Page 14 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“H ello? Hello!” A lot of knocking accompanied the woman’s voice. My mind registered more of what I would have called pounding, but I kept on working. Whoever was at the front door of our apartment building wasn’t here to see or talk to me, so I ignored her.

But since my neighbor was a busybody, he did respond. The next thing I heard was his door open across the hall and he opened the front door, too. And then, a lot more clearly, I heard the woman speak.

“Are the apartment buzzers broken? What’s wrong with this place? Ew. Is this what’s called a slum?”

I recognized who she was, both from her tone (bored and arrogant) and her diction (rude and arrogant).

I stood up from my makeshift desk and went right to the mirror to check myself over.

I didn’t have nearly enough time to make all the fixes that Grant would have required, but I did take down my hair and smooth it, and I did take a moment to be glad and grateful that I’d finally managed to exfoliate away the stripes on my body.

Then I went to the door of my apartment and opened it.

“Vivienne?” I asked blankly. I sounded shocked, which I was. After hearing her in the hallway, I knew that this visitor couldn’t have been anyone else…it was still difficult to accept her presence in my apartment building.

But there she was: Vivienne Piquer, the wife to Lance, a fashion exemplar for the masses, and the woman whom I’d aspired to be for five years of my life.

Grant had aspired for me to be her, too, in a lot of ways.

I’d frequently heard that “Vivi wouldn’t wear that” or “Vivi always drinks this” or “Vivi never eats so much.” Vivi was pretty much perfect, and who didn’t want perfection?

She looked practically perfect now, even as she frowned at both me and Hernán and also managed to convey, mostly in the way she was standing and the way her nostrils flared slightly, that this place was not an acceptable setting for her amazing self.

“Emerson,” she stated, and there was a total absence of discernable happiness to see me in her voice or in her attitude. “There you are. You live in this place?”

“Yes. Obviously,” I answered. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you. Obviously,” she shot back. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come to a slum.”

Hernán frowned and told her a few things in Spanish, and I emerged from my stunned stupor enough to invite her into my apartment.

I held open my door and gestured, anyway, and she accepted by gliding past me in a gorgeous pair of sandals.

Then the problem of not having anywhere to sit became clear and frankly, embarrassing.

Vivienne looked around and took the chair, which left me to stand and stare at her.

I shook my head. “What are you doing here?” I repeated.

“As I said, I came to see you,” she said. Her nostrils flared more, suggesting that now she might have smelled Coral. As a confirmed misanthrope, my cat was presently in hiding.

“You have my number,” I pointed out. I’d been involved in several girlfriend group texts that had morphed into wives-plus-Emerson group texts as the years, all five of them, had slid past. “You have my email address, too.”

“I wanted to come in person. I wanted to check on what…” She turned her head and looked around the small room, taking in the beige walls, the grey floor, the small window with the plastic shade, and the lack of furniture.

“The splendor?” I filled in, and she looked at me blankly. She had so much: beauty, money, and a natural inclination to enjoy exercise. She’d never had a lot of humor, though, and the image of a chicken flashed through my mind.

“Can’t you sit down? This reminds me of being in elementary school,” Vivienne said. “You look exactly like my third-grade teacher.” She waved her long fingers near her face. “You have that same pinched, dried-up thing going. She was so old that she died midway through the year.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss. But there’s nowhere that I can sit,” I replied, my voice taut.

“After breaking my hip in a bad car crash, I have trouble moving too much.” Although, to be honest, it was a lot better now that Levi and I had started taking so many walks.

In fact, I’d cancelled my next appointment at the orthopedic surgeon’s office.

Vivienne didn’t offer the chair that she occupied, the only one. “Fine. So, what are you doing right now?”

“I’m talking to you, but I don’t know why.”

Now she looked frustrated. “I mean, what are you doing in this place? Here?” she demanded, and I glanced around.

“No, not just in your ugly apartment! You’re not originally from this area.

Why don’t you go back to where you came from?

What’s keeping you from leaving? You should go. Go away.”

“What?” I asked, not understanding.

“What are you doing here?” she asked me, exactly my words to her not too long ago.

“My life is here,” I answered, and she shook her head.

“Not really. Grant’s life is here, but you aren’t a part of it anymore. You never really were.”

“I was very much a part of it! We were together for five years,” I snapped. “Five years of my life that were wasted—”

“Ok! Fuck,” she sighed, and she checked her phone. “You always got so worked up about everything. At least you’re talking now. Last time I saw you, you were totally out of it and I thought you might be the same today.”

“‘Last time?’” I echoed. “What do you mean?”

“I went to the hospital to see you,” Vivi said. “Grant was having a shit fit and saying that you were gong to die, and we all expected it.”

“Sorry I let you down,” I said.

“No, I’m glad you didn’t. It would have been way worse for him because the police were already making problems.”

He’d gotten cited for various traffic infractions and as far as I could tell, he had enough going against him that he’d lost his license. But there hadn’t been any criminal charges related to the accident.

“No one wanted you to die,” she continued. “Of course, we never liked you, either. We didn’t want to hang out with you, and none of us could understand what he was doing with you.” She did look puzzled. “Why were you and Grant together?”

I leaned against the wall and let myself slide to the floor. I tried to do it slowly and carefully, but I ended up bumping hard at the end. “Ouch. We loved each other,” I said. “We were a good couple in a lot of ways. Our differences were complementary.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, while he wanted to spend, I wanted to save—what does this matter to you, Vivienne? I’m not leaving Detroit, if that was what you wanted to know. Why do you care where I live?”

“I don’t.” She checked her phone again. “So, you’re actually still injured?”

“Yes. But I’m improving,” I acknowledged. “I’m not going to die and I’m getting back to being ok.”

She looked at me in silence and I attempted to guess her motivation for tracking down my new address and driving over here. I came up with jack squat, so I asked her again.

“Why did you come?”

“I’m the kind of person who cares deeply,” she informed me. “I even care enough to check in on you.”

“Now that you’ve done that, is there anything else you need?”

There was something, obviously, because the idea that she had only been interested in my welfare was a giant pile of what Coral deposited in her litter box.

In my experience, Vivienne was never interested in others unless their issues connected in some way to her.

Like, she worried if you were getting a blister on a hike, but only because it would slow down the group and she wanted more cardio (and yes, that had happened).

She cared if you were wearing the right dress to the fall formal at the fraternity but that was because you would be in pictures with her, since Grant and Lance had been best friends.

She also hadn’t wanted to damage the reputation of the fraternity.

In the end, my dress hadn’t done that, but there had been other problems. Their chapter had been sanctioned for hazing and was eventually shuttered.

But she was unwilling to tell me her true motivation for being here today, and an uncomfortable silence stretched out as she stared at me on the floor with her eyes narrowed and her lower lip slightly extended.

If I’d had any artistic ability, I could have painted her portrait and called it Vivienne, Pensive .

“Well, thanks for coming, even if you’re not being honest about your reasons,” I finally said.

I began the struggle to get up, which was a little embarrassing in front of her.

She didn’t make any offer of help and she just sat there and silently watched me.

I had turned red by the time I walked to the door and I tried not to limp at all.

Then I held it open, and when she still didn’t move, I pointed toward the hallway.

“Goodbye, Vivienne. We probably won’t ever see each other again, since I won’t let you in if you come back.”

“There’s no reason to be a bitch,” she told me.

“There is,” I said. “You just admitted that you came to the hospital and saw how I’d been hurt.

You didn’t bother to stick around and see if I needed help, though, and I did need it.

Months have passed since then but neither you, your husband Lance, or any of Grant’s other friends have shown their faces one time.

I haven’t gotten a text or a call asking how I was.

And I was bad!” I told her. “I got really hurt and everyone I knew—”

“Just so you’re aware, Emerson, we’re all on Grant’s side. Obviously,” she interrupted, but she did finally stand and take the two steps from my desk to the door. “We were sorry that it happened, but we’ll always support him, not you.”

“And yet, you dropped in now,” I mentioned. “You’re still here and I want you to leave.”