Pillow Talk

A short story/drabble I wrote after reading a bunch of Raymond Carver.

I have never slept with another woman.

The wife doesn’t know that.

I’ve had sex with other women, before we met of course, but I never stayed to actually sleep with any of them. I suppose that makes me cruel or unemotional or something. But I try not to think about it so much anymore. That kind of thing can really emasculate a man.

Catherine is in bed already. She’s fingering her way through a copy of Swedish 101, silver-rimmed spectacles that add 10 years to her age, hanging round her neck. I thought she was supposed to use those to read? So I ask her.

“I thought you needed those to read?”

She looks at me like an intruder that’s just sauntered into her bedroom with a pair of stockings over his head and a sawn-off shotgun under his arm.

I ask again, and this time she seems to have heard me.

“I’m not really reading…” Catherine leans the book forward so that I get an unwanted glimpse at the peach-white pages. “I was just having a flick through. Waiting for you to get your arse into bed.”

She seems a little flighty tonight. She hasn’t tied her hair up like she usually does, but I prefer her like this, so it’s okay. My night isn’t entirely compromised.

“Alright. I’m coming.” I say as I finish staring at my reflection in the mirror.

It’s a huge ebony-wood framed mirror, somewhere between an oval and a rectangle, that hangs over the single ebony-wood dresser that Catherine just had to have. It used to hang over my mother’s mantelpiece but when she died three years ago after a series of strokes, Catherine took this as an opportunity to have at the only ornament in my mother’s flat that didn’t, to quote her accurately, “carry the stench of old age.”

She patted my back rather guiltily when I proceeded to burst into tears. But I don’t think about that anymore. No use when I know I would’ve made a similar slip-up had Catherine been in my position, and of course less than a year later, she was.

I don’t look in the mirror out of vanity. It’s nothing that straightforward. It started when my hair showed signs of thinning, and to my delight when I asked Catherine if it was noticeable, she made me stand under the big bedroom light and muttered, “Oh, yes. I can see it now. You’re going the way of your father, hm?”

I gave her my best huffity glare, and she laughed so softly that I instantly forgave her.

But that did very little to appease my constant paranoia that everyone could see the top of my skull like some sort of crude Halloween costume, only I was stuck wearing it all year round. So now I stand a good fifteen-twenty minutes in front of my mother’s old mirror and inspect the damage. Some nights Catherine watches me over her book or magazine, grey-blue eyes wanting to speak but never actually saying a word. I bet she thinks about how thick my hair was when we were kids. When we met in our second year of college I had a god damn ponytail for pity’s sake! I bet she makes herself look when every inch of her body shudders to turn away. Like some f*****g morbid curiosity.

But I don’t think about that anymore.

Climbing into the bed beside her in just my baggy blue shorts, I feel like that burglar again. Catherine snaps the book shut and puts on her glasses. I’m wearing mine too, I realise. In one slow reach she peels them from my face, and I make out the blurry line of her lips curving into an easy smile. She likes to see my eyes.

“I like to see your eyes.” She says. “You always had the most gorgeous green eyes.”

My stomach doesn’t sink quite as much as I’d hoped.

“So, you’re going to run off to Sweden then? You know they have the largest number of nudist colonies there than anywhere else in Europe?”

I can’t read her expression without my glasses, but I feel the bed shift as she sighs and I know then that my arrow has struck a nerve.

“No I am not running off to Sweden, James. I’ve only been practicing for a few weeks.” Catherine breathes on my glasses and wipes both lenses on her pyjama top. “And you know that’s not true. You really do believe everything you read, don’t you?”

She’s right of course, but that doesn’t mean to say that I would rather adhere to hearsay like the rest of this bloody village and its gossipy inhabitants.

“I was only kidding.” I try to redeem myself as she passes me back my glasses and I set them on the bedside table.

I don’t read in bed. That always seemed overly coupley to me and I’d always be more interested in knowing what Catherine was reading next to me.

“I think it’s great that you want to learn a new language.” I lie. “Who told you it would be a good idea?”

She frowns at me then, even I can see that.

“Nobody, James. Christ, am I not allowed to come up with these things on my own? Would you have preferred it if I’d have asked your permission first?”

I have a headache already, but this is the only way to get a real conversation out of her. Out of either of us.

“No. Of course not. You can do what you like, can’t you?” I don’t know why I added the “can’t you” and from the looks of it neither does Catherine.

She plays with the corner of her copy of Swedish 101 like it’s a flipbook, the pages clapping together as she struggles not to turn it into evidence that might later be used in court.

“I can.” She says without looking at me. “I can and I will. I mean, I am.”

“Well good.” Is my version of a response, then there’s the obligatory silence between us as I try and get comfy, prodding my pillow a few times for good measure.

I lay flat against the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. It looks like popcorn painted over with sealant and it’s in that moment I realise our ceiling has the exact same pattern as the one used at my childhood swimming baths. All of a sudden I can taste the chemical fuzz of chlorine in the back of my throat, burning the inside of my nose like dried blood. There’s the taste of blood too, as the memory subsides and I can hear the silence a little clearer now.

Catherine huffs, the sound of her book hitting the bedside table. Then the light clicking off. My light is still on and I give it a good minute or so before conjuring up the energy to reach over and switch it off. She turns and faces away from me, knees slightly raised like a child curling up in a bed that’s much too big for them.

I only semi-seriously consider sleep, until I hear Catherine’s voice, barely a rustle in the darkness.

She says, “I do want to leave, James. I think about it every day.”

Blinking once, I reply with “Then why don’t you leave? What’s keeping you in this house…in this bed with me?”

“I don’t know.” There’s a sniff and I can’t tell whether she’s crying or if it was just a sniff. But then she really begins. “Sometimes it feels like there’s this, I don’t know…gravitational pull. As if no matter what I do, everything circles back to you. Do you understand what I mean, James?”

She stays on her side, facing away from me. I feel like a prisoner talking to their cellmate through the wall.

“I…”

“Because I don’t think that you do. I don’t think you know what it’s like to have everything in your life revolve around another person.”

My lips part, tongue moves as if to speak but the words I’m searching for simply do not exist. Not in this lifetime.

“I am only forty years old. That’s not that old nowadays.” Catherine says with an air of pride.

“I know it’s not.” I whisper.

“Then why are we doing this to ourselves?”

The question forces me to scrunch my nose up. What exactly are we doing to ourselves?

“Doing what?”

“Convincing ourselves that we’re already ancient, already past the point of saving. I can still be saved, James. I know I can.” If she had been crying, she’s not now. Her words are clear and purposeful and cut straight to the bone.

There’s that taste of blood again.

“Go ahead then. Save yourself.” I’m not sure if I say the words out loud or not, because there’s no reaction from Catherine.

I watch as she brings a hand up to her face and brushes something off her cheek. My stomach finally sinks like it’s supposed to.

“I’m sorry.” My eyes squeeze shut. “I love you. I love you Catherine.”

She shuffles a little then, moving her right arm so that it’s tucked beneath the pillow. Nice and cold.

“Goodnight.” She says as frankly as her prior confession.

Goodnight is her final word to me, but as my eyes remain closed, the tiny shreds of stars and webs of constellations making their home in the pit of my skull, it sounds more like goodbye.

My lips part again and this time the words finally come.

“Goodbye.” I mutter, sleep finding me all too easily. “Bye.”