Minnesota Goodbyes

Entry #47

The dead don't rest in the living. People like to tell you they do, that they'll always live in your heart. Something peaceful and saccharine and useless like that. And it doesn't matter, because someday my heart will seize up in my chest, and then where will she be? Dead as me? Or will I be as dead as her?

It doesn't really matter, I suppose; I was just thinking about rest. Not like sleep, but something that settles in your soul, that answers all the messy things in life. Because for that month without her (I keep thinking about that month, turning it over and over in my mind. What's past is prologue, right?), there was no rest. Muscles winched tight enough that your legs were corded up, impossible to move. Shoulders knotted up and teeth hurt from clenching them hard.

On the surface, yes, there was rest. You didn't trudge through the snow to class, or hunch over your notes, translating the unintelligible scrawl in the margins. But what kind of rest is that? That's a lack of labor, rather than real rest.

But then you came back to campus, and the lock of your room snicked open, and there she was.

And that is rest. It's her shoulder bumping against yours, it's shuffling down to breakfast together, it's scowling over a particularly difficult page, trying to unsnarl the meaning from textbook jargon while she hums absentmindedly.

She grins when she sees you, eyes sparking. "How was break?"

A choking noise in the back of your throat, and Clair laughs. "Mine too. Pointless, even though everyone wanted to say how much better it was this year."

"Everyone?" Your eyes flick over her face, searching for anything behind her blasé tone.

"High school friends." Clair shrugs. "You know, because it was so much better than high school break. Like college is so much better than high school. Well—" she crinkles her nose "—it is, but that's not the point."

You scoff. "Sure, sure." You throw your purse onto the futon and slouch next to it. "You didn't think this break was better?"

"Nope." She winks at you. "I was missing a key part. Hard to enjoy something when you keep thinking about better things, you know?"

You smile, eyes crinkling, and can't help flushing with pleasure.

The days go like that after the break. Days where you lie together, staring up at the ceiling and chatting. Perfection. You'll wake up early, faint winter sun blinking through the shade, and it'll grow bright (but cold) before Clair wakes up, and you both float down to lunch. Then you'll meander to class, (one of you ditching for the other's), so some days you end up studying in the middle of her physics lecture, or she'll loiter in the back row of one of your classes. It's only when she has labs that you're really separated, and it's like a fierce pang in your chest or a toothache. A dull throb of alone alone alone.

You've only been back for a week or so, but you can see no reason to break this pattern, this togetherness. What is school worth? Sure, there are some interesting things to learn, but what is that when you compare it with Clair? When you think of her eyes darkening in the watery twilight or of her laughter drifting down the hall, why would you ever go back?

The question prods you when you bus to Uptown or to the art institute or science museum (Clair's favorite first, then yours because of how she throws her head back in the planetarium. Because of how the false stars glow and she laughs and rambles on about gravitational pull and the movements of celestial bodies.) Why would you ever go back?

The university is a backdrop, rolled away at intermission, at scene change. It doesn't matter half so much as the players. Even the actors and actresses don't really matter. Well, just the one.

Clair thinks the same. Or so you think, before that day.

Though you have class and she has class, you flirt with the idea of ditching (again) and leaving the grey world of your studies behind. Clair does too, you're sure of it. Indecision rolls off her, and she almost drops her textbook back on her desk, but her jaw tightens and lips press into a flat line.

You'd proposed a trip behind Coffman, where the Mississippi lays flush against campus and is glazed over with snow and ice, glittering in the sunshine. You thought you'd both bundle up, only the tips of your noses and bright eyes exposed to the elements. After you were pink from the cold, you'd slog to a coffee shop and order hot chocolates with towers of whipped cream.

She hesitates, though, mouth open with half-formed excuses. (Her dad had called and lectured her. "No, Dad, I am going to class. No, I'm not— okay, fine." Silence fogging up the air, and she stuffed her notebooks into her backpack and slung it over her back.)

"Come with me," she pleads, "You can do your work there."

"Stay," you say, and she grimaces. "C'mon, what's the point of going? Let's—"

"I can't. Can't you come? I don't want to be alone."

And the alone isn't about class. It's about the time apart; it's about something deeper and slick that's crept between you over the break. Neither of you had breached the subject, but like an undertow, it drags just beneath the surface of everything you do together.

But how can she leave you? How can she consider walking out, like some dry lecture is worth more than you? Like it's even worth her time? It's a dead thing, something you'd study in a jar of formaldehyde. Dead words from dead men, and it is nothing compared to what is already here in this room.

Then it is, quick as a summer storm, hot and thick and angry as a swarm. Your anger balls your fists, seeps into your gut, thickens the air around you. And it sizzles off Clair, too.

(Words you can't take back and can't repeat. Cruel as a blade, and cutting, too. Selfish and loud and boiling words, hurled between the two of you. Ripping apart your room, your peace, your rest.)

And you, you who would've stayed, are the one yanking your bag over your shoulder and slamming the door behind you. You are the one who stews in class, your writing slashing notes into the margins of your textbook. Hands shaking and ragged breathing and pumping heart. And then formulating wild apologies and excuses Clair can't hear.

What good had it done? Tears boil at the corners of your eyes, softening the room into a blur. (A note in the margins to her, though Clair will never read it. Bleeding over the onionskin pages, your pen stabbing through them when you press too hard.)

It's not like you'd never fought. Anyone who's ever lived together has, even if they aren't big, engulfing things. But this? This feels like hate and heat and hurt. And so much of that is directed at yourself. Now you storm and stew in class, and what good had it done? You swallow, but your tongue and throat are too sandpaper rough for it to do anything.

When you get out of class, brushing past everyone in your haste to get back, there she is, hunched on the floor outside the door.

You study her for a moment. The light of the hall is clinical and flat, and it steals something soft out of her. Her collarbones and cheekbones jut out in harsh lines and shadows skulk under her eyes and down her jawline. She looks like something fundamentally broken, some ravaged animal.

But when Clair glances up and your eyes meet, it's scrubbed away. The storm scuttles behind and beyond you, and there she is, and here you are.