Amy Inspired (8 page)

Eli was not offended. “I promise not to go through your underwear drawer.” He lifted his coffee to his lips. “Figuratively or literally.”

This was the second time underwear had figured into our day’s conversation.

Zoë set a cup of fat-free tofu pudding in front of each of us. Eli stuck his spoon in the center of the colorless, gelatinous mound. It stood upright on its own.

“You’re banned from my panty drawer,” I said to him, “but you can certainly eat all the food you want.”

Later I wondered why I’d said “panty” instead of underwear, panty being such a frilly, flirtatious kind of word.

Arguably, Eli was attractive, with a face that belonged to someone younger than his thirty-two. Dressed more conservatively, his long hair trimmed and pulled back, you might notice the defined structure of his cheekbones; in the right circles, his narrow face and his deepset eyes might be considered vogue, even beautiful. But you didn’t immediately notice beauty. Too many other superficialities demanded your attention. His clothes were secondhand, well-matched but often stained with paint or plaster. He wore heavy jewelry, silver rings on his fingers and frayed hemp on his wrists and neck. Most distinct of all was the tattoo, a Celtic circular pattern that wound from shoulder to just below his elbow in dark green ink.

From his dress you could draw immediate conclusions that he made no effort to dispel: In high school he’d been a pothead; he’d grown up a kid who rode his skateboard on curbsides until the local police banned him from the harmless sport, and then he persisted anyway, with that air of martyrdom only an adolescent can achieve; he would have had parents with money who provoked a hatred of materialism almost as strong as his hatred of the government. He did not wear deodorant because he didn’t believe in masking the body’s natural functions with modern hygiene, which was really just another facade people put up. His girlfriend wore ankle-length dresses and did not shave her legs.

Not that any of this was true. He didn’t talk about himself, so there wasn’t a lot to go on.

During the last week of school he tried not to be an intrusion, and in return I tried not to notice that he was. He did little to upset the apartment. His furniture—what he’d salvaged of it—was in storage. Aside from his duffel bag, he’d brought one extra pair of shoes and the military khaki green knapsack he carried on his shoulder wherever he went. He only ate the food we expressly made for him. He kept his bathroom things in a Kroger bag stuffed under the futon.

“You know there are some students on campus talking about opening a gallery,” Zoë said. She was holding up the bottom of her mattress while I blasted it with Lysol. Every night since Eli had arrived, Zoë had scoured the Columbus craigslist for job openings and I’d scoured the mattresses for bedbugs. “I also saw an ad for lawn maintenance.”

“It’s December.”

“True.” She dropped the mattress and frowned. “Yeah, why would somebody post that?”

“Lift,” I commanded. She lifted the other side of the mattress. I fumigated.

She said, “I wonder if Kathryn has any openings at the library.”

I waved my hand in front of my face trying to dispel the antiseptic fog. “You’re not telling the landlady, of all people, about Eli.”

“Yeah. She wouldn’t be too thrilled about the idea of someone living with us.”

She said this as if it were news. Already we were making Eli park four blocks away so the sight of the old Volkswagen wouldn’t rouse suspicion. At that moment I realized two things: (1) Eli was not just between apartments, he was broke; (2) Eli was going to be staying for a very long time.

“Zoë.”

“Oh, sorry—lift.” She lifted the mattress. I pushed it back down.

“What do you mean
living
with us?”

She feigned innocence. “I didn’t mean anything. I mean he’s living with us until he finds a new place.”

“You said Christmas break. You said he just needed a place for the holiday.”

“I know what I said, but it’s just that everything’s gotten a little more complicated.”

“What about Michael,” I countered. “What does he think?”

“Michael? Why would he care? It’s not like I’m
attracted
to Eli.” She frowned. “That would be so clichéd, to be in love with Eli. Everybody’s in love with Eli.”

We heard the front door open and shut. The subject was closed.

I found Eli in the kitchen, investigating Zoë’s latest bulgur wheat soup experiment.

“Is it food?” he asked.

“It’s edible,” I said. “It’s nutritious.”

Tentatively, he lifted a spoonful to his mouth. The phone number written on the back of his hand was two days old. The ink had begun to fade, but I was willing to wager that the 9 and the 3 and the first letters of the owner’s name—CAL—might last to the weekend.

Considering the fact that he’d spent the last four weeks as live bait, I hadn’t minded his unkempt appearance at first; I’d begun to wonder, however, whether he hadn’t been wearing the same variation of two outfits since arriving. Or maybe it was his scent that alarmed me, an odor pungent but seductive, like upturned, sun-baked earth.

“I want to meet this Eli.” I held the phone an inch from my ear; Brian had my mother’s volume. He was five years younger than me but insisted on acting like a big brother. “Are you charging him rent?”

“No, we’re not charging him rent,” I said. “I
thought
he was just visiting for the weekend.”

“You need a timeline. A plan for eviction. You don’t just let people come live with you. What if your landlord finds out?”

“She won’t find out. You’re starting to sound like Mom.”

I hadn’t meant to talk about Eli and I certainly hadn’t meant to jeopardize my brother’s good mood. He and Marie were registering for wedding gifts. “Amebuger!” he’d shouted into the phone when he picked up. “Vacuum cleaner with or without the central dust segregator?”

Direct contact with my brother had become a rare thing since he started medical school. When he wasn’t in lecture, he was in the library. I couldn’t remember the last time we hadn’t held a conversation in whispers.

“How’s Marie doing?” I asked to change the subject.

He asked her. “She says she’s surviving, how are you? She’s still in family med, so her schedule is good. She’d be better if Mom wasn’t driving her crazy.”

“Wedding stuff?”

“You’d think napkin anagrams were the be-all end-all.”

“Monograms,” I corrected.

“Whatever. She’s making Marie nuts.”

We discussed their honeymoon plans and our mother’s relative insanity with all things wedding. When the conversation hit a lull, I worried the button on my blouse.

“Brian,” I began, tentative. “I told the chair of the department I would teach again next semester.”

There was a pause.

“So no planned escapes from Copenhagen?”

“I don’t have the money—or the prospects. Do you think it’s a mistake to stay?”

“A mistake? They pay you, right? And you get to write your stories, right? Sounds like a good setup to me.”

“I don’t think I’m any good at it.”

“
Amy
.You’re a great writer.”

“No, I mean the teaching. I’m terrible.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know it.”

“That’s enough. Those kids love you.”

“Really?” I asked piteously; Brian was the only person around with whom I had no shame.

“If nothing else, at least you have all the time in the world to write.” He spoke away from the receiver: “Baby! Rice cooker! We need this.
Need
it. No, I’m serious. Did you zap it?”

“I can let you go,” I said. He didn’t answer. I sighed and waited, twirling red circles on the back of a student’s essay.

He came back to the phone five minutes later. “Marie wants to know if you heard about Mom’s new boyfriend.”

I made him repeat what he’d just said.

“Well, maybe not boyfriend yet. But they’re going out. Every Friday night to Olive Garden.”

When I pressed him for details, he said I should just talk to Mom myself. He had to get back to stainless-steel cutlery but would call again later. I hung up reluctantly knowing he was unlikely to make good on his word. I’d lost my brother in two phases: first to medical school, then to a woman. I was lying when I pretended it didn’t affect me every time I called and got his voicemail.

Communicating with my family was like playing a game of telephone around a summer campfire, only there were no marshmallows and nobody was laughing. Approximately twenty-three hours after explaining the Eli situation to Brian, Mom called to inquire why in heaven’s name Zoë was giving lifts to gypsies.

“Grandma says he has some kind of biblical name. Abraham? Micah?”

“Are you talking about Eli?” I asked.

“That’s it. Eli. What’s this business about Eli.”

It took me half an hour to disentangle what Brian had said to Marie, what Marie mentioned to Grandma, and what Mom had chosen to hear from Grandma’s final account. I told her that one of Zoë’s close friends had come to visit for dinner, that he was attractive, educated, and talented. I did
not
tell her he had a tattoo, had flunked college before going back at twenty-eight to study art, and intended to stay at our apartment until he found a job, which was unlikely to happen anytime soon as he’d studied art. Under no circumstances would I allow my mother to know I was cohabiting with a man outside the holy bonds of matrimony, no matter how platonic or even antagonistic our relationship. This was the same woman who wouldn’t let a boy within two feet of my bedroom all through high school, protesting that there was nowhere to sit but on my bed.

In an effort to rewrite my mother’s first impressions of Eli, I was a bit too enthusiastic in my praise. Mom assumed I liked him, and immediately credited his visit to Providence: “It’s just like it was for me. If I hadn’t taken the job in Kentucky I’d never have hit your father on that exit ramp. I told you God still has you at that school for a reason. You were meant to meet this Eli.”

This was exactly what she had said the night I met Adam; she had yet to recant that theory. And I hardly considered her meeting Dad a precedent, considering the ultimate outcome of that fateful intersection

“I have had my own providential run-in,” she said coyly.

“Yeah, Brian mentioned something about this.”

“I was in the shopping market, trying to decide whether I wanted Gala apples or Jonathan—the Galas have not been very good lately for some reason, and they’re my favorites, but I finally had to switch to Jonathans—anyway, I had Jonathans in my bag and was just turning around to get more when I bumped right into Richard Moore. He said he was trying to get to the tangerines but had slipped because they’d mopped the floors, then I said I was trying to get apples but they were all so bruised and awful and
he
said the fruit has gone downhill since the new manager took over the store. You know he told the cashiers they don’t have to wear those little paper hats anymore?”

“Who’s Richard Moore?” I asked.

“The man from that little corner place that does my taxes.”

“
Mr.
Moore, the financial advisor?”