The Journey Prize Stories 25 (25 page)

Sharon used to be cheap. When they were students, when money was a thing, Sharon was flamboyantly frugal, a loud champion of all things scrounged or redeemed.

One time, Sharon and Kyle had shown up at their door late one evening, exultant, because the video store was throwing out old VHS tapes. Sharon had rescued
The Great Muppet Caper
from a cardboard box on the sidewalk, just as the rain was starting to fall.

Chris pulled the futon off the frame and onto the living-room floor, and the four of them sardined themselves under two overlapping blankets and watched and cheered and made amazing jokes, until Kathryn thought she might hyperventilate.

Later, exhausted by their own hilarity, they watched in silence, a blissful stupor washing over their bodies. And Kathryn loved these people, loved living on this futon island with them,
and it was at this moment – as the movie rounded into the third act – that Kathryn began to think about the four of them falling asleep here in front of the TV, and the four of them waking up in the morning and making breakfast together and deciding what to do with their Sunday, the four of them. Kyle was already drifting off, soughing faintly between songs. And then Chris was asleep, furrowing and scrunching his sincere face. And then it was just Sharon and Kathryn holding hands and fading in and out as the tireless puppets saved the day. Then the credits were rolling and Sharon was squeezing her hand, then letting it go. She was reaching for Kyle’s shoulder, rubbing him slowly awake.

You guys can stay, Kathryn had said. You should stay.

Sharon smiled, and kept rousing Kyle, who made a low, assenting rumble.

You should stay, Kathryn said again. It felt urgent.

But now Kyle was standing up, his eyes still closed, and Sharon was leading him to the door.

Thank you for a perfect night, Sharon said.

Kathryn locked the door behind them and stood there trying to reabsorb her feelings. She could hear Chris stirring in the other room. He was calling out to her – making an endearing joke that had threaded through the evening – and she was suddenly irritated and hot and a kind of angry that she could not name. She did not answer. She washed the dishes loudly and wrestled the futon back onto the frame and did not go to bed until Chris was surely asleep. And by the next day, Sharon and Kyle were engaged.

––

This, ladies, is as good as it gets. So says the salesman. The reigning king of beds, he says. He begins to enumerate the many features of this noble mattress. Kathryn can see the contents of his nostrils.

They have only been in this bed for half an hour, and Kathryn waits for Sharon to drive the salesman away, remind him of their deal. But Sharon does not drive him away. She encourages him. She calls him Gary, which is his name. She asks Gary how long the warranty is, she asks about coil count. They talk admiringly to each other about the bed while Kathryn stares into a halogen light. She is thinking again about that letter, magneted to her fridge.

And what do you think, the salesman asks Kathryn. Kathryn doesn’t understand the question.

She’s just keeping me company, Sharon says, letting go of Kathryn’s hand. Sharon explains to the salesman that her boyfriend – fiancé actually – can sleep on anything and so bed-shopping with him is impossible because he dozes off on every bed they try.

The salesman makes a half-neutered observation about men and women and Sharon laughs. Sharon and the salesman begin to rehearse the differences between men and women.

But Chris would be here. If Kathryn had a pain in her leg, if Kathryn was unable to sleep at night, Chris would be here beside her, even if he was bored. But he wouldn’t be bored. He would be engaged. He would make it into a game. He would make up life-stories for each mattress. He would tell her about their childhoods as beanbags, imbuing each bed with hopes and ambitions and tragic flaws that he and Kathryn might recognize and grow to love. And Kathryn would mostly listen,
but would occasionally blurt out some bit of business that he would seamlessly integrate into the story.

And when the time came to decide, Chris would listen to her messy, rambling anxieties about where the bed was made, what the factory conditions were for the workers, and did she really need a new bed at all, and didn’t most of the world sleep on mats not half as comfortable as the bed they already had. And when she got overwhelmed by the morality of it and all the choices and the expense and the materialism and she started to panic, he would put his arm around her and guide her out of the store and across the street to the Chinese place and he would order dumplings and put them in front of her. And he would sit there and take all the terror and despair and just surround it with his goodness and absorb it like charcoal until she could stand herself again and could go back across the street and buy a bed. And when some salesman told them that men are like this and women are like that, she would know that she and Chris were on the same side and that Gary was on the other. Because she and Chris are a team.

Sharon is sitting up now, digging through her bag. She is buying the four-thousand-dollar bed. Kathryn wonders at the quiet snap of this decision. How one minute Sharon did not know, and then the next minute she did. It is only 11:30 in the morning.

Kathryn has not said any of the things she meant to say. She meant to say that, yes, the thought of Emily eats at her. That she feels colonized by that letter, planted like a flag in her kitchen. That sometimes when she comes home and the letter has been moved slightly, she wishes that Emily would
disappear and have never existed, but that sometimes she wishes it was Chris who would disappear, or she herself, or that nobody had ever existed and the planet was still choked with algae and God was pleased. Other times, she hears some dumb song on the radio that makes her feel connected to everything – mattress salesmen and deer ticks and crying babies – and she wants Chris to do whatever he needs to be happy. If he needs to kiss Emily, then kiss her. Or worse. She just wants him to be happy. She wants him to be happy so he can make
her
happy.

Sometime this week would be ideal, says Sharon.

Sharon has her day-planner out, making arrangements for the mattress to be delivered. Kathryn gazes blankly at the appointments and the half-familiar names. It’s mostly wedding stuff. Then she sees her own name:

Sleep World

(w/Kathryn!)

Next to her name is drawn a small heart. The whole day is blocked off. Kathryn wonders if they will now have lunch and sit on some heated patio drinking bellinis and talking about big and small things, or if the unexpected efficiency of her purchase will inspire Sharon to see how many other tasks she can accomplish today.

Kathryn doesn’t mind either way. She is ready to go home. She has something to say to Chris. It is starting to take up space in her mouth. She wants him to be happy. What is her worst-case scenario?

Seated and stowed.

Thank you, all set.

[Sound like cockpit door closing.]

Oh, that fucking door again.

What’s wrong?

This.

Oh.

You have to slam it pretty hard.

[Sound like cockpit door closing.]

This one is: Plane Ditched in Columbia River after Multiple Bird Strikes. Three serious injuries. One fatality. Forty-three passengers treated for hypothermia. On my desk Monday morning: the stats, the snaps, the autopsy, the tapes. (The .FLAC files.) (We still say tapes.) Linguists identify speech – loss of thrust, loss of trust, one five zero knots, one five
zero, not. I take the acoustics. Engine noise, aircraft chimes, whether the captain has reclined his seat.

Flaps one, please.

Flaps one.

What a view of the Columbia today.

Yeah.

After takeoff checklist.

After takeoff checklist complete.

[Sound of chime.]

Birds.

Whoa.

[Sound of thump.]

Oh shit.

Oh yeah.

Uh oh.

Sometimes you hear the pilots snap photos. Would you look at those Rockies. Or: photo of the FO clicking a photo of that fighter. Also, they swap jokes.

Welcome to the George Herbert Walker Bush Intergalactical Airport.

[Sound of laugh.]

I can’t fly anymore. Free flights, if I wanted, but I can’t coax myself past security. I take trains.

Mayday mayday mayday mayday.

Caution, terrain terrain terrain.

Too low. Terrain.

Pull up. Terrain.

We’re goin’ in the river.

Say again, Jetblue?

Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up.

The Oregonian
featured the accident on the front page. I bought a copy at lunch. The girl’s on A3: Backup Singer Dies in Plane Crash. In the photo, she’s surrounded by honeycomb. Her hair’s the same colour. Yellow in the waxlight, how sun warms through a sheet of gold tack.