by the things Pastor Maddock had said and blinked back to the present moment feeling somewhat outside myself.

Dazed as I was, it took me a few moments to recognize a familiar looking girl slipping out the back doors after the last prayer had been said and the congregation began to file orderly from their pews. I hurried to the foyer and searched over the crowd of bustling families, but I’d no sooner seen Ashley Mulligan and she was gone.

After a lunch at the deli across the street, I took the bus to central campus and followed the sidewalk past the academic buildings to Leonard Chapel. The chapel was a whitewashed room with a steeple and narrow rows of many-colored stained-glass windows. It did not inspire religious feeling, but it was quiet and isolated, a good place to think. My thoughts wandered to Eli, but I quickly corralled them back. I refused to dwell on our fight; I didn’t want to consider the possibility that what he’d said about me had been true. I prayed, instead, for Ashley and then for Zoë and her parents. I prayed until I was sure I’d been in the chapel an hour. My phone informed me it had been exactly seventeen minutes. Prayer usually had this effect on me.

I took the trail down into the woods, following the creek until the path crossed the water by way of a rickety wooden bridge. I was skeptical of Pastor Maddock’s message. The need for popularity or fame or recognition had always been a point of guilt, not of hope; I had never before considered the possibility that the desire to be known was Spirit-inspired.

The well-worn trail wound and divided. When the path finally met an open field I was surprised to find myself on north campus, a soccer field away from the crowded neighborhood of underclassmen dorms.

It began to rain while I waited at the nearest bus stop. When the bus finally appeared ten minutes later, I was soaked to the skin, my arms covered in goose bumps. I didn’t mind the rain. It felt good, God’s opened arms throwing liquid blessing into mine.

Michael’s car was in the driveway when I arrived home. I hadn’t seen him since Zoë left. He ran to meet me under the porch awning.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, as if I had no right to be out alone past dark.

“Out.” I was cold and wet and quite aware that my body was broadcasting both of these facts through my shirt. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why are you here?” I asked.

“I need to talk to you about something—to ask a favor, really.”

“Okay.”

“It’s serious.”

I sat on the porch to take off my shoes. I wrung out my socks one at a time.

Michael grew impatient. “Can we go inside?”

“Just give me a minute.”

He sat in one of the lawn chairs. He clasped his hands. He leaned forward, wiped his mouth, clasped his hands again.

“Michael, what is wrong with you?”

“It’s about Zoë and me,” he said. “I need you to talk to her for me.”

I picked bits of gravel from between my toes. “Why can’t you talk to her?”

“It’s complicated. You know, she’s already upset about her mom. If I try to tell her how I feel, she’ll freak out. But she’ll listen to you.”

“Tell her what, then?”

“Amy, look, don’t think I don’t care.” He turned to me with the most wounded expression. “We’re just not working. She’s way out there, I’m here. We never talk—and when we do—I don’t know, I never know what to say … I just can’t do it. Our lives are different now.”

I stopped rolling my pant legs up. “Her mom has
cancer
. She doesn’t need you to talk; she needs you just to be there.”

“But I can’t be there, that’s the thing.”

“Your boss would give you a few days off. You could visit.”

“I can’t just cancel everything and be always driving to Chicago.”

“That’s exactly what you can do.”

A series of faces passed before me: Adam, the narcissist; Eli, the delinquent; and now Michael, the ever moronic. The men I knew seemed different enough at first, but ultimately one proved as fickle as the other, and the plot never varied: men showing up, men exiting.

I asked if he was leaving her.

“I’m not cut out for this kind of stuff.”

“Michael, no one knows what to do in times like this. There’s no right or wrong thing to do or say—you just need to be there.”

He shook his head.

“You can’t do this to her,” I whispered. I didn’t trust myself to raise my voice. “Wait until her mom gets through these last treatments. Wait until she’s home at least, so you can talk to her in person.”

Michael studied the side of his shoe. Mud from his sprint to the porch had sullied his fresh white soles. He wiped them clean on the edge of the porch. “I think we need to end things now while we’re ahead. We had a good run, you know? We were good for each other for a while. Now we need to move on.”

He’d already made up his mind. And here he was, trying to use me to buffer the blow.

I stood so fast I hit my head on the wind chime dangling from the porch roof. He reached the door first, insisted on holding it open for me.

“Does that mean you won’t talk to her?”

“Tell her yourself,” I said, slamming the door in his face.

I considered calling Zoë, but decided against it. Michael was above all a fickle person. There was always the chance that he would change his mind. Secretly, though, I wished he would break up with her, so she could find a pleasant, intelligent man who deserved her.

To calm myself down, I made a cup of tea. I sat at the kitchen table, intent on organizing the week’s unopened mail. I saved the envelope postmarked from the
Southwest Literary Review
for last.

Dear Author:

THANK YOU for your submission to the Southwest Literary Review. We find, however, that your manuscript does not meet our current needs. We wish you the best of luck placing your work elsewhere.

Sincerely,

The Editors

I sat at the table, stewing in my irritation, staring until the tea went cold. The envelope included a brochure for an upcoming writers’ conference,
Getting Published for the At Home Writer
. It was a $700 overnight workshop.

I scribbled out
the At Home Writer
and then wrote
Dummies
in bold caps. I stared at the phrase.

I went to my bedroom, opened my laptop and typed:

GETTING PUBLISHED FOR DUMMIES

Writer’s Creed:

With my pen

(laptop, word processor, or otherwise)

I will pursue truth and beauty

for the improvement of my mind and the edification of

humanity.

If this results in personal fame and glory,

I am resigned.

Chapter One: The Inflatable Ego

So you want to navigate the slush pile (which in your mind resembles a very large pool of pink Icee) to that great pot of glittering gold success: publication. Aspiring author, this book is for you!

We at Getting Published for Dummies believe that if given the right tools and pointed in the right direction, any and every striving writer can publish their fledgling manuscript to become king of the hill,
Oprah Winfrey Show
-bound stars. No more late nights wondering if your sorry flesh will amount to anything! No more counting your greasy tips and rejection slips! Turn to page two, buckle up, and kiss anonymity good-bye!

I stared at the blinking cursor. In workshop we frequently complained (with no trifling satisfaction) how everyone we knew wanted to write a book. We were like Americans in summertime Paris, bemoaning the rush of tourists, guilty of the very trespass we found so distasteful. We were in competition, always. We forgot why we’d started the entire journey in the first place.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when being recognized for my work had begun to matter. There’d been a time when I cared only about the work itself, when I’d have spent hours happily sweating in the corner of an old attic just for the joy of seeing my thoughts materialize on the page. Back then it had been play. As a child I would have recited my tales to a brick wall for the pleasure of storytelling.

When had my being heard become such an imperative?

… If the author has deluded him- or herself into believing that writing is a selfless act of discovery or a vehicle of human communication or the expression of the soul’s deepest longing etc., s/he cannot deny that s/he also hopes the book will become a ticket to the Interesting Life.

It behooves us at this point to define the Interesting Life (IL). For the aspiring novelist, the IL is a vague conglomeration of things, most commonly consisting of flights to great cities (which, to date, the author has only ever seen in pretty night-scape posters), interviews on television talk shows, book signings, and the endowment of a glistening aura/radiant beauty and importance upon his/her person, the kind paparazzi photograph.

The IL is analogous to and interchangeable with the Tragic Life, the Rags to Riches Life, the Inspirational Life and so forth. While it should be noted that each has its identifiable differences, they all spring primarily from the greed of the competitive ego …

I wrote with the rejection letter open on the desk beside me. I debated taking the letter to work and recording it in my blue binder along with the other carefully tabulated rejections.

Instead, I walked to the sink, shoved the letter down the garbage disposal, and chunked the form up.

19

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Sent: Thursday 4.19.07 12:04 PM

Subject: Final Excerpt

Attachment: Getting Published for Dummies part2

Elements of a Publishable Novel

In alphabetical order

Character:
Any person who plays a part in the narrative