Lillian Wissler

Person as Place

A town full of local coffee shops, my ex and I still began most of our mornings together at the only Tim Hortons in town. Our normal booth was taken, the one where I would sit and Liz would stand over me for a second, kiss my cheek before they went to the bathroom. Where my coffee would be
set in front of me by them or myself, and I would get too caught in the paralyzing brain rush that always happened to me when a partner left me to my own devices.

On this day, though, I had an actual chair. One against the window facing the dealership where I’d bought my car. I made a joke that the seller would see me, text like he sometimes did after seeing me drive past. My ex did not find matters like this funny. One of those nonsensical things wherein they were always most jealous of male attention I got, though I am a lesbian. Some old burr, or something worse. I made nice about it, just sipped my drink and smiled. Liz gave me a chip and did the old standing over me thing, excused themself to the bathroom.

I felt glowy and uncareful. I have a bad habit of setting my keys on my lap, forgetting them before a loud drop, or jangling them purposefully. That morning, I lifted them onto the table. I seemed to have broken from the craze, settled into the kind of permanency that meant my mind was still my own for the moment.

Out the window, I could make out the COAD on the side of one of the many mountains. I looked beyond it, trees thick to the sky. The women at our usual booth were discussing Genesis, their Bibles both split open on the table.

Liz was from here in Athens, a place I sometimes jested about being from, too. I had family there, grew up there every once in a while. It was why I had wanted to go anywhere other than Ohio University; I wanted new. I got the old. What I came to realize was that I knew fragments, and Liz helped paint the rest of the picture. Even still, I showed them enough places I realized I owned a part of it, too. Liz would get this look on their face when it happened, or when they planned a date, and I recognized the location upon arrival.

“I can’t show you anything new, can I?” They asked once, and I could only laugh in response because their voice had flattened in a way I hadn’t heard before. That’s new, I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to hear the sound of it again.

The summer of our romance, I got a lot of the dreams I felt had missed me. I was in a small town with a partner who knew it well, kissed me often, and rarely avoided a chance to have their hands on me. Their family liked me, cooked for me, and I would sit warm in my chair at work thinking about who would be waiting for me on my front porch when I got off. The barbs got harder and harder to see.

I tend to hold a magnifying glass to people at first, checking for the places with potential to hurt me. I also tend to put it down too early to make it of any use. Liz was never any different, and after our painful split, I realized the reasons we ended were the ones I had seen first. Maybe this one will stick. Maybe none of them will, and the Greeks will name an emotion for my Fate. Maybe they already have, and I quit reading too soon.

The women with the Bibles were loud, something that surprised me. Religion has always held a sense of embarrassment to me, and this was one of those moments I had to remind myself I was unique in that feeling. Or at least that I was in that room.

One of them answered her phone when called, a movement that cut off the other woman. She didn’t seem rushed or apologetic, had a loping conversation with her son, didn’t mention where she was to him—maybe she had some of my same embarrassment after all.

A man in a construction vest came in, also on the phone. He ordered his coffee, corrected the worker when they repeated it back wrong. Waiting for his drink, he stared over my head at the mountains I’d looked away from in order to study him.

Liz returned to the table, said sorry to leave me.

“Don’t be,” I said, still eavesdropping.

“November Rain” started to play over the whole thing, and I snorted, thinking of my father and his love for that song.

“Guns N’ Roses at 10 a.m.”

Liz just nodded.

Behind the counter, I watched another worker placing chips in the same brown storage bins we used when I cashiered for KFC.

“Did you ever work fast food?” I asked Liz, and they shook their head no.  

“Those bins,” I said, “I would recognize them in death.”

They just nodded, got that look on their face.

I turned back to the window. “Do you know what that place is?” I pointed at the COAD.

“No, I don’t.”

“Hm,” I googled it, sipped my coffee. “Appalachian support, it says. For many things.”

“Hm,” Liz repeated me without meaning to. That look was still on their face, one like I was an intruder. But I think I was imagining it because another time they gave me that look, I asked what they were thinking of, and they told me they were thinking about how much they love me.

“Well, it looked like you despise me,” I laughed, but it was breathless because the look had scared me.

“Want a bite?” They asked me, unwrapping their sandwich. KFC always used boxes, never this wrap. I nodded, leaning forward with my mouth open.

The look didn’t really leave their eyes, and I thought about the drive home to Dayton, and the stretch of 35 that went flat flat flat. I loved it, loved the time to think, to spot something new. Liz avoided it at all costs. I was going to drive us down it later that day. I rarely drove us anywhere; Liz preferred to drive. I’ve come to think of that strip of highway as a bit of a character judge. At the time though, I just put my hand over the table for theirs, my own miniature prayer as the Bible women packed up to leave.

“Actually, I’ll stay a little longer,” one of them said, the mother. “It’ll give me more time to look it over, think about it.”

“Right.” The other woman said, surprised but smiling. Pleased.

I watched it all, and Liz watched me watching them.

I glanced back at the COAD, and the mine-scarred mountains by it. In my first apartment in Athens, I’d greet the mountains each morning. I told my mom once that I can’t live anywhere without them now, but I have been trying to figure out if that is really true ever since then.

I remember thinking I had seen enough of that town, when I meant I’d seen enough of one person. I remember realizing that was the same thing there. I remember how my skin would itch sometimes like if I went just one town over, I would feel better. I remember how it worked very well for a while, and then I realized needed a new state.

That morning, though, I looked at the mining scars and felt for a moment like a true outsider. I didn’t turn to Liz’s face for the validation, though I knew I would just be stretching the meanness I sometimes found there into a fit for whatever I was thinking. Maybe they were seeing that, or maybe they were mining me, too. Maybe all these things can be true at once.

*

Lillian Wissler is a lesbian writer from Dayton, Ohio. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Short Vine Journal and Cornell University’s Rainy Day Literary Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in 30 North, and was short-listed for Epiphany’s Breakout! Writers Prize in 2024.