Curveball Prologue Part 2: Now Amy
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On the other side of the country, Amy brushed her hair in front of the bathroom mirror. A few black strands came loose and fell against the bathroom sink. She paused, plucked them out with slim, white fingers, scratching the porcelain with an unpolished nails, and delicately dangled them over the trash can before letting them go.
The apartment was quiet. Her bangs fell in her eyes; it was time for a trim. Serena would force her to the salon, and probably force her into a body scrub, facial, and massage as well. She’d probably pay for it, too, stating the entire time that Amy needed to relax.
She hadn’t been relaxed in years. Probably ever. A pricey massage wasn’t going to change that.
She squirted a few pumps of Cetaphil in her palm and washed her face, her too-long bangs getting in the way. A few splashes of water and her nightly beauty routine was finished.
The teakettle was going off. It was red and dented, an old relic, and the whistle was the same as it had been for decades. The whistle of the teakettle was probably one of the first sounds that she had heard. Her mother had it from before she was born, and she would brew ginger and chamomile to combat morning sickness. It was funny to think of her mother as pregnant with her and able-bodied, running around with a baby bump and a cup of tea, pacing the floor, reclining on a couch, putting her feet up.
Towards the end, the visiting nurse had thought to be nice and painted her mother’s toenails bright red. It was garish and disgusting, that cherry red color on her mother’s twisted, nearly atrophied feet. Her mother had never in her life painted her toenails. Amy made the nurse take it off.
She filled the tea basket with a rooibos-citrus blend and dropped it into an old clay mug with a chip on the handle. Another relic of her mother’s, one of the first gifts that Amy’s father had given her. She should have thrown it out, or broken it accidentally, so that she would have an excuse to get rid of it. But its rim was wide enough to accommodate a tea basket, so she kept it around.
Just like she kept the apartment around. She could have sold it after her mother passed, but then what? Move where? Chase her father to Portugal? He didn’t want her around when she was a child, there was probably no reason to reconnect with him as an adult. She didn’t even know what they could talk about. All of the art that her mother had left behind was his--one of these days, she would strip the walls and paint it over, and leave the paintings in a heap on the curb for the hipsters to salvage. Soon. Maybe in the spring.
The hospital bed had gone right away, as had the shower stool, and the wheelchair, and everything else that made living with a degenerative illness supposedly easier. Her mother had resisted all of it as long as she could. “Act sick, be sick,” she used to say, shuffling from the kitchen table to the counter, supporting her fading weight. She refused to use the wheelchair, which was good because it didn’t fit through doorways anyway. She would lean on Amy for support, sometimes a lot, when her brain started forgetting how to move her muscles, as she would painfully make her way back to her bedroom.
Amy had cleared that room out. Her old bedroom, too. She bought a new bed and moved it into the spare room. Serena helped her pick out new pillows and a new bedspread, and had worn her Marc Jacobs lounge pants and Acne silk knit t-shirt to help her paint it white, and did an absolutely terrible job doing the trim. Amy had to go back with paint thinner and do it again. She bought a desk and moved it into her old bedroom, and splurged on dark oak bookcases. Serena had given her an antique Tiffany lamp as a roomwarming gift. Her mother’s favorite chair was moved in, but not before reupholstering it. She bought books. Stacks of books. Hardly a day went by without her stopping at the used book stores around the neighborhood after she got off the train, or picking up a stack at the library (not often anymore, since she kept forgetting to return them), or have a box from Amazon waiting for her on the stoop.
Amy went through at least one a day. She absorbed them. Her mind would drift away from her family’s apartment, her mother’s favorite chair, and enter a world of elves and fairies, or Southern belles and gentlemen, or medieval midwives and heretics, or heroines who fought vampires or aliens in space. She was free to explore. She was free to explore now, but that would take so much. Booking tickets, packing, taking leave from the lab, arranging for transportation, checking into a hotel. Talking to strangers. Serena would go with her, of course she would, she actually had been after Amy to go on a vacation. She had been plugging Paris, or Venice, or Monaco. Serena had already been to all three, multiple times.
Instead, after her mom was gone, she built this room, and went into it, and then left it without leaving the house.
It was almost time to go, but then her phone rang.
Amy was probably the last person in the city (besides Carrie Bradshaw, and she was fictional) to still have a landline. The lab gave her a Blackberry that she kept fully charged and on her bedside table. The phone ringing now was a single line, rotary dial, and loud enough to hear through the walls. When her mother was still there, Amy kept it unplugged.
It was probably Serena. “Hello?”
“AMY!” It was Serena. “I called you like twice! Did you get rid of your answering machine?”
The answering machine was in her mother’s closet, its cord neatly wrapped around it. “I stopped using it months ago.”
“I know that. Let’s get you a new one. I emailed you too. Did you see my new Pins?”
She hadn’t. “Yes.”
“So do you like it?”
“Yes.”
“LIAR. It’s tight and sparkley, I was testing you.” Serena had created some online thing where she aggregated evening gowns and accessories for Amy to wear to the Red Ball, and probably added about two dozen things every hour. It was impossible to keep up with it. “Which ones do you like?”
“Uh, the black ones.” It seemed like a safe bet.
“Black? OK, cool! We should go all black with DIAMONDS. You can borrow mine. Jimmy Choos! When do you want to go shopping?”
Amy paused with the receiver to her ear as a smile escaped her. Serena had grown up, but hadn’t changed much. Her first day at the academy, when she was still new and terrified and wondering how she would adjust to actually living at school, the tiny girl with silvery blonde hair latched onto her like a glittery lampry and hadn’t let go since. HI! I’m Serena! I’m your best friend. Want to trade shoes? I like your hair!
“Oh, I don’t know. Whenever is convenient for you.” Actually, she had ordered a dress online, and planned on getting it taken in. Shopping with Serena meant lunch, then private fittings with designers, then dinner out at somewhere with Darien, and probably one of his “friends” that was conveniently single, then martinis and live jazz at a club that had a dress code and bottle service, and then Amy falling asleep in Serena’s guest room with the cat next to her, far away from her chair and books. That far away from her normalcy, and she might be convinced to go to Paris. “I think I already have a dress, though.”
“We’ll get shoes. And you have to try on my diamonds. Oh! And you’re wearing makeup to the Red Ball. You can’t say no!”
Amy sighed. That had often been her problem. “A little.”
“OK, good. I’ll make an appointment. You need a haircut, by the way. Just a little bit! I don’t mean you look bad, but you’d look so cute with more layers.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh! And we can do lunch at Blanca. And then--” Serena gave a rundown of what sounded like a very full afternoon without taking a breath. Amy was going to need a couple of days with the phone unplugged to prepare for it.
“Sounds great.” She checked the time. Where was Darien? Serena could talk for hours about nothing if no one was around to stop her.
“Good, then this Saturday.”
“That’s cutting it close.”
“Well then it will have to just be PERFECT.” She must have sensed Amy’s waning interest. “Oh, gotta go! Darien’s coming home soon and I want to try and make him an old fashioned. Like a fifties housewife. It will be neat, right?”
“He’ll love it.”
“OK, I’ve got to google that then. Talk to you later!” Serena would probably call at least four or five times between now and Saturday. She worried if she didn’t hear from Amy regularly.
She put the receiver down and picked up her cup. The steam had quieted down enough for her to handle it with bare hands. The floor was cold; she could put socks on, but it was getting late, and she itched to retreat to her sanctuary.
She turned off the lights to the rest of the house before shutting the door to the study. There was an alarm clock in there, just in case she fell asleep, even though she had never used it before. She always woke at dawn out of habit.
A bookmark was stuck halfway in a McCormack, the one she had a hard time finishing. Too many casualties, and she had a feeling the father wasn’t going to make it. She moved it off the pile as she sunk in the oversized chair and fished around for a new one. There was Tolkien in the pile, along with Gone with the Wind, her standbys on sleepless nights. More modern literature, not very good, since she had picked them up two-for-a-buck at the book shop. Something with an Oprah recommendation on the cover. Agatha Christie. Young Adult fiction. Something being made into a movie. Something with a dragon on the cover. A small paperback in the middle of the pile won: a historical romance starring a cast of fierce Highlanders and their ladies. It would be nice to see Scotland. She settled a throw blanket around her chilly feet, and started to read.