The (middle) draft
I originally wrote a much different and much shorter version of this story three years ago. Last year, I wrote this version for my Creative Writing Class. I have decided to focus on this story yet again, with the hope that I can lengthen it and polish it to a final story I could be proud to present to a wider audience.
The Mattress
The day her husband moved out was the second worst day of June’s life. She sat with her legs crossed on the mattress in their bedroom as he threw clothes into another suitcase lying on the mattress beside her.
“How can you do this to me?” She asked. Her voice was steady. She didn’t quite believe that he was leaving her, not yet.
He didn’t look at her as he responded, “I’ve done everything I can for you. I can’t make you live again. I can’t spend every day trying to make you get out of bed, and worrying that when I come home from work, that you’ll still be in bed staring at the ceiling.”
June whispered, “I’m getting better. I am.” Then the first tremor appeared in her voice as she watched Mark fold his favorite t-shirt and place it on top of the growing pile of clothes in his suitcase. He really was leaving, and it was at that moment she knew.
His eyes were colder than she had ever seen them. “You’re not the only one is hurting here, you know.” He closed the suitcase and latched it, and turned away from her. His shoulders slumped as he whispered, “Look. I’m wrong to be angry with you. It’s not your fault. But I can’t even look at you right now.” He turned and kissed her forehead, then turned and left their home forever.
June sat in a haze on the mattress as the day’s light died around her. At twilight, she called Christina.
Christina stayed in her guest bedroom for two weeks. At night, she woke intermittently to the sobs from next door, and then sat in bed beside June late at night stroking her spasming back as she cried herself to sleep. June left her bed only to bathe or eat for the first few days. She knew that she was backsliding, and that Christina, bless her best friend, was at a loss as to how to help her. She made the effort to start living again for Christina; it is this effort that she couldn’t or wouldn’t exert for even her husband.
One day near the end of the two weeks, she encountered sticky notes from Christina posted all over her self-imposed prison in random places. A sticky note under her glass of water showed a crudely drawn monkey hanging from a branch with the caption “hang in there!” But the one that finally put a smile on her face was the yellow note stuck to the bathroom light switch. It read, “And anytime you feel the pain, hey June, refrain, don't carry the world upon your shoulders.” Every time June found herself in a sad state throughout their friendship, Christina would sing “Hey Jude” to cheer her up. Though this isn’t a bad grade in Chemistry or a few extra pounds before prom, nevertheless, June felt cheered just a small amount by her best friend’s familiar sign of support.
June felt well enough that day to descend the stairs (ever so carefully), where she found a lukewarm pot of coffee on the stove and a newspaper turned to the classified section. A sticky note on the paper from Christina read, “I think a new start will be good for you.”
That first time she moves, Christina throws her a housewarming party, and isn’t that just like her, making the best out of a miserable situation? But June is grateful. Her coworkers and friends attend, and it reminds June that even though her husband had left her, there were still people who cared about her.
After the party, a bubbly Christina snaps her fingers in front of June’s out of focus eyes. “Earth to June!” June focuses on her best friend’s face. What she sees there is the hint of mischief so familiar to her from years past, when two girls would sneak vodka into class in a water bottle, or pass test answers underneath bathroom stalls between class periods. And though they aren’t teenagers anymore, and though the mischief twinkling in Christina’s eyes only emphasizes the crow’s feet beginning to form there, still June feels a rush of anticipation.
“We need to cheer you up.” From behind her back Christina pulls out a joint. She grabs June’s hand and pulls her limp body to standing, saying, “Come on.”
“I think that is supposed to be for pain management,” June protests without any real conviction.
When they reach the bedroom, Christina lights the joint and inhales, throwing herself down onto the new bedding set from Target on June’s old mattress. June turns on the stereo to fill the silence, weaving towards her friend.
“Firm mattress! Shit, where’d you get this? This is the best mattress I’ve ever felt!” Christina giggles and took another hit. She has always been a lightweight.
June remembers the day she and Mark bought the mattress like it was yesterday.
“What exactly is wrong with our old mattress?” He asked as he ran a hand experimentally over a plush mattress top to his right.
“It sags in the middle. I always end up rolling like a squashed bug up against you in the middle of the night.”
“Shouldn’t you like that?”
“I need my space.” She sat on the edge of the nearest bed. The bed creaked quietly beneath her. Mark walked over and threw himself down onto the mattress with relish. It creaked loudly beneath him as June glared at her husband.
“Well, this is no good, unless we want our neighbors to hear our business.” A gleam lit up his eye as he bounced on the loud mattress, “But then again…”
June interrupted, “We are not having sex battles with the neighbors!”
Mark slid off the bed and walked towards another mattress. Holding his wife’s hand, he pulled her towards him. “I’m sorry. You know I kid. We’ll get a bed, there’ll be no sex battles, you won’t roll like a bug up against your loving and handsome husband…”
“Correct.” She grinned, sitting down on the edge of the Serta mattress her husband was sprawled on.
He rambled on, “I can knock you up on this bed without our neighbors hearing, and then you can even give birth in this bed like the granola liberal you are. The kids will jump in on Christmas morning, and then the dog too, and when we’re old, we’ll die together in this bed.”
“That’s morbid.” June lay down, gently, on the bed, and said, “Firm. I like it.”
“Then I like it.”
She can hear his voice in her head. Even though she hasn’t yet inhaled any marijuana, she suddenly feels loose like she has and stumbles towards the bed on a spinning floor. The mattress is the ship between icebergs of unpacked boxes in the spinning sea of her new bedroom. To steady herself, she sings under her breath the lyrics to the familiar song playing on the stereo, “You know you can make it…”
“Juney, Juney, you’re not gonna break it,” Christina finishes as June lies beside her on the bed, plucking the joint from between Christina’s long, delicate fingers.
“It is a good mattress.” June wraps her lips around the joint and inhales, “A good mattress for making babies…” She exhales, “and birthing them.”
“And getting high!” Christina runs her hand up June’s side. June shivers, gooseflesh breaking out on her arms and her nipples harden. Her best friend’s smiling, drug-goofy face is looking down on her.
“Hey, June, hey. You’re alright. You’re gonna be alright.”
June isn’t sure what to say. Christina’s face swims in and out of focus. She kisses her to shut her up (or so she’ll tell herself later) but she doesn’t see Christina’s face before her, only the stucco ceiling behind Christina’s head. She doesn’t hear the music, just whispered conversations at twilight of futures. Christina’s hot breath on her neck just reminds her of the newness of learning Mark’s body and of him learning hers and the kisses shared at sunrise when morning breath bothered them not at all. That stucco ceiling was mocking her, reminding her of the first home she lived in with Mark when all that mattered was that they loved each other and that was enough.
Christina’s fingers are on her bra strap, her breast, and all she can think is “I’ve got to move again.”
She stepped into the little black dress pooled at her feet, and grasping the straps, shimmied the satin up her body, sliding the smooth fabric over the newly acquired yet still nearly imperceptible bump on her lower abdomen. Biting her lip, she turned in front of the mirror, and examined herself from the side.
“You can’t tell. I promise.” Mark’s warm breath on her ear caused her to break out in gooseflesh as he reassured her. She turned, gave him a quick peck on the lips, and straightened his tie.
“Are you sure?” June asked. “I feel fat.”
“You’re not fat. Honestly, you look exactly the same as every other day. Skinnier, even.”
June playfully punched her husband, who tumbled onto the mattress behind him. “Funny. You know I just don’t want to tell anyone about the baby yet. It just feels like it is bad mojo, or something.”
He stood, and as he walked out of the bedroom, panned, “Plus, Christina would kill you if you stole the limelight right before her wedding.” Mark turned and winked at her. “Hurry up, beautiful, or we’re going to be late.”
June assembled her hair into loose curls held up by emerald green clips, and added the emerald necklace that Mark gave her on their first anniversary. “No one is going to be able to tell. No one is even going to be looking at you,” she told herself. The inherent truth of this statement reassures her; during her best friend’s engagement party, no one will be paying too much attention to the unassuming brunette with the slight baby bump forming beneath her dress. She stood on her tiptoes, sliding on one heel and then the other. She knows that in a few months, her ankles are going to be too swollen and her balance too skewed for her to wear heels, so she feels she might as well enjoy them while she still can.
At the top of the stairs, June experienced another bout of morning sickness…at 7 pm at night. Grasping the banister, she took deep breaths as the nausea and dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. It certainly wouldn’t be good if she vomited all over the new dress and more importantly, the new carpet. As she regained her composure, she shakily took a step down the stairs. “I don’t think Christina will forgive me if I don’t show up, even if I tell her why,” June thought. She took another shaky step downstairs and her ankle turned. She toppled down the long staircase, and every step stabbed at her back like a dull knife. At the bottom of the stairs, she felt a throbbing pain in her back and a sharper pain even lower. She opened her eyes and saw Mark standing above her the stucco ceiling swimming in and out of focus behind his pale and terrified face. She felt hot liquid between her legs and had a fleeting moment to think, “Oh no, I pissed myself.” Then she passed out.
The next house is a keeper; there isn’t a single square inch of stucco or anything else to remind her of Mark in sight. This time, there is no housewarming party, no gifts, no karaoke. Just Christina, perched on her couch and digging through a box labeled “books.” Christina tries to ask her something, but all June hears is a buzzing in her ears as she realizes what book lies at the bottom of that box, a gift from Mark from happier times in April, a message in his chicken scratch scribble on the inside cover.
In a burst of movement, she’s across the room, her hand on Christina’s, stilling it above the box. In her rush, she knocked over her wine, and the claret stain on the carpet reminds her of the blood drying on her thighs that she thought was urine. She feels like she might vomit or pass out but instead she just stares at the stain.
“June, are you okay?”
“Yeah. Yes. Just…” But there is nothing she can say.
Christina’s looking up at her and her eyes are brown, not green like his, and June just wants to feel something, someone good again, so she brings her lips down on Christina’s. Her face is much too soft. But then Christina’s mouth parts beneath her insistent lips and June decides to forget all the things that make her best friend not the one she really wants.
They stumble upstairs and converge on top of the crisp new sheets. They move in tandem; years of friendship forge a rhythm that makes this one step too far easy, thoughtless. June bites her fist to keep from screaming when Christina shifts on top of her, accidentally twisting her spine in a way that stabs her through with a knife’s edge of pain.
June thinks about the four fractures in her back. The torn ligaments in her arm. And the other precious little thing that was lost after her accident in May. She never told Christina what else she lost after she fell.
Afterwards, they lie in bed, facing away from each other. June drifts in and out of sleep, dreaming of the mattress, and the fall, and the baby book from Mark lying in a cardboard box downstairs.
“I’m pregnant.” Christina’s voice is barely audible. June doesn’t respond and soon Christina drifts into the slow, steady breathing of sleep.
“I was,” June whispers.
The Mattress
The day her husband moved out was the second worst day of June’s life. She sat with her legs crossed on the mattress in their bedroom as he threw clothes into another suitcase lying on the mattress beside her.
“How can you do this to me?” She asked. Her voice was steady. She didn’t quite believe that he was leaving her, not yet.
He didn’t look at her as he responded, “I’ve done everything I can for you. I can’t make you live again. I can’t spend every day trying to make you get out of bed, and worrying that when I come home from work, that you’ll still be in bed staring at the ceiling.”
June whispered, “I’m getting better. I am.” Then the first tremor appeared in her voice as she watched Mark fold his favorite t-shirt and place it on top of the growing pile of clothes in his suitcase. He really was leaving, and it was at that moment she knew.
His eyes were colder than she had ever seen them. “You’re not the only one is hurting here, you know.” He closed the suitcase and latched it, and turned away from her. His shoulders slumped as he whispered, “Look. I’m wrong to be angry with you. It’s not your fault. But I can’t even look at you right now.” He turned and kissed her forehead, then turned and left their home forever.
June sat in a haze on the mattress as the day’s light died around her. At twilight, she called Christina.
Christina stayed in her guest bedroom for two weeks. At night, she woke intermittently to the sobs from next door, and then sat in bed beside June late at night stroking her spasming back as she cried herself to sleep. June left her bed only to bathe or eat for the first few days. She knew that she was backsliding, and that Christina, bless her best friend, was at a loss as to how to help her. She made the effort to start living again for Christina; it is this effort that she couldn’t or wouldn’t exert for even her husband.
One day near the end of the two weeks, she encountered sticky notes from Christina posted all over her self-imposed prison in random places. A sticky note under her glass of water showed a crudely drawn monkey hanging from a branch with the caption “hang in there!” But the one that finally put a smile on her face was the yellow note stuck to the bathroom light switch. It read, “And anytime you feel the pain, hey June, refrain, don't carry the world upon your shoulders.” Every time June found herself in a sad state throughout their friendship, Christina would sing “Hey Jude” to cheer her up. Though this isn’t a bad grade in Chemistry or a few extra pounds before prom, nevertheless, June felt cheered just a small amount by her best friend’s familiar sign of support.
June felt well enough that day to descend the stairs (ever so carefully), where she found a lukewarm pot of coffee on the stove and a newspaper turned to the classified section. A sticky note on the paper from Christina read, “I think a new start will be good for you.”
That first time she moves, Christina throws her a housewarming party, and isn’t that just like her, making the best out of a miserable situation? But June is grateful. Her coworkers and friends attend, and it reminds June that even though her husband had left her, there were still people who cared about her.
After the party, a bubbly Christina snaps her fingers in front of June’s out of focus eyes. “Earth to June!” June focuses on her best friend’s face. What she sees there is the hint of mischief so familiar to her from years past, when two girls would sneak vodka into class in a water bottle, or pass test answers underneath bathroom stalls between class periods. And though they aren’t teenagers anymore, and though the mischief twinkling in Christina’s eyes only emphasizes the crow’s feet beginning to form there, still June feels a rush of anticipation.
“We need to cheer you up.” From behind her back Christina pulls out a joint. She grabs June’s hand and pulls her limp body to standing, saying, “Come on.”
“I think that is supposed to be for pain management,” June protests without any real conviction.
When they reach the bedroom, Christina lights the joint and inhales, throwing herself down onto the new bedding set from Target on June’s old mattress. June turns on the stereo to fill the silence, weaving towards her friend.
“Firm mattress! Shit, where’d you get this? This is the best mattress I’ve ever felt!” Christina giggles and took another hit. She has always been a lightweight.
June remembers the day she and Mark bought the mattress like it was yesterday.
“What exactly is wrong with our old mattress?” He asked as he ran a hand experimentally over a plush mattress top to his right.
“It sags in the middle. I always end up rolling like a squashed bug up against you in the middle of the night.”
“Shouldn’t you like that?”
“I need my space.” She sat on the edge of the nearest bed. The bed creaked quietly beneath her. Mark walked over and threw himself down onto the mattress with relish. It creaked loudly beneath him as June glared at her husband.
“Well, this is no good, unless we want our neighbors to hear our business.” A gleam lit up his eye as he bounced on the loud mattress, “But then again…”
June interrupted, “We are not having sex battles with the neighbors!”
Mark slid off the bed and walked towards another mattress. Holding his wife’s hand, he pulled her towards him. “I’m sorry. You know I kid. We’ll get a bed, there’ll be no sex battles, you won’t roll like a bug up against your loving and handsome husband…”
“Correct.” She grinned, sitting down on the edge of the Serta mattress her husband was sprawled on.
He rambled on, “I can knock you up on this bed without our neighbors hearing, and then you can even give birth in this bed like the granola liberal you are. The kids will jump in on Christmas morning, and then the dog too, and when we’re old, we’ll die together in this bed.”
“That’s morbid.” June lay down, gently, on the bed, and said, “Firm. I like it.”
“Then I like it.”
She can hear his voice in her head. Even though she hasn’t yet inhaled any marijuana, she suddenly feels loose like she has and stumbles towards the bed on a spinning floor. The mattress is the ship between icebergs of unpacked boxes in the spinning sea of her new bedroom. To steady herself, she sings under her breath the lyrics to the familiar song playing on the stereo, “You know you can make it…”
“Juney, Juney, you’re not gonna break it,” Christina finishes as June lies beside her on the bed, plucking the joint from between Christina’s long, delicate fingers.
“It is a good mattress.” June wraps her lips around the joint and inhales, “A good mattress for making babies…” She exhales, “and birthing them.”
“And getting high!” Christina runs her hand up June’s side. June shivers, gooseflesh breaking out on her arms and her nipples harden. Her best friend’s smiling, drug-goofy face is looking down on her.
“Hey, June, hey. You’re alright. You’re gonna be alright.”
June isn’t sure what to say. Christina’s face swims in and out of focus. She kisses her to shut her up (or so she’ll tell herself later) but she doesn’t see Christina’s face before her, only the stucco ceiling behind Christina’s head. She doesn’t hear the music, just whispered conversations at twilight of futures. Christina’s hot breath on her neck just reminds her of the newness of learning Mark’s body and of him learning hers and the kisses shared at sunrise when morning breath bothered them not at all. That stucco ceiling was mocking her, reminding her of the first home she lived in with Mark when all that mattered was that they loved each other and that was enough.
Christina’s fingers are on her bra strap, her breast, and all she can think is “I’ve got to move again.”
She stepped into the little black dress pooled at her feet, and grasping the straps, shimmied the satin up her body, sliding the smooth fabric over the newly acquired yet still nearly imperceptible bump on her lower abdomen. Biting her lip, she turned in front of the mirror, and examined herself from the side.
“You can’t tell. I promise.” Mark’s warm breath on her ear caused her to break out in gooseflesh as he reassured her. She turned, gave him a quick peck on the lips, and straightened his tie.
“Are you sure?” June asked. “I feel fat.”
“You’re not fat. Honestly, you look exactly the same as every other day. Skinnier, even.”
June playfully punched her husband, who tumbled onto the mattress behind him. “Funny. You know I just don’t want to tell anyone about the baby yet. It just feels like it is bad mojo, or something.”
He stood, and as he walked out of the bedroom, panned, “Plus, Christina would kill you if you stole the limelight right before her wedding.” Mark turned and winked at her. “Hurry up, beautiful, or we’re going to be late.”
June assembled her hair into loose curls held up by emerald green clips, and added the emerald necklace that Mark gave her on their first anniversary. “No one is going to be able to tell. No one is even going to be looking at you,” she told herself. The inherent truth of this statement reassures her; during her best friend’s engagement party, no one will be paying too much attention to the unassuming brunette with the slight baby bump forming beneath her dress. She stood on her tiptoes, sliding on one heel and then the other. She knows that in a few months, her ankles are going to be too swollen and her balance too skewed for her to wear heels, so she feels she might as well enjoy them while she still can.
At the top of the stairs, June experienced another bout of morning sickness…at 7 pm at night. Grasping the banister, she took deep breaths as the nausea and dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. It certainly wouldn’t be good if she vomited all over the new dress and more importantly, the new carpet. As she regained her composure, she shakily took a step down the stairs. “I don’t think Christina will forgive me if I don’t show up, even if I tell her why,” June thought. She took another shaky step downstairs and her ankle turned. She toppled down the long staircase, and every step stabbed at her back like a dull knife. At the bottom of the stairs, she felt a throbbing pain in her back and a sharper pain even lower. She opened her eyes and saw Mark standing above her the stucco ceiling swimming in and out of focus behind his pale and terrified face. She felt hot liquid between her legs and had a fleeting moment to think, “Oh no, I pissed myself.” Then she passed out.
The next house is a keeper; there isn’t a single square inch of stucco or anything else to remind her of Mark in sight. This time, there is no housewarming party, no gifts, no karaoke. Just Christina, perched on her couch and digging through a box labeled “books.” Christina tries to ask her something, but all June hears is a buzzing in her ears as she realizes what book lies at the bottom of that box, a gift from Mark from happier times in April, a message in his chicken scratch scribble on the inside cover.
In a burst of movement, she’s across the room, her hand on Christina’s, stilling it above the box. In her rush, she knocked over her wine, and the claret stain on the carpet reminds her of the blood drying on her thighs that she thought was urine. She feels like she might vomit or pass out but instead she just stares at the stain.
“June, are you okay?”
“Yeah. Yes. Just…” But there is nothing she can say.
Christina’s looking up at her and her eyes are brown, not green like his, and June just wants to feel something, someone good again, so she brings her lips down on Christina’s. Her face is much too soft. But then Christina’s mouth parts beneath her insistent lips and June decides to forget all the things that make her best friend not the one she really wants.
They stumble upstairs and converge on top of the crisp new sheets. They move in tandem; years of friendship forge a rhythm that makes this one step too far easy, thoughtless. June bites her fist to keep from screaming when Christina shifts on top of her, accidentally twisting her spine in a way that stabs her through with a knife’s edge of pain.
June thinks about the four fractures in her back. The torn ligaments in her arm. And the other precious little thing that was lost after her accident in May. She never told Christina what else she lost after she fell.
Afterwards, they lie in bed, facing away from each other. June drifts in and out of sleep, dreaming of the mattress, and the fall, and the baby book from Mark lying in a cardboard box downstairs.
“I’m pregnant.” Christina’s voice is barely audible. June doesn’t respond and soon Christina drifts into the slow, steady breathing of sleep.
“I was,” June whispers.