Her “no” got swallowed up by the sheets in his bed. The linen smelled of his cologne, which was a mixture of old wood, incense, and a sweetness that made her stomach swirl. The pillow underneath her heated at her breath. She clutched its cool underside and told herself that this was fine. Their bed was one of those foam mattresses that made her feel like she was sinking into an embrace. There was a long oval indent, marking where she slept. She chose the left side of the bed. It was closer to the clock. The digital blue numbers screamed against the muffling darkness. It was 10:43 PM and she was supposed to be asleep because she had a meeting at 8:30 AM, which meant she needed to get up at 7:30 AM. A little blue dot on the upper right corner indicated that she remembered to set her alarm. She would probably check it two more times before she slept.
He was moving. They were moving, rocking this bed like a boat on a turbulent sea. The sheets curled and crested around her. The wooden headboard that they bought together at an Amish auction was cracking against the wall. Their neighbors in the townhouse next to them were probably fluent in the Morse code of their sex. She never liked the headboard and the way it punctuated their presence when all she wanted was a break from her open eyes. All she wanted was to sleep on the far side of the bed, occasionally waking to check the clock at hours that seemed so small and soft. Whenever she was alone, she liked to make little scratches in the old wood. Sometimes, she made pictures, like butterflies or flowers, girlish things that filled the margins of her schoolbooks. Other times, she carved abstract lines and shapes. She liked to draw triangles when she was sad, though she didn’t know why. He had never found these marks. He probably never will. He never looked at her too closely.
Here she was, twisted once more in cotton, sticky with their sweat. The quilt that her mother gave her on her wedding day had long been kicked to the floor. He never liked that quilt, said it was “tacky.” She never him told him that her grandmother was the one who shaped it, and how she missed the way her arthritic hands held her. She hardly talked to him about her grandmother at all.
He was always above her. Even when they slept, he snaked his arms around her body and she choked on his scent. She forgot what it used to smell like when she fell asleep. She tried to recall her childhood room, when she had a music box instead of a clock. When she didn’t have to share her sheets. But the memory was hazy. The edges of it were blurry with disuse.
She didn’t bother with her “no” again. The sheets bound her to the bed and the dent in the mattress had formed a wall around her form. It was soft though, and the bed bended obediently to her every move. She’d never had a mattress that allowed her to imprint her identity onto it like this one. Though the sheets didn’t smell like her deodorant or the apple-scented shampoo that she used for her hair, they were stained with her presence. A mascara mark there, a blood stain here, her initials that she’d written in pen on the inside of her pillow case, these were the traces of her. Proof that she was alive in this room. Proof that this bed that did not smell like her was still hers. This bed, with the headboard that she hated, with her quilt forgotten on the floor, with the clock humming its digital light, this was real. This was home. To imagine any other room, was to create something that was never there, that will never be there. And she was here, alive in this bed, with him quaking above like thunder.
