Pretty Amy (23 page)

I stopped walking and looked at her. I could have just repeated those words, said them easily, like I used to when I was little. I could have said what she wanted me to say and done what she wanted me to do. But it wasn’t that easy. I wanted it to be that easy, but it wasn’t.

Eventually she gave up and drove past me, her red taillights bright and hot as coals at the bottom of a fire as she made her way down the street.

As I walked home, I couldn’t help thinking about Cassie being reduced to a girl sitting in a car with her head down, waiting for her mother. Saying she was sorry over and over again. Cassie was the tough one, the stubborn one.

I was the one who should have been able to apologize. Who should have been able to tell my mother the words she wanted to hear. Maybe I was more stubborn than I realized.

Twenty-four

The following night was Moons Over My Hammy
for Connor and his wife and chocolate milkshakes for me. Connor had been right—I didn’t have a choice. I had to go to dinner and to their church group with them, just like I had to do all the other annoying things my mother told me to.

I’d never admit it, but it was mostly because I didn’t know what else
to
do.

I called Aaron as Connor beeped in my driveway, hoping he might come to my rescue, but he didn’t answer his phone. He probably didn’t know it was me. I called again as my mother banged on the basement door. It went straight to voice mail and I hung up. What message was I supposed to leave?
Meet me at Denny’s
?

I sat across the table from Connor’s wife, trying to figure out what she saw in Connor. Not like she was any prize, but she was female and she was breathing. Considering the age of their children, they must have met in high school. I wondered if he used to surprise her in parking lots, if they used to have hot and heavy make-out sessions in cars parked in dark places.

She had a chin-length bob and apricot-blond hair. The color you get using an at-home color kit, which, other than usually turning out orange, illustrates like nothing else that you are completely uncomfortable with yourself. I knew that because I’d used them.

She wore one of those plaid flannel overall dresses with a yellow turtleneck that made her look like Big Bird from the neck up. I couldn’t help feeling like I looked pretty good sitting next to her. Maybe she could be my new best friend. I tried not to wonder whether Lila had thought something similar the night we first met.

I looked over at the blue daisies Connor’s wife had brought for me. I guess blue daisies signified a last-ditch effort with a burgeoning convict, like red meant love and yellow meant friendship. I considered going back to Blooming Maples to give them to Mrs. Mortar, since then, at least, I wouldn’t have them around to remind me that the only person who had ever bought me flowers had been Connor’s wife.

“You could at least be grateful this whole prayer circle is for you,” Connor said between bites of his sandwich.

I sipped on my milkshake. “Don’t they have anything better to do? Like drinking strychnine or speaking in tongues?”

“That is very closed-minded of you,” he said.

“I’m Jewish, Connor,” I reminded him again, in case he’d forgotten.

“Well,” he said, wiping his mouth, “look where that has gotten you.”

“This night is not about converting me,” I said, spooning up chocolate ice cream from the bottom of the glass.

“The night’s not over yet,” he said.

His wife stayed silent, but she ordered me another chocolate milkshake.

“Do you guys eat like this all the time?” I asked, starting on my second milkshake, even though I felt like I might puke. I really hadn’t eaten much since the arrest. It felt good to have a stomach full of chocolate.

“Only on special occasions,” his wife said, finally breaking her silence, turning to look at Connor and rubbing his shoulder.

Hopefully this prayer circle really did drink strychnine, so I could kill myself as soon as we got there.

…

I hated to admit it, but part of the reason I didn’t want to go to Connor’s prayer circle was because I was afraid of churches. Any time I went to one, I was immediately made aware of my
otherness.

Sure, every church I’d been to looked the same as my temple at first, brick on the outside, waxy tiled floors on the inside, hallways flanked by classrooms and offices, and school-grade public bathrooms. But then I would enter the sanctuary and see that big cross hanging on the wall, and I’d realize it was all different and I was all different. There was nothing more terrifying than being completely unlike everyone around you.

I felt that enough in my secular life.

Luckily, the prayer circle was in the rec hall, so at least I could pretend I wasn’t in a church—that is, until they started praying.

Connor paused for a second before we entered, just long enough for me to see that all the women were dressed exactly like his wife. Like they had taken a big pile of those overall dresses that were on sale and had them all blessed.

Connor put himself between his wife and me, then put his arms around both of us. I elbowed him. “I was forced to agree to praying, not to touching.”

“Touch is one of the most powerful healers.”

“So is morphine. I’ll take that instead.” I walked ahead of them to a seat in one of the metal folding chairs they had arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. I crossed my arms and legs and harrumphed, letting everyone know I was not a willing participant.

A woman in a blue-and-green-plaid overall dress sat next to me and said, “You must be Amy.”

I wanted to say something smart, but I couldn’t figure out what, so I just nodded.

“We get strangers here, but not too often,” she said, like some maid in a haunted mansion taking you up to your room, where you’ll be killed that night. “We are just so glad to be able to help you with this decision.”

“I don’t know how much help you’ll be,” I said.

“Well, not us. Him,” she said, looking up.

The craziest thing about all of this—and there were many crazy things: the fact that I was in a church, the fact that I was with Connor and wasn’t at work, the fact that I was with a bunch of Dress Barn rejects, the fact that within minutes I was going to be praying to Jesus to ask Him for guidance—was the fact that this was my mother’s idea.

My mother, who was an image Jew, which is a Jew who only cares as much about her Judaism as the person she is trying to prove it to, was sending me to the feet of Jesus for help. She must truly have run out of options.

“Let’s get started,” some guy said, cupping his hands around his mouth to make sure everyone could hear. I guess this was supposed to include the Man himself.

Everyone sat down in the circle of chairs, alternating man, woman, man, woman, and I felt instantaneously uncomfortable. Not because it was obvious I was the only one here who was not adhering to God’s Perfect Plan, but because my stomach hurt and not in the
tummy hurts
sort of way. It hurt in the
dysentery
sort of way.

Someone said something about taking your neighbor’s hand, but I was afraid that if I let go of my stomach, which I was clutching like a ball in my lap, it would explode, and by explode, well, just guess.

Then Connor said, “Jesus, we come to you today for guidance for our sister Amy.”

I think I groaned, because everyone looked over at me—either that, or they were trying to picture me as their sister, superimposing an orangey bob and my own overall dress.

“She seeks your wisdom in making a decision with immense gravity over the rest of her life.”

I groaned again, and Connor whispered, “It’s okay.” Pulling me to him and shaking me, like an older brother giving your whole body a noogie.

It caused whatever had been struggling to escape from inside my stomach to start coming loose. I got up and ran for the bathroom.

“Where are you going?” Connor yelled after me.

I didn’t bother explaining. I was afraid that if I took the time to stop, my soul wouldn’t have been the only thing this congregation was cleaning up.

I practically pulled the bathroom door from its hinges as I ran inside, saying my own little prayer, thanking whoever was responsible for putting the bathroom right next to the rec hall.

As I sat on the toilet, I couldn’t help wondering whether God was punishing me. Not that everything that had happened already hadn’t made me consider it, but until that night I hadn’t actually been purposely taunting Him. Maybe this was His way of telling me that I had even less control over things than I’d thought.

There was a knock at the bathroom door. It was Connor’s wife, asking me if I was all right.

“Fine,” I said, even though my stomach was saying something very different.

I heard someone come up behind her and heard her whisper, “Just a case of the Loosey Gooseys,” and then, “Hell hath no fury like lactose. That’s why Connor and I stay away from it.”

Then I heard that someone chuckle.

Connor’s wife opened the bathroom door. “Do you need anything?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I just groaned. Even if I could talk, I was not about to have a conversation with this woman while I was on the toilet.

“Some water, some juice?”

I said nothing, just answered with the sounds of someone whose large intestine is turning to liquid.

“She’ll be okay. We’ll just move everyone out here into the hallway,” she said as she closed the door.

To which I answered by puking onto the floor in front of me, which seemed more than appropriate.

I sat there, dying on the toilet, as a group of Christians I didn’t even know huddled in a circle in the hallway outside of the bathroom and prayed that their Lord Jesus would give me the wisdom to make the right decision. If that isn’t enough to turn someone into an atheist, I don’t know what is.

…

Connor called my mother and told her what had happened. Which was why I was surprised that, when I found her waiting for me at our front door, it was with a scowl instead of with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. I was glad Joe wasn’t out on his bike. At least my humiliation would be reserved for family members and a few select members of God’s assembly.

She was yelling before I even got inside the house. I could see her through the storm door, her mouth moving like a fish out of water gasping for breath. “This is real, Amy. As much as you like to play around, this is real.”

“Mom, I’m sick.”

“I’m tired of your excuses.”

I thought about something to say in response, but I didn’t really have the energy. Well, maybe I had the energy, but I certainly didn’t have the time. I ran past her to the comfort of my bathroom.

“What? Do you think it will be
cool
to go to jail?” my mother yelled from outside the bathroom door. She leaned into it and turned the handle. I was glad that even in my hurry to get inside, I hadn’t forgotten my habit of locking it.

“Mom, go away,” I said. Not like I would have responded to this anyway. It was my mother’s favorite chorus during a bitchfest—
If
everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?

“Why is this locked?” she asked, like she always did.

Usually I would have been in there smoking, or putting on way too much makeup, or trying on the thong Lila had given me, but now my mother was attempting to barge in on me when I was food-poisoning sick because she wanted me to turn on my best friends to avoid my own punishment.

When had things gotten so crazy?

“I already told Dick Simon and you and Dad and now Connor and everyone he knows—I’m not interested.”

Why were they all making such a big deal out of this? I mean, I knew it was a big deal, but it felt like everyone cared a lot more about it than I did.

Like everything else.

“Fine. Get convicted, then. See if I care.”

“Mom, you’re making things worse,” I said.

“
I’m
making things worse,” she said. “That’s a riot.”
She started laughing.

I didn’t respond. This was what she always did. Why bother talking when she didn’t listen anyway? I grabbed the trash can next to the toilet and threw up.

She was supposed to be getting me a warm washcloth and some toast; she was supposed to be asking me if I was okay, if I needed anything, like Connor’s wife had.

But maybe there were things I was supposed to be doing, too.

She knocked. “Open the door. I want to talk to you,” she said.

“Mom, gross,” I said.

She knocked again. “Amy, I mean it. Open the door.”

I flushed the toilet, if only so I could shut out her voice.

“Amy, are you still there?”

I wasn’t sure why she was asking. Did she think I’d flushed myself down the toilet? The sad thing was that if it were a possibility, I might have considered it in that moment. Gone down the pipes and floated up again into a new life, with a new me and new parents and two new best friends.