Erase by Fiction

I woke up to a buzz on the table and a shift in the air.

My eyes strained against their lids, puffy as all hell. I felt as faint as the light leaking through the blinds, nothing new, but something else left an imprint as I jolted into consciousness.

A buzz erupted again. My phone, charging on a white side table, slipped artificial light into my field of vision to compliment the rays from the window. The sheets on the other side of the bed—deliciously cold—hissed as I pulled myself up to read the notification.

Mom. Good Morning.

Good morning to you, too. The big bubble of impending text hovered at the bottom of the screen. She never, ever opened with declaring the morning would be good unless she was going to give me a reason for it not to be.

It’s been weeks. Answer me.

Stacks, stacks of undone study guides and mock lesson plans peeked at me from my desk.

I’m coming to speak with you. Try to clean at least a little.

I straightened my back. She lived two hours away.

The kitchen. I knew I had dishes piled up, dust bunnies bouncing in corners, and the ghosts of crumbs yet to be wiped. Junior year had long since caught up with me, but she didn’t care. She’d still have a cow.

Almost drunkenly, I swung my legs out from under the comforter and stumbled toward the door. Coffee first, coffee first.

But my mind screeched to a halt and began sputtering as soon as I stepped into the kitchen.

Margie. She sat at the table. Still. Twelve hours later, and she snored softly—only the lightest of sounds permeating through the kitchen. Her soft brown curls splayed in a fan around her face, unkempt like they always were. A rainbow of annotated papers and books with cracked spines littered the space, scribbles in languages like English and Latin and both Ancient and Modern Greek, languages I could immediately recognize precisely because of Margie’s colorful ramblings. Her backpack sat, deflated, on the floor next to her chair. All of her belongings asserted such a strong presence that I could barely tell the ugly, piss-yellow color of the pine table and chair set underneath it all.

Coffee, coffee. The craving sharpened at the sight of her.

I padded over to the coffeemaker on the other side of the kitchen, careful not to wake her. My tile was cold from a night without touch, and its presence against my sent goosebumps up my arms. I shivered.

My hand shook as I scooped ground coffee into the basket. The possibilities the day held unfolded before me, each worse than the last. I imagined Mom bursting through the front door, seeing my papers mingled with Margie like they hadn’t in nearly two months. I imagined the questions, the interrogations, the shame, the temple-rubbing. I filled up the water tank.

If it was soon, Mom could wake Margie. We would have no time to talk, to have The Conversation, before Mom would dig her claws into the juiciest treat: a situation she could fix, a dependent she could help. Then we would sit, like stupid kids, while I would groggily recall the hours I spent rehearsing my stupid monologue in the shower, a stupid speech I would never get to deliver.

That decided it. I had to do it today. I had to talk to her.

The press of a small button began a minute-long series of soft hisses from the coffee machine.

I had left Margie in the kitchen around 10:00 pm, scribbling away, complimenting my tea with lemon and honey I’d reluctantly handed over. She took no cream, holding the mug against her freckled cheek to warm it, the brownish gray liquid simmering like her eyes. She’d smiled as I closed my bedroom door behind me.

The coffeemaker chirped, signaling that the pot was brewed. I helped myself to a cup, pulled the half-and-half out of the fridge, and poured one dollop into the black coffee. The unmixed cream spun and swirled inside the rich, translucent brew. My stomach churned right alongside it.

It had to stop. I had to end it. Margie waltzing into my apartment, acting like I couldn’t see the divots under her eyes or her uneven nails, longer than I’ve ever seen them. Nails that scraped against the doorknob as she entered, skimming my defenses like fat off water and flinging them against the wall, making my words stick like the eyeliner crusting on her waterline. Last night, she smiled and thanked me for the tea and the WiFi and the quiet, because her roommates were really so loud and she didn’t know what she’d do without me.

Birds began chirping outside the lone kitchen window, one which sent scattered rays onto Margie’s snoring body.

She wanted to be without me. That was the kicker. Usually I wasn’t able to escape her shining eyes and overwhelming presence, but two months ago there was a buzz and blue light leaking into my line of vision and a single line saying exactly what she’ll do without me, it’s not me it’s her, she’ll see me around.

The ceramic mug warmed my hands. Its handle had lumps, bruises from when I’d made it in a pinch pot class with Margie last summer. I’d tried to glaze it rainbow, but instead it ended up looking like a shiny, muddy mess. At least it was leak-proof.

I took another sip of the coffee, wondering when the hell I should wake Margie and whether I’d have the balls to say what I’ve been gathering up the courage to ever since that one text two months ago.

A stray paper, scanning some lines of poetry, fluttered near Margie’s nose every time she exhaled. My chest hurt with each movement.

I’d never seen Margie so quiet as when she was sleeping. She always reacted in ways that demanded to be felt, sucking in all the oxygen in a room, leaving the other occupants breathless from pure proximity. She wielded words like the pencils she twirled between her fingers, like tools spread out of a velvet blanket, their sole purpose to increase her knowledge and draw those around her closer.

That grip had reassuring pressure. A solid presence next to me, it allowed me to lean to the side for the past two years. The only issue was the fall after it disappeared, with no chance to regain balance.

From my perch at the counter I could see that Margie wore a shirt of mine that she’d never given back. It was gray, from my high school, and two sizes too big on her. I had to stop myself from walking over and rubbing the material between my fingers, the same gray jersey as my sheets, as warm as they used to be…

The unfinished lesson plans, final projects, shoeboxes, tutoring logs, and dishes loomed in my mind’s eye. My mother, with the same colorless complexion as mine, only drier, loomed alongside them.

My and Margie’s friends weaseled their way in there, too. Rebecca, Siobhan, Johanna. Wrist tattoos and head-scratching and murmurs after the breakup about giving us time, not wanting things to be weird, that maybe we should take a break from Friday night dinners for a few weeks to figure things out. Rebecca averting her eyes and Johanna full-on looking away and Siobhan tilting her head in sympathy because they’ve been there, oh sweetie they’ve been there, with one of us or with the other. We can’t afford to lose one another over something silly, now, can we? We’ve survived this long.

The bed was always warm one way or another.

Margie twitched in her sleep on the kitchen table. I couldn’t leave her there for much longer, no matter how much I loved seeing her muted in a peaceful moment. There was my mother’s colorless eyes and Kia Soul to think about, plugging down Route 29 to coax something, anything out of me after two months of what she had wished for not going her way.

I approached Margie, close enough to see the crusts of old eyeliner still remaining on translucent eyelids. I shook her shoulder, trying my best not to scare her. “Margie.” No response. “Margie!”

Her head shot up, sending papers and pens of every color askew. “What’s wrong? What happened?” she muttered, seeing past me with bleary eyes.

A lump formed in my throat. “You fell asleep again,” I said.

Margie groaned. “I was going to leave by midnight this time. I promised myself.” She turned her pleading eyes to me. “I promised you!”

I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. I hadn’t bothered getting dressed or tidying myself before leaving my bedroom. I was wearing no bra, no shoes, and my shirt was so faded and had so many small holes in it that it no longer said “PRINCE WILLIAM HIGH SWIM,” just “PR E W G S M.”

“I know you promised,” I said, avoiding her eyes. God damn it. I walked back over to the coffee pot and leaned against the counter. I need space between me and her, I thought. I can’t trust myself.

She rubbed her eyes. “It’s just that my roommates are so loud! I don’t know what they’re doing, going so hard so close to finals…” While she continued grumbling I bit back a response about communicating with one’s roommates and asking for quiet study hours on weekdays. I didn’t have a roommate, I acknowledged that luxury, but come on.

“Yeah,” I conceded, “But… we broke up two months ago, Margie.”

She immediately sobered up. “I know.”

“You ended it.” This isn’t fair to me.

“I know.”

“You’re constantly asking to come over here.” I wish she could just stop.

“I know…”

“Isn’t there anywhere else you can go?” As soon as I said it, I knew the answer. Rebecca, Johanna, Siobhan… we had all the same mutual friends, all of whom had partners, all of whom were still mourning the crashing and burning of a relationship within a friend group. If Margie went over to one of their places, she’d have to talk about me, and she wasn’t ready to do that. She was only ready to act like nothing happened.

“You’re the only place I can think to go to, Livvy.”

The old nickname expanded to fill the air. Taking my silence as complacency, Margie rose from her chair. “Oh-Livvy-ah, Olivia,” she said in a sing-song voice, to the tune of some unplaceable indie song. She had a piece of hair stuck in her mouth.

“Don’t call me that,” I groaned. Margie continued to approach. “Woah, relax.” she exhaled as she brushed my side, reaching for the coffee. She smelled like old mornings, like a little bit of her sweat mixed with laundry detergent and Sharpie. “I just wanted a cup.” She was close enough that I could see her cowlick and the texture of her acne scars. Dry hands reached above my shoulder, into the cabinet, and drew out her favorite mug, the one with the mushroom soup recipe on it.

My chest and stomach erupted. Oh, no. It was like before but not, the uncanniest of valleys. I saw the future spiral out in front of me, shooting through time, laying out exactly what will happen. I saw the warmth, the warnings, the weaknesses, the reunions, the rebirth shifting right back into decomposition.

She leaned against the counter next to me, sipping at her heavily-sweetened coffee. It did nothing to parch her cracking lips. “What were you expecting us to do?” she asked me. “Never talk again? The lesbian community here is, like, extremely tight. That’s a bit naïve of you, Livvy.” Instinctively I wanted to respond with I’m not a lesbian, but I got her point. Margie teased me, a familiar routine, but one I was not ready to begin again.

“I wasn’t expecting to never see you again,” I said carefully, “I just… you know I’d do anything to help you the best I can. But this much, I can’t handle…” I trailed off as she turned to fully face me. I was a few inches taller than her, but she leaned in with enough confidence to make up the difference.

“Tell me to leave, then.” I imagined her manipulating strings attached to my neck, my hands, my elbows. “I know I need you, Livvy, and you need me.” Closer, closer. “You need me, right?”

Her words. Words, words, words. Words spilling out of her hands and her pen and her mouth, as they always had, her mouth with chapped lips which I met with my own.

The smell of Sharpie grew stronger as the sweet dregs of her coffee mingled with the bitterness of mine. I blindly placed my mug on the counter next to me to free my hand and touch the small of her back, drawing her closer. I need her, she needs me, I need her.

Two years of knowing each other inside and out can’t be shaken easily. Muscle memory kicked in, with rough palms cupping cheeks and navels pressing together with the desperation and frustration of two months apart, of finals week, of my mother on her way in her brand-spanking-new Kia Soul and arriving in two hours if I’m lucky—

I broke away before she could manage to perch herself on top of the counter, shooing her hand away from the waistband of my pajama pants. “I can’t,” I gasped. “My mom is coming—you need to leave.”

Margie stood there, mouth slightly open, her lips slightly less dry than they were a minute ago. An embarrassed flush began to creep across her face. “Are you serious?” she asked.

It’s not fair to me. “You said you wanted to be open to see other people.” I straightened my back and stepped backwards. “Then go. Cut me loose. We’ll still have the same friends, and see each other often, as you said…” My throat began to close up. “I don’t think I need you as much as you say I do.” It’s fiction, a story, but Margie was familiar with those. She knew the need for them, the necessity. Stories were how she wooed me in the first place.

“Say what you really mean.” Her face still red, she began to pack up her papers and books and packets of poems and epics. “Why can’t you just say what you really mean?”

I’m not like you with words, wielding them like weapons to serve my will. I’m better at repeating the words of others. “I am. I am saying what I mean.” Hopefully she was so angry that my face didn’t give me away.

Margie’s lips flattened into a thin line, white next to her flushed cheeks. “I get it. Loud and clear.” With a blur of blondish-brownish curls, Margie whipped open my apartment door and was gone.

The silence shifted back to its usual position. The dishes were still untouched in the sink, but a bird continued to chirp outside of the lone kitchen window. Both of our mugs sat on the counter, handles turned away from each other, lukewarm.

I shivered, and thought of the shoebox.

All that about words, and the shoebox only just then reentered my mind. Instead of completing my assignments or cleaning or emailing my Professor about the tutoring lab I missed, my feet patted across the hardwood into my bedroom and veered toward the closet. The shoebox, sure enough, was on the floor under strewn corduroy jackets and flannel pants. It hadn’t budged for two months. It was a Nike shoebox, violently orange and frayed at the edges, filled to the brim with paper ranging from full sheets of cardstock to scraps of notebooks and the backs of receipts.

The letters had originally been strung across the walls of her bedroom, connected by ten-dollar twinkle lights from Target. There were still divots in the tops of the pages from where the clothespins had gripped.

I clumsily folded my legs and sat in front of the closet, lifting the lid of the shoebox and tossing it aside. When I’d torn the paper off my wall, I’d put the most recent pages in first, leaving the oldest at the top. Lifting the top page, I held it up to the ceiling light, allowing the purple pen to shine through the translucent pulp.

January 21st, 2020.

Olivia,

You probably only think of me as that random chick from your writing seminar, but, hey—I figured the best way to study for this class is to write. I have a phone, sure, everyone does. But the routine of handing someone a letter, a rectangle of space that’s blank on the outside but contains whispers and murmurs and all sorts of shit inside is kind of awesome, I think. It demands physical space. Maybe I just enjoy seeming like I’m smart. But anyway, I have Latin class in 5 minutes so I gotta wrap this up fast. This is a long and really annoying way of asking for your number. Well?

Peace and love, Margaret from Writing Seminar.

I remembered my resentment at having to take a writing seminar for my childhood education major. The windowless classroom, the faces illuminated by laptop screens, the first glimpse of those curls and that inclined head. She talked more than me, and when she threw words against the wall, they stuck more often than mine.

After I received that letter, I offered to drive to get coffee after class. I drove everywhere from then on, just for an excuse to pick her up.

Next paper. February 4th, 2020.

Olivia,

I had a great time last night. I don’t know if I’ll ever get your dorm’s paint smell out of my clothes, but I don’t care. You showed interest in my homework, which was nice of you, but you don’t have to pretend that. You don’t have to pretend with me. I can rattle off about Adonic stanzas and Sappho’s Tiasos until I don’t know when to stop. I want to listen to you, too. Last night, you were reading your Research Methods textbook and rubbing the tip of your nose with your thumb and forefinger when you got really concentrated. I noticed that. Same time next week?

Peace and love, Margaret.

God, I remembered that research and data analysis class. I took it to fulfill a general education requirement, and I studied for it with Margie because we desperately clung to any excuse to be with each other, as people usually do in the honeymoon phase. Our honeymoon phase, before things were official, was in the winter. We found warmth and isolated hobbies to spend the time, passing passions and rants and habits back and forth like keepsakes for later.

She kissed me and asked whether we could become official a month later.

August 13th, 2021.

Ocelle,

Isn’t that word neat? I can only do so much with ‘Olivia,’ and the shape of ‘Livvy’ has become an old habit on my tongue. Its shape is nice, but you said to spice it up. I’m still going strong with the letters, a year and a half later, so God damn it if I’m not gonna keep it interesting! It means ‘little eyes,’ you know. I promise it’s a pet name. If you don’t like that one, I can do ‘iucundissima’—‘most pleasant one.’ Catullus could be an asshole, but he had some bangers. If I’m gonna write my thesis on works by these old farts, I may as well put it to good use. You’re more worthy of the compliments than his lover, anyway.

He, Ovid, Homer, a ton of them wrote in dactylic hexameter, with stresses on syllables that looked like fingers, sometimes as directions pointing the way in the poems or sometimes the meter was grasping the lines themselves with velvet touches. If I had any original talent, I’d write in that meter for you. I’d translate the way you grip me onto the page, instead of just translating what hundreds of people already have before. Hopefully I do something eventually with this, like you probably will with your degree. Psych is so much more useful, at least way out there. You’re practical, you’re magical, and you’re my hero. Remember.

Peace and love, Margie.

At this letter, my throat burned.

I’d also read Catullus. I’d looked at translations early on in our relationship instead of doing homework for my own education policy class just so we’d have more to talk about and share. Margie always got a kick out of seeing me remember a quote, a passage, or even a theme. Because of all that reading, I now know and forever will know that sal, salis (m.), the word for salt, is commonly translated as wit. When I was with Margie, initially her insight always brought flavor and intensity to everything, and I craved it constantly. But now. It was too much. My tongue now recoiled and shuddered and begged and pleaded to be doused, no, drowned with water. After the kiss in the kitchen, my mouth was dry with salt, barren to no end.

I tasted more salt as tears crept down my face. My chest heaved, caving in, but I refused to adjust my posture. Let me collapse sitting in criss-cross applesauce on my closet floor. Please.

But, no. My phone buzzed in my back pocket.

I’m on my way up, Mom said. Jesus Christ, Olivia. It’s not like pulling teeth to respond to people.

And I still didn’t respond. Instead, I hauled myself up from my hole, face puffy, and rifled through my already stacked desk for a pen and some paper.

Let Mom come up.

Let her tell me things I already know, that I already tell myself.

Let her find a highlighter that Margie left behind. Let her lecture me on healthy relationships, let her generalize about dating women and guess at something she’d never done.

Let her show her love for me by taking charge of my life, by forcibly offering support.

Let her be myself in the future, desperate for any sort of control to exert over a situation in which I have none.

Let her wipe my tears and remind me that I have class tomorrow, like any other Monday.

I could smell the coffee burning in its pot a room away.

Touching my pen to the paper, I began to write.