The Journey Prize Stories 25

by Various

  After the Chairman loaded the cans of paint and the rollers, pans, and brushes into the trunk, we headed to the beach.

  Riceboy shredded the scenic route, motoring down narrow streets that had a view of the ocean and the mountains. I peered at my friends again, examined their faces and slouched postures. These were my dragoons. In the moonlight they looked like the kind of people to whom the poets of yesteryear would dedicate verse.

  Riceboy halted the car. We had arrived. We were ready to launch.

  I got out, popped the trunk, and put a drop cloth over the back licence plate. I’d eyeballed enough movies to be an expert on side-stepping issues with the law. Riceboy draped his oversized coat over the front plate. The Chairman marched the cans of paint over to the mural, and Peril and Suzie gathered the remaining supplies.

  We approached the mural with the fanfare of a winning army, whooping and menacing our way down the path. The mural had a sinister vibe. Under the streetlight, the settlers appeared to have leers upon their faces. They looked like zombies or cannibals or vampires or some type of unknown monster that fed on the flesh of humans.

  “It’s really in need of a touch up,” Suzie said.

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  The Chairman filled a pan with paint, then another. Peril handed me a roller. Riceboy and Suzie grabbed the brushes. We were not jibber-jabbering, but somehow we had all sidled up to the same conclusion: we were going to paint over the entire mural.

  We laboured like the Chingers that we were, and, in less than an hour, the task was finito.

  “That summer you spent slaving for that painting company was worth it,” I said to Riceboy. “This is an example of fine craftsmanship.” Despite all that had transpired that night, the corners of my mouth pulled up – a smile. Riceboy’s face held the same expression. I imagined that this was forgiveness, or something like it.

  Peril was next to me, an opportunity. I got up in her personal space and seized her hand. Her hair smelled like a field of wild flowers, and I was a bee wanting to gather her pollen. She didn’t treat me like a leper. Instead, she held my hand like it was a giant wad of cash she was afraid to drop.

  The wall was now beige, slick like the Wongs’ kitchen. There was no evidence that there had once been a mural. My dragoons and I gazed at the blank slate before us. Light drizzle began to fall, but we continued to stand at attention. Though it’s said that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made thing visible from space, at that moment it felt as if anyone looking down upon the Earth would have seen that expanse of beige wall, and us, sleeping giants shaking off a long slumber, presiding over it.

  ZOEY LEIGH PETERSON

  SLEEP WORLD

  Forty-seven minutes is a long time to wait in a mattress store when you don’t need a mattress. For the first couple of laps, the salespeople kindly ignore Kathryn. She has explained that she is waiting for someone. It’s early on a Tuesday morning, and the salespeople are still handing each other cups of coffee and debriefing on last night’s television.

  Kathryn wanders the store, trying to look purposeful. She studies each mattress in turn. She contemplates their regal names. She peers into a small cutaway section of mattress with its isolated springs pressed up against the Plexiglas. They look battered and desperate, like the animals in the brochures that still come to the house.

  Eventually, one of the young salesmen is sent over to check on her. Kathryn affirms, again, that she is waiting for a friend, that it is the friend who needs a mattress, and that she herself is entirely content with her current mattress, though this is not strictly true. Her own bed is sagging and problematic, but Chris likes it.

  The young salesman returns to the pack with this information. They keep talking amongst themselves about this show and that show, but Kathryn can feel them watching her with suspicion. She tries to imagine what they might suspect. That she is going to sneak out of the store with a queen-size boxspring in her bag? That she is going to slit the long, soft belly of a mattress and hide evidence inside? That she is going to move into their showroom with several temperamental cats and set up camp? What is their worst-case scenario?

  Now that Sharon owns a car, she is late to everything. The car was part of a story that began with Sharon not having a baby and ended with her and Kyle moving to a condo with cream carpets.

  On paper, their new place is not even that far away. A forty-minute ride from Chris and Kathryn’s – thirty if you really pedal. Kathryn and Sharon had routinely cycled twice that distance when they were in grad school together, but the miles feel somehow longer in this new direction. Bike paths end unceremoniously in the middle of the block, spitting you out onto noisy highways. The cars move faster and seem angrier, and you arrive unhappier than you were when you left.

  Back when Sharon and Kyle lived across the alley, the four of them would see each other almost every day. Sometimes to borrow a lemon or envelope or screwdriver, other times because the news was too terrible to watch alone.

  Now though, they don’t show up at each other’s back door with a bottle of wine or half a birthday cake. They don’t phone each other and say, We made too much pasta, do you guys want to come eat with us? Instead they say, What does week after next look like? They say, Can we do it at our place? They say, Hey I’m coming into town to look at mattresses, why don’t you come along and we can catch up?

  When Sharon arrives, much is forgiven. The salespeople are not suspicious of Sharon. They are charmed and intrigued by her princess-vs-pea dilemma – a series of fine beds that all felt perfect for the first hour, but then this nagging ache that would creep up her leg and into her spine. It’s fun to watch Sharon do her thing. She is getting everyone on board, like they are her students. Kathryn feels lucky to be here with Sharon on a Tuesday morning while her work sits at home on the desk.

  Here is what I propose, says Sharon to the gathered sales force. You guys pretend I’m not here and let me lie around in your beds all day like a weirdo. Then at the end of the day, I hand you my credit card and show you the bed you just sold me.

  This amuses the salespeople and they bring out special paper booties and special pillows for different kinds of sleepers – side sleepers, stomach sleepers – and a secret notebook with all the pricing information and talking points. And so equipped, Sharon and Kathryn are set adrift in the sea of mattresses.

  Okay, says Sharon once they are alone, let’s get in bed and then I want to hear all about this Emily thing.

  Kathryn had told Sharon about the Emily thing in an inadvertent phone call inspired by Neanderthals. She’d been on the couch watching a BBC program on Neanderthals, the last of a people, and she had suddenly felt so much love for Sharon, and so much longing, that she picked up the phone and dialled the number without thinking.

  Sharon was half-watching the same show and paying some bills, and they talked about work for a while and how it must feel for an actor to be cast as a Neanderthal.

  Then Sharon had asked what was up, and asked in such a way that Kathryn felt that something should be up. And so, to have something to say, Kathryn told her that Chris had a crush on some Emily from work – which is fine, people get crushes – but that he had invited this person to stay in their apartment while they were away for the long weekend, to house-sit, to sleep in their bed, and that that felt weird. This got Sharon’s interest. They talked about it hotly for several minutes – Sharon being emphatic and scandalized in gratifying ways – until Sharon was so sorry, but she had to go to a strata meeting.

  Now Sharon is going to want the whole story. Everything is a story now with Sharon. But Kathryn isn’t sure what else to say. Chris hasn’t mentioned Emily since that weekend. After bringing her up constantly in the weeks leading up to her stay, now he can’t even be drawn into conversation about her. When Kathryn asks what Emily looks like or what colour her hair is, Chris can’t say. All that Kathryn knows about Emily is what she left behind in their apartment: in the bathroom, a tin of lip balm with a s
liding lid that is satisfying to open and close; in the recycling, a half-rinsed jar of some paste that makes the whole house smell velvety; in the bedroom, nothing, although both their clock radios were unplugged; and on the refrigerator, a three-page letter of thanks, politely addressed to both of them, but clearly written for Chris and filled with such candour and fellowship that it felt too intimate to read. Kathryn had read it twice. All this she has already told Sharon on the phone while the Neanderthals failed to adapt.

  Kathryn considers now telling Sharon about the misspellings in the letter, not just Kathryn’s name, but in almost every line. But she cannot think of a way to say this without feeling dirty. Finally, she resolves to say this: There is no story. There are just these feelings that come and go. Feelings without a beginning, middle, and end.

  But by the time they are settled into a bed, they are already talking about sex.

  Since buying the condo, Sharon and Kyle have been out of sync, sexually. Morning has always been their time. Truthfully, morning and night. But especially morning. These days, though, Kyle’s brain wakes up making lists and doesn’t remember it has a body until it’s time to leave for work. Now Sharon has found a solution: oats before bed. Apparently, half a cup of Scottish uncut oats right before bed has Kyle waking up like his former self.

  That’s why I was late getting here, Sharon says. She doesn’t actually wink.

  Kathryn rolls onto her side and stares out over the empty mattresses. They’re like ice floes. Can you steer an ice floe? Or do you just go where it takes you?

  How did you figure that out, Kathryn asks. The oat thing.

  Ann-Marie, from our building, she told me about it, says Sharon.

  Kathryn has met this Ann-Marie, once, at Sharon and Kyle’s housewarming. Ann-Marie was in the kitchen blending margaritas and warming tortillas in a cast-iron pan she’d brought from her place across the hall. Let me take that, said Ann-Marie, plucking a dirty plate from Kathryn’s hand. This kitchen is exactly like mine, so I already know my way around, said Ann-Marie, though Kathryn could see the sink right there.

  You should try it, says Sharon of the oats. This, Kathryn understands, is a reference to Chris, and Kathryn feels a vague urge to defend him.

  Chris has what Kathryn calls a high cuddle drive. He kisses her awake every morning, he reaches out to touch her arm while they read the paper, he hugs her for whole minutes, which she loves. But sex, when it comes, comes in slippers. Still, over the years they have found a sort of equilibrium. And it’s nice, the sex, when they have it.

  This isn’t working for me, says Sharon, rising from the bed. Too mooshy, she says.

  They drift through the beds, Sharon pressing her palm firmly down into each mattress and holding it there, eyes closed, as if communing with the bed’s essential nature. Kathryn looks at price tags. Some of the beds are so unaccountably expensive, that Kathryn – if it were up to her – wouldn’t even pause in front of them, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  Sharon is lingering over a four-thousand-dollar bed. She has slid her hand under the foam pad and is palpating the springs, dispassionately, like a doctor. She is in fact a middle school teacher.

  Didn’t they just buy a bed, Sharon and Kyle? (Kathryn remembers precisely: it was an engagement present to themselves.) Did they sell that bed? Where does four thousand dollars come from? How do you buy a condo, and then a bed, and then another bed?

  There was a time when she might have asked Sharon these questions. Actually, there was a time she wouldn’t have had to ask – the answers would have bubbled to the surface while they helped each other put away groceries or stood in line together to cash their student loans. When they were part of the slow unspooling of each other’s lives.

  Sharon has sunk herself into the four-thousand-dollar mattress. Kathryn is converting the price in her head. Four thousand dollars is her food for an entire year. It is the dental work Chris needs. It is x hours of copy-editing plus y hours of indexing, over the ten-year life of the bed, for a total of z hours per year. Kathryn climbs into the exquisite bed.

  Sharon holds Kathryn’s hand as they lie staring up at the acoustic panels.

  This is the one, Sharon says. Her hand feels softer than it used to, and bigger, in a four-thousand-dollar bed.

  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.