Untitled 1: A Short Story
She awoke slowly, trying to pull up the name attached to the body lying tangled in the sheets next to her. Not wanting to wake the sleeping form, she laid still. Her deep eyes peered out from beneath her lashes, first trailing down the man’s body to the bed around them and then to the creamy decor that created the feeling of an endless expanse of soft sunlight.
The ceiling fan whirred softly above her head, the two pull strings of beaded metal clinking together rhythmically with every shake of the appliance. Almost as if in a perpetual dance, with only the melody of wooden blades slicing the air for music. She stared up at it for a long time, thinking of all the happy things in her life that had once spun just as the fan did.
Her mind flitted through images of her childhood playmates, arms linked with bent elbows, playing Ring Around the Rosy. Then she thought of a colorful merry go round, her mind’s point of view from atop the same sky blue horse with the white and golden saddle which she had sat. Then there was a snippet of daydream where she was sent back into her father’s strong arms. The same large hands that had carried her off of the merry go round gently encircled her tiny waist, as he picked her up to spin her around in the chilly winter air.
She had been six at the time. All the spinning had made her dizzy, and she staggered back to her mother, who sat smiling on at the scene from a nearby park bench. Just as she reached out to grasp her mother’s hand, the memory switched, as if someone had violently clicked a button and forwarded to the next scene.
Her mind whirled to a vision of the same smiling woman. This time, smiling too widely. Her whole frame shook with laughter, making her tilt forward and clutch the steering wheel as she ignored the blaring red light in front of her.
The girl remembered the car spinning out of control until it hit a metal barrier and came to a sudden, jerking stop. She felt a more sickening dizziness hit her this time. She peeled her eyes from the spinning ceiling fan, but she could not stop the onslaught of memories that pounded back into her head.
The spinning car, the spiraling depression that followed, the glass bottle that spun and flipped through the air, launched from her drunk father’s large hands, missing her head by inches. The glimmering fragments of green glass that surrounded her shivering body on the floor. Then she remembered the cold spiraling banister that led up to her cramped room in the foster home. The screech of spinning taxi tires leaving her at a curb by the train station filled her ears as she began to cry in the bed, remembering how at age eighteen she had been left with only enough to buy a one way to the city and a bowl of soup in a small deli.
Although cloudy tears filled her eyes, and sobs racked her lungs before bubbling forth from her lips, she was unable to stop. Unable to stop remembering how when a snooty waiter had sneered at her shivering body and requested her to leave for the night, she had simply broken down in the deli, just as she was now, begging to stay for just awhile longer. Just until she figured out where to go next.
As the reel playing in her head shifted to the next frame, her wandering a lonely city street, a hitch caught in her throat as she recalled the young man working the night shift in the bookstore. Her sobs quieted to silent torrents of salty sadness cascading down her cheeks as she recollected the worry folded into his forehead, his concerned voice calling into the street as his outstretched palm beckoned, no, begged her to join him inside.
She remembered her first night at the bookstore, the wiry springs that prodded her in the back from the mattress that was pulled out from the back office just for her to sleep among the stacks on.
She sighed into the memory of how after getting a job at the store and moving into a small flat nearby, the boy who worked the night shift tentatively asked her to coffee. As if after all of her hardship, an ill-conceived invitation for a lunch break was what would break her. At the cafe, she remembered him making her laugh, truly and loudly. A primitive sound that spurt from her diaphragm and knocked her head backwards in joy for the first time in years.
And finally, she remembered the wedding, the friends, the celebration, the family, the house, the fights and the compromises, and the countless days she had woken up on the same bed, entangled in the limbs of her husband and saviour.
She was dazed with an incredulous shock at the fact that she had forgotten where she was when she had woken up. After all, those arms were the only place she had ever belonged.
Sniffling, she pulled her eyes back up to her husband’s face, which was stretched out in a morning yawn, and then contorted into an expression of distress.
“What’s wrong? Are you alright?” He asked this urgently, propping himself up on one elbow, and unraveling his other hand from hers to gently wipe away the tears that stained her face. The same worried wrinkles invaded his forehead just like the day he had first met her.
“I’m so glad you worked the night shift,” she whispered hoarsely.
His worried expression melted away, making room for a passionate sparkle in his eyes and the most subtle of smiles. She didn’t catch the glimmer of love on his face. She did not see how lucky he felt, remembering that dark, yet fateful night, for she had already nestled back into his chest. Her hair tickled the bottom of his chin as she pulled him closer to her, for she knew as long as she held onto him, nothing more could spin out of her grasp.
