Tayari's Blog: Do You Remember Amanda Davis?

I was the country mouse of the group. The others were all directly from New York, or from somewhere via the Big Apple. Abner was from San Francisco, but had his own sophistication since he worked for Gap. All the girls from NYC had on tiny down jackets, fitted and girly or funky wool coats that said, “I’m serious.” There I was, a southern girl with thinned blood from five years in Arizona, zipped into a huge down parka ordered from Land’s End. “Good for up to 40 below zero!”, boasted the catalog copy. Its only concession to fashion was that it was reversible.

I could write an essay about each of my new friends, but I want to spend this time remembering Amanda Davis. As many of you probably know, Amanda was killed in a plane crash on March 14,2003. We had planned to meet for lunch.

Amanda was a spunky southern woman who had lived in NYC and San Francisco. She showed me a photograph of a white foot with red toenails with the sea in the background. “That’s me in the south of France,” she told me. There have been countless remembrances of her that talk about her fire, her mother-bear kindness, and her way-out-of-no-way determination. I remember these things too.

While at MacDowell, she read from her then forthcoming novel, Wonder When You’ll Miss Me. I was sitting in the back of the room, but I could see her chest heaving as she took breaths to calm herself. As she read, I heard a little quake in her voice. When she finished reading, she looked up with a little smile as if to say, “Was that okay?” And it was, of course. The applause was warm and real.

On Christmas Day, Amanda and I shared a red velvet cake my mother sent to me via US Mail. We were the only people at the gathering who had even seen a red velvet cake, let alone crave it. We sat apart from the group and ate together and talked. She told me that she was pissed off that William Morrow wouldn’t give her a book tour and that her dad was going to fly her around in the Cessna. She would make her own tour. We all know how that sad story ended.

In March of that year, I was invited to read at the Virginia Book! festival in Charlottesville. There had been some drama concerning my scheduling. “Then when would you like to read?” the director asked me, more than a little bit snippy. “I want to read with Amanda Davis,” I said, not having seen the schedule. I just knew that whenever Amanda was reading would have to be a prime spot. She would have accepted nothing less than the best.

This is how I happened to get the call first. Amanda was on her way to Virginia when her father’s plane went down. The festival director remembering my request to read with Amanda called me with the news. I called the other friends of ours from the colony. We put our money together, making a donation to MacDowell in Amanda’s name. It wasn’t enough to buy a bench or a plaque or even a memorial sapling, but we gave what we could and we are proud of that.

I used to think about Amanda all the time. At first it was because she was all that anyone could talk about. There were high-profile obituaries in the NYT and MacSweeny’s. Also, Amanda was way ahead of the curve with her UGGs and iPod way before anyone else had ever heard of them. When these items became crazes, I thought of her then. Of course, she was on my mind at Bread Loaf as there is now a fellowship in her name. But I haven’t thought of her in a long time although I have one her famous thank you notes posted on my refrigerator.

Today, though, as I walked to work in the snow, wearing my ugly Land’s End Coat, UGGS and iPod, I thought of Amanda. I didn’t know her very well, or for long, but like so many other people, I miss her.