flashquake Editor's Pick
Vanitha Sankaran

If I Could Be Like Our Couch
by Wendy Zarganis

What struck me about this piece were the startling truths exposed in the heat of the moment. The author has captured the essence of those truths, the emotions we feel within but have not the courage to express.

Late at the bar and the subway isn’t running to our neighborhood. We have to take a cab. I’m not talking to you because of everything. Feeling bad is always your choice for me. I’m nearly out of money spent on you, spent on booze. We can’t afford nights like this one. I shiver in this stone cold cab next to you, my statue wife. You don’t look at me. You don’t breathe. You and I are ten years married. Middle-aged. Crumbling.

The hostile movement of the cab reminds me of the dream I had last night. I shouldn’t have said anything about it at the bar, shouldn’t have shared my dream with you. But I thought if I told you that you were doing something wrong in the dream, you could correct it. "It’s just a dream. I love you," you should have said instead of sighing and looking away before I finished explaining.

In the dream, they’re chasing us. I have a car. I keep telling you to get in. We can escape. I watch you hesitate like a newborn breathing. You don’t get in the car. You go to him. He’s standing there like an expectant groom. He’s short. You don't like short men in real life, but you make an exception in this dream. I don’t watch you kiss him and start a new life, but I know that’s what you’ll do. I drive away.

I realize all this happens in a dream so it’s not nice to blame you for the actions of my imagination. But blame is a salve and it soothes me to use it.

The cab slows, stops. You fall out first, idly threatening to slam the door on me. You have that glare. See, blame is soothing. But it’s not my fault that I have dreams.

Everything works out in dreams. Remember our wedding?

My hand over yours when we cut the cake. We push a little too hard into that initial slice of marriage. We’d both done this before with other hands. I wonder if you threw out all your old photos from your first wedding. I remember you telling me that you can’t even picture your first husband’s face anymore. I wonder if he's short. Every single photo, they say, starts disintegrating the moment you put it in an album. It will take years and years, but every single photo will disintegrate. We are picture perfect.

"Sleep wherever the hell you want," you yell at me, when I say I feel like sleeping on the couch.

Are you mad about the dream, about terrorists, about the miscarriage, about our bills?

"I will," I yell. I’m not in the mood to discuss global issues with you at 2 AM. I tell this to you.

"It’s not global issues," you say, "It’s about where our marriage is headed."

Our world. Global issues. I am facing the living room and my marriage and the couch where I will be sleeping for the next eight, ten, hundred hours. I hear you close the bedroom door. I know if I look away from the couch you won’t be standing there behind me. I dread the absence. When we married, I had a vision of us, together against the invasions of the world. Now you are meeting other men in my dreams. My dreams have become an invasion of you.

The boxes you packed this morning are all around the coffee table. I don’t want to be neatly wrapped up. It was my idea to go to the bar and talk. It was you that would always fix things so we could continue. But I couldn’t convince you to fix things this time. How did tonight become different? What is the secret of keeping a marriage in shape so that the pressure of dreams will not crush it?

The boxes are all sealed tight, except for one marked "china". I put my hand in. I tussle through rumpled tissue paper, my fingers hasty like feeling lingerie. I pull out a dinner plate. It has no cracks. Back when we were registering, I didn’t care about the china pattern. You wanted these plates with modern design with lines that disappeared into each other. I remember you telling me the design was like how two people become one in a marriage. These plates made you happy that day. I remember when we got back to our apartment, we made love on this couch. You usually only want to do it in bed. These plates made you so happy that it didn’t matter to you where we were.

The couch is still firm after ten years. What a remarkable couch to hold up for so long. Unyielding. What is the secret of a couch keeping its shape after being pushed upon year after year?

I sat on this couch when you told me about the miscarriage. I remember you were detached when you spoke, like regretting a lost lipstick. I could have given comfort if you had shown me tears. After you told me, you asked if I would mind sleeping on the couch. You wanted some space. I never felt as alone as that day with you. And right now, with a couch for my bed. Sleeping there always leaves a kink in my back that spasms like commitment and loss.

I put the plate back. I leave the box open and exposed like me on the couch, cold with no blanket. The couch hurts me. It’s not meant to be slept on and that is clear to me. I kick the box and it is so fragile. I want you and plates break.

Copyright 2002 by Wendy Zarganis

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