Amy Falls Down (14 page)

“Has Lemming agreed to do it?” she asked.

“Leaming,” said Harry. “Yes, she has.”

“But only if you don’t want to,” said Carla, while Harry muttered in the background.

“You said you had two,” said Amy. “Who’s the other?”

There was a two-beat silence. “It’s not exactly a teacher,” Carla finally said. “It’s a writing coach.”

“A what?”

“A writing coach. You know. She’s a motivational speaker, like a life coach. Actually, she’s a life coach too.”

“Oh my God.”

“Holly Hamm,” said Harry.

“She sounds like a Christmas entrée.”

“You can Google her,” said Harry. “It’s not important. Our point is, the point of this call, really, we do have a proposition for you that we think you’ll like.”

Amy had already Googled Holly Hamm, whose professionally constructed website was listed first on a page full of holiday recipe sites. Holly, while not exactly porcine, resembled a festive Christmas ornament, with a megawatt smile and springy brown hair. She looked like a prep school gym teacher on speed. One of her college degrees (from “Beauchamp University”) purported to be in physical education. She was also a licensed practical nurse, and she was a diplomate, whatever that meant, in “dietetics,” “human psychology,” and “therapeutic choreography.” Though the page promoted her as a writing coach, she was experienced in all sorts of coaching, including, as Carla had mentioned, the coaching of life itself, for which she was also “certified.” She had presented writing seminars internationally, most recently in Rangoon. Her site claimed that she “wore many hats.” She was equally proficient at fencing, storytelling, and dressage.

“This is horseshit,” said Amy.

Carla gasped. Amy never swore.

“It says here that her weekend-long coaching seminars ‘show aspiring writers how to turn their experiences into fiction that sells.’ How can you even think about hiring this person? She’s a con artist.”

“I see your point,” said Harry, “but she fills rooms. She can help us widen our base.”

“Amy,” said Carla, “I don’t like Marva Leaming either, but Holly’s the real deal. She can put butts in seats.”

“How very inspiring,” said Amy. “Look, I have work to do. I’d wish you luck, but that would be immoral. If my name appears in any of your ads, please remove it.”

“Wait!”

Amy hung up. For the next few minutes she tried to shrug the whole thing off, and then laugh it away, but the laughter was hollow and the shrug plain embarrassing. No one was watching. She dragged Alphonse out of a deep sleep and out into the street, force-marching him uphill while she talked to herself. They passed the coyote spot and kept going, all the way to the big rock at the summit of the cul-de-sac. There she came to the gross realization that her feelings were hurt.

How could she have spent so much time and energy on these people and have them come away knowing so little about her and what she valued, exercising such awful judgment, willing to do business with characters like Leaming and Hamm? Carla and Harry were, she hated to admit, her friends, and they didn’t know her at all. This was what hurt: not the hiring of her old rival or the idea of paying a charlatan to milk the suckers, but the fact that they hadn’t realized how offended she would be. Nothing she had taught them had stuck. She had imagined herself real in their minds—not deeply understood, as only Max had understood her, but still distinguishable from other people, unique, not quite a cipher—and all the while she had had only two dimensions. Just a name and a shape and a cluster of attributes. She was the writing teacher, the eccentric with the dog, the Sniper’s nemesis. She was a flat character, and while she had never aspired to more from the world at large, she had apparently expected more from her friends. How humiliating. How childish.

By the time Alphonse dragged her back indoors, she had formulated a plan of action. There were six messages on her answering machine, all of which she erased unheard. Obviously they were craven apologies. She had hung up on them, and even Carla and Harry could not have mistaken her anger for anything else. She called them back. Carla picked up on the first ring.

“Amy, I’m so sorry! I never meant—”

“Here’s the deal,” said Amy. “Hire whoever you want to work with the twenty new people, the people
lined up around the block,
assuming there really are twenty new people lined up around the block, assuming there really is a block, but go ahead and give them Marva Leaming, Coach Hamm, Mahatma Kane Jeeves, whoever the hell you want, I really don’t care, but the rule is, they are to have no contact whatsoever with the six retreat people: Ricky, Surtees, Tiffany, Robetussien, Brie, and that Skinny Bitch person, although I’d love to throw her to the Lemmings, and if you can figure out a way to do that, go ahead. I’ll come down once a month and do a workshop with those six alone. The rest of the time, we’ll work together online. I want half of whatever money you take in. If the Lemmings get their mitts on even one of my people, the deal’s off, and I’m gone, with half the money anyway. Take it or leave it.”

“And your name on the brochure,” said Harry.

“Absolutely not. I won’t have my name on the same piece of paper with those clowns.” Amy was beginning to breathe normally. Briefly she wished Maxine could hear her. She’d be so impressed. Half the money! Amy had never demanded money in her life.

“How about two brochures,” said clever Harry. “One for the retreat; one for the ongoing workshop/seminar/motivational thing. Your name will be on the retreat brochure, right under the title.”

“Which is what?”

“We’re thinking of ‘Something Colony,’” said Carla. “Amy, I’m really, really sorry.”

“Like a penal colony?” asked Amy. “Devil’s Island?”

“So far,” said Harry B, “all we have is Birdhouse Writers’ Colony.”

“Too wordy.”

“That’s what I said,” said Carla.

“Exactly,” said Harry. “We need one word, like Breadloaf.”

“How about Meatloaf?”

“She’s still pissed off,” said Carla.

“Cheese Log.”

Harry laughed.

“I’m all right, Carla,” Amy said. She had indeed calmed down, partly because she felt “empowered,” an icky word but useful on the fly, and partly because she was distracted by wordplay. “How about Croatoan?”

“That sounds familiar,” said Harry.

“It’s a mystery word carved into a tree in Virginia in 1590. An entire English colony went missing and left only the word behind.”

“So we’d just call it Croatoan?”

“Yes. With the subtitle ‘The Missing Writers’ Colony.’”

“I like it,” said Harry.

“So do I,” said Carla, “although won’t some people think it’s just a joke?”

Amy said nothing.

“Oh, I get it!” said Carla. “Amy, you’re so funny.”

“Bye,” said Amy.

“I’ll send you the paperwork,” said Harry B.

*   *   *

Later that day, Amy wrote down “Croatoan” and “You Don’t Know Me” in her notebook, briefly touched base with Maxine, who said something new might be in the works with NPR, and fed herself and her dog, all the while thinking about Harry B and how competent and efficient the man was. As soon as she read him the riot act about what she was willing to do and the terms under which she would do it, he came up with the idea of two brochures, neatly separating her from the other two people on their payroll. Later still, she recalled that before she had slammed down the phone on the two of them, Harry had mentioned a proposition, one he was sure she’d like. She’d forgotten all about it. What had it been? she wondered. And why hadn’t he countered with it, when she presented her list of terms?

She looked over at Alphonse, who was busy cleaning his front paws. She loved to watch him do this, how his long tongue would curl delicately around and in between each toe, over and over. Sometimes he did this at night in the dark, waking up to do his ablutions, as though prompted by conscience, the licking sounds soft and comforting to hear. He must have had a great mother. “You’re a good dog,” she told him. He rewarded her, as usual, with a mordant gaze; his version of “I know.” “Hey, there’s another dead horse in the bathtub,” she told him fondly, and simultaneously realized the truth: that Harry, and possibly even Carla, had herded her into that list of demands. No, not Carla, she wasn’t that clever, but Harry was a trained mediator. No wonder he was ready with the “two brochures” solution. Harry’s proposition was the very thing she came up with herself. Maybe not all of it—maybe he hadn’t planned on giving her half the money. Maybe he’d planned on giving her more! “Sonofa
bitch,
” Amy said. Alphonse raised one eyebrow and turned back to his paws.

Harry had known she would never work with Marva Leaming or a writing coach. He had let Carla worry about that possibility, thus adding to the verisimilitude of the whole telephone conversation, which, she could see now, had amounted to a kind of stealth negotiation. Still, the more she thought about it, the less outraged she became. He had also known something else about Amy: that she cared about the students she already had. That she would never abandon them to the ministrations of these people. Harry knew her, a little bit. So, in her own juvenile way, did Carla. Amy hadn’t been wrong about them after all.

She lay awake for a time thinking about that, and how, after Max died, she had neither wanted nor needed to be known by anyone. He had known her as well, Amy guessed, as it was possible to know anybody; he often said that she was the only person in the world who knew him, and she had no reason to doubt him. He was fond of his lovers, some of them, but that was all. She couldn’t remember the names of hers. Sex was best between strangers. Love was possible only through knowledge. Or perhaps knowledge only through love. In the beginning, it was
I know what you’re up to. I know what you did. I know you like that guy.
And then
I know you feel like hell. I know you can do better than that. I know your childhood stories, your most embarrassing moment, what frightens you more than anything. I know what makes you laugh.
Their friends banned them from charades. She’d get up there and signal “book title” and “three words” and he’d say
“Appointment at Appomattox.”
“I know you,” he said at the end. “I know you so much.”

What did it mean that now, after all these years, she wanted to be known again?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Wheel of Tide

Amy had been working so hard on new fiction that she’d paid less attention than usual to her blog, GO AWAY. She had kept it for years without making regular entries in it: months might go by before she thought of a new posting idea, or a new list to include, to supplement the original lists. The lists were never intended to be anything but amusing. The list of lists included:

FUNNY LOOKING WORDS (like “disembosom”)

FUNNY SOUNDING WORDS (like “phlebotomy”)

HYBRID TITLES (“Arms and the Man Who Came to Dinner”)

ODD HEADLINES (“Man Eating Catfish Displayed in Memphis Aquarium”)

MOST INTRIGUING OPENING PARAGRAPHS OF REAL NEWS STORIES INVOLVING PEOPLE SMUGGLING THINGS IN THEIR PANTS

WORDS THAT ARE THEORETICALLY INDEPENDENT BUT ACTUALLY ONLY EVER USED WITH ONE SPECIFIC OTHER WORD (“trove”)

ADJECTIVES THAT ONLY EVER MODIFY ONE THING (“tumescent”)

NOUNS THAT APPARENTLY CAN ONLY BE PLURAL (examples included “fantods” and “tongs”)

TITLES OF BOOKS PUBLISHED TEN YEARS AGO THAT YOU CAN NAME OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD

The previous December, a few weeks prior the Birdbath Incident, Amy had begun a new list:

REALISTIC NOVEL PLOTS

under which she included storylines from writing exercises she had once used:

A devoted couple suffers a devastating car crash from which only the man recovers, the woman dying at the scene. He is crippled by grief and guilt. At night he scans the skies, as though she might suddenly appear to him. “Where are you?” he demands. But her voice does not whisper in his ear, nor does her ghost appear in dreams or mirrors, nor does he even spot, out of the corner of his eye, passersby whom he mistakes for her. Memories of her inevitably fade away, until he needs to look at a picture in order to recall her face. The end.

A poor but innovative and talented boy enters a hot air balloon construction contest in which all other contestants have access to expensive, high-tech equipment. The boy has only rudimentary materials: bagstring, paraffin, and Mylar scavenged from Dumpsters and painstakingly assembled and glued. The other contestants snort with derision when they see the finished entry and even try to get him disqualified, without success, since the judges both like and pity the boy. On the day of the contest, his patchwork hot air balloon comes in last place, receiving a hastily composed honorable mention which is accidentally misspelled as an “Honorable Memtion.” The end.

A boy and girl meet in college, date, fall in love, and break up senior year. They go on to marry other people and raise families, but neither is truly happy. They meet again at their twenty-fifth reunion. He has been divorced for five years; her husband has been unfaithful to her throughout their marriage, and she is in the process of obtaining a divorce. Initially, they do not hit it off. She finds him stiff and prematurely aged; her bitterness turns him off. But over the next two years they find excuses to call or email each other, and ultimately they find themselves deeply in love—which, they admit, they had not been when they were young. Their marriage is a low-key affair, but they splurge on their honeymoon hotel in Marrakesh. On the second night, their wing of the hotel catches fire, and they both die horribly. The end.

As was her custom, Amy had posted the list and then forgotten about it. When, while recovering from her injuries, she looked in on GO AWAY in the New Year, she was disturbed by the number and tenor of comments it had prompted. She was used to pleasant, often thoughtful, seldom snarky comments and suggestions. Occasionally other writers would visit her page and chime in, adding to her lists. In this case, though, the list was a bomb. Readers misunderstood her purpose. Comments included: “I must say I never took you for a proponent of ‘sick humor.’ Remind me never to read another one of your books”; “These are cheap shots, Amy”; “What’s your point? Are you allergic to happy endings, or what?”; “This would be precocious if you were twelve years old. As it is, it’s just very sad.” The most discomfiting comment was: “WTF!!! LMAO! GFY AimEEE!” She understood the first two acronyms but had to consult Carla for the third. “It probably means ‘Good for you,’” she said. “Or it could mean, you know, ‘Go do something to yourself.’ But I’m sure not.”