Viv + Mae

Mikaila Ayala, “Snake Skin”

by Emma Elisabeth Murphy

Viv put her glass down on the table loudly. She was drunk, and every movement was accentuated with a heaviness few associated with her usual elegance. Mae sat on Viv’s couch in the living room, facing the open windows towards the low November afternoon sun. I watched the mountain sparkle as the final rays consumed a golden emptiness that late autumn tended to reveal.  

 “When’s the last time you saw him, HEY Mae? You hear what I said?!” called Viv from the kitchen. She was grabbing the half-empty bottle of Merlot. 

“It was in August when I came back for my mom’s funeral. Classic for us, don’t you think? Our reunions only revolve around deaths and marriages. He had the audacity to ask if I’d take a few shots of him by his car after the service. He also sent me tons of food, massage certificates, and a monthly subscription to the new Lightroom editing app. Can’t say I didn’t see it coming, but might as well shoot me in the foot again.” Mae’s annoyance was palpable through her sarcasm. 

I laughed a cough from the porch where I was taking a hit. I could always hear everything – especially when Viv was buzzed. I knew she liked to be seen as a more secretive person so I never let on that every time she spoke to Mae her voice changed about three octaves and six levels in volume. They always talked like that to each other though. I didn’t have to think twice about it. And they always had their drinks, while I always had my weed. Some things never changed. 

Viv and I have been married for two years now. We’ve been together for three, but since neither of us had ever been in a healthy relationship longer than six months before, we decided after a year that it was now or never for marriage. The risk of having something happen that would force us to dissolve our love prematurely was something we wanted to avoid. Not because we were desperate, but because after the heartbreaks we’d both endured, we knew we were lucky as hell to find each other. We never saw love as something that could be permanent, fixed into a shape that continued to grow from the same roots it began with. No, we knew better than that. So we figured why not get married when we still cared, when things were still good, instead of waiting to see if we’d last.

“Damn Mae, I figured it was bad between you guys but I didn’t think it was that bad. He bring Ella with him this time? I swear next time I see him I’m not gonna be so nice.” 

I heard Viv’s glass land loudly on the coffee table we’d recently found at the antique store. I knew what she was thinking right now– ten years of Elliot stringing Mae along, being his best friend, giving her the photography career she has now.  She spent each of those ten years fully and completely devoted to him. Thinking things would change someday, that he’d finally realize it was her. But one day Mae realized this wasn’t a Lifetime movie. She wasn’t gonna end up with him. And from what I’ve heard, it wasn’t always peaceful between them anyways. Ever wonder what it’s like to be the closest person to a thriving and climbing musician as he reached the peak of his fame? Mae knows. The good, the bad, the ugly, all wrapped up into one perfect figure of beauty: Elliot Sullivan. 

“No she wasn’t with him. It was my mother’s funeral after all, I’m fucking glad he didn’t have the audacity to bring her along.”

“It still makes me laugh that he’d find someone named Ella. Elliot and Ella, Ella and Elliot, el-oh-el-oh-el-oh...” Viv continued to “lol” while dancing around the room. 

I put my joint out on the agate ashtray and looked up at the fading November sky. Viv’s cabin seemed even more like a witch’s abode in the twilight moments; long trailing Ivy climbed up the north-eastern side, remnants of last summer’s garden decaying in the backyard. Even the sunflower stalks drooped like friends too tired to stand anymore. But there was something magical about the lack of sterility here. It’s the one thing that still terrified me of Viv– knowing that if I were to break her heart, she’d still be connected to the source of life and death through her relationship to the earth. I envied this connection to source. What terrifies me more is that she’s my gateway, my portal, out of eternal existential despair. But she was here, now. That’s what we always came back to. 

“Viv, please. Stop. It’s not worth the energy. I wish him the best, truly. You never did tell me about Vincent. You said he showed up, right? Can’t say I’m surprised. He still riding that motorcycle?” 

I paused facing the closed door. If i went inside now, Viv would tell Mae the version of this story I’ve heard before. I decided I could bear the cold for a moment longer. 

“Yeah. It’s a new one but he’s still riding. Still got the long hair, too.”

“What happened?” Mae moved closer to Viv on the couch, cradled her left hand in her own. 

“He said he had been riding up and down the mountain for the last week debating whether or not he should stop by. I guess he saw me outside in the garden over the summer, last time he came up and told me he thought it was a mirage. Well you’re here now, I said to him. I’m as real as I’m gonna get. Shit, I should be quieter. I told Michael but…” Viv contemplated how to phrase the next sentence. Her entire tone changed when she was wistful about love. 

It’s a side of her I know well. It didn’t bother me. I knew they needed to talk about these things, to give grievance and light and space to whatever vines were inside of them that still held onto this pain. This was their way of letting it go. And it was my way of knowing that I wasn’t alone with the secret pain I harbored, either.