You say goodbye, but do you really know it's over?
You say goodbye, but do you comprehend it?
You go along,
thinking that things like this never change.
But that can also change.
•
She had a friend, once. It came about by chance and enforced proximity, nothing more; they were roommates for two years at Brown, first by computerized selection in Morriss and then for convenience in Caswell. Madeline Knight was her name; Vivienne hasn't heard from her since and, for that matter, doesn't think of her often, either. They parted on good terms, so there's no point in letting it linger.
There are, for the second time today, tears prickling her eyelids. Vivienne stalks over to the nearest window and scowls at the cars passing below, drink in hand. Another mouthful, and another, and the moment passes and her eyes are dry again, although it still hurts to breathe through the tightness in her chest that always takes longer to dissipate.
Vivienne does wonder, sometimes, what happened to her.
•
Either Madeline outright lied on her new student housing questionnaire, or the system that paired incoming students with compatible habits together had a severe and undiscovered flaw. That was and still is the only explanation Vivienne can come up with to explain how she, with her regimented sleep schedule and careful, habitual precision could possibly be deemed compatible with someone as tirelessly exuberant as Madeline. For the better part of a year, she was almost convinced that Madeline simply didn't need to sleep.
Vivienne, on the other hand, did, even on weekends, so she was more than a little vexed whenever Madeline waltzed in and out of the room at three in the morning on Fridays; Vivienne's version of "keep it down so your poor roommate can sleep for a proper and healthy number of hours" differed significantly from Madeline's. Usually, she buried her face in her pillow against the harsh fluorescent light that always spilled through the open doorway at just the right angle to hit her eyes and waited for Madeline to collapse onto her own bed and be quiet or else leave again with the victim du jour. Madeline had tried bringing them home for the night, once or twice, in the beginning, but they always wanted to talk and so Vivienne had put her foot down by the end of September.
A few days after spring break, during which Madeline had gone home and Vivienne had stayed and enjoyed a week and a half of blissful quiet, she snapped and grumbled out something along the lines of "Why don't you just sleep in the hall," only to be bolted out of her lingering sleepiness by Madeline landing just shy of her knees and offering the opinion that she ought to go to a party sometime. Any hope that Vivienne had of making it a short conversation were dashed when Madeline reached past her to click on her lamp.
"You know perfectly well that I don't dr—" Vivienne had begun, peeved.
Madeline swatted her upside the shoulder. "Drinking and having fun aren't inextricably linked, you know. I mean you're allowed to leave the room for things other than class and scheming with other poli sci's and pre-laws. It can't be healthy, not having a life outside of your textbooks."
"I happen to likestudying," Vivienne muttered mutinously.
Madeline, however, had refused to leave well enough alone, and made a nuisance of herself and Vivienne, grudgingly, offered that she did know what she was missing out on because she had dated someone back at Groton, and she had, for a period of six months, experimented with a life not lived according to schedule and found it deficient. At that, Madeline said nothing, just stared with those beautiful blue eyes of hers until Vivienne squirmed and said the first thing that came to mind, which was "Larry used to let me come to the office with him and, after I was old enough to look the part, he'd introduce me as his intern and let me sit in on depositions and hearings and so on."
"And that was how you decided he'd be an acceptable step-father, yes?" Madeline said, smirking.
"Something like that," Vivienne had replied. Madeline let her stop talking after that, told her instead about growing up with a twin sister and three brothers and parents who died too young; Vivienne, who still had a full set of parents and step-versions of both, winced at that, and by then she was so exhausted that her judgement was impaired enough to mumble out a narrative of the divorce and the horrible fights and even more horrible periods of silence that preceded it.
When she woke up in the morning, Madeline had still been there, nestled between Vivienne and the wall and with an arm curled unceremoniously around her waist. It was more comfortable than Vivienne had been willing to admit at the time, albeit much too warm. Madeline made her tea and, in the weeks that followed, there seemed to be little point in going back to the polite acquaintanceship they'd had before.
•
Vivienne never did figure out how to define the whatever it was between her and Madeline. Mostly, they were friends, although there were times when they skirted precipitously close to the edge of anything even remotely platonic and Vivienne has, after all, always strived for precision in language as in everything else. Regardless of labels, it was remarkable, how easily Madeline could make her forget about rigid adherence to the Plan when they talked. Or touched, when that happened.
It was the hand-wringing she noticed first—not right away, but an awareness of it grew in the month or so leading up to winter break of their sophomore year. Madeline wrote it off as merely cold hands, which was at least plausible, so Vivienne let the matter lie even though she could tell that Madeline was worried. Better, she thought, to wait until Madeline was prepared to talk about it. Another few months passed without a word on the subject, though, and then Madeline abruptly resigned from the track team and stopped going out on weekends and started taking elevators, something she had been almost vehemently opposed to before.
After that last, Vivienne gave her another week before deciding she'd lost her patience. "Madeline, what is going on?" she demanded. Madeline winced and looked away; Vivienne remembers distinctly staring at what little she could still see of Madeline's face and the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"I just haven't been feeling well, lately," Madeline had muttered. "And." She stopped, twisting her hands together in a way that had to hurt. Prompting only made her move from her desk to her bed and keep resolutely looking anywhere but at Vivienne; Vivienne followed her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"You can tell me," she said. "You can tell me anything."
"I'm transferring to NYU next year," Madeline said at length, and Vivienne felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. It was a struggle not to sound accusatory when she asked why, that time and each subsequent one; Madeline never gave her a straight answer. She felt out of place or she wanted to be closer to home or money was too tight to justify another two years of Brown's tuition, scholarship or no. The evasion managed to hurt even more than the irrational feeling of abandonment. They both lived in New York City, for god's sake, so it shouldn't have felt like the permanent estrangement it was.
"At least call me," Vivienne said, in desperation, at the end of the year when Madeline's sister, Alice, showed up to help her pack for the return trip.
"Of course," Madeline said, and hugged her goodbye.
She didn't.
Vivienne could have called her, of course; even after three years she has the number memorized. But she'd seen what happened to the people Madeline got bored of, the ones that she strung along for a week or two and then never spoke to again. Those that kept trying to contact her were systematically ignored; Vivienne herself had run interference on Madeline's behalf on occasion.
She did try calling, once, towards the end of July. The call went to voicemail, and Vivienne listened to the robotic voice telling her to leave a message and thought that of course Madeline wouldn't bother personalizing it at all; she'd be too busy meeting new people to worry about the old ones. Vivienne hung up after the tone.
•
They kissed. Only once. Madeline dragged her to some coffee shop or another to listen to scruffy aspiring musicians who, in their search for originality, had managed to write songs that all sounded more or less identical, right down to key. Madeline enjoyed herself immensely; Vivienne had nursed an ice tea and composed the third draft of her essay on inequality in the American democracy in her head. When they got back, Madeline had sprawled on Vivienne's bed and demanded to know whether she'd enjoyed herself, teased her mercilessly when she answered with the truth ("no, not at all"), and then refused to move.
"We could always share," Madeline said, grinning. "You do have empirical evidence that the bed won't be too small if we cuddle, after all."
"I don't cuddle," Vivienne had said, folding her arms, which only made Madeline smirk and shift into a more comfortable position, her arms crossed behind her head. "Please, Madeline, I'm tired." That had worked; Madeline got up and sidled past her, too close—Vivienne still isn't sure whether that part was intentional or just a matter of misjudged distances. At any rate, Vivienne reached out and stopped her, and there was a painfully awkward few seconds during which Madeline raised her eyebrows and Vivienne could think of nothing to stay.
She's almost certain that Madeline leaned in first; it was Madeline who kept it from being anything more than a fleeting moment of mutual attraction between friends. Three and a half years later, Vivienne can still vividly remember tasting mint green on her lips.
After—it couldn't have been more than a minute—Vivienne asked something inane like "What just happened?"
"It's called kissing," Madeline said dryly. "I'd have thought you'd know about it from that boy in boarding school." Vivienne had stepped away and glared at her until she relented and shrugged. "Does it matter?"
She hadn't known if it did, to tell the truth. "I don't feel any different," she said. "It was nice, I suppose."
"Same," Madeline said before retreating to her own bed. "'Night, Vivienne."
She had gone to sleep with her lips still tingling; Madeline said nothing about the kiss the next day, and Vivienne had followed suit, content for the time being to let their relationship stay undefined in the grey area between platonic affection and sexual attraction—somehow romance never really entered her mind.
Vivienne tears herself from the window and curls up in the only comfortable seat in her apartment with her fourth—or possibly fifth?—glass of scotch. She wonders, now, if anything would have been different had she put effort into pursuing something more concrete.
AN: Lyrics from "Not A Love Story", from Tales from the Bad Years.