Next Year, for Sure Read online

  —

  Chris watches Kathryn’s steady strokes and eases his rhythm to complement hers. He tries to stroke left when she strokes right, right when she strokes left. He thinks one of them is supposed to be steering, but they seem to be finding a course together, pushing wordlessly toward the far point of the shore, and then the next point, and then the point beyond that.

  Do you want to kiss her? Kathryn says.

  Chris didn’t even know he was thinking about Emily.

  From the rear of the kayak, he can’t see Kathryn’s face, only her back, her hair, her elbows. He studies the back of her head, trying to read her. She is leaning into her strokes, getting tired.

  I don’t want to kiss her, he says.

  He doesn’t want to kiss her. He wants what comes after. After the kissing and the undressing and the confiding. After the discovery and the familiarity and the gradual absence of kissing. He wants the intimacy of friends who used to be lovers.

  They paddle around an outcropping in silence.

  Because if you want to kiss her, she says, tell me and we can have that conversation.

  Okay, he says.

  Across the back of her life jacket is stencilled the word MEDIUM. He thinks: Medium. Seer. Soothsayer.

  They turn back, unsure how far they’ve gone. They take turns paddling, and sometimes let themselves float along.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sleep World

  Forty-seven minutes is a long time to kill 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 Plexiglas. They look battered and desperate, like the animals in the brochures that keep coming in the mail.

  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 box spring 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, spitting you out onto noisy highways. The cars move faster and seem angrier.

  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 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 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 playing hooky 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 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. Thus equipped, Sharon and Kathryn are set adrift in the sea of mattresses.

  Now, 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 during 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 dialed her 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 he sees at the laundromat—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 head down to a condo 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 sliding lid that is satisfying to open and close; in the recycling, an unrinsed jar of some paste that makes the whole apartment 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 nearly every line. But she cannot think of a way to say this without sounding petty. 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. Morning and night for the first couple years, but mornings in particular. 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. Apparently, a quarter cup of steel-cut oats right befo
re 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 stroke her arm while they read the paper, he hugs her for whole minutes, which she loves. And okay, so they don’t have a lot of sex. But when they do—usually on a Sunday, sometimes when the air turns crisp—it can sprawl across the whole afternoon and into the evening, luxurious and playful and sweet.

  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 was up to her—wouldn’t even pause in front of them, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  Sharon is lingering near 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 Kathryn 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 onto 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 smart and dumb jokes, until Kathryn thought she might hyperventilate from laughing.

  Later, exhausted by their own hilarity, they watched in silence, a blissful stupor washing over their bodies. 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 she 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. Soon Chris was asleep, too, furrowing and scrunching his sincere face. Finally, 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 strangely urgent.

  But now Kyle was standing, 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 inexplicably 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. 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 twenty minutes, so 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 turn it into a game. He would make up a backstory 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 Kathryn’s 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 nearly 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 noodle place and he would get a bowl of food in front of her. He would sit beside her in the vinyl booth and surround her with his quiet goodness, soak up all her terror and despair and absorb it like a charcoal filter, until she felt worthy of love and a non-debilitating bed and could march herself back across the street and buy a decent mattress. And when some salesman told them that men are like this and women are like that, Kathryn would know that
she and Chris were on the same side and that Gary was on the other. Because Kathryn 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 eleven thirty 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 Kathryn 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 earwigs and crying babies—and she wants Chris to do whatever he needs to do to be happy. If he needs to kiss Emily, then kiss her. Or worse even. She just wants him to be happy. She wants him to be happy so he can make her happy.

  Sometime this week would be ideal, says Sharon.

  Sharon has her day-planner out, making arrangements for the mattress to be delivered. Kathryn lets her eyes skim through Sharon’s week, the appointments and the half-familiar names. It’s mostly wedding stuff. Then she sees her own name:

  Sleep World

  (w/Kathryn!)

  Next to her name is drawn a small heart. The whole day is blocked off. Kathryn wonders if they will now have lunch and sit on some heated patio drinking bellinis and talking about big and small things, or if the unexpected efficiency of this purchase will inspire Sharon to see how many other tasks she can squeeze into her so-called sick day.