Sleep story

We had no mattress when we got there. We left the old one behind in the apartment made of glass. The new owner was hurrying us out. The old mattress needed transport to the dump. I have a van. I’ll do it. My renter wants in. It was lying there on the floor when we pulled the door closed for the last time. Years of sleep or the equivalent.

The small house was unbearably hot when we arrived so it wasn’t so terrible to sleep the floor. We had an air mattress but it was precarious. He leaned in to kiss my forehead and gave me a black eye. We went to the store with the nice mattresses shortly thereafter. This was what I would spend the prize money on: a mattress made of latex that I would have for life. This is what my accomplishments could afford me: sleep at night. Rest for my left hip and his right shoulder. A mattress made of latex with a merino wool cover that resisted dust mites and bedbugs. Protection from calamity, awake and at rest.

I slept beautifully on that mattress. Truly, it was the best I have ever slept, even while waking life escalated daily with absurdity in the name of education. Our bodies sank into it at the end of each day and remained thus, unconscious and undisturbed until we heard cardinal song or commuter traffic. While we worked, it quietly re-established its form, expanding to fill pits born by our heaviest and pointiest parts. It was always remade by evening.

When I was pried from that house in late September, the complimentary mattress bag provided by the movers was insufficient. It was thin, foggy and had obviously been used to hold inferior mattresses. This isn’t good enough I said before driving away and crying in a parking lot. I hope you survive this a neighbour said before waving goodbye. On the other side of the country, at another small house the mattress reappeared as resilient as ever. That bedroom was cold and damp but it proved resistant to this too. It held its form but never the dust, even as I laundered a hundred meters of unbleached cotton. He propelled himself through one bad job and two better and I made soft things for long journeys. We always slept well at night except that Christmas Eve but it wasn’t the mattress’ fault. This is a mattress for life, I told myself. You earned it with your accomplishments. No one can take that away from you.

Of all the things left behind, this is the heaviest burden.