Oliver and Erica

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Oliver and Erica Page 2

by Desiree Span


  I put on my comfortable PJs and sat on the big rug I had once thrown on the wooden floor of my small but tastefully decorated living room. Thank you, IKEA.

  I poured the remaining red wine I was drinking in my ridiculously huge mug that read “☺ ERICA ☺.” It had been a silly gift from a friend for Christmas, but through the years I had found it to be practical for many purposes: for my eight glasses of water a day when I am in a detox phase, for my I-don’t-do-mornings coffee, and for my I-feel-I-deserve-a-huge-drink mood.

  Leaning back against the comfortable ecru-colored couch that occupied more space than I could afford to lose, I studied my recently painted wall with satisfaction. I had meticulously chosen a deep pine-green color that, even Jan agreed, contrasted perfectly with our wooden floor and light couch, and had topped the whole look off with a couple of cushions made of raw cotton fabric that I had scored on my latest flea market bonanza. I took a huge sip of the wine and enjoyed its velvety warm feeling as it glided down my throat.

  I had been searching for inspiration for weeks, so that morning I hadn’t gone directly to work in my art studio. Instead, I decided to dig up some memories, to see if that could get the creative juices flowing, and what better way to start a trip down memory lane than by going through old memorabilia saved up during the last decades?

  I had spent the rest of that day in the attic and started out enthusiastically, making my way through the room. The first thirty minutes were pure nostalgia. I sighed and smiled while encountering the sought-after memories; my old ’90s leather jacket (which I could never throw away, because my mother was right; ALL CLOTHES become fashionable again), a little box with three used pacifiers in it (we always had extras because the twins would lose them and that meant nobody was allowed to sleep that night), and the backpack I used on my first road trip with my cousin Lynn, covered in stickers and badges of all the places we had visited in Europe.

  But then slowly irritation kicked in. It was very crowded, and I started sweating and I got tired of stepping... well, more like jumping over the hurdles of bags and boxes. And after slapping a spider out of my hair, tripping over a huge crate, and bumping my toe twice against a set of dumbbells that Jan had bought online, I ended up kind of cleaning the place and sorting “crap” from “crappy crap” by throwing it to two different corners.

  Un-be-lievable! How much useless junk can a family of four harvest through the years? It’s a good thing nobody ever went up there, for they would have surely signed us up for that TV show... what’s it called? The one with all the hoarders.

  During the odyssey, I found some bags with photographs in it and hauled it all down the stairs, together with some other, could-be-inspirational stuff.

  There were photos I had put aside at some point, with the intention to put them in an album or something. There were pictures of our wedding and honeymoon, and pictures of my pregnancy, up to when the twins were newborns. The rest of the thousands of photos taken were still in a digital state. Not having the time to print them or make albums online, I had put it on my to-do-list. So I guess it will be done anywhere between now and let’s say... the next ten years.

  I also found a huge cardboard box my mother had sent to me from the United States a couple of years earlier. She said they were having a big yard sale and she had found things she assumed I wanted. She sent over everything she thought could be of sentimental value. I had never gotten to really examining what was inside, though. So after I put the kids to bed and with Jan still not being home, I figured now was a good moment.

  In it were mostly items from my childhood, including some clothing she thought my girls could use but surely didn’t fit them at this point. There was also an old stuffed animal I used to sleep with every night and a wooden treasure box with my name burned on it... inside were some seashells and a note that said, “For my best friend Erica.” I smiled nostalgically when I saw the box and ran my fingers over the letters that spelled my name. I lay the treasure box aside.

  At the bottom of the cardboard box I found a couple of photo albums. The albums were old, and the pages in it had gone yellow and some were stained. My mother had organized the photos in such a way that each album had either a theme or were ordered by the years in which they were taken. The photos inside were taken in the United States and were mostly of my sister and me, when we were young. There were pictures of us at the fair, eating pizza, playing in our backyard, and on trips we had taken through the country.

  At the bottom of the box I found two red albums my mother had put together. These actually had a title. On them she had written “Oliver and Erica.”

  Oliver Blake. We grew up together and even though we were quite the opposite in character, we were thick as thieves.

  I was the emotional, spontaneous type and prone to making hasty decisions, while Oliver was serene and always went about things in a more thoughtful, rational way. But somehow despite these differences, one wouldn’t be seen without the other; we were attached at the hip.

  I opened the first album and was surprised to see that on every page my mother had created a collage with photographs of Oliver and me. The photos brought back happy moments of a childhood in a land far away I used to call home: pictures of Oliver and me making funny faces; eating cotton candy at the yearly carnival; fast asleep in the back seat of a car, both very tanned after a sunny day swimming in the lake. The memories made me feel warm inside and I smiled...

  * * *

  “Why don’t we go swimming in the lake?” I asked lying next to him on my stomach and I swung my legs back and forth, which made my slippers dangle on my feet. I was bored.

  Oliver was looking down at the newest bug in his grub collection and didn’t seem to hear me. As usual his heavy, thick rimmed glasses had slipped toward the tip of his nose, revealing his bright, baby blue eyes. He unconsciously pushed them back up with his index finger.

  “Or let’s take our bikes or go roller skating,” I tried again with a sigh.

  “I can’t. I have to go look for my retainer,” he said without looking up.

  “You lost it? Again?” I exclaimed. “Your mother is going to kill you. It’s like the third time you’ve lost them and you’ve just got them!”

  Oliver rearranged three insects and seemed unpreoccupied.

  “Where did you lose them?” I asked.

  He finally looked up and turned his eyes towards the sky thinking. “I dunno,” he then said. “Maybe when we went for ice-cream yesterday.”

  “Well, then let’s go look for them!” I felt relieved that we were finally going to actually do something instead of just sitting around playing cards or working on his 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  “And we can wear our skates so that we can move around faster,” I added.

  “Sure, but promise to not tell my mom until I’ve found it?”

  I nodded and stuck out my pinky which he hooked with his own, as a symbol of our pinky-swear oath. And as we scrambled to our feet I smiled feeling the excitement of an adventure coming up.

  * * *

  Oliver was close to his mother Sophie, and unlike his older brother Timothy, who was fair and had taken after his father, he had clearly inherited her looks; raven black hair and piercing blue eyes. But he had a special bond with his dad, Peter Blake or Mr. P, as I called him. As a boy he followed his father around everywhere, and Mr. P took every minute he had to spare to spend it with Oliver. He passed over his interest in architecture to his son and they would make sightseeing trips in cities with interesting buildings. But they also kept it closer to home by regularly taking the ferry from their town Chester, to Hadlyme, where they admired colonial and post-medieval structures in the North Historic District or spent the day at the beautiful Gillette Castle State Park.

  The Blake family owned a lumber business that had been in the family for a couple of generations and was passed down to Oliver’s father by his granddad Joseph. Oliver would hang around the carpentry workshop regularly, and during the summe
r his dad would give him assignments, so to speak. He made different wooden toys or helped in the workshop, where they fabricated custom-made furniture.

  One summer he made me the wooden treasure box that I just found, and I remember he scorched off the tip of his finger trying to write my name on it with a wood-burning tool. But he finished it, with blister and all, and surprised me with it for my birthday. It wasn’t really that refined or beautiful, and later on he would master the art and make really exquisite wooden pieces, but it was the fact he had made it for me that made it special and I kept it for many years.

  * * *

  I loved Oliver’s family and enjoyed spending time at their place, but my favorite family member was his grandmother Rose-Marie. Nana Rose-Marie was Sophie’s mother; a beautiful, sophisticated, but somewhat snobbish woman. She had raised her daughter on her own when her young husband passed away, shortly after they had migrated from England to the US.

  Rose-Marie adored her two grandchildren. She would drive her elegant, classic Cadillac up to their house almost every weekend and as soon as Oliver was able to walk she regularly picked her grandsons up on Friday and wouldn’t deliver them back until Sunday evening.

  But Nana Rose-Marie didn’t have any granddaughters, so she adopted me as one. Many times, when she picked up the boys for the weekend, she drove past my house and had my mother gather a few of my things while I hopped in the back seat of her enormous Cadillac.

  We would go for ice cream or she would ask her housemaid, Colleen, to kindly fix us her “super-deluxe cheeseburgers” with homemade French fries.

  When we got older she would give us money for the movies, to buy magazines or other frivolous things and as teenagers she was always our last resort when trying to get out of trouble, because no matter what, we could always count on our Nana Rose-Marie.

  * * *

  Still sitting on the wooden floor, I finished leafing through the albums.

  The last pictures my mom had put in the album were taken when we were much older, and most were taken by me. One photograph in particular caught my attention.

  I paused, taking another sip of my rich, velvety Merlot.

  It was a close-up picture I had taken of Oliver one afternoon when we went swimming by that same lake. He must have been eighteen or so, for I remember taking that picture somewhere at the beginning of our senior year of high school. We used to go regularly, but this time we walked further than usual, to a spot Oliver had discovered weeks before. On his advice, I had borrowed my dad’s camera to capture the beautiful scenery there.

  Oliver had just come out of the water, and while sitting cross-legged on a towel he lit a cigarette. He sat there quietly, enjoying the view and drying up in the sun. The sun was setting and the soft light gave his skin a golden glisten. The picture was taken from his side, and while looking straight at me through the camera lens, underneath dark eyebrows and long black lashes, his eyes were hypnotic; an impressive color of light blue he had inherited from his mother. He was smiling at me, with the cigarette loosely hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

  I studied his striking face for a moment and unconsciously traced the imaginary line along his jaw with the tip of my finger. I then inhaled deeply, finished my wine with a final gulp, and tossed the album aside. I stood up, flipped off the light, and went looking for my bed.

  Chapter Four

  OLIVER

  1982

  * * *

  The new Dutch-American family in Chester consisted of Papa Dan, Mama Marielle, the little sister Anabel, and six-year-old Erica Sky Johansson.

  I liked her right away. She was bold and cheeky, and she always spoke her mind—you know, without the socially desirable filter on it, which is what usually ruins honest communication between most adults.

  When she was around nine she decided that from that moment on her name would be Eryka Skai, then Areeka Scay, and eventually she decided she looked like an Airyca Skae. This went on until Mr. Meade gave her an F in mathematics. Not because of her dyscalculia, but because according to him there was no one in his class that went by such a name. She then spent weeks thinking of a retaliation plan and finally came up with something she called “BRILLIANT!”

  She had me help her save up as many salt sachets as we could find, and when Mr. Meade left the classroom for a couple of minutes she poured about ten of them in his coffee and twenty or more in his jug of water. He never found out it was her, so in my perception her action had been pointless. But when she told me she had finally done it, she had such a justice-has-been-done expression that I could only applaud and congratulate her on her victory.

  She was very free-spirited as a child and passionate about everything she did. She had this surplus of energy and, although not ill-intended, she would spill that energy in the wrong direction, which would often get her into trouble. Her dad thought that signing her up for sports such as field hockey and soccer could help her use that extra pep in a positive matter, but after three broken fingers, a couple of black eyes, and one mega tantrum after losing a game, her father decided that enough was enough and that she would be better off searching for diversion in a more relaxed atmosphere.

  So she started taking art classes and fell completely in love with Gustav Klimt. She poured all her vigor, passion, and rebellion in her art. By the time she was fifteen her parents cleaned out their attic and gave it to her to use as her own art studio. She would spend many hours painting there, but when she wasn’t there she would usually be at our place. At a treehouse we had in our backyard.

  * * *

  The Johanssons regularly made summer trips to The Netherlands to visit family and Erica always brought back little presents or souvenirs for me. I treasured those forever.

  However, in the spring of 1982 my father and Mr. Johansson started building a treehouse and that summer Mr. Johansson ended up not accompanying Mrs. Johansson and their two girls on their family visit; instead he stayed to continue working on the treehouse with my dad.

  I was about eight and old enough to meaningfully participate in what my father called “Project Treehouse”. I was allowed to haul wood, hammer in a nail or two, and even handle the electric saw under strict supervision.

  “Good job, kiddo,” my dad said repeatedly and patted me on the back.

  Together they managed to get it done just in time to surprise Erica when she came back. I will never forget the expression on her face when I uncovered her eyes. Her eyes widened and shrieking at the top of her voice she jumped up and down and clapped her hands. She then turned around and hugged me tightly, then her dad and then mine... but she had hugged me first.

  * * *

  My dad’s experience in carpentry and having all the required material and tools at hand really helped the treehouse turn out, well, spectacular.

  It was built in our garden, in the huge, tall, sturdy tree where I had first met Erica. Both dads had agreed it was more than suitable to build something on. In fact, they said, it would outlast us all.

  The house had a fixed staircase that swirled around the tree, snake-like. It was completely surrounded by a balcony, and inside was spacious enough for an adult to hold, let’s say, a dinner party for six. There were four large windows, two overlooking the backyard. The other two had a good view of everything that was happening on the other side of the fence of our garden. From these windows I would watch Mrs. Kozowolski let her poodle have a dump on the sidewalk and scurry off, and I saw how one night the Brighton brothers stole our neighbor’s new barbecue. Whom, by the way, I never really liked, so I thought it quite funny to keep the answer to their “mystery of the missing BBQ” to myself.

  We placed a huge old sofa just beneath the windows. My father had cut the branches in such a way that when I lay on it, I could enjoy observing the sky. As a kid I loved imagining shapes in the clouds, and when I was older I would sometimes even spend the night there and stare at the thousands of stars above.

  * * *

  Fridays started out
as our play-date day. Erica and I would walk home together from our elementary school, have lunch, and then run up to the treehouse, where we pretended to be on a pirate ship or hidden in a bunker while trying to protect the world from alien invaders.

  Once we were in middle school she walked home with me almost every day of the week. After lunch we did our homework in the treehouse, which was gradually stripped of all its toys and stickers to be replaced with a table, some chairs, the big old sofa, a stereo, and a couple of posters of our favorite band of the moment.

  On the weekends, however, I had the treehouse mostly to myself. Erica then usually spent time painting or with her girlfriends, and my good friends Jeff and Michael Bianchi, or simply Mike, would come over, often sneaking in beer and cigarettes.

  Jeff and Mike had been my close friends since as far back as kindergarten. We constantly teased each other; Mike made fun of Jeff’s ginger hair and easily sunburned skin, nicknaming him “Mr. Lobster,” while Jeff called Mike “The Unibrow,” referring to his hairy dark eyebrows that met each other smack in the middle, right above the bridge of the nose. By the way, this spot is otherwise known as the “glabella,” a fact I’ll always remember because one lazy afternoon Jeff found it necessary to take the time and look it up in the encyclopedia, and then he sprained his wrist when he fell off his chair, laughing hysterically.

  But the teasing was harmless and we enjoyed just goofing around, spending our time talking about music, the coolest video games, or trying to agree on who we thought was either the prettiest or the hottest girl in school, because according to Mike there was a huge difference in those categories. Jeff would then bring a new angle to the discussion by bluntly stating that the issue was to actually decide who had the biggest boobs. By this new criteria we were obligated to start our debate all over again.

 

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