by Blythe Stone
I should’ve made her mac and cheese. Something she’d love beyond a doubt.
I took a sip of the wine and leaned back.
I hadn’t an appetite, not really. Self-hatred could kind of steal that from you...
Pretty soon she’d be full and I’d be grasping at straws and trying to pretend I was perfectly fine.
“Did you try this?” I asked, dipping a leaf and bringing it over to her, feeding it to her and watching her copy me.
“No but it’s different. I like it but it’s not something I’d ever make for myself because I don’t know how. I’m glad I have you. I know that in ten years my metabolism isn’t going to be able to handle burgers and pizza so I’ll have you to keep me from killing myself with bad food.”
“Burgers and pizza aren’t bad,” I said. Everything in moderation was good. I ate those things too I just didn’t eat them for every meal. I needed things a bit lighter. I made all this food and I couldn’t even eat it right now. That’s how light I needed things.
I picked at my fish and forced a few bites. It was good and I didn’t really need the butter though, I pretended for Avery. I knew the butter probably made the whole thing worth it for her. New things were hard to take sometimes, no matter if they were good for you. Tuna was so much fishier than halibut. It surprised me that she could prefer tuna when halibut existed too. There was a reason it was expensive.
“Are we gonna play?” I asked, needing something to focus on.
“Sure, if you really want to. I know it’s kind of dull and silly. If you want to do something else it’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“No, we should play,” I pushed. Last time I played a board game it was with a few little kids at some gala. I was semi-drunk but they were cute and they taught me a few things. Naturally, I’d probably never see them again. Not that they were my friends or anything. It’s just strange how I meet so many people and have these super brief encounters that are both personal and strange only to maybe bump into them again in a few years for a hello, how are you, goodbye and that's all.
I didn’t like that about my life. I didn’t like that I’d only had seemingly superficial connections. I was starting to realize though that it wasn’t exactly my fault. I was just strange.
Avery seemed excited. She set the game up fast.
I cut the rest of my fish up and threw it into the salsa knowing I’d love it that way.
“Okay,” I said.
“So are you a Mrs. Peacock or a Colonel Mustard?” She asked.
“I dunno,” I laughed. “What do you think I am?”
“You're both but you can't be so I'm giving you Mrs. Peacock.”
“And lemme guess, you’re Miss Scarlet?” I joked.
“Are you kidding me?”
“What? Is that offensive somehow?”
“Obviously, I'm Professor Plum.”
“And why is that obvious?!” I asked. This was already absurd.
“Because I look better in purple, duh.”
“I didn’t know we were supposed to get dressed for this,” I teased, side-eyeing her. “Stodgy Professor Plum probably walks around in a thick sports coat carrying only a cigar and an air about him. You really think that’s you?”
“I was thinking more dapper, young, and smart in a oatmeal cardigan with a purple button down underneath.”
She handed me one of the pads that came in the game to note clues on.
“An updated Professor Plum circa 2016.”
“Okay then, forget Mrs. Peacock. If you’re not about to be the young attractive and cunning femme fatale I am all for becoming the Miss Scarlet to your Professor Plum.”
“Fair point. Characters are assigned. You’re a far better Miss Scarlet than I could be anyway.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a dig,” I said, getting sucked in.
She shuffled through the cards, sorting them and doing certain things.
I watched her place a few cards in an envelope and then wait.
“This game is supposed to have like 4 players. Let’s each play two.”
“Fine,” I said. I didn’t care about the stupid game.
I sized her up and thought of her in that outfit she described. Professor Avery Plum. If she were ever my professor I would drive her up the wall.
“What are you smirking about?” She asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell her how annoying I could actually be.
“No, you have to tell me,” she forced.
“I was thinking of how horrible I would be to you if you were ever my teacher.”
“You’re nice to your teachers,” she said.
“Not all of them,” I laughed. That thought was certainly hilarious though. I guess she didn’t know me at all.
I’d chased away several teachers, made them scared to teach their classes. I'd even been told in confidence, more than once, that sometimes they all talk about me.
I just couldn’t stand for bullshit and lies. I couldn’t stand for someone pretending they knew what they were doing when they didn’t. It bothered me. It bothered me because it hurt other people and other people weren’t aware they were being wronged.
“Explain,” Avery said.
“A lot of teachers are underqualified for what they teach.”
“Okay…” She said.
I wasn’t about to bring up Ben. Ben’s problems weren’t about his teaching philosophies or his curriculum. Ben’s problems were moral and reprehensible.
What I was talking about were the others. I’d had so many teachers who hurt the children in their care through mental abuse. So many bully teachers who tried to put their fingers on kids and push them down. Teachers who crushed a child's ability to learn or their comfort or their motivation. All of those things were unnecessary and obscene.
Teachers like that I usually called out right away.
Of course I missed the most important one. Ben was too good at pretending to do right by us all. All except one…
“Hey,” Avery said, noticing my darkness. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I said, annoyed at myself for having so many thoughts.
“Olivia…”
“I usually call teachers out right away on their shit. I’m usually on them, as the saying goes, like flies on shit.”
“That’s pretty hilarious,” she laughed.
“No,” I said, swallowing. “I missed the most harmful one...” It wasn't funny.
“You can’t think like that,” she said, taking a spare piece up in her hand and playing with it.
“I can’t think that,” I repeated, scoffing as I ran the tip of my tongue over the edges of my teeth “I can’t think that,” I said again, running my hands through my hair to try and recover from the phrase. “I can’t think about letting you down,” I added on, staring at her. “I can’t think a lot of things, right?” I was upset. “So, what can I think?!” I wondered. What was allowed?
“Hey,” she said, her chin lifting to signal I had hurt her.
“Sorry,” I said, still upset but trying not to be.
“Don’t apologize,” she shook her head, warning me.
“You really expect me to just feel normal right now, don’t you?” It was absurd.
“Avery, I can’t even eat…” I leaned back and held my stomach with my arm, using my free hand to motion at my wreck of remains, all the uneaten left.
At this rate, the only way I’d feel normal was if I slept all week and we didn’t talk.
As usual, the only time we were really okay was when we were oblivious or when we were having sex.
Nothing had changed since Friday. If anything, we’d gotten worse…
I let out a shaky breath and brought my hand to my face and held it to keep myself from crying again.
We kept living like this, kept having the best day and then the worse. It just wasn’t fair. If we were dealing with things at all it was a big mess. Why was that?
A cruel trick. Life was doing this to
us. Life kept on pushing.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm still not over before and that makes me feel unwell. We were really having the best day,” I remembered sadly, looking over at her.
I got up and knew I needed to do something. I started to walk the rooms, all the ones we hadn't been in yet. Avery followed. She was probably wondering what I was doing, what I was looking for. Her pace was slower, more careful. But I needed to stop being consumed by what she wanted. I needed to let myself feel.
We got to this one room and it was a library/study with a baby-grand piano for show and walls of books encasing it all. I walked to the baby-grand and pulled the lid up over the strings. There was a large desk and an old typewriter right near the window. I went there.
Books lined the walls but they were mostly easily obtained vintage classics and old encyclopedias that no one would ever really want to use for anything other than entertainment. One educated look told me something, the study was more for show than anything else. But it was nice. The perfect little space. I wished I had a room like this. A room for music and literature all at once. This one was obviously put together by the sellers and not altered much after that. Nobody loved this room but I instantly did.
I walked around the desk and sat down in the chair, pulling my body under the elevated wood and setting the paper to type.
As soon as I started typing I couldn't stop.
I let myself zone out and just write while Avery cased the room. Eventually she found a book to hold and sat down on the dressy sofa at my side.
When I stopped, I felt a little better. I got up and looked to her. “Now you,” I said, walking over to her and handing her the paper I’d typed on front to back. I offered her my hand and helped her up. Once she sat down I stood behind her with my hands on her shoulders. She was looking down in her lap, reading my letter. “You don’t have to,” I said. I just needed to clear my head.
Chapter Twenty
Avery
Dear Avery,
You don’t deserve my silence or my speech. You deserve what we had earlier. You deserve that all the time.
When I’m feeling like this I feel I’m betraying you.
When I’m feeling like this I feel I’m doing you wrong.
I want you to have days like today. Like today before the panic in me hit. I want you to have endless hours of feeling so full you spill over and I can see the happiness brimming in every corner of your eyes.
Sometimes I look at you and I know I’ve done nothing good enough in my life to deserve your smile or your company.
Sometimes you just breathe or just speak and I feel exactly the same way; overwhelmed.
I let you down… Let you fall. I feel so unworthy right now.
The whole time I thought I was holding you up. I thought I was carrying you.
I know you don’t want to talk about this. I know you can’t right now.
I just want you to know I’m sorry and I want to be the kind of person who can tell what’s happening even if you never say…
When I think about those dreams and where they take you I get really scared and angry. I want to be able to sink into you so completely that I can be there for you even in sleep.
Please don’t be upset with me right now. I know I’m not being fun or easy. I keep trying but it’s hard…
I need to let my thoughts run and it’s hard to do that while also trying to pretend I’m okay.
I know you want me to accept your words. I know you want me to not feel bad about not knowing but I am going to feel bad, at least for a little while. This thing wasn’t something small I fucked up on. This was a monumental fuck up on my part. You’ve been living this whole hellish life in silence and I haven’t been there.
And I know, when we can help each other things will get easier and it’ll help all that but right now we’re in limbo again and I feel at a loss. So please don’t be upset with me for wanting to fix a thing I can’t go back and fix. It’s very frustrating, it’s all frustrating. I can’t go back and be a better person for you and right now that’s all I want to be able to do.
And I know any normal person could just play a game and laugh and forget but I can’t, not truthfully. You’ve had so many dark days and dark nights, so many thoughts I’ve known nothing about. I could’ve helped if I knew. I can help now but it just feels like you’ve gone through so much hell without me and I was there with you and it was so wrong of me not to know I could be better.
I love you baby… More than anything…
I just need a little time to take everything in. We’ve been talking a lot, saying things we both should’ve said a long time ago. It’s been a lot of very important information all at once. It’s been really intense… I just don’t want to miss important things, forget them, breeze over them. I don’t want to misunderstand you or leave you lonely. I need time to think and I need you to know that isn’t something I can push off, I’ll be doing it now no matter what we do this week. My brain doesn’t have a switch. It just doesn’t. And I’m sorry about that, I really am, because I know how you want everything to be light and perfect right now and I’m making that impossible for you.
I just know, I can’t promise you happiness right now. I want to make you happy but I can’t promise you that I’m not going through things and having a hard time with everything I’ve learned and everything we’ve talked about since Friday afternoon.
I want to be enough for you.
I want to be enough.
It just hurts when I’m not.
I hope you can understand that…
Olivia
XoXoX
By the time I finished reading I noticed that Olivia had started playing the unloved piano off in the corner. She was playing Clair De Lune by Debussy and getting lost in the sound. Sometimes when she played her face was like stone and her eyes like slick glass as they stared at seemingly nothing at all.
Once she finished that song she started up Spring Waltz by Chopin. I looked back to the typewriter and read her words again. She was forever asking herself for impossible perfection while proclaiming that she was anything but perfect. I didn’t know if I could say anything that would help. I understood because I’d often find myself wishing I was better for her.
Dear Olivia,
We are none of us perfect. Expectations rarely match reality but you have exceeded mine in every way. I cannot fault you in any way for how you took my mental absence. This is the nature of living with this trauma. I am rendered unable to tell you what I need or what I am feeling at times because I do not know myself.
You are the golden star in a black night. You help guide me, hold me with your warmth and light, and even in your darker aspects I find solace and comfort. You do not need to BE anything for me. I ask you not to because it is you that I need and want. There is beauty in our chaos. I would not trade that for the ease of constant happiness because it’s too much and I fear I would become complacent and unappreciative.
I prefer you, faults and great attributes together. I love your turns of mood and all that come with them. No one could excite such feeling in me. I am not a normal soul and neither are you. We were a match married by some force bigger than ourselves. You must feel what your heart and soul dictates but I will be here to comfort you in times that you feel lost or sad, even if it is with your own actions in regard to me.
I love you more than my own life. That may not be wise to some but knowledge is defeated by that kind of love. Pure, undiluted, and addictive. The kind that has the power to drive one mad with happiness and makes the ride into that madness fulfilling.
With all imaginable love,
Avery
I stopped typing and watched her fingers move softly over the piano keys, playing out the final notes of the waltz. Her music enabled me to write that letter. Without it I would have been unmoved and stagnant in my strange mental state.
The paper released from the typewriter easily and it felt thin but heavy with importance as I car
ried it over to her, leaning my body against hers from behind and placing the page on the piano in front of her.
My hands moved to her hair while she read and my eyes turned to the windows. Through which, I could see the little bit of wilderness at the side of the property. It had a wild beauty that I wanted to touch but I could not be distracted. Olivia was finishing my short letter.
When I looked down on her I noticed she had her hand over her nose and mouth and she’d been trying not to cry. She stood up and moved around the bench to hug me with her whole self.
“I love you,” she said almost hollowly. I felt her lips turn into my neck as one of her hands held her there and she kissed me in that very dangerous space, her tongue teased openly as she took, lighting me up inside within an instant.
“Your words are so beautiful,” she spoke. “The way you think… The way you are...”
“I love you too,” I affirmed.
I felt the vibration of her praise in my mind and could only be thankful to be gifted her. The one person in the world who could love me exactly in the right way. She thought more of me than she did herself. In some ways I wished it were not true but then she would not be my Olivia and I loved her for who she was.
My life, I no longer only had my own, I shared it with her. We were individuals on one journey. She was correct that we were on the same path and in some ways I might lead with an unintentional directional dominance but she could always guide our way.
“I’m glad it’s you that I go through these things with. You make all of it bearable.” Her hand snuck beneath my shirt as she kissed me, stealing me away. “Touch me,” I told her.
I felt her holding me, both hands on my skin as she asked for more without asking, falling back in my arms, her mouth opening more as I pushed to kiss her back with the same force she’d given me.
She gasped for air, falling into me and pushing me back against the wall. One of her hands moved up into my hair and cradled the back of my head while her other hand roamed and touched, pushing into my ribs and dragging downward. “You’re everything,” she said, panting hard as she kissed me again, this time trapping me so I couldn’t move unless I really tried.