Unmade Bed

Mary closed her eyes hoping this night would be different from last night or the night before or every night before for the past week. The fatigue set in and dragged her shoulders more easily than gravity ever could. Her head was pounding to the beat of her heart which felt restless in her chest though she only felt pain in the former. While they lived just twenty minutes from the beach, the air that found its way into her lungs seemed to have come from a much higher altitude. She had the urge to gasp and force more air, maybe even scream. But Mary knew that would be impractical and she didn’t want to wake up Henry, her husband, who reassured her that this would all pass with time and she knew that he was right but she had hoped that, at the very least, she would be used to it by now.

One more deep breath through the nose and slowly out through the mouth, she told herself before finally opening her eyes. Mary turned her head to the side to look at the clock on her nightstand and tragically only thirty minutes had passed. She had hoped that she had somehow stumbled upon some sleep but it was not meant to be this night. She reached over and turned on the lamp slowly, hoping the clicking of the switch didn’t wake Henry. He stirred but didn’t wake up. Mary then took the worn out book beside her clock and put on her glasses and began to read. The words strung together to resemble something like sentences, and she was sure that that was the author’s intent, but after another half hour of reading and rereading the same three pages she decided to put the book away.

Her feet wandered around aimlessly at first, searching for her slippers. She enjoyed the frays of the nylon carpet just barely touching the skin on the soles of her feet. It was almost hypnotizing. Her toes found her slippers and she gently lifted herself from the bed. Her first thought was to do some stretches. She stretched her arms out and brought them in, touched her toes and reached for the sky, and she rolled her head around back and forth and forth and back. Another deep breath and she still had no more desire to sleep than she did an hour before. She made her way out of the bedroom, leaving the nightstand lamp on behind her.

The kitchen always seemed colder than the rest of the house when it was cold outside and warmer than the rest of the house when it was warm outside. It was an odd thing that Mary never noticed before a week ago. Quiet, especially Mary’s newfound quiet, has a way of making one more sensitive to the smaller details that would otherwise go unnoticed. She took some milk and poured some into a small pot and turned on the stove. She listened to the gentle hiss of the gas as it heated the white liquid and she took another deep breath. The cold air seemed to fill her lungs a bit easier. When the milk just began to develop subtle wisps of steam above its surface, Mary took it off the heat and poured it into a mug. She washed the pot and let the milk cool for a bit.

Her hands looked tired and her eyes felt that way too as did the rest of her body. She was tempted to lay her head on the dining table where she sat, thinking that sleep would find her then. Instead she looked at her fingers and scoffed at her fingernails, which had long been removed from any manicurist’s station. Mary’s tired blue eyes traced the skin on the back of her fingers to the thin, gnarled veins that wrapped around the back of her hand. Turning over her hands she saw that they were more like leather though far from leathery and had far less calluses than she thought they should have had. With her palms facing her, she buried her hands in them but still couldn’t tire herself out. She drank the rest of her milk, washed the mug and shut off the kitchen light as she made her way back to the bedroom.

The hallway was lit with a single naked bulb whose flickering was not the fault of the manufacturer but of the faulty wiring of that particular fixture. Mary hated how poorly that hallway was lit and mentally made a note to tell Henry to get it fixed this weekend. Instead of going through the door on the left to go back to bed, she opened the door to the right into the other bedroom and flicked the light switch on. The light buzzed and gradually turned on. It was slightly cooler in this bedroom than the other. Mary shivered and made her way to the unmade bed, sitting down and staring at the curtains hanging over the small window.

There was a small desk against the wall just below the window, drawings strewn carelessly on top of it and broken crayons sprinkled on top of that. Mary’s eyes looked up and down the pink walls of the room and remembered where each and every sticker on it had come from. She heard footsteps behind her but she didn’t turn around. Henry didn’t say a word. He just sat beside his wife on the child’s bed and rubbed his hand on her back in large circles until she leaned her body back against him. She lay down on the bed and Henry wrapped his arm around her as he sat on the floor since he couldn’t fit in the bed with her. Mary closed her eyes and dried her cheeks on her husband’s hand as she finally succumbed to sleep. Henry let his head hang down loosely as went to sleep as well, his wife’s tears drying against the back of his hand.