I
liked the idea. Love.
In
our new apartment I always kept the sheets clean and crisp. Slipping beneath
fresh covers was a treat I looked forward to each night. Each morning, I would
turn back a corner of the made-up bedding so that later on I could peel back
the rest and dissolve inside. An sometimes, when I woke up to find the sheets
still flat and untwisted around, like warm concrete that refused to buckle, I basked
in a great sense of pre-8 a.m. accomplishment
After we moved in, I went shopping at a mid-range department
store and bought a set of pastel green 400-thread count single-ply Ralph Lauren
sheets for a double-sized bed and an extra-firm pillow sturdy enough to swear
upon in court. “Are you interested in our luxury down mattress pad, sir? L. L.
Bean?” The salesgirl had asked, but I told her, another time. It would leave me
something to look forward to in
the cold, winter months ahead, craving novelty but could barely finding the
energy to leave the house.
When
I returned home I unwrapped the new sheets from their plastic, stripped the
bed, and began to prioritize our linen closet’s hand-me-downs. I refolded the off-white
ribbed Egyptian cotton, and stacked up like tree rings the extra pillowcases. Creased
and faded were the two sets of cheap, papery sheets we had used during our lives
as bachelors.
On
Sundays I fluffed the pillows on the bed, four total, and flipped over the one
with the ink stain. I swept the
bare mattress where particles of maybe granola, cat litter, dead skin, and
whatever else stuck to the bottoms of our feet and traveled into bed with us in
a kind of pollution or symbiosis.
They
say the first year is all about survival.
As
a rule, I alone made the bed because I was convinced this was an act only
complicated by collaboration, and, at the time, it was important for me to feel
the gratification of seeing a task through, beginning to end.
I
kept a half-glass of water on my nightstand and always ate a sugary snack
before bed, as children do—toast with jam, a cookie, or a small bowl of yogurt.
Later it became almost impossible to sleep without this, and so after dinner I
set out the dish or the utensil needed, and all throughout my post-dinner activity,
grading papers, running an errand, or walking around the block, I would look
forward to the extra glucose. “Aren’t you worried you’ll gain weight?” you said,
slipping out of your boxers. But from Sunday to Saturday, one evening winding
down and recoiling into another, I told myself you found my attention to habit
somewhat endearing, especially when compared with the torrents of your own dullness.
How could anyone not find apathy so overwhelming?
But
some nights when I peeled back the covers, I had the distinct feeling I might
die within the night, and strangely, the person I imagined finding my body was
never you, the obvious choice, but an acquaintance or often times a
stranger—how they would get into the house?—who would not arrive until days
later to find my corpse, draped in wrinkled linens. Once, it was a quiet girl who smelled like chlorine who had
sat next to me in 10th grade geometry. Another time it was Vince
Lombardi, who grinned with his hands clasped, wringing them shoulder to
shoulder across his boxy chest.
Vince Lombardi?
However
illogical, these rescuers would hover in the space just beyond my wakefulness,
and without invitation, usher me into the comfort of a temporary death.
This
is a story about surviving.
Fall
fused icily into winter, the days grew shorter, and my bedtime crept and
rivaled dinner, as if the ritual of sleep were my one and only sustenance. Like
a biologist preparing for dissection, I took pride in arranging everything just
so, including my own limbs. They say one’s sleeping posture reveals deep yet essential
secrets about one’s mental state.
Those who sleep on their stomachs have something to protect, and those
who sleep on their backs with their elbows and palms at their sides have the
most confidence. My natural sleeping posture combined the fetal position with
an upside-down version of how, at age nine, I had been taught to properly slide
into home plate, my legs mimicking the shape of the number four. I had not
thought a lot about what this posture said about my inner child, or my
relationship with my mother, or the tension my body type carried in the muscles
of the lower back. How could I? One’s sleeping position is determined by an
endless, myriad of such external factors, including but not limited to:
digestion
of a heavy meal,
lack
of stretching after exercise,
how
long or how much one had already slept that day,
the
stress-level of events occurring immediately prior to sleeping,
the
stress-level of events occurring immediately after sleeping,
the
stress-level of events occurring at any time within the near or distant past or
future of sleeping,
the
temperature of the room and amount of blanket coverage,
jetlag,
drunkenness, or daily caffeine intake,
post-coital
fatigue (which is said can be deadly among squids),
the
sleeping postures of participating organisms.
And then sometimes there
were the pitiful, insomnious nights, hopelessly perforated by trips to the
toilet, to the fridge, or the couch, the nights hung together in one liquid,
long week of torment.
And
most importantly, what I would never openly admit, sleep always carried with it
its own mysterious rules of bodily routine or renewal, which harnessed
themselves to that First Year in ways I could never even begin to understand or
describe, however much attention I paid. All rituals have a way of making certain
things disappear.
Before
the alarm clock rang on February 12th, at 4:19 A.M., I waited with
my hands folded. The sky would not brighten for hours, until after the school
day had already began, and so I lay there, waiting, as if riding the bus,
content with letting only time do the worrying.
At
first, I didn’t recognize the voice speaking. Its sound was more like the
feeling of scanning your eyes across pages and pages before realizing you
hadn’t actually comprehended a single word of what your eyes had passed over.
Slowly, over the next few seconds, the speech began to take shape, and I began
to observe its predicates and articles. Unmistakable syntax. One hundred
percent grammatical sentences spoken by a one hundred percent real voice. I
reached for my glasses.
The
voice was like a kind of third party, a friendly neighbor who sometimes struck
up a conversation, by unlatching your back door without knocking, or by poking
his head over the hedge when he saw you working out in the back yard. Whether
this neighbor-figure had been invited was of little consequence. He was both
well known and anonymous, trusted yet mysterious. Yet there was comfort in that
only something concrete would bring forth his need for contact, such as a
relayed message from the water meter reader or the endlessly volleyed favor of mowing
the conjoined boulevard. I had, I admit, made the habit of avoiding this said
neighbor, and only carried on the most reluctant small talk, to the point where
I had caught myself repeating “and how are you?” a second time, which marked my
inattention with bright, neon lights. This man should already know I wanted
nothing. But sometimes maintaining a façade is easier than not.
“Do
you think,” he began, “ they make cat houses on blimps?”
His
subject then, became more or less clear.
I looked at the ceiling and cleared my throat. There was something
troubling in the man’s voice, and whatever tension was gripping him, I knew I
didn’t want to get too involved.
“They
let people smoke on the Hindenburg,” he continued, “so don’t tell me it’s out
of the question. Everybody
nowadays assumes the answer’s obvious, but it’s not too difficult to remember a
time when it wasn’t.”
“Why’s
that?” I said. The words felt fuzzy and fermented in
my mouth, so I lay there, rehearsing infinitives: to floss, to brush, to put on
the coffee. Morning was all about
efficiency, not manners.
He
didn’t respond.
The
darkness between us was like a brown picket fence.
Then
the pillows separating us arched upward, in the shape of brown fence posts, as
if we were on an episode of Home
Improvement.
His breathing changed, and for a moment I thought
I was off the hook. “Give me a
break. It’s not just about knowing and not-knowing. We’re talking about a set
of conditions—expectations, really—that with ample preparation are nearly
absolutely predictable.”
He
was right. There really was no reason you couldn’t take a cat house on a blimp.
But I wasn’t about to give him this satisfaction. Do that, and the next time he
popped his forehead up over the fence I’d be subjected to his theory about the
history of mispronounced Italian in the American restaurant industry. I wasn’t
about to act interested.
“Nothing
you say or do will make me unlovable,” he said next.
I
paused, thinking. I didn’t have an argument for that one. My judgment seemed
clouded by either too much or lack of information. It’s hard to argue with
someone you’ve let become mostly invisible.
“I’m
going to be late for school,” I said.
It was still hours before sunrise.
But the urge to flee, to escape, had been programmed into my muscles, so
much so that at that very moment the worry that I would somehow miss first
period altogether seemed deeply probable and real.
In
my head I rehearsed what the next few seconds would bring, me emptying the bed
and smoothing out the covers.
“You’ll
probably ask if we can talk about this later” he said. “There’s no way you
could not know this already, but you’re not in trouble and I can’t help
you. That’s the good news.”
I
was quiet for more than a minute, my thoughts folding and refolding linen.
“Is
it?” I said.
It
was dark, but I imagined him waving a little perfunctory salute from behind the
fence. “Goodnight,” he said. “Have
a good day at school.”
“Good
night,” I said.
When
my feet hit the carpet, I realized we had somehow sailed into morning on our
last thin sliver of compromise.
Thinking
about making and re-making the bed to achieve large swaths of uninterrupted
sleep is one way to measure time.
But there are others.
Sometimes
I wonder what happened to Wilson. The thought usually pops into my head as I’m
stripping off week-old sheets like birch bark. After Wilson crept back behind his fence—did he disappear forever?—drowned
and forgotten inside that mattress?
