Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

She liked her job, and she was good at it, and that made her feel capable and secure. Success—first academic, later professional—had always made her feel that way: safe.

This is an area I struggle with and often how I have felt.

“I’m not an idiot.” Sylvia rolled her eyes as she started toward school. “I just like my social activism with a little style.”

Me.

Her parents had always disdained big displays of any kind of emotion—anger, despair, joy, love—from anyone. But especially their only child. Kate had learned early on the value of swallowing her feelings whole.

‘What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil,’

She was looking at me like I was supposed to have all these questions about this love of hers. I didn’t. It would have been easier to come up with something if Sylvia hadn’t said pretty much the exact same thing about three different guys. And the really crazy thing was, she wasn’t even lying. Sylvia believed what she was saying. But that was part of what made Sylvia so great, too. She had this ginormous, out-of-control heart that gobbled up everything in its path. It was nice to be near it, especially because sometimes I could barely feel my own heart beating beneath the weight of my hyperactive brain.

that. I could live my whole life with a hole where my dad was supposed to go, as long as my mom would be there to fill it.

“Listen, Lola’s only five, and even I know that being a parent is awful ninety-five percent of the time,” Seth said. “As far as I can tell, it’s that last five percent that keeps the human race from dying out. Four parts blinding terror, one part perfection. It’s like mainlining heroin. One taste of life on that edge and you’re hooked.”

uncertainty is never helpful. It allows for too much . . . rumination.