Alix Ohlin - Babylon and Other Stories

“But what?”

“But nothing,” he said, his fingertips walking along on my collarbone and down my chest. “But nothing at all, not ever.”

The bed was the worst I'd ever slept on in my entire life. Lumps in the mattress competed with broken springs to torture my back. I woke an hour later in agony, and Spike was groaning in his sleep, tossing back and forth, like a fish dying on land. My head hurt and my mouth was dry. The moon shone over Spike's face. With his eyes closed, his cheek against the pillow, he looked like a child.

From the other bedroom I could hear a bed squeaking and Miriam's voice saying, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

Without waking, Spike reached up and pulled me close to him, warm together against the cold air of the room.

In the morning, the house smelled of syrup and bacon. We sat up in bed and spent a while kissing. There was a holiday sort of feel to things. Downstairs, Miriam was mixing pancake batter and Uncle Bob was building a fire in the stove. He winked at us.

“You two sleep all right?” he said.

“Well, okay,” I said.

Spike collapsed on the couch. I walked through the kitchen and stepped out onto the back porch, squinting as the sun glinted against the snow. The air smelled clear and fresh, and there were no other houses in sight. The land sloped down to a rocky valley and up to a clearing on the other side. The wind rattled pine needles over the snow, and maple trees stretched their naked branches to the sky. I was only a little hungover. After a minute I went back inside and offered to help Miriam with breakfast, but she said she was all right. She hummed to herself as she stirred the batter. I poured coffee for me and Spike and went back into the living room. Uncle Bob was lighting the stove.

“So, Lucy, you didn't sleep all right?”

“I slept okay. It's just, well, to be honest, the mattress isn't very comfortable.”

“It's not? Why isn't it?”

“It's lumpy, Uncle Bob,” Spike said from the couch. I sat down next to him, and he rubbed my back.

“Well, God, Spike, you should have said something. God, you kids, I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry.” He stretched out his hands, looking dismayed.

“It's not a big deal,” I said. “We'll survive.”

“Absolutely not,” said Uncle Bob. “I mean, if a person comes to my home, I'd like that person to do more than survive. I'd like that person to have a good night's sleep. That's the very least I can do, isn't it? As a host? Well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a new bed.”

“You don't have to do that,” I said.

“Yes, I certainly do. I can't have you kids coming to my home and not sleeping. You should be able to relax in your Uncle Bob's house. I just can't have it any other way. I'm buying a new bed.”

He wouldn't talk about anything else over breakfast. As soon as we were done eating, he and Miriam drove to a furniture store in Rutland. Spike and I did the breakfast dishes. Then we went back to the old, uncomfortable bed and had sex.

They got back at around two in the afternoon. We were reading next to the stove, Spike engrossed in a paperback thriller he'd found in the guest room, and me battling Middlemarch. I had to write a paper on it, but kept falling asleep in the middle of chapters.

“Spike!” cried Uncle Bob as he came into the room. Cold air blew in behind him. “Come help me with this goddamn bed.”

Miriam sat down next to me. She looked tired.

“Good book?” she said, and I made a face.

With great difficulty, Uncle Bob and Spike dragged the old mattress down the stairs and across the living room. It was a feathertick mattress, lumpy and huge and mottled white. It looked like a dead animal, say a polar bear — something they'd hunted and killed but that continued, even after its death, to overwhelm them. I stood in the kitchen as they dragged it in there.

Uncle Bob let his end drop. “I need a break,” he panted. His face was red. He looked at me and Spike. “I bought this bed with my ex-wife. Let that be a lesson to you,” he said, and shook his head.

Finally they managed to get the mattress outside and they left it in the snow behind the house. Then they carried the new one up the stairs. The whole thing took hours. Miriam stood at the base of the stairs, saying, “To your left, Spike,” and “No, you have to lift and angle it,” until Spike lost his temper and told her to leave them alone. She went away muttering. I stayed in the living room.

Finally, Uncle Bob came downstairs and sat down next to me. “Lucy,” he said. “I think Uncle Bob needs a drink.”

“Thanks for the bed,” I told him. “You really didn't have to do that.”

“But I did, didn't I?” He smiled widely, that impish look again. “You know, you're the first girl Spike's ever brought here.”

He and Spike started drinking whiskey to celebrate the new bed. It was already dark when Uncle Bob got the idea to burn the old one instead of taking it to the landfill. He got some kerosene out of the garage and told Spike to help him drag the mattress down to the valley. Spike seemed to like the idea. Miriam came out of the house, scowling.

“What are you doing, Bob?”

“Burning this old mattress.”

“Where? Under all that tree cover? Are you crazy?”

Uncle Bob looked at Spike and me and shook his head, as if appealing to our common sense. “You know,” he said, “when a middle-aged man takes up with a younger woman, it's supposed to be so he can have fun. It's not supposed to be that the younger woman just looks like a younger woman but is really a middle-aged woman inside.”

Miriam turned sharply around and went into the house. I looked at Spike but he didn't say anything. It didn't seem right for nobody to follow her, so I did. I didn't know what to do. I went to our room and sat down on the bed. I could hear her sobbing. After a while she used the bathroom and then walked back to her bedroom. I went out to the hallway and knocked on the open door.

“Are you okay?” I said.

She just looked at me. “Bob,” she said, and shook her head. “Fucking Bob.” She pulled out a compact and put on her red lipstick, pressing hard against her lips, and seemed to get calmer and angrier. “Fucking Bob, he drives me crazy,” she said, and smacked her lips together. She stared at the floor as if Bob, or a picture of him, were sitting there. “I have to stay with him, though. I owe him my life.”

“What do you mean? You can't stay with him if you aren't happy together,” I said, and I believed this to be simple and true.

She looked at me with pity. “When I met him I had no life. I was pregnant, I had no money. He helped me. So you see?”

I didn't. “I still think you have a choice.”

“If I ever left Bob I'd be in trouble again in a second. I just know it. In a second. He knows it, too. That's the thing about me and Bob, he's crazier than I am. It keeps me steady, you know what I mean?”

I looked out the window. Snow was falling thickly, but a fire burned tall and strong in the valley, and I could see two shadowy figures around it — a weird scene, magical and sinister, like a page from a fairy tale.

“I guess I'll fix dinner,” Miriam said. She didn't seem upset anymore.

I walked downstairs and went out the back. Snow piled on my hair and my shoulders. I found Spike and Uncle Bob each with a bottle in hand. On top of the mattress they'd piled boxes, broken chairs, some twisted pieces of metal I couldn't identify. Wind whipped the flames around loudly.

“Housecleaning!” yelled Uncle Bob when he saw me. “I decided to get rid of some things. I know the traditional time for this is spring, but you know what Spike says.”

“What does Spike say?” I said, looking at Spike.