I Don’t Need It, I Just Want It

I Don’t Need It, I Just Want It Valerie Sayers (bio) Keywords fiction, Valerie Sayers, mattress, marriage story, feminism, relationships ________ I TELL RUDY that we really really need a new mattress and watch his mouth twist––he’s never thrilled about buying anything, much less a mattress that might take as long to pay off as a new car. The old one was supposed to last twenty years, and Rudy’s hell-bent on getting every last night. But honeybun, my aching back and the yellowing receipt agree: the twenty years are up. The first mattress Rudy proposes, naturally, is the cheapest one possible, so I promise to research futons. I have fond memories of an extra-lumpy futon owned by a fellow grad student, though the orthopedist grimaces when I ask if sleeping on one now might help or at least be OK. The futon FAQ page also says slatted beds like the one we own are bad for futons. So I move along to researching mattresses of the future. I make a date with my husband to check out reports and reviews and lists of guilt-inducing materials, to make a new budget that will fool us, or at least Rudy, into thinking we can afford the all-natural green mattress I want, made in the U.S.A. without a whiff of fossil fuel. Marriage: blood sport, my mother used to call it, but she meant that literally and I’m afraid my poor mama knew whereof she spoke. ________ EVERY MATTRESS I’ve ever slept on has imprinted itself on my spine, if not my soul. Our twenty-year-old mattress is made of memory foam, that unholy stew of dark-side chemicals. Who knew we slept on polyurethane? The first time I lay on it in the storeroom, blissfully ignorant of how the mattress sausage was made, I panicked: the surface was as unyielding as a lecture from my father. Or maybe that was just the kind of memory the foam produced. I made myself breathe deeply, relaxed into the mattress’s authority, and fell asleep for forty-five minutes, right there among all the other wild-eyed shoppers at the Memorial Day sale. That mattress was bliss for the first four or five years. Now it’s a torture contraption that sets me on fire sure as petrochemicals are setting the earth ablaze. [End Page 132] ________ RUDY HAS a million things to do before we can sit down together, even though we set the time, eleven a.m. on a Saturday, late enough for him to do all those things: rant about the cuts his editor’s made to his column; rant about his colleagues’ emails; rant about every picture Rosellen’s posted on Instagram. Rosellen’s just finished junior year of college (pronouns they/them/their). Rudy’s befuddled by the pronouns. He likes to gaze on the pictures to see what today’s gender is, but they always just look like Rosellen: dark heavy brow under a tangle of hair gathered up in back, Rudy’s full lips and bulbous nose, my too-long chin. She’s not pretty but she’s gorgeous, lithe and brown and stylish as a Parisian, arms bared to show off her only tattoo, a top hat: homage à George Sand, a writer I’m not sure she’s actually read. By the time I pull a chair over to Rudy’s desk, he’s fretting: café after café, dishes and wine glasses crowding the tables, though Rosellen’s vegan and we fretted that she wouldn’t find enough to eat. I think Rudy secretly hoped that Paris would make her an omnivore again. She (apologies, I see I’ve been doing that, force of lifelong habit)––they––are surrounded by friends: new friends? French friends? We know less than nothing about the details because Rosellen tells us less than nothing. “Didn’t I tell her to cook in the Airbnb?” “Rudy. It’s Paris.” “She’ll run out of cash at this rate.” I don’t remind him that the university’s paying for this trip: “research,” compensation for a semester abroad lost to...